Keeping track of how God tells time

Every day in the synagogue, Jews pick up their Hebrew prayer books (the Siddur) and recite a passage based on God’s ancient declaration to Moses: “Blessed are You YHVH who sanctifies Israel and the times” (‘Baruch Ata YHVH meqadesh Yisrael v’zmanim’).

The original thought behind this prayer is found in Leviticus 23:2-4: “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them: ‘YHVH’s appointed times which you shall proclaim as holy convocations – My appointed times are these.’” The God of Jacob repeats that principle again, stressing it in Leviticus 23:44: “So Moses declared to the sons of Israel the appointed times of YHVH.”

But many Jews don’t attend synagogue today. And countless Christians of all stripes consider Jewish feasts, fasts and prayers to be quaint but unimportant. Yet the God of the Bible declares that these feasts and festivals are uniquely His – “My appointed times” as it says in Leviticus 23:2.

What does God’s declaration mean, and what significance does it have for Jews and Gentiles who believe the Bible? What are the implications of YHVH’s declaration for the nations of the world and for their political and religious leaders? How are we all to keep track of how the God of Jacob tells time?

God’s sovereignty over darkness and light, the stars and the seasons

King Solomon proclaims: “There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). This started with the creation and manifestation of light to our universe: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:3-4).

“He counts the number of the stars. He gives names to all of them” (Psalm 147:4). “Praise Him, sun and moon! Praise Him, all stars of light! Praise Him, highest heavens and the waters that are above the heavens! They are to praise the name of YHVH,  for He commanded and they were created” (Psalm 148:3-5). The Jewish Siddur again reflects this biblical perspective: “Blessed are You, YHVH our God, King of the universe, who makes distinction between holy and normal, between light and darkness!”

Denying God’s sovereignty, His existence, His seasons

The prophet Jeremiah mourned the lack of spiritual discernment of many in Israel in his day, who did not bow the knee before YHVH’s sovereign creative power, but denied His ways, spurned His calendar and scorned His feasts: “But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart. They have turned aside and departed. They do not say in their heart: ‘Let us now fear YHVH our God, who gives rain in its season, both the autumn rain and the spring rain – who keeps for us the appointed weeks of the harvest” (Jeremiah 5:23-24).

Paul of Tarsus echoes Jeremiah’s words, adding that not only Jews but also Gentiles stand guilty of this same spiritual denial:

Times and seasons can be changed only by God

Daniel the prophet was a top political advisor to the king of Babylon. He spoke from personal experience when he declared that YHVH “is He who changes the times and the periods. He removes kings and appoints kings. He gives wisdom to wise men, and knowledge to people of understanding” (Daniel 2:21).

Daniel understood that a repudiation of God’s Leviticus 23-based calendar is, at its heart, a denial of God’s sovereignty. Those who make light of the biblical calendar end up mocking the crafter of that calendar – the God of the Jews and the sovereign shaper of history. Daniel notes that it is the anti-Christ/ anti-Messiah spirit which attempts to adulterate those biblical perspectives strongly rooted in the Hebrew calendar. Our day has seen a mushrooming of such attitudes:

The zenith of Creation’s first week is the seventh day

YHVH calls Himself the God of the Jews (see Genesis 26:24; 28:13; 31:42; 32:9; Exodus 3:6,15-16) roots. He entrusted the entire Bible to the Jewish people (see Romans 3:1-2). The God of Jacob tells the Jewish people that the feast days of Leviticus 23 are “your appointed feasts … a reminder before your God” (Numbers 10:10).

The weekly Day of Rest (Hebrew, the Shabbat) begins in Genesis on the seventh day of Creation. YHVH established this day as special and holy from the very beginning (see Genesis 2:3). Thousands of years before Abraham was born, God set His stamp on Shabbat for all time.

