God's Holy Days - The Promise of Hope for All Mankind

Well, this is an exciting time of the year, isn't it? Beautiful spring weather, beautiful colors, buds of trees coming out. Such a beautiful, beautiful time. It's the time for the spring Holy Days. But should we even be keeping these days? Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread. Most people in the world do not. Well, without going into the Scriptures, I think most of us here have proved beyond the doubt that, yes, Christians today should be keeping God's Holy Days.

We find all of the Holy Days listed and described in Leviticus chapter 23. But did Jesus keep these days? Yes, He did. We can find verses in the four Gospels that Jesus kept the Holy Days. What about the New Testament church? Why, the New Testament church was founded on one of the Holy Days, the day of Pentecost. And we can read Scriptures in the book of Acts and in the epistles showing that the Holy Days were being kept by the people of God. One verse even says, concerning the Feast of Unleavened Bread, let us keep the Feast.

So that makes it very clear and plain we should be keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So, yes, God's church, God's people, will be keeping the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the other Holy Days as they come up in their season during the rest of the year. You know, the Holy Days will be kept in the millennium. In Zechariah chapter 16, chapter 14, the Feast of Tabernacles will be observed by all nations, or else they have no rain, it says.

Secular history also shows that Christians were keeping the Holy Days after the New Testament era, Polycarp and Polycrates, disciples of John, Polycrates, a disciple of Polycarp, was keeping the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So you can do study into that if you need to. I think we all have proved that to ourselves beyond a doubt, but it is something that we should be able to prove because in 1995 there were people who had kept the Holy Days for years and years who were told it was no longer necessary, and so they gave up on the Sabbath as well as the Holy Days.

And those who were back at that time will remember. They just knew they were swayed by this teaching that it was no longer necessary. So God's Church has been tested on that. I don't know that will be tested in that same way again, but we should know beyond a doubt from the scriptures that God does expect Christians to keep the Holy Days today. So let's look forward to the keeping of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and our messages now must focus on these days and preparing for them. Isn't this wonderful that God has revealed to His Church that the Holy Days portray the plan step by step how God is accomplishing His plan and His purpose?

Of course, we have our booklet, God's Holy Day Plan, Hope, the Promise of Hope for All Mankind, and this has been revealed to the Church. I don't know that the Church in all ages has understood this plan as well as we do. It's been revealed here in the last days to the Church in a greater way than the Church probably understood down through the ages. Down through the ages, I imagine that the Church has understood aspects of this Holy Day Plan, at least aspects of it, but not in its entirety as we do today.

So we are very blessed in that way, very, very blessed to be able to understand this Holy Day Plan, which portrays the way that God is accomplishing what He's doing. So now let's be getting ready for Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Let's be excited about it. I tell you, I saw an air of excitement in our fellowship before services today, so let's keep that up.

You know, I just want to mention, first of all, a few questions that people might have, and I'm not going to go to the Scriptures because of the time element here, but these are questions that we should be firm on. When is the Passover? Is it the 14th? The Jews keep it on the 15th. You will notice they know they are keeping their Passover on the 15th.

We know that we are keeping the Passover, though, on the 14th. Are we doing it right? Well, Leviticus 23 does say the Passover comes on the 14th day, and that is the day on which Jesus Christ observed it when He gave the New Testament emblems. It was on the 14th. What about the Old Testament Passover? Was it on the 14th or the 15th? You know, the Israelites were told when they killed their lamb, put the blood up on the doorpost, they were told not to go out of their houses until the next morning, and yet they left Egypt by night. It was the following night that they left Egypt, and that is, of course, where we have the night-to-be-much-observed celebration. We have a couple of steady papers that I'll mention for further study, if you would like to do further study. This is quite a thick one here, the Passover of Exodus 12. Let's see how many pages, 46 pages long, but here is the Passover of Exodus 12 study paper. If you'd like to find that online, then you can study into that further if you need to. But what about the New Testament Passover?

When should it be? As I mentioned already, Jesus kept it, and He said, with desire, I have desire to eat this Passover with you. He called what He was doing, and where He ate the Passover meal there, the Old Testament Passover meal, and He instituted the bread and the wine and the foot washing, He called it a Passover. And Paul later referred to it in 1 Corinthians 11 as the Passover that night that Jesus was betrayed, that He took bread and wine. So the New Testament Passover, we have a paper on that as well, a doctrinal study paper, the New Testament Passover. And the New Testament Passover very clearly is at the very beginning of the 14th day of the first month of God's calendar. So if there's any need to look at those steady papers, just to firm things up in your own mind, then please do so. Why should only baptized members keep the Passover? That's a question that might come up. In the Old Testament, the law regarding the keeping of Passover was that a person must be circumcised, and that would open up the door for his household to keep the Passover. Well, spiritual circumcision occurs in our lives when we are baptized, and those sins of the past are all cut off, you might say. They are forgiven, totally washed away by the blood of Christ. So a person should be spiritually circumcised in order to take the Passover. The foot washing, the taking of bread and wine.

