Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.
The verse appoints the first day of the seventh month as the Feast of Trumpets, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and a holy convocation kept as the old civil New Year, on which no servile ordinary labor is to be done and an offering made by fire is to be presented to the Lord. It is one of the seven yearly feast-day sabbaths, standing beside and in addition to the weekly seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord and of the fourth commandment, not that Sabbath itself. It belongs to the ceremonial law of Moses governing feasts, offerings and priesthood, a shadow and type centering in Christ which expired by limitation and ceased to be obligatory at the cross when the sacrificial system ended. With the days that follow it, it foreshadows the work of Jesus as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary from the tenth day of the seventh month in 1844 until the consummation, when the sanctuary is cleansed and the righteous are gathered in. These yearly sabbaths are the plural sabbaths as shadows whose body is Christ in Colossians 2:14-17, joined with meats, drinks, holy days and new moons, over which Christians are not to be judged.
Festival Setting and Wording
The first day of the seventh month, Tisri, is appointed as the Feast of Trumpets, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and a holy convocation, observed as the old civil New Year. It is the fourth annual sabbath of the Hebrews, on which ordinary labor was forbidden and offerings were to be presented to the Lord. Like the other annual feasts and sabbaths it was set apart for offerings and sacrifices distinct from the weekly Sabbath. Its rules about rest and sacrifice belong to the Mosaic ceremonial rites and temple services.
No servile, ordinary labor was to be done on that day, but an offering made by fire was to be offered unto the Lord. The prescribed offerings were additional to the usual gifts and freewill offerings. Israel was to set apart appointed holy days from ordinary labor for such fire offerings, with firstfruits given as thank-offerings acknowledging God as giver of temporal blessings, the first sheaf presented before harvest and the first loaf from harvested grain given to the Lord. This annual, typical sabbath belonged to the sacrificial system that arose after sin and pointed forward to the Saviour, standing with meat offerings and drink offerings besides the Sabbath of the Lord as one of the shadowy sabbaths.
The forbidding of servile work is less strict than the weekly Sabbath on which no work at all is to be done. The day stands on the same level as the fifteenth of Abib and the other annual sabbaths, while the tenth day of the seventh month is more sacred than the rest. It comes once a year, not once a week like the Sabbath of the Lord.
The annual sabbaths are appointed on particular days of the month, distinct from the Lord's weekly Sabbath, and did not regularly fall on it though they sometimes coincided with it. They fell on certain days of certain months and feasts and could naturally fall on all days of the week, unlike the weekly Sabbath which always falls on the seventh day. They give no reckoning of the days of the week, and the eighth day spoken of in Leviticus 23 is the day of the feast, not a day of the week, so to take it as Sunday is an unwarrantable assumption and any argument for Sunday-keeping built on that expression falls for lack of its central point. These yearly, typical, shadowy sabbaths set forth in Leviticus 23:4-37 stand beside the Sabbaths of the Lord, are typical of events in redemption, and expired by limitation when the shadow reached the substance.
The holy day begins at even, at the setting of the sun, and must be kept from even unto even to its close, and because all days commence at the same point every Sabbath must be observed in that same sunset-to-sunset period.
The record is also set within the Day of Atonement cleansing work and the Feast of Tabernacles ingathering after harvest. The Day of Atonement is the day of final cleansing and remission for sanctuary and people, closing the complete yearly round of ministration in both apartments by cleansing the sanctuary of sins transferred there by daily ministration through the year, when those who did not cease from works and afflict their souls were cut off. The last day of the yearly sanctuary round was the great judgment-day of the year when cases were brought in final review, sins brought by sprinkled blood into remembrance before the veil were brought by the high priest into the most holy and confessed before the ark containing the law, the atonement-goat's blood sprinkled there, and the priest in his own person brought out those sins and placed them on the goat chosen for Satan to be sent away into oblivion and destroyed, while those who afflicted their souls, confessed and put away sin stood clear. The setting in the seventh month follows the Day of Atonement when the sanctuary was cleansed, and together atonement and feast typified Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary in final cleansing identified with judgment followed by ingathering of the righteous as harvest of His love and labor; the Passover week whose first and last days are holy and the tenth-day requirements belong to the same appointed feast-day system of offerings pointing to Christ and blotted out by His death.
The seventh month contains three feasts, Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles. The verse is the first of four annual Jewish sabbaths in Leviticus 23:24-39, on the first, tenth, fifteenth and twenty-second days, counted among the seven annual sabbaths and feast days and among seven kinds of Sabbaths including the seventh-month Sabbath. The blowing of trumpets called all the people together in preparation for building the altar.
The feast is named in an indefinite way without the definite article the, marking the first enactment of the institution. It is a memorial of blowing of trumpets and holy convocation as one of the seven annual Sabbaths given to Israel. Its trumpet blowing heralds and announces the great Day of Atonement ten days later on the tenth day of the same month, as one of five yearly celebrations whose work is to herald that day. In the type this trumpet day ten days earlier announced the approach of the judgment and cleansing of the earthly sanctuary, with priests at Jerusalem blowing trumpets announcing the definite time of that solemn cleansing, so that the sanctuary cleansing comes on a fixed, announced schedule requiring a similar heavenly announcement ten prophetic years before the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary on a day-for-a-year reckoning, fulfilled in the falling of the stars over the Western Hemisphere on the night of November 13, 1833, when multitudes streamed for ten hours and lightened midnight earth.
The Feast of Trumpets is included among Israel's appointed yearly gatherings at the sanctuary during the year, one of three special occasions considered alongside Passover and the Day of Atonement.
Annual Sabbaths Versus Weekly Sabbath
The verse belongs to a yearly feast-day sabbath, one of seven yearly sabbaths set forth in Leviticus 23:4-37, and not to the weekly seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord of the fourth commandment. The chapter distinguishes the feasts of the Lord from the Sabbath of the Lord, placing the feast sabbaths once a year as additional to the weekly Sabbaths of the Lord. They are typical, shadowy ceremonial sabbath days, shadows of things to come, local and ceremonial, which received authority from the ceremonial law and ceased when that law was abolished at the cross. They fell on certain days of certain months and feasts and could naturally fall on all days of the week, being typical of certain events in the work of redemption and expiring by limitation when the thing typified was reached, when the shadow reached the substance.
