The Number 8 is for New Beginning

From only 1 bloom last year to dozens this year!

 

God called the light Day,

 and the darkness He called Night.

 So the evening and the morning

 were the first day.

Genesis 1:5 

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It is not a fluke that this scripture says the evening and the morning were the first day.  God intended that we look at our life in the opposite way most of us see it. We wake, work hard, and end our "day" exhausted and so ready for bed that we can't sleep sometimes.  But God would like for us to think of our day in this way:

Prepare for your day with rest, awake ready to tackle the day, and use the hours until evening when rest once again will begin your new day.  If you let that sink in, it will give you a glimmer of God's desire for a more positive look at how he is there to bless each day. By beginning our work rested.

In the story of the Crucifixion of Christ, we discussed that Christ had finished his work in man's body, as man would have done, and was totally exhausted, discouraged and quite ready to just die when it was over.  He had taken on all the elements of life in the most literal way, and literally was ready to lay down and die. 

I recently noted that among people I know there are at least 20 who have come to a point in life that they feel like it might be better to just lay down and die. Some have even done something about how they feel by acting upon that discouragement.  I do not condemn them, because I myself have been there! I know what it is to believe there is simply nothing you can do to turn your life around, though you have tried, in prayer, no less, to honor God to the best of your ablility.  I have felt driven to the last thread of hope, and have found myself lost and helpless. I begged God to help me out of the pit. Jesus allowed the prince of this world, "ole Satan," to influence the people around him in such a way that it carried him to a place that he would experience what we experience when we are there.  Allow me to quickly interject that Jesus could have with one word stopped it all, but he chose not to. Think about how many times during those last hours it is said of him that he spoke not a word.

What does that have to do with Bible number sequences?

Watch closely. "The evening and the morning were the first day."  In accordance with that peice of scripture, the Jews sought to have the legs broken of the men who remained alive on the crosses, because they realized that they were about to break their own law that they so fiercely enforced on their own people.  The bodies had to be attended to before the Sabbath, the 7th day, because you simply couldn't do such things on the Sabbath. It was considered unholy.  No work was to be done on the Sabbath. Now, we discussed that God himself established that law in the very first book of the Bible, so why shouldn't it still be viable.  It was, but the Pharisees and Saducees had take the laws and made slave masters of them. Even these poor men on the crosses had to fall under the "law" and were not allowed to die in their own time.  By breaking their legs, they would die quite quickly because they couldn't push themselves up any longer to fight for life. (John 19:31) They would literally be suffocated to death as much as if someone put a bag over their heads.

Do you see the irony of it.  Some, I am sure saw it as merciful, but the Synogogue leaders saw it as keeping the law. In other words: they now became murderers in order to keep a statute of not breaking the Sabbath. It was the upside downess of this kind of thinking which discusted Jesus, and probably others as well. When Jesus said they should not worry so much about the splinter in someone else's eye before they pulled the log from their own, in one of his parables, this is the kind of thing he was talking about.  Which was more wrong?  Making these men suffer and die for punishment until it suited the religious leaders to put an end to it, in order to make them look good, or kill the offenders quickly in the first place so they didn't have to suffer. 

The religious persons of Christ's day had taken God's mercy out of the equations in life and instilled laws that put them in control.  God's laws were not meant to put anyone in control but God. They were meant to protect, and shelter his people from harm and disease and so much more.  They were supposed to show his grace and mercy, help and protection. 

Now where does the first day come into play if it was God's seventh day they were suppposedly honoring? Now recall that they were keeping the letter of the law which started the new day in the evening. That's just it. It was God's seventh day, but in his own words, the evening and the morning were the first day. God wanted his rest day to be man's first day. This is confusing until you view the cycle. 

Before I get into the number 8, notice that the scripture says, to labor for 6 days and then rest again from labor a day. The number six is the number of man and his works. It is sandwiched between 2 of God's rest days. Man's first day of work is the day after God's 7th day. Man works on his days, rests on God's day, and begins again to work on the first of man's days. However, God asked man to take his rest day, and claim it as man's first day. The eighth day forever after the first week of God and man, is the beginning of man's week.

