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Christmas and other Festivals

In the Old Covenant, New Covenant and Church==

Once a year the vast majority of professing Christians join hands with their fellow inhabitants of the nominally Christian countries to keep the festival of Christmas. Obviously there is variation in the forms of celebration; but there is much common ground between believer and unbeliever in giving presents, sending cards to friends and relations, decorating houses with fir trees, holly and mistletoe and paper garlands, and in eating and drinking special food, particularly on the date of December the 25th.

Nearly all Christians have accepted this tradition without question from their earliest childhood and seek to make the occasion a remembrance of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. They have misgivings about the commercialising and overeating that characterise the season, but have never examined the whole subject in the light of scripture to know the mind of the Lord.

In this writing I want to consider the keeping of festivals in scripture, firstly under the old covenant and then under the New. After that I will briefly survey the origins and history of Christmas observance.

==Old Testament Festivals==

Among the many laws and instructions that God gave Israel through Moses there was an annual calendar of festivals. These are described in Exodus 23:14-17 and in more detail in Leviticus 23 and with other information in Numbers 28 and 29 and in Deuteronomy 16. In total God ordained seven festivals which were divided into three groups.

The first group centred on the Passover (Pesach) and contained also the Festival of Unleavened Bread and the Festival of the First Fruits. This celebrated deliverance from slavery in Egypt and also the beginning of harvest. The Exodus from Egypt and the birth of the nation that took place at the time were events that the Jewish people could never forget and of course they remember them till this day. This group of festivals was celebrated in the first month.

The second group contained only the Festival of Weeks (Shavuot) or Pentecost. This fell in the third month, fifty days on from the Passover and celebrated the full grain harvest. Fifty days after the Exodus the Israelites came to Mount Sinai where God gave them the ten commandments. That also was an event they could never forget.

The third group of festivals fell in the seventh month and centred on the Festival of Tabernacles (Succot). It also contained the Blowing of trumpets on the first day of the month and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) on the tenth. Once again this group of festivals was associated both with Israel's deliverance from Egypt, and with the produce of the land. The tabernacles reminded the Jews of how they had left their houses in Egypt and dwelt in temporary abodes while they travelled.

These festivals were clearly ordained by God. They were times of great national solidarity. All Jewish males were required to go up to Jerusalem three times a year to appear before God to celebrate. They were times when all work ceased and, apart from the solemn festival of Yom Kippur when all had to fast and afflict their souls, they were times of joy and rejoicing before the Lord.

Some time after Joshua the observance of these festivals declined, and they were not observed regularly during most of the period of the monarchy. They were restored by the kings Hezekiah and Josiah with much repentance, and later by Ezra after the exile in Babylon. In New Testament times we find much direct and indirect reference to the festivals and indeed their observance among Jews has continued down till this present day.

We have a further festival described in 1 Kings 12: 31,32. After the division of the kingdom between Solomon's son Rehoboam in the south and Jeroboam in the north, Jeroboam felt it necessary to set up a rival religion to keep his subjects from going up to Jerusalem to worship. He set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan and instituted a festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month. Scripture describes this as a date which he had'devised in his own heart'. As we read on through the pages of Israel's history we find repeated references to him as 'Jeroboam the son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin'.

When we turn to the New Testament, as I have said, initially we find the Jewish people still observing the Old Testament festivals. As the revelation of the new covenant progresses however we begin to see an altogether new dimension. The deliverance from Egypt which the Passover remembers annually is seen to be a picture of a far greater spiritual deliverance. Jesus is the new Moses who leads a new people out of a much more serious slavery. He sets them free from sin and Satan. The festival of Weeks, or Pentecost to give it its Greek name, becomes the glorious baptism of the Holy Spirit, a transforming, vitalising experience as described in the book of Acts. It is no longer the first fruits of the natural harvest. Rather it is the first fruits of a vastly superior and more important spiritual harvest.

The Festival of Tabernacles speaks of an even greater spiritual harvest yet to come. God's purposes are not yet complete. There remains a glorious ingathering of fruit of which Pentecost is only a foretaste. Before we may enjoy it we must hear the trumpets sound and then pass through a spiritual Yom Kippur when we afflict our souls and utterly put off the works of the flesh. Then we can move forward into the great inheritance reserved for us in heavenly places and ready to be revealed in the last days (1 Peter 1:4,5).

So we see that the two-dimensional shadows of the Old Covenant become three-dimensional realities in the New. We find a revolutionary teaching that all the sacrifices and ceremonies that God had most solemnly commanded Moses are of value in themselves but point to infinitely greater spiritual truth. We are not seeing a new religion or a changed religion, but a mind-shaking development. The flat square has become a solid and substantial cube, the circle has become a sphere, the useless foundation has become the finished building, the dead has become alive.

Christmas and other Festivals

Do you have a ministry or a business Do you have a called of God ministry where your whole purpose is to "feed the sheep", and God supplies your needs, or do you have books, tapes, videos, etc. that you SELL for a "donation", or just outright SELL, and your buyers supply your needs?

There is nothing wrong with being in business and selling things. However, if you are a church or any kind of "ministry", you may want to check your motive for how you are conducting the work of the Lord.

Remember the money changers in the temple where JESUS turned over the tables and threw them out. They were selling things in the "CHURCH". (God made it quite clear to us that we were not to charge for anything, that HE is our source.)