I guess I'm not really understanding. You are not prohibited from feasting. But we are certainly not obligated.
Freedom Galatians 5:1
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And, Christ is the end of the law, to bring righteousness to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4)
Not obligated! There are many ways the Lord tells us is a good way to live, and we are always left free to choose. It is a question of how we react to scripture. Some things are necessary, those things we must be forgiven for if we don't listen. Some things are for our benefit, listening results in blessings for us. This is for a blessing. You are certainly free to choose not to be blessed by following the Lord's instructions.
Quite the opposite. Christians have been set free from the feasts of the Old Covenant. Indeed they could not even be properly observed without the temple at Jerusalem and the Levitical priesthood (which do not even exist at this time). So why do you continue to promote spiritual confusion and nonsense?
The only feast which is set before Christians is the weekly observance of the Breaking of Bread (the Lord's Supper) on the Lord's Day (the first day of the week). See 1 Corinthians 11 and many other passages.
In your words God should be impressed by the exercise of ceremonies? What does God want from those who name the name of Christ? What should sanctification look like?
Isa 29:13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men:
Mt 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
Pharisees lip service keeping feasts and creating more at every opportunity. Christians worship in Spirit and through the Word of God.
One is saved by grace the other is likely not saved at all.
For the cause of Christ
Roger
If the feasts are some burden God puts on you to endure, if God invited you to the party of the feast to punish you and not to establish a party, then God would not be God. You refuse to even consider what God suggests, because the fleshly party of Easter and Christmas seems superior. Now you are saying you won't accept even those because of the Lord's supper. So snub Christmas and Easter, and refuse to even consider having a feast.
Have you thanked the Lord at all, even in your prayers, for His wonderful plan to save us, or would this also be a burden?
The church has refused to even consider feasts for over a thousand years, and even my suggestion that anyone think about having them is met with a solid wall of refusal to even consider them. I still think God's ways are always worth at least considering, the whole organized church does not thing so. It is their choice. But the idea that if they praised and celebrated God it would be to IMPRESS God is off the wall.
The ways of the Lord are for our benefit, to refuse to consider any of them is not affecting God, it is affecting you.
Thanks so very much, everyone, for responding. I don't think anyone has changed how they thought of the feasts, but it has helped each make their response to scripture clearer in their own minds as they thought through their answers, I know it has in mine. Those who think it is best to avoid them have expressed that and reasons why, and I am sure that made them surer they were right. As I express my reasons why I would like them celebrated again, it has made it clearer to me why this would be a good idea. No one changed at all, and yet I feel sure everyone benefitted as they thought through their reasons.
God is worshipped in Spirit and truth. What you are proposing is ordinances and rituals which scripture says is not what pleases God.
I do not expect you to grasp the truth on this subject. The Pharisees made a great pretense of feasts and rituals but had no heart for the Spiritual things of God.
The church that is genuine church knows how to worship and please God. The things of the pretenders has no attraction to them.
For the cause of Christ
Roger
This is what the Gnostics say. They told the church of
Colossians that they may not celebrate the feasts because they were literal not spiritual only and God was spirit only. Paul told them that wasn't so, not to listen to them.
From the first we learn of God in Genesis, the Lord tells us that he created the earth and it was good. We are to look at His creation to see Him. Read that book of Colossians to see what God thinks of the Gnostic idea that we may do nothing physical, all things physical has no reality.
Justification delivers us from the penalty of sin, while sanctification delivers us from the power of sin. The Cross of Christ is as necessary for sanctification as it is for salvation (1 Cor. 1:18).
Does nothing to address the point that God is worshipped in Spirit and Truth. We do not worship in shadows of things to come but in the Light of Christ Who is the Word of God.
For the cause of Christ
Roger
This is all very true and fine, but your point was that God was not to be worshipped in any way except in spirit.
That's the prescription of scripture.
The Pharisees had worship completely wrong. Many people are religious but the worship a god of their own imagination.
For the cause of Christ
Roger
Which also means that you must abandon the shadows and cling to the reality -- which is Christ. But the shadows have a great deal of attraction for you (as they do to all unsaved Jews).
No one can -- in good conscience -- celebrate any OT feast today as God had commanded. Let me give you an example, so that you abandon this vanity.
THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD
But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.
Where will you offer your "offering made by fire" for seven days?
THE FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS
And he [the priest] shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.
Where will you find your Levitical priest and the temple where he will do this?
Do you see how foolish your ideas are? You need to repent of your foolishness.
God was very specific about how the Sabbath and festivals and new moons were to be kept.
if one is not EXACTLY doing what God told Moses to tell Israel, then one is not " keeping " them,
one can choose to honor them, but should not say they are " keeping" them.
To say that if the Jews did it then that makes it wrong is not reasonable thinking. The Jews had prayer, was prayer wrong? The Jews were custodians of the OT, was the old testament wrong?
Exactly. Therefore absolutely no one can celebrate those feasts today according to God's instructions. There is no temple, no Levitical priests, no Levites, and no sacrifices. And because the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom supernaturally on the day Christ died (Nisan 14, 30 AD), there is no going back to the Old Covenant and its ceremonies.
As I already stated, the only feast for Christians to day is the Lord's Supper -- a Remembrance Feast, where the leaven of malice and wickedness must be purged.
Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the Feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Cor 5:7,8)
Here Paul applies the spiritual meaning of the feast of Passover, since Christ has already FULFILLED this feast. It is now the Lord's Supper.
You are saying no Christian may do anything physical to express their faith and devotion. We are human, that would be saying we may have nothing to do with the Lord because the Lord is spiritual and we are physical. That is the thinking of the Gnostics, have you decided to be gnostic instead of Christian?
We are to learn about the priests, the temple, and the sacrificial system. It is an illustration of Christ. The feasts are not in that category. The feasts are a celebration of the plan of salvation for us. No shadow. A celebration that we are told is for all generations. In other words scripture tells us to celebrate God's plan for our salvation as long as we are human and have children.