The feasts represent Him as in the midst of the people, a circle round Himself.
Weekly Feast
The Sabbath
the Sabbath, a sign of the covenant made with them (Israel),
but also that His people are in due time to enter into God's rest (here that of
the first creation, for us of the new creation, as risen); the new moon — a
sign, I doubt not, of the restoration of Israel.[i]
Annual Feasts
Antitype – the cross.[ii]
I have the sense that
holiness must be, and I go with a personal, individual sense of it, and
sit in my tent to keep the feast of unleavened bread, and bless God for having
delivered me from that in which I was. And besides this I find that I have got
into an entirely new place - a place in which God has made a habitation for
Himself. I am risen; I am in the new creation; it is a new thing altogether,
and the old is all done with; and so I come with a free-will offering, and I
worship as I realize the coming down from God of all the blessings that He has
given us in the Holy Ghost.
On the morrow after the sabbath the unbroken sheaf of
first-fruits was waved before Jehovah. On the first day of the week the Lord
Jesus, not having seen corruption, rose from the dead, became the first-fruits
of them that slept.[iii]
1.
Antitype – The descent of the Holy Ghost.[iv]
2.
No penticost in John vi or vii. John treats of a divine
person on earth, not of the man in heaven. Penticost supposes Jesus on high.[v]
The great public summons.[vi]
The great public summons being now given brings on the day
of atonement for Israel (that is, their coming in personal humiliation under
it), and this was separative in its character. It was a day for them to afflict
their souls, ceasing irrespectively from all worldly employment - "Ye
shall do no work." Whatever soul was not afflicted was to be cut off, and
so it will be: we find it in Joel 2; we find their character in Zephaniah 3:
12; we find the affliction itself in Zechariah 12. Their acknowledgment in
terms of the value of that which made peace for the mourners is in Isaiah 53.
(Applicable, I need not say, in its value to the church, but spoken in terms by
the remnant of the Jews in the latter day.)[vii]
1.
Antitype – Has had no fulfillment. The fulfillment of this
type will be when, after the execution of judgment, Israel restored to their
land, shall be in possession of all their promised blessing.[viii]
2.
Israel’s rest.[ix]