Bible Readings:
Exodus 12:1 – 28, 24:14 – 17, 34:18 – 24
Deuteronomy 16:1 – 17
Sermon Outline:
John 7:37–38 (NKJV)
37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
1 Corinthians 5:7–8 (NKJV)
7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 – The feats of OT Israel during the three annual pilgrimages:
(1) Passover / Feast of Unleavened Bread
(2) Feast of Weeks (also known as “Feast of the Harvest”)
(3) Feast of Tabernacles / Booths (also known as “Feast of the Ingathering”)
2 – Lessons from these now-abolished feasts:
(a) Looking back to the mighty, sovereign grace of God
(b) Glorius fulfilment in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
(c) Out response
“… Paul mentions that [the Galatians] observed ‘days, and months, and times, and years’…He is referring… to the east days appointed in the law, which those seducers sought to make the Galatians observe as a matter of necessity. They were introducing constraint and servitude in place of the liberty bought fo us by the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Paul is so vehement, and also because of the misuse of these ceremonies, as I have said, for they were intended to make manifest the Lord Jesus Christ, that he might be sought. But those who deceived the Galatians were making a very different set of obligations. In keeping the Passover and other feast days, they were returning to the former figures which ought to have been abolished. When the Passover was observed under the law, it was in order that the people should remember their deliverance from Egypt, and eagerly await the great redemption that they had been promised. This is why Paul tells us that our Passover lamb has been sacrificed (l Cor. 5: 7), that is to say the Lord Jesus Christ. He is demonstrating that what was prefigured by the sacrifice of the paschal lamb under the law has today been fulfilled in the person of our Mediator. The same applies to the feast of tabernacles, in which God was reminding the Jews that they once lived in the wilderness, where there were no buildings or houses, and that they dwelt there for a long period of time, wandering about from place to place. This was a reminder to them that their life was but a pilgrimage through which we pass very quickly. The same could be said of the feast of first-fruits, when they would present the first-fruits to God.”
John Calvin, Sermons on Galatians (Banner of Truth Trust, 1997. pp. 396 – 397)