Lent is a seasonal celebration. It always occurs in the March/April period as the days counted off between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Most of us don't relate to seasonal celebrations. If were honest events that are outside our family (birthdays, anniversaries, weddings) usually just happen around us. We all know that Easter is coming up, but most people don't have the slightest idea of when it occurs. Hence, seasonal celebrations can serve us in incorporating into our lives the various Biblical events that mean much to our faith.
God was the author of seasonal celebrations. Leviticus 23:2 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel.
These are the LORD’s appointed
festivals, which you are to proclaim as official days for holy assembly.
God called
Israel’s faithful to come to Jerusalem seven times a year for prescribed week
long celebrations – all of them with their own meaning. Since these festivals are not well known by
most people in the church, here’s a listing of the seven major festivals, with
a brief description of what they were for.
1. Passover – a celebration of God’s deliverance
from Egypt, and that God had chosen his people to be a nation of Priests to
serve him. The hallmark event of
Passover was the blood of the lamb applied to the doorposts of the house as a reminder that God "Passed Over" the households of the Israelites and preserved them from the death of the first born.
2. Unleavned Bread – tied in with
Passover, this followed the Passover day and extended their week long
celebration with the theme of “cleansing”.
Leaven or Yeast symbolizes sin that permeates the life of the believer
and “grows”, unless we purposefully remove it…hence, unleavened bread.
3. First Fruits – On the day after the
Sabbath (Sunday) following the week of Unleavened bread, they worshipped God
and asked him for a fruitful harvest.
Easter comes from the word “Ishtar”, who was a goddess of fertility and
the general sense of it is portrayed secularly at Easter with eggs and
bunnies. For Christians First Fruits is
the reminder of God’s faithfulness as seasons come and seasons go, and planting
and harvest remind us of the resurrection of all things, beginning with Jesus
our Lord.
4. Pentecost – As the name implies,
occurs 50 days after First Fruits. Now
the harvest of grain begins and with the first of the harvest, bread is made
with yeast. Pentecost was the beginning
of the church, and the purpose of God to include us, Gentiles, along with Jews
in making up the fruits of the harvest by His Spirit – making all one in
Christ.
These first four all occurred in the
Spring – roughly March/April thru May/June.
The summer was a time of fields, working the ground, nurturing the
growth of crops and then awaiting the Fall harvest. In the Fall, three more feasts occurred.
5. Trumpets, or Rosh Hashannah – It was
considered the beginning of the civil year for Israel. A rams horn was blown and the people were
summoned for a ten day period of reflection and repentance. The ram’s horn was a part of Israel’s history. Abraham found the ram as God’s provision for
the sacrifice that spared his son Isaac.
Jericho was conquered with the army of Israel using ram’s horns. In Leviticus 25, God specified using the horn
to “proclaim liberty throughout all the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof”.
Interestingly, that quote is imprinted on the liberty bell in
Philadelphia that celebrates American’s formation in providing “liberty and justice for all.” The Apostle Paul reminds us that one day God
will sound a trumpet and the dead in Christ will arise!
6. The Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur –
This is considered to be the highest holy day in Israel. The full story of what occurs on the Day of
Atonement is symbolic for what salvation means to us all. On that day two goats are selected and one is
held as a blood sacrifice – the sins of the nation are confessed over it and
the goat is slain – the blood sprinkled on the mercy seat in the Holiest of
Holies. The second goat also is spoken
over with confession of sins, but instead of slaying it, the goat is taken away
– out into the wilderness where it is let go, never to return again. So on this day, we realize that God has paid
for our sins through the shed blood of His son, Our Savior, Jesus; and he has
taken our sins away from us, never to be held against us again.
7. Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkoth
- The last of the festivals immediately
follows Yom Kippur. It is a party,
celebrating God’s provisions to all of his people. He has provided for their lives with food and
shelter, and provided for our spiritual needs with his own blood. Most Israelites build temporary shelters,
Sukkahs, to remind themselves that they once were people who wandered in the
desert, but that God brought them out of that to be a nation. For us, as Christians, it is a reminder that
we have been brought from our own wanderings and darkness to a place of
security and hope in Jesus Christ.
NOW, what
does all of this have to do with Lent?
All of God’s
festivals were commanded upon the people for a couple of generic, but specific
reasons.
Leviticus
23:4 “These are the appointed feasts of the LORD,
the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them.”
God called
them “feasts” because they were not meant to invoke morbidity, but rather, a
sense of Identity…this is who we are.
We are the
people of God, and we’ve been called out by God from the world; and it is our
desire to recall all that God is, and all that God has done for us.
Lent is our
reminder – these 40 days of reflection and remembrance – that God has called us
out of the world and has called us to Himself, to be salt and light to the
world around us, through the redemption that is ours in Christ Jesus.
Over the
next 10 days I’m going to take the Psalms of Ascent – the ancient Psalms that
Israel used in their journeying to Jerusalem for these festivals – and share
them one by one as a reminder for us of what God has done for us in redeeming
us and calling us to Himself.
Peace
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