An introduction to the concept of Torah, the five books of Moses. Session One teaches students that Torah means “instruction.” It is God’s loving instruction for his people—the wedding vows of the sacred marriage between God and his people.
The Bible is the story of a series of covenants. New covenants do not cancel previous covenants; they build on top of one another. Session Three gives students an overview of the biblical covenants to see how everything fits together.
The letters of Paul can be hard to understand. On the surface, some passages sound like they are anti-Torah. Session Seven clarifies several key passages in Paul’s epistles by placing them back into their original context.
The Torah spells out appointed times for meeting with God: times of prayer, holy days, and sacred festivals. Are these relevant for believers? Session Eight gives students a quick overview of the biblical calendar.
The commandments of Torah are not burdensome or beyond our reach. Session Nine demonstrates the simple wisdom of living according to God’s instructions by highlighting a few sample commandments.
Are you ready to take hold of your rich biblical inheritance? Torah is for all of God’s people. Session Ten explores the relationship of Christianity and Judaism while revealing the place of the believer in the midst of the people of Israel.
The Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, but long before the giving of the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath has been blessed and holy since creation. On the seventh day, God “ceased” from creating the heavens and the earth. God blessed the Sabbath day by appointing it as a day for divine good. Like salvation, the Sabbath is a gift from God. The reward for keeping the Sabbath is the Sabbath itself.
The Bible contains an ancient calendar of “the LORD’s appointed times,” holy days that He has set aside for meeting with man. The seventh-day, biblical Sabbath is the first on the list of the LORD’s appointed times. Each of them symbolizes a significant historical event from the past, and each one of them prophetically alludes to the work of Messiah. The Sabbath foreshadows the coming Messianic Era.
The Sabbath day provides us with a foretaste of the kingdom and the World to Come. The kingdom will be an era of peace, abundance, fertility, prosperity, and the universal knowledge of God, the Sabbath uniquely embodies and rehearses those things. The Sabbath signifies God’s eschatological rest. In this way, the Sabbath provides us with a picture of salvation.
The Sabbath day offers holiness and blessing to everyone, but the Jewish people have a special rela- tionship with the Sabbath. God gave the Jewish people the obligation of observing the Sabbath day holy in every generation as a sign that He has sanctified Israel by setting the Jewish people apart from all other peoples.
Although God gave the Sabbath to Israel as a sign of their set-apart status, that does not mean that Gentiles cannot participate in the Sabbath as well. They can, at the very least, remember the Sabbath day and honor it, just as the God-fearing Gentile believers in the New Testament did.
Sabbath observance is a lot more than just taking a day off from work. The Sabbath-keeper turns his foot back from seeking his own pleasures because of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is to be celebrated, not merely observed. By treating the day with honor, being selective about what activities he engages in, the Sabbath-keeper honors the day, and the LORD rewards the Sabbath-keeper.
The Jewish people are to cease from work on the Sabbath day. However, the Hebrew word we translate as “work” (melachah) does not refer to hard labor or making a living; it refers to various acts of creative production. For six days man is permitted to take mastery over creation. On the seventh day, we stop and remember that God is the true creator.
In this lesson we will learn about Yeshua’s attitude toward the observance of the Sabbath. Why would a Christian be interested in keeping the Sabbath? Because that’s what Yeshua did. He kept the Sabbath, according to the commandment.
In this lesson, we will learn about how the church abandoned Sabbath observance as a way to distance itself from Judaism and the Jewish people. The transition from Sabbath to Sunday began in the first century, but the transition was not really completed until the fourth century. Sunday is a perfectly appropriate day for worshiping together so long as we don’t refer to it as the Sabbath day.
In this lesson we will learn about how, in the coming Messianic Kingdom, all citizens of the kingdom will observe the Sabbath. The Gentile nations will go up to Jerusalem to worship the LORD from Sabbath to Sabbath. We will also learn that restoring the Sabbath is part of four key prophetic restorations.
The Bible contains an ancient calendar of “the LORD’s appointed times,” holy days that He has set aside for meeting with man. The appointed times include the Sabbath, Passover, Pentecost, Festival of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Festival of Booths, and the Eighth Day. Each of them symbolizes a significant historical event from the past, and each one of them prophetically alludes to the work of Messiah.
