Our Scripture reading for this Sunday is Exodus 12:1-14 and John 19:28-37.
Lent begun on Wednesday. This year for our Lent series we are looking at the Feasts of Israel from Leviticus 23 and how they are fulfilled by Jesus. This Sunday we will look at the feast of Passover.
By way of introduction to the series (entitled, “Fulfilled”) I invite you to read this series introduction from Reformed Worship magazine.
Texts: Leviticus 23:1-2, Colossians 2:16-19.
Leviticus 23:12 isn’t a captivating read. There doesn’t seem to be any wisdom to follow, any advice to heed, any comfort to grasp. It’s simply a command to celebrate feasts and observe holidays. If you skim over the list of holidays given in the remainder of Leviticus 23, you notice right away that none of these holidays seems at all relevant to us today (after all, when was the last time you and your family gathered together to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets?). Furthermore, when we read Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he seems to be warning us against taking these ancient holidays too seriously. Do these words about religious observances instituted thousands of years ago have anything to say to us today?
Absolutely! Leviticus 23 shows us that God is a supreme teacher with a flair for the dramatic. God wants us to see, touch, taste, and hear who he is, what he is like, and how he calls us to live. That was why God gave the Israelites feasts.
But when we look at the Colossians passage we see that people are judging one another on their religious performance. How well are you keeping kosher? How scrupulous are you in observing the sabbath or other religious feasts? Paul warns them not to get caught up in these “pictures.”
Like the Colossians, we often think that if we play by all the religious rules, act like relatively decent and moral people, and attend church, we’ll stay on God’s good side and earn a ticket to heaven when we die.
The problem, of course, is that this never works. We try hard to be good, moral, religious, or spiritual, but we’re trying to save ourselves. Flannery O’Connor once wrote that “the best way to avoid Jesus is to avoid sin,” because if we think we’re good enough, then we don’t need a savior. The truth is that we are broken, fallen, and sinful people. The good news—the message that God was proclaiming in the feasts and festivals of Israel—is that someone greater has come!
The feasts of Israel were shadows, pictures; the substance is found in Christ. We have the supreme joy and comfort of knowing that Jesus has come to live the perfect life that we could never live, and to die the death that we deserve. The peace of Christ is ours when we place our hope and confidence in him alone. The next six weeks of this series will illustrate what that looks like, how we can trust Jesus, and how we live in response.