Now this friend also knows your friends and family and decides to go to them with a plan - a surprise party for you. And to make it a real surprise, makes plans to hold the celebration on 'his birthday'. Behind the scenes he has your family excited - - what a celebration he has planned. Each detail is more extravagant than the next. He hires a wonderful orchestra and choir, spares no expense on food. He knows your fondness for angel food, but he's into chocolate - so 'devil's food' it is. And the gifts - some beyond 'their' wildest dreams, but not yours.
When you arrive at the celebration, your friend tells you that he is having a party for YOU and that he has invited YOUR family and friends. They all sing HAPPY BIRTHDAY, hoping you'll be pleased. You know your 'friend', you know it is HIS birthday - not yours. You note the devil's food cake, knowing its his favorite, not yours. You know he knows that such gala and the 'extravaganza' is 'not your style', yet the orchestra plays and the choir sings beautifully and your family and friends are having such a 'wonderful time' how would you dare show your displeasure, but you know in your heart that your friend is mocking you - and using your own family to do it.
We have just completed the year of God's feasts now culminating and beginning a new cycle with Simchat Torah which essentially means the 'joy of God's instruction'. But sadly for the 'church' we are not taught 'God's instruction', his feast days , nor really how to study or search it out. The Holy Spirit is more than willing to teach all who are willing to yield to His leading, but it requires a decision to 'enter the rest'. This is not about 'legalism' - keeping God's feasts as the 'letter of the law', but actually the opposite, allowing God's feasts to keep us. It is coming to an understanding of HIS FEASTS that we realize the extravagant love God has for each of us, then DESIRING to do that which pleases HIM.
God's feasts are 'celebrations' - Hebrew words that indicate 'entreating God's favor' as well as 'boasting in God'. God's feasts are God's 'celebrations' that are 'worship of God.' God's feasts promote prayer and fasting, sincerity and truth, a discipline of the spirit rather than the gratification of the flesh .
The world's feasts are not counterfeits, as they are not even 'close'. Yet they are also called celebrations', with much appeal to the flesh, in truth bringing honor - 'worship' - to 'false gods': feasting in excess, enticing to different lusts to include coveting, greed, sexual immorality, and the like.
When Jesus was fulfilling the feast of Passover he went to Gethsemane (oil press) and entered into prayer and fasting.
God's part: Passover: JESUS as the Passover Lamb
Our part:.. UNLEAVENED BREAD: Sincerity and truth
....... 1Corinthians 5:7-8 For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.
....... Therefore LET US KEEP THE FEAST not with old leaven, nor with the
....... leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of
....... sincerity and truth.
God's part: Firstfruits from the dead
Our part:.. Shavuot / Pentecost: filled with His Spirit, led by the Spirit,
.............. walking in the power of the Spirit.
God's part: Rosh ha Shanah / Blowing of the trumpets [Saving Israel out of her trouble]
............. Yom Kippur / Day of Atonement: Restoration
Our part: . Sukkot / Feast of Tabernacles: Abiding in Christ-life - in faith
God makes it clear that HIS feasts are everlasting. Some have translated everlasting in the 'indefinite ' sense - UNTIL - the new covenant. Some have argued 'for the Jews / for the Gentiles'. But the argument is futile if we consider 'Christ' and 'Christ in us'. With that in mind, the Shalosh Regalim (literallly three walking) pilgrimage feasts plainly includes the grafted in church. How can they not when there is One God, one faith, one baptism - Jesus as one with the Father, and we one with Christ. Christ is the fulfillment and essence of the feasts. Even with 'our part', the feasts are not a 'work we do', but a 'work God does within us'. If choosing to 'walk out' the feast, having the Passover Supper, building a Sukkot, we learn the work that God is 'doing in us' - - that we are not 'keeping the feast', but that the 'feast is keeping us'. God is the faithful one, bringing us to a place of sincerity and truth, by 'Christ in us'. He fullfils our requirement of Shavuot / Pentecost by placing His Spirit within us, that we will worship Him in Spirit and truth. He brings us to the place of our temporary sojourn, to the place of 'being gathered', by our abiding faith in His resurrection - in spirit and truth. FAITH - - 'Christ in us' - - everlastingly keeping His feasts that His feasts 'keep us'.
