Week 9 ———  Jesus and the Appointed Times
John 2:18-22

(April 11-18: Jesus observes the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Jerusalem. The Gospels don’t mention any specifics of his activity after the discussion with Nicodemus until April 20th, when he and his disciples leave Jerusalem.  So, I will take this time to provide some background on the special appointed times in God’s calendar and then discuss the feast of Firstfruits next week. This will hopefully give you time to catch up if you have gotten behind.)

Eclipse fever is over (until the next one.)   I am sure you got your fill of the apocalyptic predictions based on that regular occurrence of the moon blocking out the sun totally for 4-5 minutes.  This is not a new thing.  Some saw some Hebrew letters in the tracks of the path of the last three solar eclipses to cross the US.  (Hey, if you want to get some revelation from Hebrew letters, I can show you 304,805 Hebrew letters in my Hebrew Scriptures.  I can promise you that you will get a lot of good information there.)  But people have forever been searching for meaning from the sun, moon, and stars.

But is that why the sun, moon, and stars exist?  God tells us exactly why he created those in Genesis 1.

Gen. 1:14-15   And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” 

So there are four reasons.  The most obvious one is “to give light upon the earth.” But their significance goes beyond mere illumination. Secondly, they are also “for days and years.”  The sun determines our days.  The sun ‘comes up’ and then the sun ‘goes down.’  Sunset is the beginning of a new day (as God defines it and the Hebrew Bible understands it — “evening and morning was the first day.”)   And how about ‘years’?   Because the Earth revolves around the sun in just over 365 days and because its axis is tilted, the sun rises and sets in a slightly different place every day.  It only sets in the due west on two days of the year, the spring and fall equinoxes.   Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, the pyramids in Egypt, and many other ancient monuments were constructed to align with the direction of the sunrise at the summer solstice.  People have forever realized how the sun marks out the years.

Thirdly, the Sun and Moon are there for signs (Hebrew ‘otom’).  Not the signs people want to see in an eclipse or a comet, but something more.  People have forever been trying to make “signs from God” out of natural occurrences (or trying to explain away the signs of God as natural occurrences.)  Comets were associated with the death of Caesar or the coming of the black plague in the Middle Ages.  During solar eclipses in ancient China, people thought an invisible dragon was eating the sun. So the Chinese would bang drums, pots, and pans and get archers to shoot arrows into the sky to scare the dragon away. Moments later, the sun would reemerge. So it must have worked! In the Middle East, in 585 BC, the Lydians and Medes were in a five-year war. A total solar eclipse occurred during the battle, and nations stopped fighting at once and forged a peace treaty.  In 1504, on Columbus’ final voyage, he got stranded in Jamaica.  He convinced the indigenous people that if they didn’t feed and take care of him, the gods would be angry.  He used an almanac to predict a lunar eclipse and told the people the gods would give them a warning and that the moon would disappear for a time that night.  The son of Columbus, Ferdinand, wrote:

“…with great howling and lamentation they came running from every direction to the ships, laden with provisions, praying the Admiral to intercede by all means with God on their behalf; that he might not visit his wrath upon them.”

What does the Bible say about people seeking signs?   Jesus said:

Matthew 12:39-40   “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.  For just, as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. “

We will talk much more about this sign of Jonah later.   Jesus hints at this sign in our passage today:

John 2:18-22   “So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”

But I think this verse from Jeremiah sums up the turmoil that constantly circulates during these routine celestial happenings:

Jeremiah 10:2-3  “Thus says Yehovah: “Learn not the way of the nations, nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens because the nations are dismayed at them, for the customs of the peoples are vanity.”

Jeremiah goes on to say don’t be afraid of idols either.  Like the fear of man from routine movements of the heavens, they are only inventions of man.  They “can not do evil, nor is it in them to do good.” (Jer.10:5).  But every big astronomical event brings out the sign-seekers.  Don’t fall for that nonsense.  If you want to know about real signs, check out the otom in the Bible.

In the Bible, these signs, “otom”, refer not to natural astronomical occurrences but to something beyond the ordinary.  For example, the plagues in Egypt are called ‘otom’.  One plague was darkness, but not the darkness of a solar eclipse that affects a small area for a short time. All of Egypt (except where the Hebrews were) was in total darkness for three days.  In Joshua 10, the sun and moon stand still during a battle for the length of a day.  In 2 Kings 20 (also in Isaiah 38), the shadow of Ahaz’s sundial goes backward ten steps as a sign.  Routine visible astronomical events are a wonder of God’s creation, but not miracles or signs.

Finally, the sun and moon are there for what the ESV calls “seasons.”  This is the translation of the Hebrew “moadim” in almost every translation.  That is unfortunate, as the actual translation is “an appointed time or place for meeting with God.”   The NIV is on the money here and translates moadim as “sacred times” and the Holman likewise as “signs for festivals.”   It could refer to a season only as a ‘sacred season’ or “appointed season” to meet with God.¹  The primary two things this word refers to in the Bible are 1) The “tent of meeting” — where Moses met with God outside the camp (an appointed meeting time and place with God). Or 2)  the appointed feasts in the Biblical calendar.  — Lev. 23:44   “Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts [moadim] of Yehovah.”

Leviticus 23 lists eight appointed times.  There are four in the spring and three in the fall—but these are mentioned only after the most important appointed time, the Sabbath.  

Lev. 23:1-4   Yehovah spoke to Moses, saying,  “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts [moadim] of Yehovah that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts [moadim].  “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to Yehovah in all your dwelling places.

Again, the Sabbath is the most important appointed time for meeting with God.  We will discuss the Sabbath in Jesus’ teaching later.

We have already discussed the first of the spring appointed times, Passover (see ‘Behold the Lamb #22‘).  The Bible doesn’t call the day Passover but uses that term to refer to the sacrifice “Pesach,” which is eaten after twilight, thus the beginning of the next day, the first day of the seven days of Unleavened Bread. (We discussed unleavened bread in ‘Jesus Cleanses the Temple #25‘.)  The first day of Unleavened Bread is a special Sabbath, as well as the last day of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:7-8). So you can have 3 Sabbaths in the week of Unleavened Bread.²

The next feast is Firstfruits, which is on the day after the Sabbath of Unleavened Bread. Several New Testament books refer to this feast. Understanding Firstfruits will deepen your understanding of why Jesus’ resurrection opens the door for our resurrection. So that is our topic for next week.

1. Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon,  article for ‘moed.’ (‘Moed’ is the singular form, and ‘moadim’ is plural.)
2. At this point, a very wise and careful reader may think about the final week of Jesus’ life and how they had to rush his burial as the next day was the Sabbath.  That led everyone to believe that Jesus was crucified on a Friday because the Sabbath starts at twilight on our Friday night.  But, if you know about Jewish feasts, you realize that every day after the Passover lamb is slaughtered is a Sabbath, so Jesus’ death did not have to be on a Friday.  We will go into more detail about this possibility next year.