UNDERSTANDING “THE SHADOW OF THINGS TO COME”

"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ."

 Some believers feel they must literally keep these festivals as in Old Testament times. This is not what the New Testament teaches. We must understand this metaphor used by Paul when he calls the feasts, the tabernacle of Moses and the old testament sacrifices " a shadow of things that were to come."

 If you go out on a sunny day at sunrise and walk with your back to the sun you will see your shadow on the ground. . The shadow bears a resemblance to you, but it is not you. It is only a shadow of what was coming down to earth which is you.

 If you were a mother one of your children seeing the shadow might call out,"mummy, mummy." but the child would not hold to the shadow.

 Paul says the feast, the tabernacle of Moses and the Old Testament sacrifices are that way. They provide a profile, an outline without enough form to recognize what they portray. They show us the blessings Christ was to bring to those who would believe on him.
 However, when the reality (of which the shadow was but a profile) came - we would all want the reality (Christ) more than the shadow.   

• the different "meats and drinks", clean and unclean, allowed or forbidden by the law, were emblems of the two people, the Jews and Gentiles, the one clean, the other unclean; but since these are become one in Christ, the distinction of meats is ceased, these shadows are gone.
• The feast of tabernacles, though it was in remembrance of the Israelites dwelling in tents and booths when they came out of Egypt, yet was also a representation of Christ's dwelling, or tabernacling in human nature.
• The Passover, as it was a commemoration of the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt, and of God's passing over their houses when he smote the firstborn of the Egyptians, so it was a type of Christ our Passover sacrificed for us.
• The feast of the first fruits was a shadow of a believer 1st fruits of faith including being baptized of water and of the spirit.
• The "Sabbaths" were also shadows of future things; the grand sabbatical year, or the fiftieth year Sabbath, or jubilee, in which liberty was proclaimed throughout the land, a general release of debts, and restoration of inheritances, prefigured the liberty we have by Christ from sin, Satan, and the law, the payment of all our debts by Christ, and the right we have through him to the heavenly and incorruptible inheritance.
• 7th year Sabbath, in which there was no tilling of the land, no ploughing, sowing, nor reaping, was an emblem of salvation through Christ by free grace, and not by the works of men;
• seventh day Sabbath was a type of that spiritual rest we have in Christ now, and of that eternal rest we shall have with him in heaven hereafter: now these were but shadow