A few years ago I attended an conference on Hebrew Roots and the Feasts of God and someone posed a question to the speaker about the god 'Baal Peor'. The speaker's answer was this, 'Well, to put it plainly, Ball Peor was known as the 'crap god'. People would defecate before the idol and then smear the idol. Sounds terrible, yes, but we 'ignorantly practice' much the same in our 'worship' to God.
Wikipedia: If Pe‘or is connected to the Hebrew stem p‘r 'open', used both of mouth and bowels, it might mean 'opening' and so Ba‘al Pe‘or could mean 'Lord of the Opening'. This apparent meaning is probably the source of Talmudic traditions associating Ba‘al Pe‘or with exposure and excrement. The tractate Sanhedrin 64a attributes to Rab through Rabbi Judah the story of a sick Gentile woman who vowed to worship every idol in the world if she recovered. Upon recovery she set out to fulfill her vow, but drew back at Pe‘or as the rites were too disgusting: eating beets, drinking strong drink, and then uncovering oneself.
A story follows about a Jew who showed his contempt for the god by wiping his behind on its nose after defecating in the temple and who was praised for his piety by the acolytes of the god who said: no man has ever before served this idol thus. Tractate ‘Avodah Zarah 3 states in the Gemara that the area before the idol Pe‘or was used as a latrine and that the worship of the idol consisted of excrementing before it. Rashi comments on Numbers 25.3 that Pe‘or was so called because they would uncover before it the end of the rectum and bring forth excrement; this is its worship.
How would you feel if a feast was to be kept in your honor, but instead your day was ignored or forgotten and your enemy's feast was kept on his appointed day, and then to 'mock you', your name 'celebrated' on this day' with everything that was abhorrent to you. We as 'church' (most ignorantly) do this and then take Scriptures out of context to support our 'reason for the season'. Are we throwing 'human waste' in the face of God?
I, of anyone, will tell you honestly, that yes, I too 'love the world's seasons'. Who wouldn't? Satan comes as an 'angel of light'. But I am at a place where I wish to make a 'conscious decision' for truth.
When one jumps off a cliff, whether in full knowledge or accidentally in ignorance, the end result remains.
It is interesting to note that as God's feasts end their cycle with their promise of our being gathered to the Lord - the world's celebration of Halloween ensues and on its heels Christmas' is ushered in, followed by the world's vision of a 'Happy New Year' (champagne glasses clicking) and Cupid's 'Valentine love' working itself toward honoring the 'estrus cycle, the goddess Ishtar - Easter'. If you were God - how would you feel about your 'loved ones' practicing these rites, abhorrent to you, 'in your Name'? Especially after having already given them celebrations that do please you, but are pretty much ignored?
Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)". The name of the festival historically kept by the Gaels and celts in the British Isles which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end".
....... Matthew 24:32-51
....... "Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become
....... tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when
....... you see all these things, know that it is near--at the doors! Assuredly, I say to
....... you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place...
....... But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For
....... as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and
....... giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know
....... until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son
....... of Man be ... ... "Who then is a faithful and wise servant ...
.......Amos 3:15
.......I will destroy the winter house along with the summer house;
.......the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end,"
.......Says the Lord.
.......Amos 8:1-3
.......Thus the Lord God showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit.
.......And He said, "Amos [burden], what do you see?" So I said,
......."A basket of summer fruit."
.......Then the Lord said to me: "The end has come upon My people Israel;
.......I will not pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple shall be
.......wailing in that day," Says the Lord God-- "Many dead bodies everywhere,
.......They shall be thrown out in silence."
Church - are we seeking His face? Are we fasting and praying? Are we seeking His truth? Are we bringing Christ to the world in 'spirit and truth? Are we setting captives free? Bringing healing? Raising the dead?
Joshua 24:14-15
"Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth,
and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side
of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord!
And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves
this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers
served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the
Amorites [the sayers], in whose land you dwell. But as for me and
my house, we will serve the LORD."
Selah!
Shalom!
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