During the Jewish holidays I get asked a lot about how we should best honor the feasts and traditions of the Old Covenant.Friend. The Old Covenant rituals are a mere shadow of the substance of Christ.
“These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” Colossians 2:17
Learning about the Jewish holidays is great for information seeking and for seeing the prophetic of the coming Messiah, but this stuff becomes dangerous to focus on.
Many Christians want to look back to go forward. They want to embrace the old to get closer to Jesus.
Yet …
Paul warns the Galatians of the very same concept. He warns them that they were falling back into the law and the ways that stunt growth by the Spirit.
“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.” Galatians 4:9-11
When I first came to Christ, as a Jewish guy, the only thing I absolutely 100% knew was that going backwards was bad.
Too many believers go backwards in an attempt to grow. In a desire for nostalgia, our freedom in Christ gets stolen from a focus on feasts and works.
Again. This stuff is great for instruction in Christ and for learning about the ways of the past, but terrible to base our lives on.
What’s worse. 95% of all modern Jewish traditions weren’t even around at the time of Jesus. If we want to do the things He did, very few Jewish practices of today are true to what He actually did.
Yep. Most of it was adopted after the cross to redefine the Jewish faith in the wake of losing people to The Way.
If you want to get closer to Jesus. Spend time with Him.