Moses and the Prophets later communicate that the Lord of Eternity put a divine seal on the Shabbat, crowning it as an especially Jewish sign-day for all the days of time and space:

 

God grants to the Sabbath a weekly preeminence and priority

In Leviticus 23 (the biblical chapter which highlights the Jewish year’s complete feast calendar) the God of Jacob emphasizes something that most of us rarely think about when considering the Jewish feasts. The yearly feast-cycle begins with God commanding the celebration of the Shabbat (Leviticus 23:3). The high point of each week is to be the Shabbat, a remembering of YHVH’s sovereign authority over everything that He has created:

The Jewish Sabbath in the boxing ring of the Gentile Church

As Roman and Greek Replacement Theologians grasped the Jewish Scriptures with gnarled anti-Semitic hands, they began to perform spiritual plastic surgery on the Bible. The Genesis Shabbat was incrementally morphed into a Gentile-Christian Sunday. And in short order, Sunday-worship became a theological litmus test of Christian orthodoxy. Those who held to a biblical seventh-day Shabbat (like the Jewish apostle Saul of Tarsus; see Acts 13:14, 42-44; Acts 16:13; Acts 17:2; Acts 18:4) were eventually rejected as heretics. Gentile Christians rapidly drained  Shabbat-keeping (which had been the practice of the original Jewish apostolic body of Messiah) from church liturgy and observance. Instead, anti-Shabbat and anti-Jewish-feast tendencies  were soon to become the church’s theological conviction and religious practice.

The reasons stated by the church for rejecting Jewish feasts and the Jewish Shabbat were not based on any biblical mandate; they were anchored in cold-hearted anti-Jewish attitudes. Here are some dishonorable milestones in that metamorphosis:

Ignatius of Antioch, written between Antioch and Rome, circa 107-110 AD – Epistle to the Magnesians:

Justin Martyr, penned in Rome 155 AD – Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 18, 2:

Constantine the Great; written in the Balkans; March 7, 321 AD – Corpus Juris Civilis Cod., lib. 3, lit. 12, 3:

Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima, 335 AD; one of the Fathers of Church History:

The Council of Laodicea, Canon 29; 365 AD : “Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord’s Day, and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be Judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.”

It’s hard to tell time while ignoring God’s Jewish calendar

The Body of Christ got off to a bad start, developing a theology and a Last Days perspective which rejected YHVH’s calling on the Jewish people. It replaced the calling of Jacob with a non-biblical ‘priority of the Gentiles.’ Theological sleight-of-hand moved Shabbat to Sunday and replaced the Jewish biblical feasts with a ‘Christian Calendar’ chock full of newly-created ‘Saint’s Days.’

Something was lost in this ‘Gentilizing’ process. God’s prophetic calendar and His gifts and calling to the Jewish people are not items that can be blithely ignored. The entombment of the truth and light that these Jewish riches could have brought to the body of Christ has weakened the Christian world for ages, depriving it of the full counsel of God and sapping it of spiritual clarity and discernment.

But God and His purposes are not stymied. He is raising up voices which are restoring His truth about the Shabbat. Before he was murdered, Charlie Kirk published a book ‘Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your life’. And 2,700 years ago the prophet Isaiah prophesied of a coming day when Messiah Yeshua will sit on David’s throne in Jerusalem, and the entire planet will once again celebrate YHVH’s appointed times, His feasts and His Sabbaths:

The rise of the Messianic Jewish movement in the 1800’s and 1900’s is a token of this fast-approaching prophetic day. “Messiah Yeshua is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). 

 

Loving Passover seders but scorning the Shabbat

Over the past sixty years, many Evangelicals have had the joy of experiencing the richness of a ‘Christ in the Passover’ demonstration. They have discovered how Messiah Yeshua’s Last Supper was truly a Jewish Passover meal, and that those elements lie at the heart of what is today known as ‘communion.’ They have heard about the future Messianic celebration of the Passover, as Yeshua prophesied: “For I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes” (Luke 22:17-18).

Yet, while Evangelicals appreciate one or two Jewish feasts, some often have a knee-jerk reaction to the continuing relevance of the Shabbat. Some of this is due to a suspicion or fear of the Mosaic covenant – what could be termed ‘Shabbatophobia.’ The Shabbat was given at the dawn of creation, which means that Adam and Eve kept Shabbat. But later the Shabbat was also made part of the Mosaic covenant (see Exodus 20:1-12; Exodus 31:13-16). Nearly two millennia of anti-Semitism and an anti-Mosaic attitude have taken their toll, and these negative attitudes to Shabbat are often a litmus test of other deeper spiritual infections. It is worth remembering that Isaiah prophesies that the Shabbat will be part of the New Covenant order in days to come (Isaiah 66:22-23).

How shall we then pray?

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the very practical enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do.

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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