Purim

Tabernacles 2018

Purim 2018

 Joojay Kebobs, Persian Saffron Rice, Salad Shirazi and yogurt

 Acting out Esther

Feast of Tabernacles 2017

We built our first OUTSIDE Tabernacle this year, and I LOVE how it turned out! 

  “Now on the first day {of the Feast of Tabernacles} you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.” Lev 23:40

  On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD for seven days, with a Sabbath rest on the first day and a Sabbath rest on the eighth day. 40Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall REJOICE before the LORD your God for seven days. 41You shall thus celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It shall be an EVERLASTING statute throughout your ALL generations. Leviticus 23

 A week of treats

Breakfast in the Tabernacle

Our Fajita Feast the final night

 Sampling the Etrog

Day of Atonement 2017

Feast of Trumpets 2017

 The Feast of Trumpets is our time to decorate our home for the cozy Fall season.

Shavuot/Pentecost/Feast of Weeks

 ¹⁰ You are to observe the festival of Shavu‘ot  for Adonai your God with a voluntary offering, which you are to give in accordance with the degree to which Adonai your God has prospered you. ¹¹ You are to rejoice in the presence of Adonai your God — you, your sons and daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites living in your towns, and the foreigners, orphans and widows living among you 

-Deuteronomy 16

¹⁵ “‘From the day after the day of rest — that is, from the day you bring the sheaf for waving — you are to count seven full weeks, ¹⁶ until the day after the seventh week; you are to count fifty days; and then you are to present a new grain offering to Adonai. ¹⁷ You must bring bread from your homes for waving — two loaves made with two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, baked with leaven — as first-fruits for Adonai.. ²¹ On the same day, you are to call a holy convocation; do not do any kind of ordinary work; this is a permanent regulation through all your generations, no matter where you live.

²² “‘When you harvest the ripe crops produced in your land, don’t harvest all the way to the corners of your field, and don’t gather the ears of grain left by the harvesters; leave them for the poor and the foreigner; I am Adonai your God.’”

-Leviticus 23 

The above verses tell us to keep Shavu'ot.

But as we have learned, these holy days YHWH commands us to keep are not just random days. 

  

In digging deeper into the Bible, I learned that the Commandments were given on Shavu'ot! God's Commandments written on stone.

19 In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day, they came to the Wilderness of Sinai... Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: ⁴ ‘You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself. ⁵ Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine. ⁶ And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”

⁷ So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. ⁸ Then all the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” 

 -Exodus 19 

And fast forward hundreds of years, and the Holy Spirit was given on Shavu'ot! God's Commandments written on our hearts!

The festival of Shavu‘ot arrived, and the believers all gathered together in one place. ² Suddenly there came a sound from the sky like the roar of a violent wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. ³ Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them. ⁴ They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in different languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.

-Acts 2

These celebrations are not obsolete! They are so amazingly rich in meaning and I learn more about YHWH with each one I celebrate.

Purim 2017

... to establish among them that they should celebrate yearly the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar, 22 as the days on which the Jews had rest from their enemies, as the month which was turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and joy, of sending presents to one another and gifts to the poor.

Esther 9:22

And they served drinks in golden vessels, each vessel being different from the other, with royal wine in abundance, according to the generosity of the king

Esther 1:7

 

Abigail's favorite part is acting out the book of Esther with stuffies.

 

 Then the king said to the wise men who understood the times (for this was the king’s manner toward all who knew law and justice,
those closest to him being Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, who had access to the king’s presence, and who ranked highest in the kingdom).

Esther 1:13

 

 So the king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews.

 Esther 3:10

 Now it happened on the third day that Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, across from the king’s house, while the king sat on his royal throne in the royal house, facing the entrance of the house.2 So it was, when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, that she found favor in his sight, and the king held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. Then Esther went near and touched the top of the scepter. 

Esther 5:1-2

 

So Haman took the robe and the horse, arrayed Mordecai and led him on horseback through the city square, and proclaimed before him, “Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor!” 

Esther 6:11

 

Hanukkah

I struggled with whether or not to celebrate Hanukkah this year. I absolutely did not want a replacement for Christmas. But I also did not want to miss out on a way to celebrate Yahweh in a way that would be pleasing to Him. After all Yeshua (Jesus) did travel to Jerusalem, to the temple,  during Hanukkah, so that must mean He celebrated it, right? (John 10:22)

We ended up doing the antithesis of everything we had resolved to do.

   

My first course of action in anything I am unsure about, is to research. And that is exactly what we did.  Our family read various historical accounts of the Maccabees, including the  book of 1 Maccabees. 

I also prayed for wisdom. 

