Yeshua’s Proverbs 31 Bride:
The Bride and the Feasts shows us how the Biblical feasts all give us hidden prophetic shadow pictures of how we are to refine ourselves as Yeshua HaMashiach’s Proverbs 31 bride (if we know how to look).
Written Version: The Bride and the Feasts!
What are we doing in the feasts? This is the question.
Every year we are doing the feasts again. For a lot of people I think it is “Check, I have my matzah.” “Check, I got rid of leaven.” “Check, we had a Passover meal.” This kind of a thing. And we read certain passages and this kind of a thing.
I would like to bring to you what we discussed in the meeting, and I want to give just the big picture overview and then leave it. Let us try and keep this real short and really simple, as simple as we can.
So the big picture perspective: What are we really doing in the feasts? Let us get a couple of super meta-themes going on.
One thing is that mankind all rebelled to get away from Elohim in the garden. Elohim said to do this. We said, “We do not need to do that, we can do this over here, we will be just fine. We do not need you, that is okay.”
That did not work. So, we have mankind who has rebelled away from Elohim. And He effectively is looking for rebels to come back. He is looking for us to redefect back to His cause. And the way He does that is by reaching out to us through the great sacrifice of His Son through His mercy, through His forgiveness for sins, all of those things. These are the reasons why we want to come back. That marks the point where we are born as spiritual children.
But that is spiritual children. And He is not coming for a child bride. He is coming for a mature bride. A spotless, blemishless bride.
What He wants effectively are willing, eager war-brides. Effectively, He sprung us from slavery in Egypt. And what He wants is for us to dedicate ourselves to the cause of establishing His Son as the King over all the earth. We can see this in the parable of the minas.
Luqa (Luke) 19:15
15 “And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading.
The parable calls for a role of a very active bride. And if we are not an active bride then it is not pleasing to Him. Again, it is the parable of the minas.
But how does all of this pertain to the feasts? Now I want to orient you to just three slides of the presentation. It is a little complex here. So I will have to unpack it for you.
I am going to focus right here on the center column which is the English column. And we have Spanish on the left and Hebrew on the right (place of honor). At the top we have the slide title, Feasts of the First Month in English and then in Spanish.
You are going to hear most of the people in the Messianic movement, Ephraimite movement, rabbinic, Karaites, all these kinds of movements, they are going to say spring feasts and the fall feasts. We do not use those terms. That is pagan terminology. The word spring is actually a Babylonian concept, the term never appears in Scripture. Spring, fall, just erase those out.
What we see in Scripture instead are the feasts of the first month and the feast of the seventh month. And we are going to talk everything about them here.
What we see here are the four feasts of the first month. And we are going to talk about how they relate to us as the bride.
So, we are slaves in Egypt and here is, the Pesach. On the Nazarene Israel website we have several studies about the ancient Hebrew wedding. We have a partially completed book study that we want to merge with the Torah Calendar when we rewrite that whole study and put it on video. Because that is really what the calendar is. This is the story about our purification as His bride. He is being faithful the whole time. It is a story about how we get purified.
So, I am a person that believes that all the details of the calendar are important. We have the Torah Calendar study, we have several videos. Especially Establishing the Head of the Year, very important video series. We do not want to be celebrating the wedding a month late or even two months late. That would not work.
In any case, Shiddukhin is the agreement to marry. It is when you have two families, and they get together. (Our earthly family and then with Elohim.) And there is a private agreement to marry. And then they celebrate it with a private meal (Pesach). The wedding is not official yet. But the match is on.
Immediately upon that you have seven days of unleavened bread. Now we could translate this effectively as the Feast of Pure Doctrine or the Feast of Unleavened Doctrine. And you will see this again and again in our studies. But the Feast of Unleavened Doctrine is where we get rid of every other doctrine other than Yeshua’s. And we practice the Faith once delivered to the saints which was the Israelite sect of Nazarenes.
It is right there in Scripture. So that is what we are supposed to do. That is why Jude tells us in verse 3 that we should contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
Yehudah (Jude) 1:3
3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
Even though he is not contesting that we are saved, and he is not saying we are not saved, he is saying that it is still necessary to contend earnestly for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.
That is why in another place, Yeshua also says, “But when the Son of man returns, will He find the faith on the earth?” [Definite article: “THE” singular faith.]