The yearly sabbaths stand beside and in addition to the Sabbaths of the Lord, set apart as days for bringing special offerings to the Lord, while the weekly Sabbath comes in constant succession every seventh day. They are enumerated with Passover, Firstfruits, Trumpets and Atonement, came in consequence of sin as types and prophecies pointing forward to Christ, met their fulfilment in Christ Jesus, and ceased with the sacrificial law at the cross. The first day of the seventh month, the feast of trumpets, was expressly called a sabbath, a holy day set apart from common days on which no servile work was to be done, distinct from the weekly Sabbath and shadowing forth Christ and part of Christ's work. The seven yearly sabbaths are separate from the weekly seventh-day Sabbath, which is based on creation, memorializes creation, and is eternal.
The weekly Sabbath is called the Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, my holy day, the holy of the Lord and thy holy Sabbath, while the festival sabbaths are called your sabbath and her sabbaths. The first of four annual sabbaths falls on the first day of the seventh month, with the tenth, fifteenth and twenty-second days making the other three, requiring no servile work and a fire offering to the Lord in the midst of the ordinances of meat-offering, sacrifice and drink-offerings, sharing their same nature, origin and end. It is not the Sabbath of the Lord which comes every seventh day, was instituted at creation before the fall for the whole human race to commemorate God's rest, and was placed in the midst of the Ten Commandments as ever binding, but one given at Mount Sinai twenty-five hundred years later, sometimes only four or nine days apart, to be observed besides the Sabbaths of the Lord. It was a shadow of things to come, blotted out and nailed to the cross, whose mirth was to cease, and it is the kind of sabbath meant by sabbath-days associated with meat, drink and new moon, plural sabbaths associated with feast-days, holy convocations and new moons.
The weekly Sabbath memorializes creation, was instituted at creation before the fall and before the apostasy for all mankind and all humanity as a special memorial of God's goodness and power in the finished work of creation, while the yearly day originated this side of the fall at Sinai after types and shadows were introduced and would never have existed but for sin. The weekly Sabbath was spoken by God's voice from heaven, twice written by His finger, engraven on stone, placed in the moral law and placed in the ark in the most holy place as part of God's unchangeable, eternal moral law and a constant memorial and sign of power to create, uphold and sanctify; the yearly observance was not so commanded or written or placed, but was written by men on parchment in a book placed beside the ark. The yearly sabbaths are ceremonial, temporal, shadowy and typical, for one nation and especially for the people in Canaan, not unchangeable, perpetual and for all people, having no basis in God's act of creation and not being God's own rest day. They came in consequence of sin with the sacrifices, symbols and ceremonies that point to the Saviour who takes away sins, whose body is Christ, whereas Gentiles must be circumcised to keep them and they must be kept by going up to Jerusalem, whereas the Sabbath is kept wherever people are.
The Sabbath is sanctified by resting from ordinary labor, not by doing the work of the other six days, gathering in holy convocation to hear the law, worship God and pray. The people of God were commanded to hold holy convocations on days besides the seventh day, so meeting together for worship on a day does not prove that day is the rest-day or Sabbath. Israel had holy convocations on days other than the weekly Sabbath when no servile work was permitted, and such assemblies did not cancel or violate the command to work six days and rest on the seventh.
The seventh-day Sabbath is presented as first among Israel's appointed feasts and holy convocations, and those who so class it treat the feasts, including the Sabbath, as abolished together. The word Sabbath was applied to great festivals as well as to the seventh day, and not to the seventh day alone, so that the holy day and Sabbath days include both the yearly sabbaths connected with the feasts and the weekly Sabbaths. Those who so apply it make the Sabbath a type, which destroys every moral difference between the weekly and annual sabbaths and places the Sabbath in the category of positive institutions, for moral institutions are not typical nor typical institutions moral.
The prevailing teaching distinguishes the movable sabbaths connected with feasts and dates from the weekly Sabbath, whose seventh day does not change when feast dates change, the same day Jesus kept and still identifiable as the day before Sunday. The sacred calendar and feast days were regulated by the moon and barley harvest. Those who held otherwise explained the Sabbath of the fourth commandment as requiring observance on fixed dates that change the weekday from year to year, so that the Sabbath Christ kept fell twenty-eight times in the Gospels on Thursday, once on Friday, and a number of times on Saturday during the last year of His public teaching, and no one now keeps the Sabbath in the manner Christ kept it.
Ceremonial Shadow Ended in Christ
This day belongs to the ceremonial law, the law of Moses governing feasts, offerings, temple service and the Levitical priesthood, not to the eternal moral law of the Ten Commandments. It is one of the typical sabbath days which were shadows of things to come, a ceremonial sabbath and feast-day sabbath distinct from the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment and from the Lord's weekly Sabbath. Its rule to refrain from servile work and present an offering made by fire belongs to the Mosaic ceremonial rites and temple services for the first day of the seventh month, the Feast of Trumpets, among the annual sabbaths of the seventh month associated with the appointed feasts and with new moons and feast days. These annual festival sabbaths were instituted in the wilderness and placed among Israel's festival observances, distinct also from the seventh-year sabbath of the land, and they explain Paul's reference to plural sabbaths as shadows of things to come. They were shadows pointing forward to Christ's death and expired when He died, being removed by Christ at the cross, when that ceremonial law was abolished; they were not the Sabbath established at creation.
The yearly sabbaths and feasts came in consequence of sin as shadows, types and prophecies centering in Christ, and when the shadow reached the substance they expired by limitation and ceased to be obligatory at the cross when the sacrificial system ended. They were celebrated from year to year when Israel lived faithfully before God, but as types fulfilled in Christ and His priestly work they need not be celebrated year by year while awaiting their complete antitypical fulfilment. The chapter distinguishes the feasts of the Lord from the Sabbath of the Lord, and the seven yearly, typical, shadowy sabbaths and feasts in Leviticus 23:4-37 are not connected with the weekly Sabbaths of the Lord but stand beside the Sabbaths of the Lord. The first day of the seventh month, Tisri, as an annual sabbath and first day of the old civil year, was like the other annual feasts and sabbaths set apart for offerings and sacrifices, typical of certain events in the work of redemption. The eternal Sabbath of the Lord is the weekly seventh day in constant succession, while the yearly sabbaths fell on certain days of certain months and feasts and might fall on any day of the week.
