Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Exodus 23:10-19 comments: the Sabbath of rest and three feasts




Exodus 23:10 ¶  And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: 11  But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard. 12  Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed. 13  And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth. 14  Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. 15  Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:) 16  And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field. 17  Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD. 18  Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning. 19  The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.
Leviticus 25:1 ¶  And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2  Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. 3  Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; 4  But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. 5  That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land. 6  And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee, 7  And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.
The sabbath of rest for the seventh day of the week is given: a day of rest also for animals, servants, and foreigners who worked for the Hebrews. It is interesting how Christians who bring forward the Ten Commandments and the Law given to Moses in general as applicable to Christians don’t also regard the Sabbath of rest, a day of the week given to man and beast to rest from their labors, as also applicable.
In a world filled with idol worship and devil worship and all under the pretense of worshipping gods, little g, the Hebrews were not to even mention their names.
There were three feasts they were to keep in a year; the feasts of unleavened bread, of harvests, and of ingathering. These three times in the year all males were to appear before God in a place appointed and to keep a feast.
The feast of harvest is also called the feast of weeks.

Exodus 34:22a  And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest…

The feast of ingathering, when everything is brought in, is also called the feast of tabernacles.

Deuteronomy 16:13  Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine:

Deuteronomy 16:16  Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:
There are specific instructions given later for these feasts. It is interesting to note the three feasts, the three times they were to come before the Lord. Three times in the Bible the phrase come up hither, meaning ‘come up here,’ is used in different contexts.
Proverbs 25:7  For better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen.

Revelation 4:1  After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.

Revelation 11:12  And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.

Three times in one verse the pre-Flood patriarch, Enoch’s, translation from earth to God’s presence is mentioned.
Hebrews 11:5  By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
It is interesting to imagine that the translation of the church, popularly called ‘the rapture’, a word not found in the Bible, takes place in three steps with Christ and those who were resurrected at His resurrection being first.

Matthew 27:52  And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,

And then two more times mentioned in Revelation of the pre-Tribulation saints and then of those who come to Christ during the Great Tribulation. However, we have enough to do with the clearer statements in the Bible regarding our relationship with God in His ministry of reconciling man to Himself, things that we are not doing, to spend time arguing about the more obscure doctrines of the Bible.
However, several early church “fathers” like Hermas, Cyprian, Victorinus, and Ephraim the Syrian spoke of the church being removed before God’s wrath is poured out at the end of time.
Christians today who do not believe in the Translation of the church, popularly called ‘the rapture,’ will say that preacher of the early 1800’s, John Nelson Darby, invented the doctrine. He did popularize it in opposition to a world that regarded evolutionary progress as truth and that mankind and Christians in particular were headed toward a ‘golden age’ of righteousness and peace.[1]
But, he obviously did not invent the doctrine, merely gave it his own twist. As John Reeve wrote  two centuries before Darby’s, in the 1600’s, “Then shall the Elect, by the Decree or Voice of Jesus Christ, the Archangel, first appear out of the Graves, and, in the twinkling of an Eye, with all the Elect that are then living, as one Man, with a glorious Shout, shall, with distinct immortal Bodies, like unto their God, ascend to meet the Lord in the Air, and with him and his mighty angels, as swift as Thought, enter into that vast new Heaven and new Earth above the Stars….[2]
My intent here is not to approve of any preacher’s particular doctrines or idiosyncrasies or even personal opinions or heresies but simply to show that the doctrine was not invented by Darby, as some would say. Only the timing of when it would happen, before the Great Tribulation mentioned in Matthew and Revelation, during, or at the end of it were in contention among those that believed in it. Although I have not read his work there is supposedly another pretribulation rapture commentator named Morgan Edwards from the century prior to Darby.
Other references to the idea of the church being physically removed are from such diverse preachers and commentators as Jesuit priest, Francisco Ribera, in 1590, Puritan Cotton Mather in the 1600s, and John Gill in the 1700s.[3]  In the first decade of the 1700s Matthew Henry even uses the phrase, “rapture in the clouds,” in his commentary on 1Thessalonians 4:17 which is so commonly free on the internet I don’t need to give you directions here.
Darby’s view was that what he called “the rapture” must take place before the return of Christ. The Bible seems to say that then there is the thousand-year reign of Christ and the general judgment follows.
My point in bringing all of this up is to only say that a doctrine can exist in the Bible and either be misunderstood, not be known by most believers, or that those against it or for it may misrepresent it to justify their own beliefs. The Jews believed that Israel would be restored to its past greatness, not seeing the Cross or the Resurrection of their Messiah. Many Christians of the 1800s, the age of the so-called great revivals, were Postmillennialists and believed they would turn the world over to Christian principles and values without Christ present so, no rapture and Christ’s rule coming after we had perfected the world. We must always remember that our understanding is incomplete until we stand before our Saviour.
Early eighteenth century Bible commentator, Matthew Henry, reported, apparently from older Jewish authorities, that it was common for the Gentiles to boil (see Ezekiel 24:5 for seethe as to boil) a kid (goat) in its mother’s milk and sprinkle that over fields to ensure a good harvest in the future. God forbade such magical nonsense. What is important here is that God has set up three feasts for the Hebrews to remember events by, to commemorate what has happened.


[1] J.N. Darby, “The Rapture of the Saints,” in The Heavenly Hope, or, What is the Hope of the Christian? What is the Hope of the Church? (Dublin: Dublin Tract Repository, 1844).

[2] John Reeve, “An Epistle to a Kinsman,” in Joyful News from Heaven (London: Francis Cosinet, 1658), 60.

[3] Mal Couch, ed., Dictionary of Premillennial Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1996).

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