The church today needs a celebration, a remembrance, a reminder of the Holy Days. In the Old Testament it was the role of the priest to teach and remind God’s people – God had told them
Lev. 10:10 “You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean”
He later judged them for not doing their job in this:
Eze 22:26 “Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.”
God has made it very clear that the spiritual leaders of His people were to:
Eze 44: 23 “…teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.”
It seems to me that in many ways the leadership of the church today are not doing this as well as they should and many today will face God for taking light of what He expects of them as they lead His people.
The first thing that must take place is that we must Acknowledge God for what He has done and is doing. It seems that one way God had His people acknowledge Him in the past was through the Holy-Days He established – days specifically designed to point to Him and what He has done.
Our world today have defamed the celebrations that God has lead His church to celebrate in the past – they have commercialized them, redefined them.
We need a celebration, a remembrance, a reminder of Holy Days. The world has made them holidays.
We the church – the Body of Christ need to redeem these days in the hearts of God’s children – those who trust and await the coming of Jesus Christ to finally redeem His people – rescuing us from this “holiday” seeking world.
The Holy Days I refer to are three – three days that worked together to make and fulfill God’s plan for all of His creation for all time.
These are:
- Christmas – the Birth of our Savior Jesus Christ
- Easter (and the Holy Week that leads up to His resurrection) – fulfilling God’s purpose once and for all.
The third is forgotten by much of the Church today – for various reasons – but no less vitally important to fulfillment of God’s ultimate goal for His Creation. That Holy Day is:
- Pentecost – the Birth of the Church where God finally implants Himself in the hearts and lives of His people as He said and promised He would.
If any one of these three events never happened then everything God had promised and planned would be for nought – He would have failed and we would still be lost – because He would have been exposed as a liar.
If we had only Christmas then Jesus would have been like any other boy born but just extra good. You could not have Easter without Christmas and Easter is the fulfillment of all that Jesus came to do – to live and die on the Cross for our sins and rise on the third day to prove all He said and promised.
But if we stop there – I believe we ignore the very completion of what Jesus came to do. It was great that He was born of a virgin, it was great that He lived a sinless life performing miracles only God could do, it was great that He suffered and died as He said He would, it was great that rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to many, it was great that He ascended to heaven in the presence of His disciples (after He had told them to wait for something else). If that something else never came then all that came before would have been for nought – regardless of how great or miraculous it was.
He had to come as presented in Acts 2 to fill His people – It seems to me that the Father proclaimed in the Old Testament – the Son (Jesus Christ) fulfilled by living out what the Father promised and then in Acts 2 the Spirit completed and formed all that the Father and the Son had begun – the complete Triune God completed the mission.
That said we as a church need to examine how we Acknowledge God through our celebration of Him – we do pretty good with Christmas – we have special advent messages proclaiming the birth of the Messiah. We don’t seem to do as well with Easter which if the most sacred of all – we have maybe a “Good Friday” service and a special sermon on Easter Sunday often ignoring any preparation to that event – I believe there is more “preparation” in Scripture for this event than for the birth of Christ – the birth was obscured compared to the Passion of Christ. There was a Triumphal entry – a week of agony in the heart of Jesus – a Last Supper – a Crucifixion. But we often talk about this some and maybe our kids talk about it more in Sunday School.
But when it comes to the third Holy-Day – Pentecost – it is normally not even mentioned. Why not, are we afraid of the idea of what happened physically in the text – that we might look like one of them churches who go to the extreme in that direction?
I grew up in a main-line liturgical church – who in the 50’s and 60’s was preaching the gospel – we celebrated Pentecost as a Birthday – our birthday – the birthday of the Church – there were birthday cakes in the Sunday School – we were reminded that without this day we would not even be sitting in the pews.
I would challenge all who read this to examine first their own attitudes on how you Acknowledge God in these Holy-Days. But think about what the Church would look like and impart to the people they serve if they only celebrated Christmas and not Easter, or Easter and not Christmas – would something be missing.
I am saying that by not celebrating Pentecost (in whatever way the Church would see fit), something is missing – our message is incomplete. It is fine that Jesus was born and that He died and rose again for me – but if it stopped there then I WOULD be incomplete. Let’s celebrate some way the birthday of the Church on Pentecost – reminding God’s people that this is the fulfillment of all that Jesus came to do.
Christian Holy-Days 2023
Easter – April 9
Pentecost – May 28
Christmas – December 25
Jewish Holy-Days 2023
Passover April 5 (Observed evening before)
Feast of Unleavened Bread April 6-12 (Begins evening before)
Pentecost May 28 (Begins evening before)
Feast of Trumpets September 16 (Begins evening before)
Day of Atonement September 25 (Begins evening before)
Feast of Tabernacles September 30-October 6 (Begins evening before)
The Eighth Day October 7 (Begins evening before)