The yearly system with its meats, drinks, new moons and carnal ordinances was against men, a yoke of bondage when trusted for righteousness, blotted out and nailed to the cross; the weekly Sabbath established before sin is not a shadow and was not nailed to the cross. These yearly sabbaths connected with Passover, Pentecost and other feasts are distinct from the regular weekly Sabbaths of Jehovah, the seventh day, having come in after sin entered as shadows, symbols and types of better things to come centering in Christ Jesus. They are the sabbath days in Colossians 2:14-16, where feast days and new moons and sabbath days are called shadows whose body is Christ, joined with meats and drinks as component parts of the typical and shadowy system. The annual sabbath joined with meat, drink, holy day, new moon and offering-made-by-fire ordinances does not refer to the Sabbath of the Lord our God, the seventh-day Sabbath, but to a ceremonial yearly sabbath of the kind meant by sabbath-days in Colossians 2:16. It stands with meat offerings and drink offerings besides the Sabbath of the Lord and besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah, in contradistinction to the weekly seventh-day Sabbath; it is not the weekly Sabbath made for man and guarded by the fourth commandment, about which there is nothing shadowy, but one of the Colossian sabbaths that were against men and taken out of the way. Unlike the seventh-day Sabbath, God's memorial of creation instituted in Eden before sin entered, these ceremonial sabbaths originated in the typical system introduced because of sin, with the sacrifices and symbols and ceremonies that point to the Saviour who takes away sins.
The feasts with their burnt offerings and like services belonged to the first division of sanctuary ministration, the continual daily service in the holy place with morning and evening burnt offering, incense and individual offerings, distinct from the yearly high-priestly work in the most holy place and from the daily round. The ministration in the first apartment of the earthly sanctuary, performed by the Levitical priesthood, included special work upon the Lord's Sabbaths and upon the annual sabbaths, new moons and feasts, alongside the regular morning and evening burnt offering, the burning of sweet incense, and the offerings for individuals. That earthly holy-place work was the example and shadow of Christ's more excellent ministry in the true tabernacle in heaven, distinct as first-division daily service from the second division, the yearly work of the high priest alone in the most holy place for the sins of the people and for the cleansing of the sanctuary. The services of this verse belong to those performed in the sanctuary from time to time, distinct from the daily round of morning and evening service, showing that burnt offerings and like services belonged to holy days. Those preliminary and circumstantial offerings on the day of firstfruits and the feast of weeks, like those on the day of atonement, did not prevent the grand event of each day from meeting its antitype on the very day of the type: Christ our Passover sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month, the resurrection on the day of firstfruits, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, so the grand work in the holiest on the tenth day of the seventh month must commence its antitype on that day, while the antitype commencing on the day of the type may extend far forward.
The chapter's sacrifices are types of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the commanded fire offering finds its fuller meaning in His sacrifice, life and work; the feasts need not be kept year by year while awaiting complete antitypical fulfilment but are met in Christ and in newness of life. The slain animals point to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the commanded offering made by fire is one of the sacrificial details whose fuller meaning is found in the sacrifice, life, and work of Jesus Christ. The instructions for the annual feasts, celebrated from year to year when Israel lived faithfully, required the people to appear before the Lord at His sanctuary, and these festivals with all the ceremonies of the Levitical law were fulfilled in Christ's priestly service. Each and all of these feasts are typical and are distinguished from the Sabbath of Jehovah.
The ceremonial sabbaths listed in Leviticus 23, distinct from the Lord's weekly Sabbath, could be taken away from the wicked as a judicial punishment, just as someone may now be excluded from the Lord's Supper. They belonged to the ceremonial code which pertained to Israel's earthly inheritance in Canaan, and differed from the weekly Sabbath, a higher-order institution that remained unaffected when the land was overrun and the ceremonial sabbaths could no longer be kept. Unlike that higher weekly institution which remains the Lord's day, they ceased when the land was overrun.
Prophetic Type and Sanctuary Cleansing
The series in verses 23-32 foreshadows the work of Jesus as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary from the tenth day of the seventh month in 1844 until the consummation. Like the spring types, the autumn observances were to be fulfilled in their proper order and time. Christ our Passover was sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month, the resurrection met its antitype on the day of firstfruits, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 met its antitype on Pentecost fifty days later. That Pentecost fulfilment honored the antitype of the feast and not the first day of the week on which it happened to fall, and says nothing about changing the Sabbath of the Lord.
Burnt offerings and like services belonged to those holy days, and the day of firstfruits and the feast of weeks had the same work of burnt offerings as the day of atonement. Those preliminary and circumstantial offerings did not prevent the grand event of each day from meeting its antitype on the very day of the type. The antitype commencing on the day of the type may extend far forward. So the grand work in the holiest on the tenth day of the seventh month must commence its antitype on that day, though the work may extend beyond that day.
The yearly service of the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement, closed the complete yearly round of ministration in both apartments. It cleansed the sanctuary of the sins of God's people that had been transferred there by the daily ministration through the year. Atonement was made for each apartment of the sanctuary and for the altar to cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel, made necessary because those transferred sins defiled the holy places and required a special work for their removal.
The last day of the yearly round was the great Day of Atonement, the judgment-day of the year when all the cases of the days before were brought in final review before God. It marked the final review and disposition of the sins confessed during the year, so the people treated it as a serious day of judgment and examined their lives beforehand. On that day the sins brought by sprinkled blood into remembrance in the holy place before the veil were brought by the high priest into the most holy place and confessed before the ark containing the law of God. There the blood of the atonement-goat was sprinkled, and the priest in his own person brought out those sins and placed them on the goat chosen for Satan to be sent away by a fit man into oblivion and destroyed. Those who afflicted their souls, confessed their sins, ceased from their works and put them away stood clear before God with final cleansing and remission, while those who did not cease and afflict their souls were cut off from the congregation of God's people.
Together the atonement and the following feast typified Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary: the final cleansing of the sanctuary, identified with judgment, followed by the ingathering of the righteous as the harvest of Christ's love and labor after the harvest. The tenth day marked the high priest's emergence from the sanctuary to bless the people, and prefigured Christ, the great High Priest, coming from heaven to bless His waiting people with immortality. The trumpet type ten days before, when priests at Jerusalem blew trumpets announcing the definite time of that solemn cleansing, means the sanctuary cleansing comes on a fixed, announced schedule. The earthly ten days require a similar heavenly announcement ten prophetic years before the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary on a day-for-a-year reckoning, and that announcement arrived on time just ten years before the cleansing Judgment began in the falling of the stars over the greater portion of the Western Hemisphere on the night of November 13, 1833, when multitudes streamed from one point in the heavens for ten hours and lightened the earth at midnight.
The first day of the seventh month is appointed as the memorial of blowing of trumpets, kept as New Year when the fate of the world is written but not sealed, allowing ten days for repentance and ten penitential days until the tenth day, the Day of Atonement, when fate is sealed. That seventh-month New Year marked the beginning of the civil year, in contrast with Nisan, the first month associated with Passover and Israel's independence from Egyptian slavery. The Day of Atonement is the judgment work of the high priest in which the sins of God's people are blotted out from the presence of God and transferred to the scapegoat to be borne away to a land not inhabited. Atonement means to cover, carrying the ideas of expiating, purging, covering sins, pardoning, appeasing and placating, and the mercy-seat means literally a covering. These yearly feast Sabbaths, unlike the seventh-day Sabbath, formed a burdensome ceremonial system tied to particular dates in particular months alongside sacrifices and other observances, and could serve as types of the earth's rest in the seventh millennium.