Now, you know, right away we hope that our young people that are here will realize you need the Passover, really, just as much as your parents who will be keeping the Passover. But do you realize it? Do our young people realize they will need to come to that point where they are baptized, they are spiritually circumcised? You should look forward to a spiritual circumcision which takes place at the time of baptism in your life, and in the future you will be taking the Passover just as your parents do now. What day of the week was Jesus crucified? Most people in the world think it was on Friday. No, it was three days and three nights. He was in the tomb. The only way that fits the story is that Jesus was crucified on Wednesday. He died Wednesday afternoon. He was put in the tomb late just before sunset, and three days and three nights later he was resurrected just late on the Sabbath. That would have been Sabbath afternoon. If someone misses Passover, because of unforeseen circumstances that come up, maybe they just have a traffic jam. They can't get to the service or vehicle breakdown or problems. So what should they do? In Numbers chapter 9, there is a second Passover. And by the way, Moses, when that situation was presented to him, did not say, well, here's my opinion on what we ought to do. He said, no, let us wait and see what God will show us. And God showed that there should be a second Passover date, and it will be on the second month of the sacred calendar year, and on the same day, the 14th day, one month later there will be a second Passover. We will announce that in case anyone, if it does apply to anyone, we'll announce that year by year as to when the second Passover date will be. Some common Feast of Unleavened Bread questions. Why do we observe the night to be much observed? And the reason for that is, that's when Israel left Egypt, and that is the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It is the 15th day. The day right after the Passover, then, is when they left Egypt, and that is when we observe that special night as God commands in Exodus 12, that it be a night to be much observed, and some people call it the night to be much remembered. That's okay as well. What is leaven? Leaven would be yeast, baking powder, baking soda, potassium bicarbonate. We put out these agents, products made containing these agents. Just miscellaneous reminders, we do have services on the first and the seventh days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The first day comes on the weekly Sabbath this year, and the seventh day comes on a Friday. We don't, not too many people meet, have meetings on the, on Friday, do they? But we will this year for the last day of Unleavened Bread.

Why do we take up an offering? There are scriptures on that as well in Exodus 23 and due to running the chapter 16. But one question that comes up that I want to spend just a little bit more time on, can we be sure that we have the right calendar? It is obvious in Exodus 12, and verse 1 and 2 that God said, this shall be the beginning, the first month of the year, for you.

So, God is the one that gave the Israelites information about the calendar. But where is exact knowledge of the calendar in the Bible? You know, the Bible is not a book that gives exactly how the calendar is to be calculated and maintained. It doesn't show step by step just how that is to be done. Interesting, isn't it? God doesn't give that. Yet, He says, this is the beginning of months to you. How can we know when the beginning of months is for us today? We say in the United Church of God that we are confident today is the beginning of the first month of the year for us. This is New Year's Day of the sacred calendar. You know, the calendar calculations, without getting too extensively into this, but just to illustrate, is not just a simple matter of calculating the calendar. The calendar, if you study into it with such a, is so complex that until the Roman world created the Roman calendar, later adjusted by Pope Gregory, around 1700 or so, and we go by that, the Gregorian calendar, but the calendar has been an issue difficult in mankind's history to maintain, to keep. It got way off in the early days of the Roman Empire, but they did get it corrected to a certain, but not totally corrected until later. Pretty much totally corrected. But the lunar, think of this, the lunar month, a month of the year, is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, and 2.8 seconds long.

You talk about being complex. That's not easy or simple, is it? It's then approximately 29 and one half days long. That's why the sacred calendar, which is a lunar solar calendar, is one month will be 29 days, and the next month will be 30 days. And sometimes, I believe, the 30 days can be, there can be periods where there's back-to-back 30-day months. The solar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds long. So you can see that there are some problems here. 12 lunar months comes out to 354 days, 8 hours, and 48 minutes. But the solar year is 365 and a quarter, approximately. So you can see that there's about an 11-day difference there. Well, the sacred calendar makes up for this and is perfectly calculated, perfectly calculated. It gives, out of a 19-year time cycle or period, there are seven of those years that have an extra month. And that brings things into alignment. This past year that has just ended was one of those years where we had the extra month. And that is why the holy days this year come later than they did last year. And that's because we have the extra month. The extra month will push it later in the following year. But the question comes out. God has not revealed how to calculate this calendar in the Bible. How is that done? Who has the authority to do that? Well, let's go to Acts 7 and verse 37. There are a couple of scriptures that indicate the way that we believe that is accomplished.

