Building on the Foundation

  During His earthly life, Jesus Christ celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles, for He obeyed His Father’s law perfectly “without sin” (Heb. 4:15). John 7 recalls one such celebration because it played a significant part in Jesus’ ministry. We’re told in vv. 37-38, “On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” From this verse has been coined the term, “the Last Great Day.” The Feast of Tabernacles is a seven-day Feast: “The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the LORD” (Lev. 23:34). God’s Word tells us the same thing in Lev. 23:40-42; Num. 29:12; Deut. 16:13, 15; and elsewhere. So the Feast of Tabernacles begins on Tishri 15, by the Hebrew calendar, and lasts seven days. Immediately following the Feast of Tabernacles, on Tishri 22, is the Eighth Da...

Do you think women would be offended if I told them to stay home while they were on their period? What if God told them to stay home?  Chances are, the answer is yes, it probably would make women very offended to be told this. Well, that's exactly what God told them to do in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. These practices are considered old and to be valid for some people other than ourselves, but what if they aren't?  As we explored in the previous two posts, everything God gave us in His law was given to us for a reason, and it's up to us to study and learn just what that reason is. Granted, some of those laws pertained to a society governed by a leader who served God, and a people who followed suit. Following those laws and enforcing them is not possible for us as a society or even as an isolated group because we no longer have a society like that, but the principles remain for us as followers of God.  Following God requires a lot of us not just physic...

  In part one we covered the idea that it is the Spirit of God that sets us apart as a people and purifies our hearts. After all, God cannot dwell with sin, and if He is to dwell in our hearts, some major house cleaning needs to take place. Before our conversion process starts it can well be said, Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV — “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? The whole point of conversion, however, is to change this to a false statement. We are to be given a new heart, a circumcised heart, and most importantly, a clean heart. This vital process is symbolized in the Passover and the days of Unleavened bread, which is why we do it every year. It reminds us of what we are supposed to be doing and what God is doing for us, which brings us to an interesting thought. If it is all about the spiritual now, and the physical doesn't matter, then there should be no more lessons that we can draw from doing the physical things.  The fact remains, ho...