Luqa (Luke) 18:8
8 I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find the faith on the earth?”
[The Case of the Missing “The”]
You can search for The Case of the Missing “The”. You can search the website for the Ancient Hebrew Wedding. And this is what it is. He is looking for those who truly want to do what He says and not some other thing. Not some other human construction like Mystery Babylon. They claim to serve Him, but they do not even do what He says. How can that be serving Him? How can that be being His obedient servant, hearing His voice, and doing what He says? It is what He has always wanted since the Garden.
After the Pesach (or the private agreement to marry), now there are seven days where the bride is learning about her Husband. She is learning what He likes. That is the same thing as what the Father likes. Because He is an obedient Son, He has the same doctrine as His Father.
When you think about it, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is the Feast of Pure Doctrine. And how do we do that? It is the same as everything else. We learn to become like Yeshua so that we can then imitate Yeshua.
Yochanan Aleph (1 John) 2:6
6 He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
The Church (the Mystery Babylonian Church) has long thought that we do not need to imitate Yeshua. And that we do not need to become like Yeshua. And that we do not need to walk as He walked. That we just need to adore Yeshua. That is all the difference in the world. If you are just adoring Yeshua but you are not becoming like Yeshua, you are missing something quintessential.
Yom HaNafat HaOmer is on the first day of the week during the Feast of Unleavened Bread (the Feast of Pure Doctrine.) And what that does is it starts a 50-day count up to the public announcement of the wedding at Shavuot. It always takes place on the first day of the week and Shavuot also is always on the first day of the week.
Then at Shavuot we have the public announcement of the wedding. The wedding is now lawfully binding. What we see here is that the feasts of the first month all have to do with the agreement to marry, and the announcement which makes the wedding lawfully binding. And then the Feast of the seventh month (when we get there) all deal with consummation, the wedding week, and living happily ever after.
But right now, we are going to focus on the feasts of the first month. And one of the things that we saw in the presentation is that our job is effectively to learn to become like Yeshua in every way that we can. And to learn to manifest His personality in all situations.
And this is exactly what we have been saying. We need to learn to imitate Yeshua. It is not enough just to adore Yeshua. We have to learn to imitate Yeshua. We have to apply ourselves. We have to become like Him in every way that we can.
With all of that, with the understanding that we are supposed to walk as Yeshua walked. And that we are supposed to imitate our One and only Rabbi’s halachah (way/doctrine), what do we imagine Yeshua’s personality to be? If we are supposed to imitate Him, and if we are going to be married to Him, we might at least know who He is!
So, what do we imagine Yeshua’s personality to be? Just speaking for myself growing up as a child in the Christian church, it is early training that when you say the word Yeshua, my first image will be that of a cuddly little lamb. Well, there is also the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Some people they have a vision of Yeshua as a big, huggy guy. He is going to hug everybody, and He is everybody’s brother, He is everybody’s friend, He is everybody’s helper. This kind of a thing.
But do we understand that He is also our King? And that He is also our Commander? He is not afraid to come down here and show us how to do it. But He is in that position!
I think many people learn things in our culture that are not necessarily reflective of who He is. He is the Tsar Shalom (the Field Marshal of Peace)! That means He is going to win the war with His team, with His body, with His bride.
We are told in Revelation that His bride is going to be given His rod of iron to rule and reign in His stead. That requires a significant amount of organization. Yahweh is setting it up now! Do we understand Yeshua has eyes like a flame of fire? That He is wise as a serpent?
Isaiah tells us that Yeshua’s delight is to breathe in the fear of Elohim. Do we like to breathe in the fear of Elohim? Do we?
Yeshua maximized His time here on Earth. He did not spend His time relaxing and vacationing. And taking time for this and going to the movies.
Yeshua was helping to set up His Father’s Kingdom. And as it says in the parable of the minas, that is what He wants His servants to do in His absence. To essentially build His Father’s Kingdom. To gather more cities for Him.
So, many people have a picture of Yeshua as being extremely nice. And that is what a lot of modern Christianity has devolved into. Because people have a concept of a Jesus who was just extremely nice. He is constantly nice. Well, when we read Scripture, that is not really who Yeshua was.
So just this concept, just this idea that our concept of who Yeshua is, how does that impact us when we go to imitate Yeshua? During this Feast of Unleavened Bread, or during this Feast of Unleavened Doctrine (we can even call it the Feast of Unleavened Images of Who Yeshua Really Is) who is Yeshua? Let us think and pray about who He is and who He wants us to be.