Scriptural Links and Calendar Details
The yearly sabbaths explain the plural sabbaths in Colossians 2:14-17, which with meats and drinks, holy days and new moons are shadows whose body is Christ and over which Christians are not to be judged. The first day of the seventh month with its command of no servile work is one of those annual sabbaths ordained in the list of set feasts, joined with meat, drink, holy day, new moon and offering by fire ordinances. They are yearly and ceremonial sabbaths of the Jews, component parts of the typical shadowy system that came in after sin as symbols and types of better things centering in Christ, distinct from the regular weekly Sabbaths of Jehovah on the seventh day and from the Sabbath instituted in Eden before the fall and guarded by the fourth commandment, about which there is nothing shadowy. They are also called sabbath days distinct from the Sabbath of the Lord, and seven annual Jewish Sabbaths are listed besides the Lord's seventh-day Sabbaths.
The annual days belong to the class discussed in Romans 14, where Jewish Christians still observing Passover, Atonement and other days from old association may keep them or esteem them alike without judging one another. They are feast days and fast days connected with eating of herbs and the like, like New Years, Christmas and Thanksgiving day, belonging to the Jewish ritual system of feasts and feast-days with its distinctions of meats and drinks and carnal ordinances, a connected whole entirely separate from the seventh-day Sabbath spoken by God's own voice and written on stone. Their observance is a matter of indifference and within Christian liberty so long as justification is not sought through them to the rejection of Christ's sacrifice, while the weekly Sabbath stands apart as a holy sacred day from creation guarded by one of the Ten Commandments, God's day not man's, outside that liberty and not set aside by Romans 14. The every day that may be esteemed alike is the six working days, and converted Jews who still regarded the festivals as morally binding are distinguished from the continuing obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath.
Hosea foretold the ceasing of feast days, new moons and other solemn feasts, to which the annual Jewish sabbath associated with the feasts belongs. Isaiah's rebuke of sabbaths and new moons means those annual sabbaths and the new moons observed in sin and not pleasing to God, not the weekly Sabbath of the fourth commandment. The weekly Sabbath remains holy and honorable, to be kept by God's scattered people with promise of gathering to His holy mountain and by Gentiles with promise of joining His people in blessing, with a place in His immortal kingdom for those who turn from trampling it and honor Him in it.
Pentecost is an annual Jewish feast counted from the Passover Sabbath, not from the weekly Sabbath, and because its date was reckoned from that annual Sabbath it could fall on any day of the week. The statements about the firstfruits of the barley harvest to be offered on the morrow after the Sabbath establish the fifteenth of Abib as the first Sabbath in the series of weekly Sabbaths observed by the Hebrews, so that the offering falls on the sixteenth of the first month and the months are so shaped that the weekly Sabbath fills them in turn and comes again on the fifteenth of Abib in the next sacred year.
One of the annual rest days could have fallen between the Sabbath of the meeting at Antioch and the next seventh-day Sabbath. Certain feast days, including an eighth day, are called a Sabbath and a great day, but that eighth day connected with feasts beginning on fixed days of fixed months falls on a different day of the week from year to year and does not mean the first day of the week. Those eighth-day Sabbaths therefore do not prefigure the exalting of the eighth day or first day of the week as the Sabbath under the gospel, and types of gospel events and ordinances must agree with plain New Testament fact, which contains no command making the first day the weekly Sabbath.
The verse shows no reckoning of the days of the week, and the eighth day spoken of is the day of the feast, not a day of the week, so to take it as Sunday is an unwarrantable assumption. Any argument for Sunday-keeping built on that expression therefore falls to the ground because its central and vital point is missing, and as one of the yearly feast days not a day of the weekly cycle it does not establish Sunday as a weekly Sabbath.
The instruction regarding the yearly feasts is paralleled by Deuteronomy 16 and is counted among references to festival days and other nonweekly sabbaths rather than to the weekly Sabbath, with the annual feasts of the Levitical service separate from the weekly Sabbath. Mixing the annual feasts with the weekly Sabbath loses the day of the Sabbath in the Old Testament. The appointed days on which the commemorative institutions were observed were different from the days on which they were instituted, and nearly all would have fallen on the same day if the time of institution fixed the time of observance, so the time of instituting an institution has nothing to do with the time of observing it. The law gives a specific statement of time for instituting and observing the feasts, while the Lord's Supper has no such stated time for its observance.
The description of the main features of the service of the sanctuary reveals God's way, power and glory and serves as an object-lesson teaching about the temple of God in heaven and Christ's priestly service there, written for learning, doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness, patience, comfort and hope.
Obedience and Present Application
God requires the heart's supreme affection joined to the offering made by fire, and without it labor and sacrifice are not accepted. The offering is a thank-offering acknowledging Him as giver of all temporal blessings, giving Him the first-fruits of the best received. In the harvest setting the first sheaf was presented before the sickle was put to the grain and before the harvest was gathered, and the first loaf made from the first threshed and ground corn was given after harvest as acknowledgment of His goodness.
The appointed feasts lasted several days during which labor was forbidden, showing that God sets times for rest and worship. He neither requires harmful overwork nor endorses idleness. These annually repeated services were ordered to be kept in their prescribed form, and departure from even a small particular was blameworthy.
The special Sabbath laws regulating worship were binding on Israel as a nation but are not legally binding on other nations, though their underlying principles remain binding. The Feast of Trumpets observed as the Jewish New Year was a religious occasion on which servile work was not to be done, reflected in leave from labor for Jewish soldiers keeping it. The blowing of trumpets once called all the people together in preparation for building the altar, within the three seventh-month feasts of Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles.
The Jewish holy days and ceremonial sabbaths were observed in addition to the Lord's Sabbaths as shadows pointing to Christ, and were not to be used as a means of earning salvation. The yearly sabbath belongs to the Jewish ritual system of feasts and feast-days with its distinctions of meats and drinks and carnal ordinances, a connected whole entirely separate from the seventh-day Sabbath spoken by God's own voice and written on tables of stone. Its observance belongs to the class of days spoken of in Romans 14 and is a matter of indifference so long as justification is not sought through it to the rejection of Christ's sacrifice.
