1516 - "Making Sense of Biblical Holy Days"

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecy. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Chris.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1516. Today we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday with the holy days of the fall of the year. And yesterday I went over the calendar, but I want to go back to that and really put some emphasis on something that I think will help us during these seasons of the fall and the spring and especially where we have a concentrated period of what we would call religious holidays. Now, first of all, we need to deal with the idea of God's calendar. Whatever God says is a sacred date. It's a sacred date. And you and I do not get an opinion on what God says is sacred. Now you can disavow that, you can disbelieve that, you can disobey whatever God says to do. That's between you and the Lord, but you're not going to change what God has put in the eternal appointment book. God said, I've made some appointments with Israel. And we can learn from those appointments. You see, the Bible says the things in the New Testament it says this. The things that were written aforetime were written for our learning and our admonition. And Paul was talking to Romans. He was talking to the church at Rome, which was made up of Jew and Gentile. As a matter of fact, by this time it was predominantly Gentile by the time he wrote. Now those are called Moed or Moedim, plural. These are the dates that we call that God laid out to be called Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, then Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, Pentecost in the New Testament, and then Yom Turua, we call that because of rabbinical tradition, Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year. And then we have Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and then the Feast of Tabernacles, as it is called most of the time. The Hebrew word is Sukat, S U K O T. These are appointed times, but the one that's appointed on a weekly basis is Shabbat. Then there is the feast of Purim that has to do with the Book of Esther. The word Purim is the word for lots L O T S because they cast lots and so forth in the book of Esther that was related to the Jewish people and to particular dates and so forth. And then there's Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the word for dedication. It's the idea of the temple being dedicated. And remember I told you yesterday in the podcast that the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of John was in Jerusalem celebrating and acknowledging the rededication of the temple because it specifically says in the Gospel that he was in Jerusalem and it was the feast of dedication, the feast of Hanukkah. Jesus observed Shabbat. He was a Jew, and he did that religiously. Shabbat is in the first two chapters of Genesis. But in the New Testament, Jesus went to the synagogue on Shabbat, and Shabbat is not even in the Old Testament, it's not in the Torah, it's not in the Nebuim, the prophets, it is not in the writings. The synagogue did not come about or the Baikonessid as it is in Hebrew, which means the house of assembly. Sunagogos means to go up together. It's a Greek word that stuck because that is when it really became very prominent during the rabbinical period as it rose as the rabbis rose to power and the priesthood diminished, and it became more political, that is the priesthood, during the Greek period, and certainly during the Roman period that continued. But what I'm saying to you is Jesus observed things that were merely religious. Now what does the word religious mean? Well it's a Latin word, religio, which means really to be bound to something. And you say, Well, nah, that's what I thought. It it's very binding. Well it can be, but there's some things we need to be bound to. And I'm not talking about do's and don'ts and this and that, but sometimes I hear people saying, Well now, and it it it's very trendy to say these kinds of things. Well, I I don't believe in religion. Well, Jesus did. His apostles did. It's not religio that's bad. It's not being bound to something that's bad. It's whatever you're bound to and what's binding you. You see, we are called bond slaves in the Word of God. The apostle Paul said this. I mean, I think he knew what he was doing and knew the difference between something that is bad and something that's good. Can religion be bad? Yes. It can be bondage in the wrong way. But Paul said in the book of Philippians, Paul and Timothy bond slaves of Jesus Christ, bond servants of Jesus Christ. B-O-N-D, that's the word for bond where bondage comes from. Said he was a bond slave of Jesus. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. But Jesus also and the apostles were religious. They kept these holidays, not because they had to, but because they knew the proper meaning of those. Certainly, Jesus didn't have to do anything, but he did that because he's the one that inspired that to be done. Remember, he's God. And he's the one that gave those things to Israel, and he is the one that ordained these things because he said, I want to meet with you every week. That's what God said. He says, I want to meet with you at least these other seven times of the year. And so God ordained that. These were very religious things. They were filled with all kinds of rituals and so forth. But again, ritual is not bad if it is with a proper attitude and the proper motivation. You're being religiously consistent when you eat at a certain time every day. You see, that's a routine. You're bound to it. If not, just to fast for two or three days, and and you'll see that you're more bound to it than what you think. I know because I used to live to eat. I now eat to live. There's a big difference. I thought I had to eat three meals a day, or as um we were erroneously taught, if you eat six meals a day, little meals, you'll be better off. Well, that just keeps your metabolism and your gut going all the time. And we know now that's not good. We know that fasting, it's called intermittent fasting, but fasting is good. It's good for the body, it's good for the soul, it's good for the spirit. And it lets us think instead of just our gut working all the time, taking all of the energy that we have to digest food. Now, I'm not getting off on a tangent. I just want you to understand that we are very religious people when we want to be, and it's