Friday 23 May 2014

Must We Keep the Feasts?

Back when I was at high school, we had school rules which required students to attend certain programs at specific locations in the campus at specific times during the school calendar. Today all of the buildings of my former high school have been demolished and the entire lot on the corner of Blackstone and Grange Roads is currently vacant.

To ask the question, "Must we keep Moses' Law?" (such as the ancient Jewish Feast of Passover) is like asking, "Do I still have to attend assembly every Monday in the school hall?" 

The answer is not only, No - because I've graduated; (or perhaps in your case, No - because you were never a student at that school); but it's also No - because even if we want to, we can't - because the hall doesn't exist any more - it's a vacant lot.

It's impossible to keep the Feast of Passover in Australia, because part of the requirement of the Feast of Passover was that it had to be kept exclusively at Jerusalem, in Spring, in the month Nisan, at the altar in the tabernacle or Temple, with Levite priests officiating, and the priests had to be able to prove their descent from Levi by written genealogy, and it was required that a blood sacrifice be offered. None of these stipulations was optional, yet it's a logistical impossibility to keep those points today especially in the southern hemisphere but even by Jews in Jerusalem.

But even though the answer is No, that doesn't mean I'm not living the citizen-life which my high school lessons had been designed to prepare me for. Similarly, in Christ we experience all the spiritual realities, and live all the moral ethics which the Law had merely modelled. 

The question was highly relevant during Paul's day, because the school hall still stood, so to speak. The Temple complete with its Levitcal priesthood still stood. But even then, the answer was already No. Believers weren't required to observe the Law (such as the Jewish feasts).

After the destruction of the Temple, the issue pretty-much ceased. But since the creation of the modern State of Israel last century, the issue about keeping the Law (such as the Feasts) has again arisen in the minds of some believers. But the answer is still No - for the following reasons:

1. Because, if you are a Gentile, you were never required to;

2. Because, even if you are a Jew, the requirement changed; and

3. Because, no matter who you are, you can't - even if you wish to.

In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile - we all are heirs of the promise to Abraham. And that's what God planned from the beginning before the Jews' Law was ever temporarily inserted.

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