The verse appoints the first day of the seventh month as the Feast of Trumpets, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and a holy convocation kept as the old civil New Year, on which no servile ordinary labor is to be done and an offering made by fire is to be presented to the Lord. It is one of the seven yearly feast-day sabbaths, standing beside and in addition to the weekly seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord and of the fourth commandment, not that Sabbath itself. It belongs to the ceremonial law of Moses governing feasts, offerings and priesthood, a shadow and type centering in Christ which expired by limitation and ceased to be obligatory at the cross when the sacrificial system ended. With the days that follow it, it foreshadows the work of Jesus as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary from the tenth day of the seventh month in 1844 until the consummation, when the sanctuary is cleansed and the righteous are gathered in. These yearly sabbaths are the plural sabbaths as shadows whose body is Christ in Colossians 2:14-17, joined with meats, drinks, holy days and new moons, over which Christians are not to be judged.
Festival Setting and Wording
The first day of the seventh month, Tisri, is appointed as the Feast of Trumpets, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and a holy convocation, observed as the old civil New Year. It is the fourth annual sabbath of the Hebrews, on which ordinary labor was forbidden and offerings were to be presented to the Lord. Like the other annual feasts and sabbaths it was set apart for offerings and sacrifices distinct from the weekly Sabbath. Its rules about rest and sacrifice belong to the Mosaic ceremonial rites and temple services.
No servile, ordinary labor was to be done on that day, but an offering made by fire was to be offered unto the Lord. The prescribed offerings were additional to the usual gifts and freewill offerings. Israel was to set apart appointed holy days from ordinary labor for such fire offerings, with firstfruits given as thank-offerings acknowledging God as giver of temporal blessings, the first sheaf presented before harvest and the first loaf from harvested grain given to the Lord. This annual, typical sabbath belonged to the sacrificial system that arose after sin and pointed forward to the Saviour, standing with meat offerings and drink offerings besides the Sabbath of the Lord as one of the shadowy sabbaths.
The forbidding of servile work is less strict than the weekly Sabbath on which no work at all is to be done. The day stands on the same level as the fifteenth of Abib and the other annual sabbaths, while the tenth day of the seventh month is more sacred than the rest. It comes once a year, not once a week like the Sabbath of the Lord.
The annual sabbaths are appointed on particular days of the month, distinct from the Lord's weekly Sabbath, and did not regularly fall on it though they sometimes coincided with it. They fell on certain days of certain months and feasts and could naturally fall on all days of the week, unlike the weekly Sabbath which always falls on the seventh day. They give no reckoning of the days of the week, and the eighth day spoken of in Leviticus 23 is the day of the feast, not a day of the week, so to take it as Sunday is an unwarrantable assumption and any argument for Sunday-keeping built on that expression falls for lack of its central point. These yearly, typical, shadowy sabbaths set forth in Leviticus 23:4-37 stand beside the Sabbaths of the Lord, are typical of events in redemption, and expired by limitation when the shadow reached the substance.
The holy day begins at even, at the setting of the sun, and must be kept from even unto even to its close, and because all days commence at the same point every Sabbath must be observed in that same sunset-to-sunset period.
The record is also set within the Day of Atonement cleansing work and the Feast of Tabernacles ingathering after harvest. The Day of Atonement is the day of final cleansing and remission for sanctuary and people, closing the complete yearly round of ministration in both apartments by cleansing the sanctuary of sins transferred there by daily ministration through the year, when those who did not cease from works and afflict their souls were cut off. The last day of the yearly sanctuary round was the great judgment-day of the year when cases were brought in final review, sins brought by sprinkled blood into remembrance before the veil were brought by the high priest into the most holy and confessed before the ark containing the law, the atonement-goat's blood sprinkled there, and the priest in his own person brought out those sins and placed them on the goat chosen for Satan to be sent away into oblivion and destroyed, while those who afflicted their souls, confessed and put away sin stood clear. The setting in the seventh month follows the Day of Atonement when the sanctuary was cleansed, and together atonement and feast typified Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary in final cleansing identified with judgment followed by ingathering of the righteous as harvest of His love and labor; the Passover week whose first and last days are holy and the tenth-day requirements belong to the same appointed feast-day system of offerings pointing to Christ and blotted out by His death.
The seventh month contains three feasts, Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles. The verse is the first of four annual Jewish sabbaths in Leviticus 23:24-39, on the first, tenth, fifteenth and twenty-second days, counted among the seven annual sabbaths and feast days and among seven kinds of Sabbaths including the seventh-month Sabbath. The blowing of trumpets called all the people together in preparation for building the altar.
The feast is named in an indefinite way without the definite article the, marking the first enactment of the institution. It is a memorial of blowing of trumpets and holy convocation as one of the seven annual Sabbaths given to Israel. Its trumpet blowing heralds and announces the great Day of Atonement ten days later on the tenth day of the same month, as one of five yearly celebrations whose work is to herald that day. In the type this trumpet day ten days earlier announced the approach of the judgment and cleansing of the earthly sanctuary, with priests at Jerusalem blowing trumpets announcing the definite time of that solemn cleansing, so that the sanctuary cleansing comes on a fixed, announced schedule requiring a similar heavenly announcement ten prophetic years before the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary on a day-for-a-year reckoning, fulfilled in the falling of the stars over the Western Hemisphere on the night of November 13, 1833, when multitudes streamed for ten hours and lightened midnight earth.
The Feast of Trumpets is included among Israel's appointed yearly gatherings at the sanctuary during the year, one of three special occasions considered alongside Passover and the Day of Atonement.
Annual Sabbaths Versus Weekly Sabbath
The verse belongs to a yearly feast-day sabbath, one of seven yearly sabbaths set forth in Leviticus 23:4-37, and not to the weekly seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord of the fourth commandment. The chapter distinguishes the feasts of the Lord from the Sabbath of the Lord, placing the feast sabbaths once a year as additional to the weekly Sabbaths of the Lord. They are typical, shadowy ceremonial sabbath days, shadows of things to come, local and ceremonial, which received authority from the ceremonial law and ceased when that law was abolished at the cross. They fell on certain days of certain months and feasts and could naturally fall on all days of the week, being typical of certain events in the work of redemption and expiring by limitation when the thing typified was reached, when the shadow reached the substance.
The yearly sabbaths stand beside and in addition to the Sabbaths of the Lord, set apart as days for bringing special offerings to the Lord, while the weekly Sabbath comes in constant succession every seventh day. They are enumerated with Passover, Firstfruits, Trumpets and Atonement, came in consequence of sin as types and prophecies pointing forward to Christ, met their fulfilment in Christ Jesus, and ceased with the sacrificial law at the cross. The first day of the seventh month, the feast of trumpets, was expressly called a sabbath, a holy day set apart from common days on which no servile work was to be done, distinct from the weekly Sabbath and shadowing forth Christ and part of Christ's work. The seven yearly sabbaths are separate from the weekly seventh-day Sabbath, which is based on creation, memorializes creation, and is eternal.