I first decided I was uncomfortable with the "Hanukkah Menorah" (sometimes called a Hanukiah) with its 9 branches, because it did not fit the Biblical description of the menorah (Exodus 25, Exodus 37). I decided if I was going to buy a menorah, it would be gold, have 7 branches and be as close as possible to the one in Scripture.

But then, as we read  about the making of the holy articles for the Tabernacle, we learned that they were not to be used outside the Tabernacle, or by anyone but the priests. (Exodus 30:32, 37 and Leviticus 26:1 is a bit of a stretch,  but it did influence our thinking as well.)  We decided to skip the menorah all together.

Not to mention, in our research, we found there is no record of the "miracle of oil" ever occurring in any of the accounts of the actual miracles that occurred for the Maccabees. It is a tradition that has been passed down, with no historical backing. 

Since we did not believe the "miracle of the oil", we would also be skipping the Hanukkah tradition of fried foods. No latkes or doughnuts.

  

But...as we were discussing our decision, my daughter became very curious about latkes. She wanted to know what they were. I explained, but her curiosity was not satisfied. So I pulled up photos, and then videos of how to make them, but she still was not satiated. We ended up looking up a recipe and making latkes after all, as an educational endeavor and not as an aspect of a Hanukkah celebration.

So why are there 8 days of Hannukah, if there was no oil miracle? I believe it comes from the example of Hezekiah in 1 Chronicles 29, when he also cleansed the temple.  

We also decided to skip dreidels. According to our understanding of Scripture, gambling is not a way to glorify Adonai.  

But....at church, there was a Hanukkah celebration, and since we were already there, and wanted to be included in the fellowship, we participated in the celebration, including games of dreidel. It was a lot of fun, and we thoroughly enjoyed it, but afterwards I struggled with  guilt for going against our convictions. 

 Overall, in our readings about the Maccabees, I did find the message of this "holiday" to be exactly in line with what Yahweh has been doing in our lives this year. 

To me, the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah) is about following Yahweh's commands NO MATTER WHAT. It is about not giving in and following the culture, even if everyone else is doing it. The Maccabees and their followers were willing to fight and die, rather than do the things Yahweh calls abominations. They fought for liberty to follow Yahweh the way He commands us to, in His Word. And He blessed their obedience miraculously, by giving them victory, even though they were impossibly outnumbered and had everything against them.

I think we can all benefit from a time, each year, to remember that we must be set apart and holy to the Lord. (1 Peter 1:16,  Leviticus 11:44, Leviticus 19:2) A time to rededicate ourselves to Him, and cleanse our own temples (1 Corinthians 6:19). To pray that He would show us ways we have been tainted by the culture around us, so that we can repent and turn away from those practices that grieve Him. 

No More Christmas?!?

I have found that our decision to no longer participate in Christmas has not gone unnoticed, and I have had a surprising amount of people ask why we have taken this drastic step. 

In reading through the Old Testament (specifically, the first 5 books) this year, we saw how many times God told His people not to adopt the culture of the people around them. 

I had known the pagan roots of Christmas for a few years, but I justified continuing in it, because  we made OUR celebration all about the Lord (and we truly DID). We did not do Santa, or materialism. We kept a simple Advent filled with a special Bible study.

But in studying Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers... He made it clear to me that He is not pleased with us using pagan practices to worship Him. He said over and over and over to be separate, and stay away from what everyone else does. He NEVER said redeem evil things and use them to worship Him. 

 I have been asked how our children took the news. We had done all our reading together and we discussed what the verses meant for us, as we read. And when I told them about my Christmas conviction, they were not surprised. They understood where it came from and were fine with it. They wanted to do what was right before God, rather than hold on to tradition. I have checked with them often since we made the decision,  and we feel we are not missing out, and instead have replaced that holiday with much richer and more fulfilling celebrations. (The Biblical feasts)

 We believe Jesus was most likely born at Tabernacles, which is one of the biggest holidays God commands us to keep in His Word.  We have really enjoyed making that our main holiday (alongside Passover). We use the week long celebration to bless loved ones with gifts, to celebrate Yeshua (Jesus)'s coming, and go all out with decorating our home.   (Plenty of posts here on the blog about how we have learned to keep the Biblical feasts, if you want to know more.)

The following verses by no means are an in depth study. I did not keep specific notes on this topic as we were reading, as the conviction came upon me slowly. These are just what comes to mind immediately, as I write this post. There is so much information online about the real beginnings of Christmas. If you feel  the Lord leading you, please pray about it, and research for yourself.

 
Jeremiah 10: 10 Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: 2 Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

2 Kings 17:15 They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings with which He warned them. And they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them, concerning which the LORD had commanded them not to do like them.

Deuteronomy 12:31 You must not worship the Lord your God in their way,

Deuteronomy 16:21 You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah or any kind of tree beside the altar of the LORD your God

Feast of Tabernacles 2016