God’s Calendar - The Month (New Moon) of Tishri (5782)

Welcome everyone joining us on Facebook. Peace to our Jewish friends out there. We want to come on live tonight to go through this beautiful season we have entered into — the Passover — ever since the new moon fourteen days ago. We are now at Nisan 14, which begins at sundown tonight, Thursday. This is such an important time. As we read in the Gospels, this is when Messiah himself was preparing to die on the cross for all of our sins on Nisan 14, or on the Gregorian calendar, April 15th, beginning at sundown tomorrow. We appreciate everyone joining us tonight, as well as those watching on the replay.

We are going to cover a great deal of information. If you are new to Passover, it is essentially the commemoration of when Jesus — Yeshua — was crucified for our sins, but we will also go back to the historical origin of Passover, which most people know through the Exodus from Egypt. We will look at it prophetically, historically, and personally as we go through this beautiful season. We appreciate everyone joining us as we enter into this weekend of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and the Feast of First Fruits — which is when He was resurrected, the days most people observe as Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We will address those things as well.

If you are not familiar with how God structures the day and night: sundown marks the beginning of the next day. So when sundown comes tonight on Eastern time, Nisan 14 begins — the day Jesus was crucified for our sins. Tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. He was crucified, and around 3:00 p.m. He gave up His spirit. That is totally remarkable.

We will begin with the theme of being set apart, because when we speak about the Lord — about being holy and righteous — it is fundamentally about being set apart. He established this from the very beginning of Scripture and on through the New Testament: that all of us are to be set apart. Please have your Bible ready; we will go through many scriptures together rather than rushing. We have a lot of information to cover as we enter this holy season.

We will go through Leviticus 23 with the feast days — the divine appointments of the Lord. We will walk through the Exodus as a foreshadow of what He was going to fulfill, and then we will go to the Gospels and see the beautiful correlations of how the Messiah and the Father appointed these times for the Son to intersect with human history at specific divine appointments. It is totally remarkable.

But friends, it all starts with being set apart. As the world goes one way — and even including the church, the believers, the remnant — we have to stay true to God's Word and the original intent of how He wants us to worship. As we know, He made us in His image. Genesis 1:26 says, "Let Us make man in Our own image, according to Our likeness." We were made in the glory of the Father's image, the Son's image, and the Holy Spirit — the word "Us" points to the Trinity. He wanted us to be in His image and to follow His beautiful ways and commands.

Ephesians 1:4 says, "Just as He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love." He had us set apart before the foundation of the world — which is remarkable. We were in Him before the world was founded. So we need to follow the commands and walk in the ways that Messiah Himself walked when He was on earth, and the ones He taught us to obey. In Matthew 7:13–14, we know that scripture says we must walk down the narrow path, through the narrow gate, not the broad gate. When we look honestly at the body of Christ today, it so often looks just like the world. We have inherited man-made traditions, and there is at times little visible difference between the church and the world. We have to remember that the path is narrow. There is only one way to worship, and He has told us what that way is. As we go through these commandments, you will see the purity of worshiping in the most intimate way with the Lord — not according to mankind's traditions, but according to the Word of God. That is the most intimate way to worship the Lord.

Friends, He wants us to be set apart. He wants us to be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. He declared that at Mount Sinai, which we will address shortly. In Exodus 19:6, He spoke to the mixed multitude — both Jew and Gentile — who had left Egypt. He wanted all believers in God, all believers in Christ, Messiah, Yeshua, to be set apart, to obey His commands, to guard them, and to proclaim them to others as the most intimate and pure way of worship. This theme is consistent throughout Exodus 19:6, Deuteronomy 14:2, 1 Peter 2:9, and Revelation 1:6, which says, "To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood" — the blood of the Messiah, which is today, Nisan 14 — "and made us kings and priests to God His Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen." That call to be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests applies to both Jew and Gentile. The consistency of that theme from Mount Sinai in Exodus, through Deuteronomy, into 1 Peter 2:9, and through Revelation 1:6, is unmistakable.

Now we must ask: when God wants us to be set apart and different from the world, who does the setting apart? Can we set ourselves apart? Can we call something holy that God has not called holy? Of course not. He is the one who calls holy things holy and unholy things unholy, and we cannot go against that in either direction. Psalm 4:3 says, "Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for Himself." Leviticus 20:7–8 says, "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. I am the Lord your God. Keep My statutes and do them. I am the Lord who sanctifies you." God is the one who sanctifies us. So often we try to sanctify ourselves, bring in man-made traditions, and declare what is holy — but the Bible is what declares what is holy and righteous, and we must obey what He has set forth, whether the subject is worship, eating, health, or any other area of life. He has told us how to handle all of these things in the Holy Bible. Leviticus 20:26 says, "You shall be holy to Me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be Mine."

All throughout the Bible — from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Joseph — God has wanted us to be set apart in His ways, not in man-made traditions. There are many good traditions, but if a tradition goes against the biblical command, there is a problem, and we must follow the Holy Bible. Throughout all of Scripture, for both Jew and Gentile, He has called us to be sanctified, holy, and set apart. There are certain days He has ordained — these divine appointments of the Lord — that are designed to separate us from the world.

Unfortunately and regrettably, the church has inherited many man-made traditions, and we have to make sure we can discern the difference between those traditions and the biblical commands of the Lord God. The Sabbath, the divine appointments of the Lord — the feast days — and the new moon celebrations are set times, fixed times that are very important to the Lord. And as we have discussed in other studies, we will be observing the Sabbath, the new moon, and the Passover in the Millennial Kingdom as well. These are forever ordinances, which makes them critically important.

I was born a Gentile and inherited many man-made traditions from the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and non-denominational churches. All of these have inherited practices that are not biblical. But when we read the Torah — the first five books of the Bible — the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Epistles, the Old and New Testaments align perfectly with one another. I would encourage anyone for whom this is new information to explore it for yourself. Discover what man-made traditions the church has inherited and what God has actually ordained for us to follow, because there is a genuine discrepancy between the two.

We are going to worship according to the biblical command — in spirit and in truth. The truth is in the Holy Bible. It is not man, not the church, not a preacher or a pastor, not me, and not you. It is the biblical command that God has always wanted His people to be on. And when I say "His people," I mean Jew and Gentile together — the one new body, the one new man. There are not two ways to worship. There is only one.

Both sides have issues. As a nation, the Jewish people need to accept Yeshua, Jesus, as their Savior, and some of the oral traditions need to be set aside. On the Gentile side, we have inherited man-made traditions, including Easter, which is not biblical. In fact, the prophets warn against some of the customs associated with the Easter celebration — the eggs, the fertility symbols, and related practices. The prophet Ezekiel addresses this in Ezekiel chapters 6 through 8, which you can read for yourself.

We must understand that the church has taught us man-made traditions, and we need to eliminate those and align ourselves with the biblical command, because this is the purest way to worship the Lord in spirit and truth. We cannot call something holy that the Lord has declared unholy, nor can we call something unholy that He has declared holy. It works both ways. We must make sure we are under the biblical understanding of how to worship correctly, because we will all stand before the Lord and give an account. Ignorance only goes so far. We need to study the Word of God, be like the Bereans, and understand that there are man-made traditions we must eliminate. I know that may be uncomfortable for some, but it is the truth — and when you look at the Bible, which is truth, the Holy Spirit will lead you.