The weekly Sabbath is called the Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, my holy day, the holy of the Lord and thy holy Sabbath, while the festival sabbaths are called your sabbath and her sabbaths. The first of four annual sabbaths falls on the first day of the seventh month, with the tenth, fifteenth and twenty-second days making the other three, requiring no servile work and a fire offering to the Lord in the midst of the ordinances of meat-offering, sacrifice and drink-offerings, sharing their same nature, origin and end. It is not the Sabbath of the Lord which comes every seventh day, was instituted at creation before the fall for the whole human race to commemorate God's rest, and was placed in the midst of the Ten Commandments as ever binding, but one given at Mount Sinai twenty-five hundred years later, sometimes only four or nine days apart, to be observed besides the Sabbaths of the Lord. It was a shadow of things to come, blotted out and nailed to the cross, whose mirth was to cease, and it is the kind of sabbath meant by sabbath-days associated with meat, drink and new moon, plural sabbaths associated with feast-days, holy convocations and new moons.
The weekly Sabbath memorializes creation, was instituted at creation before the fall and before the apostasy for all mankind and all humanity as a special memorial of God's goodness and power in the finished work of creation, while the yearly day originated this side of the fall at Sinai after types and shadows were introduced and would never have existed but for sin. The weekly Sabbath was spoken by God's voice from heaven, twice written by His finger, engraven on stone, placed in the moral law and placed in the ark in the most holy place as part of God's unchangeable, eternal moral law and a constant memorial and sign of power to create, uphold and sanctify; the yearly observance was not so commanded or written or placed, but was written by men on parchment in a book placed beside the ark. The yearly sabbaths are ceremonial, temporal, shadowy and typical, for one nation and especially for the people in Canaan, not unchangeable, perpetual and for all people, having no basis in God's act of creation and not being God's own rest day. They came in consequence of sin with the sacrifices, symbols and ceremonies that point to the Saviour who takes away sins, whose body is Christ, whereas Gentiles must be circumcised to keep them and they must be kept by going up to Jerusalem, whereas the Sabbath is kept wherever people are.
The Sabbath is sanctified by resting from ordinary labor, not by doing the work of the other six days, gathering in holy convocation to hear the law, worship God and pray. The people of God were commanded to hold holy convocations on days besides the seventh day, so meeting together for worship on a day does not prove that day is the rest-day or Sabbath. Israel had holy convocations on days other than the weekly Sabbath when no servile work was permitted, and such assemblies did not cancel or violate the command to work six days and rest on the seventh.
The seventh-day Sabbath is presented as first among Israel's appointed feasts and holy convocations, and those who so class it treat the feasts, including the Sabbath, as abolished together. The word Sabbath was applied to great festivals as well as to the seventh day, and not to the seventh day alone, so that the holy day and Sabbath days include both the yearly sabbaths connected with the feasts and the weekly Sabbaths. Those who so apply it make the Sabbath a type, which destroys every moral difference between the weekly and annual sabbaths and places the Sabbath in the category of positive institutions, for moral institutions are not typical nor typical institutions moral.
The prevailing teaching distinguishes the movable sabbaths connected with feasts and dates from the weekly Sabbath, whose seventh day does not change when feast dates change, the same day Jesus kept and still identifiable as the day before Sunday. The sacred calendar and feast days were regulated by the moon and barley harvest. Those who held otherwise explained the Sabbath of the fourth commandment as requiring observance on fixed dates that change the weekday from year to year, so that the Sabbath Christ kept fell twenty-eight times in the Gospels on Thursday, once on Friday, and a number of times on Saturday during the last year of His public teaching, and no one now keeps the Sabbath in the manner Christ kept it.
Ceremonial Shadow Ended in Christ
This day belongs to the ceremonial law, the law of Moses governing feasts, offerings, temple service and the Levitical priesthood, not to the eternal moral law of the Ten Commandments. It is one of the typical sabbath days which were shadows of things to come, a ceremonial sabbath and feast-day sabbath distinct from the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment and from the Lord's weekly Sabbath. Its rule to refrain from servile work and present an offering made by fire belongs to the Mosaic ceremonial rites and temple services for the first day of the seventh month, the Feast of Trumpets, among the annual sabbaths of the seventh month associated with the appointed feasts and with new moons and feast days. These annual festival sabbaths were instituted in the wilderness and placed among Israel's festival observances, distinct also from the seventh-year sabbath of the land, and they explain Paul's reference to plural sabbaths as shadows of things to come. They were shadows pointing forward to Christ's death and expired when He died, being removed by Christ at the cross, when that ceremonial law was abolished; they were not the Sabbath established at creation.
The yearly sabbaths and feasts came in consequence of sin as shadows, types and prophecies centering in Christ, and when the shadow reached the substance they expired by limitation and ceased to be obligatory at the cross when the sacrificial system ended. They were celebrated from year to year when Israel lived faithfully before God, but as types fulfilled in Christ and His priestly work they need not be celebrated year by year while awaiting their complete antitypical fulfilment. The chapter distinguishes the feasts of the Lord from the Sabbath of the Lord, and the seven yearly, typical, shadowy sabbaths and feasts in Leviticus 23:4-37 are not connected with the weekly Sabbaths of the Lord but stand beside the Sabbaths of the Lord. The first day of the seventh month, Tisri, as an annual sabbath and first day of the old civil year, was like the other annual feasts and sabbaths set apart for offerings and sacrifices, typical of certain events in the work of redemption. The eternal Sabbath of the Lord is the weekly seventh day in constant succession, while the yearly sabbaths fell on certain days of certain months and feasts and might fall on any day of the week.
