Rabbi Schneider — God's Sacred Calendar and God's Holy Days
Did you know that Amen is a Hebrew word? So we all speak a little bit of Hebrew, right? We are looking at a series today, I've taught on this in different ways in the past, but this is a unique series and I'm calling this series today an overview of God's Sacred Calendar and Holy Days.
Let me say it again. I'm calling it an overview of God's Sacred Calendar and Holy Days. Now I have other teachings that focus on just the fall holy days, and then I have a segment that focuses on the spring holy days, but the series that I'm doing now is an overview, a concise overview of all seven of God's holy appointed days and his Hebrew calendar.
Now when I say Hebrew calendar, really, that is an inaccurate description because his calendar is for everybody. In other words, God never says these are the holidays for the Jewish people or for the Hebrew people, but what he actually says is, these are my holy days.
And these holy days, beloved ones, that we're gonna overview, that we're gonna look at, they truly have application for all of us, whether you're a Gentile or a Jew.
And the reason these are important is because each one of these holy days on God's sacred calendar is a shadow and a symbol of Jesus's person and ministry. So when we understand that these holy days on God's sacred calendar are not just directed for the Jewish people; yes they are for the Jewish people, but that they are also, beloved, for all of God's people because they're all fulfilled in Messiah Jesus.
Let me build a Scriptural foundation now for what I'm saying in regards to this. In the Book of Luke, chapter 24, after Jesus had been crucified and his disciples scattered because they just really felt like they had lost everything.
I mean, they had put all their hopes in following Messiah Jesus. They had left everything to follow him, and now the Son, as far as they know, he's crucified. They don't know what happened to him. Their hopes had been dashed.
The thing that they had based their identity on, that Jesus was the Messiah, was now in confusion, because Jesus had not yet appeared to them after he had risen from the dead.
So in Luke, 24, the disciples, confused, and lost, and afraid, are walking down a road to a city called Emmaus. And as they're walking down the road, Jesus approaches them, but he approaches them in a physical form that was different than the physical appearance that he had with them on earth. So when he approached them, beloved ones, in Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus, they didn't recognize it was Jesus.
He just appeared to them to be a stranger. And so this one that they thought was a stranger, but it was actually Jesus himself, they, he began to dialogue with them, and they began to dialogue with him. And Jesus, you know, he said what's wrong.
Again, they didn't recognize that it was him. They said, haven't you heard how they crucified Jesus of Nazareth? We thought he was the Messiah, that he was gonna deliver Israel, that many, many people believed in him; and now they came and crucified him.
And the Bible says that this stranger began to take them on a journey through the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms, revealing to them in the in Hebrew Scriptures how the Messiah when he came would have to suffer and die.
And what this stranger did, again it was actually Jesus, he brought them on a journey through the entire Hebrew Bible, showing them all the places in the Hebrew Bible that were actually shadows of Jesus.
You see, Jesus said similarly to the disciples as he walked them, with them on earth, he said, if you believe Moses, you'd believe me, for Moses wrote of me. The point, beloved one, is this, that the whole Hebrew Bible and especially God's holy days are about Jesus, that these holy days that we call the Jewish holidays are more than just the Jewish holidays.
They are actually, beloved, shadows of the work of Messiah Jesus. So we're gonna be talking about God's calendar and his holy days today. Again I'm gonna be reviewing over the course of this series all seven of them, tying them in to our walk with Jesus, and making application as to how they're helpful for us, not only to understand, but to apply the principles of them in our faith as we follow the Lord Jesus and are led by the Holy Spirit.