The Three (3) Jewish Feasts

Passover – also called Unleavened Bread

Pentecost – also called Harvest, or Feast of Weeks

Tabernacles – also called Ingathering or Booths

“Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year” Exodus 23:14

The First Feast: PASSOVER

Based on the story in Ex12 about the tenth plague and saving the Hebrews from the death angel who was destroying all the first-born. They were to take a lamb on the 10th day of the 1st month, and on the 14th day they were to kill it and eat it.The blood of the lamb was to be smeared on the doorway of each household.

Passover itself was just the one day, the 14th, when they killed and ate the lamb, but it was followed immediately by a Holy Day of Convocation when they began the seven days of eating bread with the leaven removed.

So the Feast of Unleavened Bread became another name for PASSOVER—for this first feast of the year for the Israeli’s.

The Second Feast: PentecostOtherwise known as Feast of Weeks, or Harvest

This was the longest of the 3 feasts, and began when the first of the crops appeared (no set calendar date). When the High Priest “waved” those firstfruits it began the 7-week countdown to the Day of Pentecost.

“Pente” or “Penta” is the Greek word meaning five, and referred to the fifty day period leading up to the one day of Holy Convocation when the law abiding Jews were required to present themselves at the temple in Jerusalem.

“…Begin to number the 7 weeks from such time as you begin to put the sickle to the corn” - Deut 16:9

“Three times in a year shall all thy males appear… in the place which he shall choose… Deut 16:16

The 3rd Feast – TABERNACLESalso known as Feast of Ingathering, or Booths

This final feast of the year was in the 7th month, and had three specific events.

7/1 – Trumpets (Rosh Hashana)

7/10 – Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)

7/15 – Seven days of dwelling in booths, or tabernacles. (Succoth)

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first” – 1Thes4:16

Passover / Pentecost / Tabernacles

Jesus is the Lamb of God – John 1:29

Jesus is the SEED that was planted: John12:24 and 1Peter 1:23

We build our house on the Rock that is Christ

1Cor 10:4.

We eat Him by reading and doing the Word!

John 6:53

Joseph’s dream of the sheaves is a type of Jesus the True Bread.

Everybody’s building a house! Some to their everlasting shame…

The New Testament says:

1. “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” – 1Cor5:7

2. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits..” 1Cor15:20

3. “The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him” - 1Thes2:1

“For every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is GOD” Heb3:3

So, shall we keep the feasts??

Certainly, but we don’t have to go to Jerusalem anymore… We keep them by (1) realizing that the blood of Jesus is on our hands, and by (2) eating the Bread, and by (3) building our spiritual house on the Rock of Ages—on the Rock that is Christ. 1Cor10:4

“Therefore let us keep the Feast, not with old leaven…” 1Cor5:8