The yearly system with its meats, drinks, new moons and carnal ordinances was against men, a yoke of bondage when trusted for righteousness, blotted out and nailed to the cross; the weekly Sabbath established before sin is not a shadow and was not nailed to the cross. These yearly sabbaths connected with Passover, Pentecost and other feasts are distinct from the regular weekly Sabbaths of Jehovah, the seventh day, having come in after sin entered as shadows, symbols and types of better things to come centering in Christ Jesus. They are the sabbath days in Colossians 2:14-16, where feast days and new moons and sabbath days are called shadows whose body is Christ, joined with meats and drinks as component parts of the typical and shadowy system. The annual sabbath joined with meat, drink, holy day, new moon and offering-made-by-fire ordinances does not refer to the Sabbath of the Lord our God, the seventh-day Sabbath, but to a ceremonial yearly sabbath of the kind meant by sabbath-days in Colossians 2:16. It stands with meat offerings and drink offerings besides the Sabbath of the Lord and besides the Sabbaths of Jehovah, in contradistinction to the weekly seventh-day Sabbath; it is not the weekly Sabbath made for man and guarded by the fourth commandment, about which there is nothing shadowy, but one of the Colossian sabbaths that were against men and taken out of the way. Unlike the seventh-day Sabbath, God's memorial of creation instituted in Eden before sin entered, these ceremonial sabbaths originated in the typical system introduced because of sin, with the sacrifices and symbols and ceremonies that point to the Saviour who takes away sins.
The feasts with their burnt offerings and like services belonged to the first division of sanctuary ministration, the continual daily service in the holy place with morning and evening burnt offering, incense and individual offerings, distinct from the yearly high-priestly work in the most holy place and from the daily round. The ministration in the first apartment of the earthly sanctuary, performed by the Levitical priesthood, included special work upon the Lord's Sabbaths and upon the annual sabbaths, new moons and feasts, alongside the regular morning and evening burnt offering, the burning of sweet incense, and the offerings for individuals. That earthly holy-place work was the example and shadow of Christ's more excellent ministry in the true tabernacle in heaven, distinct as first-division daily service from the second division, the yearly work of the high priest alone in the most holy place for the sins of the people and for the cleansing of the sanctuary. The services of this verse belong to those performed in the sanctuary from time to time, distinct from the daily round of morning and evening service, showing that burnt offerings and like services belonged to holy days. Those preliminary and circumstantial offerings on the day of firstfruits and the feast of weeks, like those on the day of atonement, did not prevent the grand event of each day from meeting its antitype on the very day of the type: Christ our Passover sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month, the resurrection on the day of firstfruits, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, so the grand work in the holiest on the tenth day of the seventh month must commence its antitype on that day, while the antitype commencing on the day of the type may extend far forward.
The chapter's sacrifices are types of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and the commanded fire offering finds its fuller meaning in His sacrifice, life and work; the feasts need not be kept year by year while awaiting complete antitypical fulfilment but are met in Christ and in newness of life. The slain animals point to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the commanded offering made by fire is one of the sacrificial details whose fuller meaning is found in the sacrifice, life, and work of Jesus Christ. The instructions for the annual feasts, celebrated from year to year when Israel lived faithfully, required the people to appear before the Lord at His sanctuary, and these festivals with all the ceremonies of the Levitical law were fulfilled in Christ's priestly service. Each and all of these feasts are typical and are distinguished from the Sabbath of Jehovah.
The ceremonial sabbaths listed in Leviticus 23, distinct from the Lord's weekly Sabbath, could be taken away from the wicked as a judicial punishment, just as someone may now be excluded from the Lord's Supper. They belonged to the ceremonial code which pertained to Israel's earthly inheritance in Canaan, and differed from the weekly Sabbath, a higher-order institution that remained unaffected when the land was overrun and the ceremonial sabbaths could no longer be kept. Unlike that higher weekly institution which remains the Lord's day, they ceased when the land was overrun.
Prophetic Type and Sanctuary Cleansing
The series in verses 23-32 foreshadows the work of Jesus as High Priest in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary from the tenth day of the seventh month in 1844 until the consummation. Like the spring types, the autumn observances were to be fulfilled in their proper order and time. Christ our Passover was sacrificed on the fourteenth day of the first month, the resurrection met its antitype on the day of firstfruits, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 met its antitype on Pentecost fifty days later. That Pentecost fulfilment honored the antitype of the feast and not the first day of the week on which it happened to fall, and says nothing about changing the Sabbath of the Lord.
Burnt offerings and like services belonged to those holy days, and the day of firstfruits and the feast of weeks had the same work of burnt offerings as the day of atonement. Those preliminary and circumstantial offerings did not prevent the grand event of each day from meeting its antitype on the very day of the type. The antitype commencing on the day of the type may extend far forward. So the grand work in the holiest on the tenth day of the seventh month must commence its antitype on that day, though the work may extend beyond that day.
The yearly service of the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement, closed the complete yearly round of ministration in both apartments. It cleansed the sanctuary of the sins of God's people that had been transferred there by the daily ministration through the year. Atonement was made for each apartment of the sanctuary and for the altar to cleanse it and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel, made necessary because those transferred sins defiled the holy places and required a special work for their removal.
The last day of the yearly round was the great Day of Atonement, the judgment-day of the year when all the cases of the days before were brought in final review before God. It marked the final review and disposition of the sins confessed during the year, so the people treated it as a serious day of judgment and examined their lives beforehand. On that day the sins brought by sprinkled blood into remembrance in the holy place before the veil were brought by the high priest into the most holy place and confessed before the ark containing the law of God. There the blood of the atonement-goat was sprinkled, and the priest in his own person brought out those sins and placed them on the goat chosen for Satan to be sent away by a fit man into oblivion and destroyed. Those who afflicted their souls, confessed their sins, ceased from their works and put them away stood clear before God with final cleansing and remission, while those who did not cease and afflict their souls were cut off from the congregation of God's people.
Together the atonement and the following feast typified Christ's work in the heavenly sanctuary: the final cleansing of the sanctuary, identified with judgment, followed by the ingathering of the righteous as the harvest of Christ's love and labor after the harvest. The tenth day marked the high priest's emergence from the sanctuary to bless the people, and prefigured Christ, the great High Priest, coming from heaven to bless His waiting people with immortality. The trumpet type ten days before, when priests at Jerusalem blew trumpets announcing the definite time of that solemn cleansing, means the sanctuary cleansing comes on a fixed, announced schedule. The earthly ten days require a similar heavenly announcement ten prophetic years before the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary on a day-for-a-year reckoning, and that announcement arrived on time just ten years before the cleansing Judgment began in the falling of the stars over the greater portion of the Western Hemisphere on the night of November 13, 1833, when multitudes streamed from one point in the heavens for ten hours and lightened the earth at midnight.
