Our Heavenly Father, who does not change (Mathew 5:17-20), would have us to know that the very special month of Aviv, the first month in His calendar, has come upon us. Aviv is the month of the Passover of our Messiah Y’shua (Jesus), the month of His resurrection as first-fruits from among the dead.
There is a popular old song “Are You Ready, This Could Be The Day!”
The month of Aviv is more about that song than you might think.
The New Testament Scriptures are truly filled with the most wonderful truths that inspire us who have the discernment given to us by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:13-14) and direct us in ways that no words could describe. It’s difficult to express to another the way in which these Scriptures revive our souls and challenge our thoughts and motives on a daily basis.
But like anything in Scripture, we would not be able to discern what we hear unless our hearts were focused on things above, things Heavenly and of God (Col 3:1-4)
In the same way, there is a key to understanding God’s biblical calendar that can only be discerned when we set our hearts on things above.
Whether you take notice of or validate God’s biblical calendar or not is immaterial to this lesson, because everything that was ever handed to mankind by God came from His mind and is therefore meaningful.
God’s seemingly asynchronous biblical calendar is not outdated, but is as intentional as the order of His creation.
We know that there are approximately 365.25 days in the year, the time that it takes for the Earth to go around the sun. What makes the biblical calendar seem asynchronous to the solar calendar is that the biblical calendar is lunar. The length of one lunar month is approximately 29.5 days, not to be confused with the time it takes for the moon to orbit around the earth, which is less due to shifts in alignment as the earth also orbits the sun. It’s all very complicated, but just remember that number, 365.25, the time that it takes for the Earth to go around the sun, the length of a solar year. Now twelve lunar months is approximately 354 days. Compare the 354 days of twelve lunar months to the 365.25 days of the lunar cycle and you will see the discrepancy of approximately 11 days. Because of this discrepancy, some biblical lunar years have to have an additional leap-month, the month of Adar I. This leap-month is added before the last month in the biblical calender, the month of Adar, which in the case of a leap year, becomes Adar II. The Rabbis and the Sanhedrin decided which years would have a leap-month and which years would not. The extra month, Adar I, was added to the third, sixth, eighth, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years of a nineteen year cycle.
But that isn’t how it was from the time God first commanded the children of Israel to observe the months, the seasons and the appointed times (“mo-ediem” in Hebrew). No Rabbi’s intervention, no Sanhedrin ruling had yet been made to determine which years would have the additional leap-month of Adar I.
The first month of the biblical calendar is the month of Aviv. Aviv means “fresh” or “green” as in “green heads of grain”, by implication Spring, because Springtime in Israel is the time of harvest, the time when the barley is ripe. The first month of the biblical calendar was to always take place in the Spring (Deuteronomy 16:1).
More often than not, the biblical year lasted twelve lunar months, at the end of which was again the arrival of Spring. But every few years, the people of Israel would notice that when the twelve lunar months of a biblical year had gone by, the Spring had not yet arrived as in the previous year. How could they know this? Well, the Israelites were for the most part farmers. They lived off the land and therefore through years of farming had come to instinctively know whether or not the crops were ripe for harvest. They could see ahead of the time that the crops would not be ripe by the time of the month of Aviv and if this were the case, they would wait for an additional lunar month to pass by before designating the lunar month to be the first month of their calendar year, the month of Aviv.
So without any rabbinical system in place to determine whether or not that calendar year was to have a leap-month, they would know instinctively that a leap-month should be inserted before the the start of the new calendar year.
The people of Israel had learnt to watch for the harvest. That is how they knew when the month of Aviv had come.
As God’s children, heirs to His Kingdom, we too should be able to discern whether or not we are ready or ripe for harvest. Through prayer, patience and the continual application of the Word of God in our lives, we should always be able to discern whether or not we are a harvest pleasing to our Master, Jesus, who is the Lord of the Harvest (Matthew 9:38). We should not be too quick to rationalize that we are ready, when in fact our lack of ripeness, lack of fruitfulness, shows otherwise.
Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn. (Matthew 13:30)
