Messianic rabbi points Jews, Gentiles to Christ in the heart of the Bible Belt
'God making an appointment with His people'
For so many Christians, the feast and festivals detailed in Leviticus 23 may as well be alien rites of passage, which is one of the reasons Baruch HaShem teaches a membership class in which all the feasts and festivals are covered — including the Sabbath, which is one of the Ten Commandments.
The feast days, Waldman says, are appointments, in Hebrew meaning "appointed time."
"It's God making an appointment with His people," he said. "Appointed time means, 'Here you go, it's on the calendar, we're going to meet.'"
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In Leviticus 23, those appointed times start with the Sabbath (or Shabbat), which Waldman says can be a blessing to both Jews and Gentiles.
"What happens is the Shabbat establishes in our lives a weekly rhythm," he said. "It's a break in time, and what it forces us to do on a weekly basis is to be reliant on God for one out of every seven days. Because in an agrarian society, if you could just work all the time, you're going to improve your harvest.
"It forced us as people to put ourselves second because as people, certainly as guys, we're like, 'Well, if I can work a little more, I can make a little more money. But it forces us to be like, 'OK, today I can't work. Now what am I going to do?'"
Waldman said there are multiple elements to Sabbath beyond merely not working — rest, spending time with family, and most importantly, spending time with the Lord.
Some Christians, he said, might misunderstand the purpose of feasts, such as when one pastor asked Waldman's father whether he thought it was only necessary to repent on Yom Kippur.
"No," he recalled his dad replying, "Yom Kippur just serves as a reminder that if I forgot to repent all year long, this is my moment. I'm going to have to repent!"
From a Christian standpoint, Waldman pointed to Zechariah 14:17, which says that the nations which do not come up to Jerusalem during the reign of the Messiah will not receive any rain.
"So rain is the blessing; rain is what actually makes crops grow," he said. "So just from that standpoint, it seems that what I would call Gentiles will celebrate at least Sukkot at some point. Maybe not now, but at some point in the future.
"And so, if you're going to celebrate it in the future, you can look into it now."
Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected].