The first day of the seventh month is appointed as the memorial of blowing of trumpets, kept as New Year when the fate of the world is written but not sealed, allowing ten days for repentance and ten penitential days until the tenth day, the Day of Atonement, when fate is sealed. That seventh-month New Year marked the beginning of the civil year, in contrast with Nisan, the first month associated with Passover and Israel's independence from Egyptian slavery. The Day of Atonement is the judgment work of the high priest in which the sins of God's people are blotted out from the presence of God and transferred to the scapegoat to be borne away to a land not inhabited. Atonement means to cover, carrying the ideas of expiating, purging, covering sins, pardoning, appeasing and placating, and the mercy-seat means literally a covering. These yearly feast Sabbaths, unlike the seventh-day Sabbath, formed a burdensome ceremonial system tied to particular dates in particular months alongside sacrifices and other observances, and could serve as types of the earth's rest in the seventh millennium.
Scriptural Links and Calendar Details
The yearly sabbaths explain the plural sabbaths in Colossians 2:14-17, which with meats and drinks, holy days and new moons are shadows whose body is Christ and over which Christians are not to be judged. The first day of the seventh month with its command of no servile work is one of those annual sabbaths ordained in the list of set feasts, joined with meat, drink, holy day, new moon and offering by fire ordinances. They are yearly and ceremonial sabbaths of the Jews, component parts of the typical shadowy system that came in after sin as symbols and types of better things centering in Christ, distinct from the regular weekly Sabbaths of Jehovah on the seventh day and from the Sabbath instituted in Eden before the fall and guarded by the fourth commandment, about which there is nothing shadowy. They are also called sabbath days distinct from the Sabbath of the Lord, and seven annual Jewish Sabbaths are listed besides the Lord's seventh-day Sabbaths.
The annual days belong to the class discussed in Romans 14, where Jewish Christians still observing Passover, Atonement and other days from old association may keep them or esteem them alike without judging one another. They are feast days and fast days connected with eating of herbs and the like, like New Years, Christmas and Thanksgiving day, belonging to the Jewish ritual system of feasts and feast-days with its distinctions of meats and drinks and carnal ordinances, a connected whole entirely separate from the seventh-day Sabbath spoken by God's own voice and written on stone. Their observance is a matter of indifference and within Christian liberty so long as justification is not sought through them to the rejection of Christ's sacrifice, while the weekly Sabbath stands apart as a holy sacred day from creation guarded by one of the Ten Commandments, God's day not man's, outside that liberty and not set aside by Romans 14. The every day that may be esteemed alike is the six working days, and converted Jews who still regarded the festivals as morally binding are distinguished from the continuing obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath.
Hosea foretold the ceasing of feast days, new moons and other solemn feasts, to which the annual Jewish sabbath associated with the feasts belongs. Isaiah's rebuke of sabbaths and new moons means those annual sabbaths and the new moons observed in sin and not pleasing to God, not the weekly Sabbath of the fourth commandment. The weekly Sabbath remains holy and honorable, to be kept by God's scattered people with promise of gathering to His holy mountain and by Gentiles with promise of joining His people in blessing, with a place in His immortal kingdom for those who turn from trampling it and honor Him in it.
Pentecost is an annual Jewish feast counted from the Passover Sabbath, not from the weekly Sabbath, and because its date was reckoned from that annual Sabbath it could fall on any day of the week. The statements about the firstfruits of the barley harvest to be offered on the morrow after the Sabbath establish the fifteenth of Abib as the first Sabbath in the series of weekly Sabbaths observed by the Hebrews, so that the offering falls on the sixteenth of the first month and the months are so shaped that the weekly Sabbath fills them in turn and comes again on the fifteenth of Abib in the next sacred year.
One of the annual rest days could have fallen between the Sabbath of the meeting at Antioch and the next seventh-day Sabbath. Certain feast days, including an eighth day, are called a Sabbath and a great day, but that eighth day connected with feasts beginning on fixed days of fixed months falls on a different day of the week from year to year and does not mean the first day of the week. Those eighth-day Sabbaths therefore do not prefigure the exalting of the eighth day or first day of the week as the Sabbath under the gospel, and types of gospel events and ordinances must agree with plain New Testament fact, which contains no command making the first day the weekly Sabbath.
The verse shows no reckoning of the days of the week, and the eighth day spoken of is the day of the feast, not a day of the week, so to take it as Sunday is an unwarrantable assumption. Any argument for Sunday-keeping built on that expression therefore falls to the ground because its central and vital point is missing, and as one of the yearly feast days not a day of the weekly cycle it does not establish Sunday as a weekly Sabbath.
The instruction regarding the yearly feasts is paralleled by Deuteronomy 16 and is counted among references to festival days and other nonweekly sabbaths rather than to the weekly Sabbath, with the annual feasts of the Levitical service separate from the weekly Sabbath. Mixing the annual feasts with the weekly Sabbath loses the day of the Sabbath in the Old Testament. The appointed days on which the commemorative institutions were observed were different from the days on which they were instituted, and nearly all would have fallen on the same day if the time of institution fixed the time of observance, so the time of instituting an institution has nothing to do with the time of observing it. The law gives a specific statement of time for instituting and observing the feasts, while the Lord's Supper has no such stated time for its observance.
The description of the main features of the service of the sanctuary reveals God's way, power and glory and serves as an object-lesson teaching about the temple of God in heaven and Christ's priestly service there, written for learning, doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness, patience, comfort and hope.
Obedience and Present Application
God requires the heart's supreme affection joined to the offering made by fire, and without it labor and sacrifice are not accepted. The offering is a thank-offering acknowledging Him as giver of all temporal blessings, giving Him the first-fruits of the best received. In the harvest setting the first sheaf was presented before the sickle was put to the grain and before the harvest was gathered, and the first loaf made from the first threshed and ground corn was given after harvest as acknowledgment of His goodness.
The appointed feasts lasted several days during which labor was forbidden, showing that God sets times for rest and worship. He neither requires harmful overwork nor endorses idleness. These annually repeated services were ordered to be kept in their prescribed form, and departure from even a small particular was blameworthy.
The special Sabbath laws regulating worship were binding on Israel as a nation but are not legally binding on other nations, though their underlying principles remain binding. The Feast of Trumpets observed as the Jewish New Year was a religious occasion on which servile work was not to be done, reflected in leave from labor for Jewish soldiers keeping it. The blowing of trumpets once called all the people together in preparation for building the altar, within the three seventh-month feasts of Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles.
The Jewish holy days and ceremonial sabbaths were observed in addition to the Lord's Sabbaths as shadows pointing to Christ, and were not to be used as a means of earning salvation. The yearly sabbath belongs to the Jewish ritual system of feasts and feast-days with its distinctions of meats and drinks and carnal ordinances, a connected whole entirely separate from the seventh-day Sabbath spoken by God's own voice and written on tables of stone. Its observance belongs to the class of days spoken of in Romans 14 and is a matter of indifference so long as justification is not sought through it to the rejection of Christ's sacrifice.