As we move into the Holiday season, I want to address the issue of Christians keeping the Jewish holidays.
I am not planning on defending my interpretation of the passages that talk about Gentiles keeping the Feasts of Israel, also called God’s appointed times, and the Feasts of the Jews in the Gospel of John. They were God’s appointed Feasts for Israel. They are still central to Jewish tradition and Jewish identity and have been celebrated continuously even with the destruction of the Temple and the scattering of the Jewish nation in the first and second centuries. They are all national holidays in Israel.
I read Romans 14, Galatians 3, and Colossians 2 straightforwardly. I know that there are arguments that the passages do not really mean what they at first glance, in almost all translations, seem to say. Romans 14 states that keeping specific days is according to the conscience of the person who keeps does so. He does not enjoin their keeping. In context, of course, Paul knows that Israel was and is enjoined to keep the Feasts and the Sabbath, but the context is that Gentiles are not so required. Colossians states that the Feasts are a shadow of the realities that are in Yeshua, who is the substance of the feasts. The Colossians are exhorted to allow no one to judge them with regard to a Feast, New Moon or Sabbath day. The New Testament scriptures do not explicitly require the observance of the Holy Days by Gentiles, so we want to avoid making any requirement that Gentiles observe these days in the same manner that are incumbent upon the Jewish people. Yet, the sentiment that all scripture is useful for teaching (2 Tim 2:15-16) portrays that it is possible for Gentiles, both K’rovei-Yisrael (those who have been led by the Holy Spirit to join Messianic Communities for the sake of Jewish witness) and other Gentile believers who wish to participate with Jewish congregations as guests, may experience spiritual enrichment and greater revelation of Yeshua as a result of a deepened understanding of, and participation in observances of the biblical feasts and Holy Days.
However, the conclusion that the Biblical Feasts are irrelevant is foolish and incoherent. The Feasts of Israel are revelatory and teach us about God’s provision for our needs, the work of the Messiah Jesus, and are prophetic for the end of this Age and the Age to Come. Understanding the Feasts is part of understanding the Bible. Why did Yeshua die during Passover? Why was he raised from the dead on First Fruits? Why does the book of Hebrews interpret the atonement of Yeshua on the basis of the Day of Atonement (Heb. 7-9) and the meaning of our spiritual life through the Sabbath (Heb. 4)? When we understand this, then Gentiles can be supportive of Jewish people who keep these special days.
I think one of the very good ways that I encourage is that the churches would teach on the Feasts during the seasons that Jewish people celebrate them. This brings out the reality that the Church is an international people joined to Israel. Understanding Israel through the Biblical patterns of Israel is greatly helpful. Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words. Joining with Messianic Jewish congregations for celebrations can be a great way of bringing out the meaning; a key teaching tool. Many do Passover Seder Demonstrations for churches.
Must Christians keep the Feasts, and take particular days of the year as Sabbath Feast days? No, in my view the Bible is clear. But should Christians connect to the meaning of the Feasts in various ways? Yes, if we are to understand the Bible better and be more in tune with rooting in Israel.
Dr. Daniel Juster, founder and director of Tikkun International, has been involved in the Messianic Jewish movement since 1972 and currently resides in Jerusalem, Israel, from where he serves and supports the Messianic movement worldwide.
If Christians are not obliged to keep the biblical feasts then what should they celebrate? They are to celebrate Christ’s birth, death, burial, resurrection and reign. They seem to do this in celebrating Christ’s birth at Christmas, His death, burial and resurrection at Easter, and His reign through His Word and Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Well, if they already celebrate all the main events of Christ’s life why should they even consider biblical feasts. Christ’s birth is scriptural, just go to any Carol or nativity service. Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are scriptural, Christians even carry crosses through Jerusalem at that time.
However, something crucial is missing from these celebrations that Christians consistently choose to ignore, and that is the biblical and Jewish origins of these celebrations. These feasts all had their origins in God’s revelation to Israel.
Easter supposedly remembers God’s deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt through Moses with a passover lamb. Easter supposedly celebrates Messiah Jesus becoming the Passover Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. However, in rejecting its Jewish origins through wilful antisemitism, the church cuts itself off from the continuity of God’s revelation to mankind. The church tried to get around this by saying it had replaced Israel, it had picked up the baton from Israel, and it still entertains that delusional belief. This is biblical nonsense as the Lord says that Israel will exist as long as the sun and moon shine. “If those ordinances depart From before Me, says the LORD, Then the seed of Israel shall also cease From being a nation before Me forever.” Jer 31:36. The millennial reign of Christ is from Israel. What is ominous is that it is the biblical feasts that are celebrated in the millennium, Zech 14:16, not the replacement Christian feasts.
