The Festivals of God - Pt 1

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.” (John 4:21-26 ESV). There are seven major festivals proscribed in the Old Testament. Jesus fulfilled the old covenant and its commandments; and with that fulfillment comes a release from observing these rituals. However, there is much to be learned from each of them. In the next few days we’ll look at each one in some detail. Each miracle and each time Jesus taught the disciples, there was a design to enable his audience, and ultimately us through the inspiration of Scripture, to help us grow and receive eternal life. Many of Christ's teachings used agricultural analogies to help illustrate spiritual truths. That is true of our reading today. Consider the scene as Jesus tried to open His disciples' eyes to their role in God's spiritual harvest. John 4 describes Jesus and His disciples traveling through the area of the despised Samaritans, the foreign peoples placed in the land by the Assyrians when they took Israel captive (cf. 2 Kings 17:24-41). Though the Samaritans had some elements of biblical truth, the Jews avoided them because they had combined it with pagan religious customs. Jesus was wearied and sat by the well while His disciples went into town to buy food. When His disciples came back, they were astonished to find Him breaking the Jew's taboos by talking with the Samaritan woman at the well! Perhaps they heard Him reveal to her that He was the Messiah. As the woman rushed off to tell everyone what she'd discovered, Jesus used this surprising setting as a teaching moment for His disciples. “Do you not say, "There are still four months and then comes the harvest"? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together'" (John 4:31-36). Jesus was calling His disciples to work in His great spiritual harvest. Whether in the chance encounters of life or the intentional missionary work in our assigned field, we need to be ever ready to give such an account of our faith. We’ll see this in each of the festivals also. The seven festivals occur during three harvest seasons in Israel. Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread occur at the beginning of the barley harvest in the spring. The Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, occurs at the end of the barley and wheat harvests. The last four festivals are all in the late summer and autumn harvest season. These are known as the Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles and Eighth Day (which we often refer to as the Last Great Day). Tomorrow we will consider the importance of “Sabbath.”