“the times of restoration of all things”
(Acts 3:21, NKJV)
Every feast produces what the Jews call Tikkun Olam – that which the Messiah will completely restore in the thousand year reign of peace. Every feast is thus a celebration of “the time of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21). Five important facets of this process of restoration that is scheduled to occur at some future point through the feast of Shavuot (and which will finally come to fruition in the thousand year reign of peace) but which we now, in the Holy Spirit, already need to practice – (1) the Sabbath’s rest, or to always be in the rest of the Lord (Heb 4:9). (2) Provision for all. Therefore the harvest principle of Shavuot is clear – “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the Lord your God.” (Lev 23:22). (3) God’s goodness, which is in essence his glory (Ex 33:18-19), will overflow the earth like the waters of the sea, covering the earth (Hab 2:14). (4) Perfect order, an ordered government. And (5) – Immense joy – “And you shall rejoice in your feast” (Deut 16:14).
In his book Creation to Completion Rus Resnik writes the following – “Every such divine-human encounter restores the original intent of the Creation, when the Lord walked with human beings in the garden in the cool of the day. In the messianic future, we will be fully restored to the Lord through Yeshua the Messiah, but even in this age, the meeting with God is a restoration of God’s original intent at Creation. Therefore, each festival not only pictures the age to come, but invites us to bring the powers and conditions of the age to come into this age.”
How beautifully the New Testament believers of the book of Acts embody this notion of being God’s people! As the Israelites in the desert, God was part of their way of life – see Acts 2:42-47.
What is the wider spiritual fulfilment and implications of this feasts? We are all familiar with the history of the Israelites who in their charismatic second dimension fell into idolatry and started worshiping a false god (the calve god of the heathen nations) as visible representation of the unseen Yahweh, and three thousand died that day (Ex 32:28). In the first dimension “appointed barley” (Isa 28:25) is cooked with human excrement (Ezek 4:12) and through that many people are misled (Ezek 13:19). In the second dimension there are those individuals in which the enemy had sown weeds (Matt 13:25), and who would need to be sifted like wheat (Luke 22:31). The promise of God existed for Israel, and prototypically also for us as the new covenant people of God – “and let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people” (Ex 19:11). Those who cannot make the transition from the second to the third day/dimension will fall like that three thousand. But there are those who will multiply the barley loaf through faith (John 6:9), whose wheat is planted in rows, decent and ordered (Isa 28:25), who have died to the self and bear as much fruit as He does (John 12:24). Thus the Word states in Acts 2:41 that “those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to him.” And of these the prophet Hosea prophesies in Hosea 6:2 when he says that “on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in His sight”! The three main OT feasts are mirrored in our NT lives
- Sela: Explain to someone the parallel of Pesach in the Old and New Covenant.
- Read: Deut 20; Ezek 46 (important for this teaching); Nah 1
- Memorize: Nah 1:7
- For a deeper understanding: Read H.H. Rowley’s The Faith of Israel.
