Monday – March 28, 2016
Praise the Lord it is Monday again and time to receive God’s Word and make it our own. In the preceding three days the Christian Church as celebrated Good Friday and Easter. What we have called ‘Good Friday’ coincides with the Crucifixion of Jesus our Passover Lamb and what we have called ‘Easter’ coincides with the Resurrection of Jesus. These first came to us as a type and shadow in the Feasts of the Lord called Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First fruits. The following Scripture passage is rather lengthy but worthwhile to read through and see the various aspects of our redemption. I will be interjecting helpful comments between the various verses.
Leviticus 23:4-10 (KJV)
4 These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.
Notice that these feasts are the LORDs, He is the focus. These feasts were an opportunity for God to be merciful to His people and portended a greater redemption to come. The word feast is the Hebrew word ‘moed’ which is an appointed time and by implication an appointed purpose. From the first Passover to the Crucifixion is 1400 to 1500 years and that is when the full implications of these feasts came into full view.
5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover.
Five is a number for the Holy Spirit, the One who quickens bringing us to spiritual life and who will make our physical bodies incorruptible at the catching away or the resurrection. Passover is when the Lord would cleanse the sins of the Old Testament saints for another year, when the lamb without blemish and certainly innocent of sin, was killed, sacrificed. Fourteen is the number of deliverance or salvation. Our deliverance, our salvation came by way of Jesus death spirit and body on the Cross of Calvary, same sequence as Adam.
6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.
Leaven represents sin, and Jesus was free of all sin. He was the sinless Lamb of God. Just as the children of Israel had to remove all leaven from their homes so Jesus removed all sin from our physical bodies.
John 1:29 (KJV)
29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
7 In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
8 But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
9 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
10 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest:
Jesus is the first resurrected from the dead, spiritual and physical, and therefore we can be sure that we also will be raised as He was from the spiritual dead and physical dead to an incorruptible state. Jesus was the first and now each of us in our order. Praise the Lord!
1 Corinthians 15:20-23 (KJV)
20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
We sing the song, ‘Because He Lives’ and we rejoice in the Crucifixion, the victory obtained over hell and the grave, and the resurrection, it is His and it is ours because of The Blood Covenant.
Because He Lives
God sent His son, they called Him, Jesus;
He came to love, heal and forgive;
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives!
Chorus
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone;
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living,
Just because He lives!
(From the Bill Gaither Website, partial)
By Pastor David R. Wood