And who has that responsibility? In Acts 7 and verse 37, This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren, Him you shall hear. This is he who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel, who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us. Moses received information, we believe, about the calendar and how it would be calculated. And this was transmitted on down generation by generation by generation so that when Jesus came on the scene about 1500 years later in the New Testament church, they had no question as to when they should meet for Pentecost. They had no question as to when they should keep Passover. There's no calendar controversy in the New Testament. They were confident that the calendar had been correctly maintained by the Jewish people, actually. The Israelite tribes went in the captivity of the ten tribes. They lost knowledge of everything, but the Jews have maintained knowledge of the Sabbath. They have maintained also the preservation of the Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures, and they have maintained the knowledge of how the calendar should be maintained. Let's go to Romans chapter 3 now. And this shows that what we believe that the Jewish people have been given this responsibility of being the custodians of this knowledge, the oracles that God gave to Moses in Romans chapter 3 and verse 1. What advantage, then, has the Jew? Paul is writing to the Romans, what advantage does a Jew have? What is the profit of circumcision? Is there any profit in being a Jew, he says? He goes on to say verse 2, yes, much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.

And these oracles are in the margin that says, sayings or scriptures. The word means the utterances. It doesn't necessarily mean written down. We know that the knowledge of the calendar and how it is to be calculated is not written down in the Bible. So the utterances, though, of how to do this were given, we believe, all the way back to Moses.

The new international version has for verse 2 that they have been entrusted with the very words of God. What was committed to the Jews, then? The Old Testament scriptures, their preservation. They have done a great job in that. The knowledge of the Sabbath, the calendar. Yes, entrusted with the divine oracles. But can we know the Jews have faithfully preserved the calendar calculations? You know, from Moses to Christ, 1500 years, the New Testament church didn't have any question about that. But here we are 2,000 years later. Can we have faith that it has been preserved by the Jewish people until our time? We in the United Church of God accept that God has used the Jews to preserve and maintain the calendar calculations. We believe today's Hebrew calendar, then, is the one that we should rely upon. Let me read from a doctrinal statement from our Council of Elders on that. Some people have taken it upon themselves to determine the calendar, and they just break into this. But who gives them the authority? If somebody comes on the scene today and they look at calendar calculations, they look at the Hebrew calendar, and some have done this, and they say, we believe we should be starting the year at a different month, a month earlier or a month later. But who gives them the authority to do that? That's a question that I think they would have difficulty answering. They have taken that upon themselves to be custodians of the calendar. We believe the Scriptures we've just read here in Acts 7 and Romans chapter 3 would indicate that if anybody has been entrusted or commissioned, it's the Jewish people. So here's our statement again. Some people have taken it upon themselves to determine the calendar. God lets them do so, but does He give them the authority in this matter? The United Church of God accepts the Hebrew calendar as being authoritative in determining when the Holy Days are to be observed. There will continue to be an ongoing study into this matter. We currently have seen no evidence that would cause us to reject the Hebrew calendar that has been accepted in the Church of God since at least 1940. Mr. Armstrong looked at this way back in 1940, and Mr. Armstrong concluded, if we cannot rely upon the Hebrew calendar for when the Holy Days come up, we're simply lost. We have no authoritative way of knowing when the Holy Days come up. But rather, let's go one step further. If God expects us to observe the Holy Days in their proper season and right time, can we trust that He has preserved the calendar seen to it, that the calendar has been preserved so that we can be confident? I think we can. Just as confident as we are that God has preserved the knowledge of the Scriptures. He has used the Jewish people to preserve the Old Testament Scriptures. And most of the more Greek manuscripts or more New Testament manuscripts are in Greek. We believe the Byzantine text is very authoritative for the way God is saying to it that the New Testament Scriptures have been preserved. Can we trust that God has preserved the Scriptures so that we can know what His will is? I think we can. Can we trust Him to see that the calendar is preserved so that we are keeping the Holy Days at the right time?

So I'm confident that He can, but if anybody wants to take it upon themselves to become the custodian of the calendar, then I would just warn you that I'm not so sure that you have that authority granted to you by God. Okay, the bottom line then is that God has seen to it that His Word, His oracles He gave to Moses have been preserved for us, both the Scriptures and also knowledge about the calendar.