depend on what we're bound to. So uh just keep the emails down about religion because you're gonna be in a losing fight with me because I know what the Bible says about religion. I've studied it now for decades. And uh, all religion is not bad. Some religious good, some routines are good, and if we're bound to Jesus Christ as a slave, then we're going to want to meet with him every day. That's a religious thing to do. People say, I'm not religious, I just have a quiet time. Well, how often do you have that? When do you do it? Do you do it every day? Do you do it every other day? Is that kept? Do you do it at a certain time every day? Do you have a certain ritual where you get up, have coffee, listen to a podcast, drink some more coffee, read some scriptures? Do you read certain books in a certain way? Those are religious activities. And so I am uh not trying to sell Catholicism or some kind of high church liturgy. I'm not talking about uh any kind of that. I'm talking about the reality that God has set aside some appointed times, and if we keep those, he said those are good. Those are good for us because it reminds us about something of the person or the work of God, that is who he is and what he has done. That's the reason for these holidays. And as I spoke about yesterday, Elul, the last month of the civil year, that is when the Jews know that the first of the year is coming from a civil standpoint, and so they go through a period of thirty days of repentance. When Yom Tarua, when that trumpet blows, Rash Hashanah, the blasting of the trumpet, that is the beginning of a new year, a new civil year. There's a religious new year, that's in Nisan or Aviv in the Old Testament. That is the beginning of everything, the first of Nisan. That's springtime, that's Aviv. This is the civil new year. And it is the civil new year is when you begin to have another series of holidays. Why? Because it's a new beginning. Have you noticed? God has us to have a concentrated time, a couple of weeks or in the fall, several weeks, of concentrating on Him. And people say, Well, uh, you know, well, that about every six months, why do we have to do that? Because uh it's real easy in six months to get out of the will of God. You say, Well, I wouldn't do that. Yes, you will. And unless you have some mechanism set up to worship on a daily basis and a weekly basis, you will slip away from God. It's a sinful nature, prone to wonder. Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. That old hymn was written for a purpose because it talks about really who we are and the sin nature. We're prone to leave God even after we have truly been born again. It doesn't take long for the flesh to get a hold of us unless we're constantly walking in the fullness of God's Spirit and in the Word of God. There's no such thing as being filled with the Spirit continually without being filled with the Word of God continually. You can look at Ephesians chapter 5, you can look at Colossians chapter 3, one talks about being filled with the Spirit of God, and one talks about being filled with the Word of God, with the Words of Christ. The reality is you're not going to be filled with the Spirit if you're not in the Word. You'll be up and down like a yo-yo. You've got to stay in the Word. And when we get into these routines and rituals, they will lead us to godliness. We don't need to get into things that put us in bondage to a particular routine itself. But if a routine helps us to be healthy in our relationship and our fellowship with God, then by all means we need to observe that and do that. And all of us need those boundaries. All of us need help with these things. And so I pray that you won't get carried away with it trying to tell everybody how not religious you are. Don't be ashamed of that. If it's good, quit living your life in a reactionary way because that doesn't help anything. That's all it seems that some people do is just live in reaction to, well, I'm not this, well, I'm not that. Well, won't you let somebody know what you are and why you are instead of what you're not and why you're not? And I think you'll see a big difference in the way people want to be around you, because no one wants to be around just somebody who's against everything. They want to know why and how do you walk with God, and it's not through prohibition. That is a religion in itself that is unhealthy. But these festivals and feast days and these things were designed to teach us about who God is and what he has done and how he relates to Israel and how he relates to us. These things were written to teach us how God was faithful to Israel, even when they were unfaithful to him, that by his grace God got them where they were, and by his favor they were able to win battles and do what they did. It was through trusting in God's word and his promises that they walked with God and they subdued kingdoms. And you can read in the great chapter of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews chapter eleven, and you'll see that these many of these were religious men, they were prophets, they were holy men, and they lived a uh very circumspect and careful life. And God used all of those things, but they were not an end in themselves. These holy days, these appointed days, these Moadim, they're not an end in themselves. They are uh there to help us to make our way to God, to see Him more clearly, and to have a time, a dedicated time to focus on the Lord. Listen, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. And so you've got to have a goal in mind in your walk with God. You need to set aside a time every day to worship God, and the more routine you can be in that in the good way, and the more ritualistic you can be in a good way, and in that sense, more religiously you can observe that time and keep that separated for God, uh more than likely the better off you're going to be in your consistent walk with God. So I hope this just helps you to get over this idea that you have to be anti-religious. Some uh religions are horrible and devilish, and and some habits that uh religions do are not good. Even some of the habits that Christians have are not good. But religion in itself is neither bad or good. It is what you do with it because it has to do with being bound to something. And if you're bound to Jesus and bound to serve Him like Jesus did when he was on the earth, that can be nothing but good. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.