Exodus 23 · a question people ask
Should Christians keep the feasts of Exodus 23?
The LORD gave the three feasts to Israel: "You shall observe a feast to me three times a year" (23:14). Jesus himself went up to Jerusalem for the feasts (Luke 2:41-42; John 7:10). The New Testament also says, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Christians answer the question in two main ways. Both agree that the LORD gave the feasts to Israel (23:14), and that "a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
Shadows now fulfilled in Christ
Those who hold this view point to Paul: "Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s" (Colossians 2:16-17). They also note Paul's worry over believers who "observe days, months, seasons, and years" (Galatians 4:10-11). They read the feasts as pointing ahead to Christ, and not as commands Christians must keep.
Colossians 2:16-17 · Galatians 4:10-11
Free to keep them, to the Lord
Those who hold this view point to Paul: "One man esteems one day as more important. Another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind", and "He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord" (Romans 14:5-6). They note that Paul was hurrying "to be in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost" (Acts 20:16), and wrote, "let’s keep the feast … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:8). They see keeping or learning from the feasts as a matter of conscience.
Romans 14:5-6 · Acts 20:16 · 1 Corinthians 5:8
The verses
““You shall observe a feast to me three times a year. You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month Abib (for in it you came out of Egypt), and no one shall appear before me empty. And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you sow in the field; and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors out of the field.”
“His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast;”
“But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but as it were in secret.”
“Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.”