That sequence is recognized more clearly in this verse:
 

Also on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest. Leviticus 23:39  ( Why we worship on the 8^th day)

 

In this Levitical law, which was intended to give a holiday, with

 feasting and celebrating the abundance of food that the people had worked so hard to raise in crops and then harvest. They were ready for a break, and what better way to rejoice than to eat the fruits of their labor.  The date given to celebrate was 15/7 - the 15th day of the 7th Jewish calendar month.

(We most often would say 7/15.) 

In the numbers for this date are 1 and 5. One is God, 5 is grace.  Symbolically this means 1 (God) plus 5 (Grace) equals 6 (the number of man.) Who does God grant grace through out the history of interactions with man. Man of course. (that one may have a bit of me interjecting something I see but the next one is strictly by God's design.

The number 1in the number 15 actually, of course, stands for 10, the number of atonement; and 5 the number of grace.  Grace follows atonement. Without atonement there can be no grace. Jesus died for our sins, paid the price, fulfilled the law, offered the sacrifice, even to the point of death for any sin that might require that for atonement, and it was done. Once it was finished, we are no longer under law, but free from the law, by virtue of the atonement.  We are under grace.  They are legal terms that derive from religious law. Even though the Israelites didn't understand Christ's death, they understood their own sacrifices for atonement. They understood that the dates were selected to have meaning.
 

Now on this day of grace, the people were told to rest and rejoice. Not in those words, but they were not unaware that the number seven, or the seventh day meant they were being given rest that was likened to God himself taking rest. By God's grace they could take these days of rest and find joy in their labors, by accepting the blessings from God, partaking of all that was good about the harvest. 
 

Now look closely at the feast days of Lev.23:39 -
7 days of rest plus one.  (7x7 plus 1 = 50 or 10 [atonement] x 5 [grace] = 50 [the day of atonement])
7 plus 1 = 8 The day of beginning again.
 

They were told to feast for seven days. But those 7 days were sandwiched between a Sabbath and the next Sabbath, or the 8th day. The verse specifically says, "on the first day there shall be a sabbath-rest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest."
Is it a little more clear?

After the atonement, Grace. This verse forshadows the time when Christ would bring atonement and rest from his work, so that we might have grace. The fruit of his labor would bring forth a new beginning. The eighth day. Man would have a new start, complete with the finshed work of Christ, and beginning in the freedom of Grace. This feast mimics the second week of God when he established that man, whose number is 6, should begin his life of work symbolically on the 8th day from the very first of creation. For Christ is was the end of a segment of his work, for man the beginning of all things new, a new creation, a new means of joining God's family, etc.
 

If we dedicate our rest days to God, in memory of his creation works, consecrating the day to God, we gift the day to honor him on his day. The seventh. But he then began the cycle of atonement and new beginning, by allowing his last day to become our first day. Each type, or forshadowing must make a full picture. And this only is a true forshadowing when we understand the whole of how God set up the picture and also fulfilled it.  ~Reversing the week to begin with rest, just as he had the day.

The evening and the morning would begin our day with rest, so our bodies might be prepared, and now the Lord was asking us to begin our work week with rest, to prepare for the coming week. It was a gift from God, just as salvation is a gift, and life is a gift. He looked into our needs and provided for them. Because in the above feast, the eighth day is the last day of the feast, which was celebrated for 7 days, (the number of completion,) God was saying that from this point on, they were to recognize that God had given them rest to start a new week, a new segment in life, a new year of preparing, planting and reaping the harvest...all things new in life. (Note in my next segment, I will discuss this sandwich of days that begins with a Sabbath and ends with a Sabbath.)
 

