The Holy Days of Jesus

Years ago, when the apostles of Jesus were leading the church, they taught the disciples to stop their work and their labor on seven days of the year for special days of celebrating their relationship with God. These seven days are called "Holy Days" or "Annual Sabbaths." Together with the Passover, each of these days emphasize a special part of God's relationship with mankind and show, step by step, God's plan of salvation.

Passover begins at sundown tonight and starts this year's cycle of these very special "Holy Days." For the Christian, Passover has two deep meainings. First, it looks back to the time of God's deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt that culminated with the sacrifice of a lamb to shield each household from the death angel because of the lamb's blood on the sides and top of the door.

Second, with the sacrificial death of Jesus on this very day of Passover almost two thousand years ago, the life's blood of Jesus shed in His death shields those who have made a covenant with God from the "wages of sin" which is death and opens up eternal life as a gift from God through Jesus. (Romans 6:23) Each year we gather with other believers and follow the instructions Jesus gave to His disciples in John 13 to wash each other's feet and share broken unleavened bread and wine that remind us of the covenant we made with Jesus. (1Corinthians 11:23-33 and elsewhere.)

The Days of Unleavened Bread immediately follow the day of Passover. The seven days of Unleavened Bread begin with a Holy day and end with a Holy Day, or annual Sabbath observance. During these days we take all the leavening (like yeast and baking soda) and leavened food products out of our homes and avoid eating them.

Why do such an unusual thing for a week? First, because the Bible tells Christians to do so. The apostle Paul taught the Gentile and Jewish Christians in Corinth, Greece to observe the Days of Unleavened Bread. In his instructions to them he emphasizes the spiritual lessons that the observance of the Days of Unleavened Bread remind us of each year. 

Paul writes, "Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Corinthians 5:6-8)

Through our covenant with Jesus, His death and sacrifice on Passover so many years ago, He removes the penalty of death, atones for our sin and grants us righteousness through faith before God. In a real sense, the sacrifice of Jesus has "deleavened" us before God.

As our part of our covenant, we promise to repent of our sin which is rebellion before God and renounce sin. While the sacrifice of Jesus and God's grace covers all the sins we have or will commit, obedience to God is something we promise to Him. Putting leaven out of our homes and lives for seven days is also a physical reminder of the challenge we have taken upon ourselves to love God and our neighbors. Sinning against God, ourselves or our neighbors is not showing love, but rather selfishness, malice and wickedness.

As Christians, we are called to learn to do better and covenant, or promise to God, to work each day to put malice, wickedness and sin out of our lives. God knows how effective a physical reminder can be to teach those lessons and gives every Christian the opportunity to benefit by living for a week without leaven.

You are invited to join us in following what Jesus did, His disciples did and what the apostle Paul taught the New Testament church to do and put leaven out of your homes and avoid eating leavened food from Monday night, March 29 at sundown until sundown on Monday night, April 5th.

We will be meeting at our regular location on Tuesday afternoon for our Holy Day assembly and Sabbath services. The last Holy Day we will be combining with some of our friends in Cincinnati and celebrating these wonderful days of hope with them.

Guy

Guy Swenson
Common Ground Christian Ministries
gswenson@NTEvangelism.org
317-707-5026