So how accurate is the Hebrew calendar? I think I found this a very interesting article. It's from a book, The Essence of the Holy Days, Insight from the Jewish Sages. It goes back to published in 1993. This is page 141. And this book brings out that according to ancient calculations, the exact time between one new moon and the next is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793 chelicum, which are parts of an hour. The hour being divided into 1280 parts.

In other words, one lunar month has 29.53059 days. It is interesting to note that according to NASA, the time between one new moon and the next is exactly the same thing. I think it's it's off two millionths of a day. And if anybody is missing the mark, I have an idea. It's NASA.

Who is missing? But it's interesting that they find out that, prove that the lunar month, as reckoned by the Hebrew calendar then, comes out exactly as the right length of time for one lunar or one new moon to another. So I think that is very interesting. See, in conclusion then, can we be confident that we should be observing the Passover on Thursday night, April 14th? We can be. Absolutely confident. And that April the 15th is the 14th day we observed the Passover the night before. And that today is the first day of the sacred calendar. And we will be keeping the sacred Passover on the very same night that Jesus kept it. We can be confident of that.

Brethren, these next 12 days, then, is time for focusing on the Passover. You can read about the Old Testament Passover. If you want to, you can go back to Exodus 1 and read about the plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians all the way up to chapter 12 when God commanded the Passover celebration. You can also read the four Gospel accounts. Did you know that about approximately one-third of the Gospels focus beginning on the last six days before Jesus died, and then on His death and crucifixion and His resurrection? So about one-third, to me that shows just how important the Passover is. About one-third of the Gospels focus on those last days before He died and then His death and resurrection. So you could read, if you would like, the four Gospels, those portions at the latter part of each one that is about His death and resurrection.

Also, good scriptures to read would be Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, John 6.

It would be good to read and meditate. In these days before Passover, we have one week and five days, it would be good to meditate on who really killed Jesus Christ. And I don't really have the time to get extensively into this, but there's a very good chapter in our booklet, Jesus Christ, the Real Story. And let me just read a little bit of this, and I might conclude the sermon on this thought, that we fully realize ourselves who killed Jesus Christ. Who bears the blame? It's easy to assign blame for Jesus' death to a small group of people, religious hypocrites, and civil leaders. Easy to lay the guilt on the race of a people, the Jewish people, the Roman soldiers. It's safe to say that if Jesus would have come to any society and culture and exposed it for its failings, its hypocrisy, he would not have been accepted. If Jesus had exposed any society that was equally far from its ideals, they too would have killed him. Jesus would not be accepted in our world today. This is the horrible truth we all want to avoid.

What the original followers of Jesus tell us is that no one is innocent of this crime.

We all were complicit in the death of Christ. Paul was convinced of his personal guilt. He says that Jesus came to save sinners of whom I am the worst.

The crime was so unthinkable, so unequal. The Jewish leaders initiated the deed. Yes, the Romans carried it out. But because each of us is sinned, he died for every single one of us. There's nothing complicated about that. That's what he wants us to see. If we had not sinned, if I had not sinned, he would have had to die. If we weren't so hardened, his suffering and death wouldn't have had to be so horrendous. None of us are innocent of this crime. We read the account of the jealousy and hatred toward Jesus, and we may silently say to ourselves, I wouldn't have done that if I had been there. We are wrong on two counts. You know, I tried to imagine myself, if I had been in the Roman army, a Roman soldier, and I had no idea of any truth of the Bible, had no belief in the Old Testament, could I have, if called upon, been the one that took those nails and nailed them in his hands. What about you? If you had been a Jew without any understanding of what we understand in the Church, could you have been one of those saying, crucify him? You know, it's healthy for us to realize, if we had been there and just been the ordinary Jew, an ordinary Roman soldier, that it could have been us that was crying out to crucify Jesus Christ. It's just healthy for us to realize that our sins are what brought about the death of Jesus Christ. I'd encourage us then to read this chapter in this booklet, Jesus Christ, the Real Story, Who Killed Jesus? It begins near the end of the booklet.

Well, my time has just about run out, but brethren, it is time for us to think very deeply about the Passover, to reflect on it, to meditate upon it, to think about that Christ died, because He loves us. God the Father so loved the world. This is an act of love. Paul says that God demonstrates His love toward us, and you can demonstrate it any more or any more deeply than letting your own child die, your own son. So, let's be reading, studying, and preparing for the Passover just a week and five days away.