We’ve completed our count, and with the evening comes the closing of the Spring Feasts, Shavuot. For me, Shavuot tends to be the most relaxed, low-key and subtle of the Lord’s Feasts. The elements of most holidays are found: good food, traditional activities, fellowship. This one is missing a lot of bells and whistles that regal deep exhaustion from the mother of the house. Perhaps here, I should remind my readers, that this is my telling of how our family marks the feast. We read, as tradition gives us, the book of Ruth. I bake a heavy and delicious baklava cheesecake as dairy and honey are symbolic of the season. The house is freshly washed, and plants/greenery are usually brought in if we have previously done without. It’s relaxing, family and…intimate. Like most of the Feasts in the last year, we’re sharing this for the first time with a group of fellow believers who, for the most part, understand something of its weight. There has been mixed joys in this for me, personally. To find, at last, a set of believers who accomodate or adopt these things is fine…but at the same time, there is such distance in our understandings and devotions (some more than others). My naivete, I suspect, allowed me to believe that once I stumbled upon such a group that there would be such harmonies in understanding and likeness so as to be a union in quite a different way. And I smile. No doubt, this same desire goes back to the book of Acts and beyond…it must have been a difficult thing for those freshly recommitted to the heed of the Word and refreshed with new understanding of all the old scriptures as the same in that present age: Grace, to also then make the jump (and stay on track) when people like myself, absent the physical heritage, walked among them.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Shavuot is so sweet a thing to observe. Whether correct or not, this particular holiday is one of reflection on the relationship between man and God..more specifically, the relationship between man and God’s Torah (His Word).
The covenant with Adam in Genesis 3 is extended to His promise to all of mankind. There we are given the knowledge of hardships to come, difficulties to experience, breaking of our hearts, the manifestation of Satan. More than this, we receive the faithfulness of God and His oath to fulfill…the seed of the woman will be bruised in the heel, but her offspring will bruise the head of the evil serpent.
In the Noahic Covenant of Genesis 9God vows never again to destroy the earth by a flood. As a sign of this promise, we are given the rainbow. At least, this is the extent of memory of most believers. Nothing wrong with this…but we are also here told to not eat blood…and it is here that it is taught to us that blood is the sacred symbol of life and of sacrificial redemption. The weight of this is so vital that it would take another post to explain. Perhaps at a future date. Yet, there is something that I would like to share with believers whom specifically believe in the Noahic account as true and valid (vs. a fairy tale) and yet, believe that we are all under a New Covenant with the “Old” being now invalid. The rainbow still continues today as a covenantal pledge…therefore, man is still expected to value the sacredness of life.
Sanctified by faith is the great covenant of promise, the covenant given to Abraham, of a great nation through whom all the promises of God are yea and Amen (Exodus 20), and through which the land of Israel is given to the physical seed of Abraham as an eternal possession. In this covenant, God extends to the world a pledge that all those who would bless Israel would themselves be blessed…and those would curse those who would curse her. As one not of the physical lineage, I’m extremely humbled that this Covenant fortells a blessing to the nations in Messiah, so that those of us who believe, following in his faith and come to His Word can rightly know Abraham as “the father of many nations.” (This does not take away the unique elect of Israel.) Here we are shown that beyond a beloved people, that the nation of Israel would be reserved as an instrument of God. Circumcision and the Sabbath are given to the nation for this pledge.
In the covenant given through Moses, follows the event from which we see the fruitfulness of the Abrahamic Covenant. On that joyous occasion the Lord’s Feasts were given to celebrate the tender mercies and overwhelming grace of God. Sabbath, as a recall of His work as Creator, is given to Israel as a holy rest…in honoring the Sabbath, they testify of God’s lordship over all of creation and His victories over the forces of paganism in establishing Israel as His nation. In Shavuot, a thanksgiving is celebrated marking the blessings of God on this earth. In Acts 2 we believers of Messiah also know this day as a holy day to which we offer thanksgiving for the blessings of the Torah, the Living Word made manifest to us. Those who are led to do God’s will in response to His grace, are guided by the whole counsel of the Word of God.
The last of the covenants found in the Old Testament is the Davidic Covenant (IISamuel 7). In the giving of this particular covenant David is promised a throne for his descendants, with its extension being the everlasting ruleship of Messiah in this and the spiritual world as described in Matthew 13.
I am of a pilgrimage people, those not claiming the physical but the spiritual inheritance of Abraham…who follows faith in the same footsteps he trod. We recognize that while we are one in Christ that the precious and needfully unique relationship between Israel and God remains…and without whom we would not have audience before God. Their gift and call is irrevocable. I am from the place of Ruth and the likeness of the Canaanite woman who sought our Lord’s mercies.