The Christians would do well to repent of their historic and current antisemitism and open their hearts to the biblical revelation of how the Lord instituted His own feasts to celebrate His life. Indeed He calls them The feasts of the Lord, Lev 23:2, not the feasts of Israel or the Jewish feasts.
Christian leaders know that Easter and Christmas are Christianised pagan feasts that were agreed by the antisemitic early church fathers with lifelong sun worshipper Constantine. They know that Christmas and Easter have their origins in the worship of the sun god and the fertility goddess Ishtar. They wilfully practice antisemitism, defy the Lord and cause God’s children to sin.
Matthew 18:6-7 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!
As followers of Yeshua, how can we understand his life, death and resurrection without at least a basic understanding of the Jewish Festivals ?
We should therefore follow them and relate our faith to them as they occur.
For Christians to keep Jewish Festivals reinforces to the Jewish belief that their Messiah has not yet arrived. Paul’s position, in this and in other edicts in his epistles, was to attempt to keep the peace between the Jews and the Gentiles hence he decreed that the keeping of feast and festivals was not obligatory because he understood that the promised Messiah had come but he did not want to alienate the Jewish people in the synagogues where he preached and attempted to alert the Jews to the Gospel message.
Sorry Roy that doesn’t sound right. Paul preached the feasts to Gentiles wherever he went. He preached Christ was the Passover Lamb, 1 Cor 5:7; the firstfruits of the resurrected, 1 Cor 15:20; the unleavened bread 1 Cor 5:8; Holy Spirit baptism, Acts 19:2; Yom Teruah, 1 Thess 4:16; Yom Kippur Heb 9:14; and the tabernacle of God Acts 17:28. He was keen to go up to Jerusalem for all the feasts if he could. Indeed he was arrested for going up to a feast even though he was warned he’d be arrested while there, Acts 21:4.
It’s probably because Christians have replaced the feasts that Jews find it so incredulous that they could possibly be following anyone Jewish let alone the Messiah. It’s not easy to see the Jewish Messiah among the tinsel and Easter eggs. An antisemitic Messiah could not be Jewish. Christian bishops wearing the robes and headgear of the fish god is idolatrous in Jewish eyes.
When Jews see Christians following Paul’s teaching they might reconsider Christianity. When Jews see that the Lord has built a new temple to dwell in, even the hearts of all believers, Jew and Gentile, they might get jealous and want to have the same relationship with the Lord themselves.
I don’t why you are still fighting this issue so hard, Mr. Juster. I don’t think the ‘Bible is so clear’ to you. As a gentile, I’m a little tired of being patted on the head and told it’s ok to sit in the back of the pews and just be so jealous of the neat things the Jews get to do! It’s alright, I can read and write and ride a bike, too. And it appears self-righteousness is not confined just to us non-Jews, church or not! That is what Paul was adamant about from both sides. We are, and CAN be, one to include the practice of worshiping The Creator his way. We are not that dumb.
Greetings Rick,
Thanks for joining the conversation.
Dr. Juster asked us to convey:
Some may think gentiles only have equal worth if they thoroughly live in the Jewish biblical life patterns.
Most Messianic Jewish organizations beg to differ, including the MJAA,
the UMJC and Tikkun which all strongly reject that view,
emphasizing that
OUR EQUAL WORTH IS IN THE STANDING GAINED BY THE MESSIAH AND THROUGH HIM.
There is so much confusion and misinformation on this subject I would suggest
The audio book by Toby Janiki “ What About Paganism”
You can access it at Beth Emmanuel.org. Hudson Wisconsin aMessianic Synagog
Thank you for your reply. I have to say that my concern and deep frustration is over what I hear and read from so many Messianic commentators expressing the commands, functions, holidays of God as – Jewish. Stop it! Mr. Juster’s article is replete these terms that foster the sense of separations and differences. ‘Jewish biblical life patterns?’ You see? ‘…avoid making and requirement that Gentiles observe these days in the same manner that is incumbent upon the Jewish people.’ Incumbent?? While Mr. Juster acknowledges EQUAL WORTH, I believe his writing displays a bit more of Galatians 2: 12-14.
Personally, I would like to hear less of ‘Church’, ‘New/Old Testament’, ‘Jewish.’ Or at least have them better defined within the context of what is being expounded on. Some of these terms were INVENTED to separate us right in the first and second centuries and we still haven’t properly dealt with this nonsense when expressing the truth of Scriptures today!
Ich war früher einmal in der evangelischen Kirche durch die Taufe als Säugling, bin aber mit 25 Jahren dort ausgetreten, weil ich dort viele Fehler fand. Seitdem studiere ich die Bibel und habe die dort genannten Feste so gut ich konnte, gefeiert. Ich habe die Fehler des Christentums erkannt und meide sie. Es kann nur Eines richtig sein, nämlich das, was Gottes Wort gebietet, und das muss mit der hebräischen Bibel übereinstimmen.