The Feast of Tabernacles, the celebration of the Lord’s people that looks forward to the joyous marriage supper of the Lamb, begins Thursday evening at sunset. This is my first year celebrating this feast for seven days as it is written in the Scriptures, and I am so excited for it to begin! I start cooking and baking tomorrow, LOL.
I ran across this instruction while researching the fall feasts this year:
“These are the feasts of the LORD which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire to the LORD — a burnt offering, and a grain offering, a sacrifice, and drink offerings, everything on its day –.” Leviticus 23:37
So there are five things which are to accompany every feast day (including Sabbaths, since the Sabbath is the first feast listed in Leviticus 23):
1) a holy convocation;
2) a whole burnt offering;
3) a grain offering;
4) a sacrifice for sin;
5) a drink offering.
The interesting thing about this is that the sacrifice for sin was made once and for all in Jesus. He also said, as often as you eat the bread (and the grain offering was always a loaf or cake of bread) and drink the cup (and the drink offering was always wine), do it in remembrance of Me. What were we to remember about Him? That the breaking of His body and the shedding of His blood paid the price for our sins — that He became our sin sacrifice! Jesus is the sin sacrifice, and the bread and wine of communion is our commemoration of it. So in our family, on every feast day and Sabbath, we break the bread and drink the cup of communion with our meal, and remind ourselves that Jesus became sin who knew no sin, so that we, who knew no righteousness, could be made the righteousness of God in Him!
A few weeks ago we learned what the New Covenant application of the whole burnt offering — the olah — is. We are to be living whole burnt offerings, as Paul says in Romans 12:1. So also we have been learning as a family, on every feast day and Sabbath, to dedicate ourselves anew to the Lord our God, to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to walk in His ways by the power of the Holy Spirit living within us!
That leaves the holy convocation — the set -apart assembly of the believers, the ekklesia, the congregation of the living God. Sometimes our church has assemblies and special services on the feast days, and sometimes not. When there is nothing going on at the church, I just invite as many believers as will come that will fit in my house to come share the feast meal with us, and join us in honoring the Lord on His holy day. I love that the commands of the Torah all find their fulfillment in Jesus, even semi- obscure ones such as Leviticus 23:37!
We do the same….. the children have such fun building their succoth……. they love the whole 'camping out' feel…