There is so much more hidden in this verse, and it brings up more questions than I have answers for as well, that it gives me great pleasure to say I don't know it all now.  The Spirit of God hides away depths of jewels in every verse. All of scripture is a mine waiting to be dug, full of golden nuggets. And for me, the numbers and sequences with their meanings and symbolism, make it all the more pleasant for me to dig.  It also quiets my mind from wondering "why" sometimes.
If it seems like it is all twisted together, it is. The intircacies of the numbers and their meaning are so entwined that no human could invent it without it being flawed. It is like a Crochet pattern of one exqusite thread being woven through out centuries of text.

Consider for example that a day is 24 hours. 3 x 8.  Could mean God through out our day.
or 21 hours plus 3 or 3x7 plus 3, God completes our day, begins and ends our day.
 

Dr. Charles Stanley did a set of sermons once, which showed the levels of Spiritual growth based on these numbers. At the time, I was in the 6th level, the level of man, tired of trying under my own steam to be Christlike enough, discouraged that life had not gone a I planned, and feeling deserted by God. Over the months I begged God to bring it all to an end, so that my pain would go away. I was physically ill, and chronically mentally ill.  I see it now as Satan's design, and he wanted me to fail as a Christian, so that all I beleived would seem to be of no value to anyone else. He wanted me to die, so I could be of no help to anyone else to becoming a Christian or to help them through the hard times. But because of Dr. Stanley (and a number of other men and women of God who were honoring God in the words they spoke,) I realized I should have victory over Satan, and not let him defeat me. As I sought for truth on how I could overcome stage six in my life, it loomed very large at me that 6 being the number of man, must mean that I had been trying it man's way.  I was well aware that we had attended churches that taught things I didn't believe were in God's word. I had felt for a long time that a couple of people were like the religious men of Jesus time. Using God's word against their flocks instead of to benefit them. They were legalistic and domineering and lacking in fruits for their labor. I made a commitment to find my end to the misery and see where the 7th day led me.  The 7th day was the day of my healing, a day of restoration to faith and health in so many ways. It was my day of rest from the turmoil and sorrow. It was my gift of new life.
 Dr. Stanley didn't teach about the eigth day, but I knew when it began that it was my era of new beginning and by then I was well aware of the Bible numerics. I new that this was my symbolic new beginning. The place where I was able to stop trying to live by laws and adherence to someone's judgements of me. I was free, to live in Christ by Grace, the way I knew all along I should, but allowed people to take that away from me. 
Each time, life brings me to a stopping place, I remember that in God there will always be a day of rest, which will also be my new beginning. My eighth day. There would be no one Lording over me to suppress the fruits of my labors from being blessed by God.
 

This brings up my final thought for the Leviticus feast day on the 15th day of the 7th month. This Feast was all about being glad there had been a harvest. That the blessings on the people had been about fruits for their labors, and that 7 days of rest, was appropriate for working so hard. But they were spending that 7 days knowing who blessed the work they did. They were to honor God for bringing increase to their efforts. When there is no increase, God is not in it. Sometimes with churches, Satan makes a false copy of this truth by drawing people to a charasmatic individual, who promises wealth. It's a sly, upside down version of the truth. So people respond. But these pastors then can begin to control their people by using guilt trips, bringing up their sin, as if they still have something to do to have righteousness.  Christ took care of sin. In God's eyes, Christ's death brings complete and utter forgiveness, (atonement) and a new day full of grace. In Satan's upside down version, Christ died, because we were so full of sin, and therefore we must do something about our guiltiness.  This is one of the reasons I am glad there is a Leviticus Feast celebrating the increase. Because, what God wants our life to be about, is not worrying over sin, but working for the increase.  That alone is what God will bless.

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Thank you dear Jesus for a new beginning. That when Dr Stanley talked of the stages of life, he allowed that there would be a day that I could take a rest from trying to be a Christian. And on that day I could take up a new understanding of life, that God gave grace to begin again. Please nourish hurting hearts with the wonder of your Word, and how you used numbers to prove that you are working in lives. May the numbers give assurance that you do have a plan for our lives to bring good and to increase to our labor, and bless us.

(New number: 2 = blessing)