When Yeshua told us to “do this in remembrance of Me,” He spoke in the context of a Passover Seder. The Passover sacrifice in Egypt occurred on the fourteenth day of the first month on the Jewish calendar. On that day, God struck down the firstborn of Egypt but spared those in homes marked with the blood of the Passover lamb. As a faithful Jew, Yeshua kept Passover in Jerusalem every year, and His last supper with His disciples was actually a Passover Seder meal.
Passover is more than just the seder night. In fact, the seder night is only the beginning of seven days of Passover—the seven days of Unleavened Bread. These days are to be a memorial, an appointed time, and a permanent ordinance. Just as the exodus from Egypt took place in two stages, so the coming of Yeshua takes place in two stages. The events that happened during the seven days of Passover in the days of the redemption from Egypt teach us about the events that will take place in the days of the redemption of the Messianic Era.
The Bible tells the Jewish people to harvest one omer of “the first fruits of your harvest” and bring it to the Temple. Beginning on the day that the first omer of barley was harvested and brought to the Temple, a count- down to the next biblical festival began. The Torah commands the Israelites to count off forty-nine days and then celebrate the Festival of Shavu’ot (Pentecost) on the fiftieth day. Jewish tradition teaches that the period of the Omer count is to be a time of spiritual introspection. Yeshua’s resurrection occurred on the day that began the fifty-day count-off to Pentecost and His ascension on the fortieth day of the Omer.
At Passover, God redeemed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. He delivered them with a powerful display of His glory. When the children of Israel left Pharaoh’s land, they left behind the culture of slavery, idolatry, and immorality that had governed their identity in Egypt. For forty-nine days they traveled through the wilderness. On the fiftieth day, they received a new culture; they received the Torah. Many years later, on the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Sinai, God poured out His Spirit on the disciples of Yeshua as a guarantee of the good things to come at the time of the final redemption. Shavu’ot brings us to the next stop on the annual cycle of sanctification where we learn that the Torah and the Spirit are not opposites. They are supposed to work together to transform us from the inside so that we become the first fruits of the new harvest.
While the spring festivals prophetically foreshadow Yeshua’s first coming, the high holidays of the fall pro- phetically foreshadow what Yeshua will accomplish in His second coming. The fall holidays commence with a period of time called the “Season of Repentance,” which inspires a deeper experience of the fear of the LORD. It is a time to remember that all our deeds are known and recorded by the Almighty. Our actions do have consequences and all of humanity will one day stand before the Ancient of Days and His Messiah in judgment.
Rosh HaShanah is a day to proclaim God’s kingship, to hear the shofar, and to reflect on specific remembrances. In the days of the Bible, Rosh HaShanah marked the beginning of the agricultural year. The festival is primarily associated with the sounding of the shofar trumpet, the horn of the Biblical Era, which was used for various applications and occasions. The sages of Israel associated ten core themes with the sounding of the shofar. The so-called “Ten Remembrances” form a blueprint for the work and mission of our Master Yeshua.
Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. It is the holiest day of the year. In the days of the Temple, the holiest man on earth (the high priest) entered the holiest space on earth (the holy of holies) on Yom Kippur. His annual quest was to provide atonement on behalf of the nation. Yom Kippur reminds us that sin is a serious problem for humanity. We must humble our souls before the Almighty if we wish to draw near to Him. Through confession, repentance, and the atoning offering of the Lamb without blemish, we obtain a spiritual entrance behind the veil into the presence of God.
The culmination of the Bible’s holiday cycle is not Yom Kippur, as one might assume, but rather the festival known as Sukkot, i.e., the “Festival of Booths.” During Sukkot the Jewish people dwell in holiday booths outside of the comforts of home. The Jewish people refer to Sukkot as “the season of our joy.” At Sukkot, we celebrate the spiritual joy of emerging from the high holidays of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur with a clean slate and a fresh start. The holiday of Sukkot is filled with sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that teach us about living a life of faith and about the future Messianic Kingdom.
How does a seven-day holiday have an eighth day? In the Bible, it happens. After seven days of Sukkot, the biblical calendar introduces an eighth day. In Hebrew it’s called Shemini Atzeret. This eighth-day celebration is shrouded in deep mystery and messianic allusions to the kingdom and the World to Come. It is a day to rejoice in God’s gift of the Torah, and it is the final day in the Bible’s divine cycle of sanctification. The annual cycle of sanctification vividly illustrates God’s greater plan of redemption while leading each individual into a personal experience of spiritual growth in individual faith.
KBA HaYesod is a 10-week Video-based Discipleship Study Program with English and Spanish Classes.