LIKE A BRIDEGROOM COMING OUT OF HIS CHAMBER… “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other...” Psalm 19:1-6.

God's chosen people eagerly received and celebrated His Word expressed to them in the vast expanse around them. 2 Kings 20 records possibly the earliest written account of the use of a sundial to stay in sync with God's creation.

“And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What is the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? Then Isaiah said, This is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing which He has spoken: shall the shadow go forward ten degrees or go backward ten degrees? And Hezekiah answered, It is an easy thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees; no, but let the shadow go backward ten degrees. So Isaiah the prophet cried out to the Lord, and He brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down on the sundial of Ahaz.” 2 Kings 20:8-11.

2 Chronicles 32:31 records that Babylonian envoys, renowned astronomers and scientists who had probably observed King Hezekiah’s miracles on their own sundials, came to see Hezekiah “to inquire about the wonder that was done in the land”.

A sundial works by observation of the shadows cast by the sun on the stick, or gnomon. Not only could they pinpoint astronomical occurrences such as the solstice and equinox, but they could tell the hour of the day. The Qumran Sundial, discovered in 1997 in the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found some 40 years earlier, had a horizontal gnomon instead of pointing to the pole, which would make the shadow motion on the gnomon irregular at times. We have a replica of the 1st century BC Qumran Dead Sea Scroll Sundial here in His Garden of Grace at Fontana Community Church.

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James 1:17 probably borrowed a figure of speech well known in the day to show that God’s creation was perfect, unlike their sundials which seemed to document lights with “shifting shadows”. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17

"Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." Genesis 1:14.

Jeremiah 31:35 and Psalm 136:7-9 state these lights are the sun, moon and stars. We have been given the sun and its hours of light to help define the length of our year and the stars to specifically identify the beginning of the first month, in conjunction with the moon's cycle, a simple and effective way to keep up with time as God ordained.

Our Creator also formed the stars and their specific, named groupings in the constellations. (Gen 1:14; Job 9:8-9; 26:13; 38:31-33; Amos 5:8). “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?”

The Pleiades is a star cluster approximately a 400-light-year distance from Earth, near the constellations of Orion and Taurus. The cluster includes seven bright stars that are easily seen with the naked eye, gravitationally bound together.

One can only imagine how Job knew that. Every year the star group appears in close proximity to the newly visible crescent moon -- just after sunset, in the spring, at the beginning of the FIRST biblical month. "Seek him that made the seven stars and Orion, and turned the shadow of death into the morning, and made the day dark with night: that called for the waters of the sea, and poured them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name ” Amos 5:8.

The Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived at the time of Jesus, also understood the importance of the language of the heavens. “Moses puts down the beginning of the vernal equinox as the first month of the year, attributing the chief honour, not as some persons do to the periodical revolutions of the year in regard of time, but rather to the graces and beauties of nature which it has caused to shine upon men . . . Accordingly, in this month, about the fourteenth day of the month, when the orb of the moon is usually about to become full, the public universal feast of the Passover is celebrated . . ." (Philo, On The Life Of Moses II, Section XLI (41) (222-224).

Eusebius, a Greek historian of the 3rd century AD also wrote, "… it was also known to the Jews anciently, and before [Messiah], and was chiefly observed by them, as we may learn from Philo, Josephus, and Musaeus; and not only from these, but also from those still more ancient, i. e. the two Agathobuli, commonly called the master, and of Aristobulus, that most distinguished scholar, who was one of the seventy that translated the holy scriptures from the Hebrew. These. . . say that all ought to sacrifice the Passover alike after the vernal equinox, in the middle of the first month." Ecclesiastical History Popular Edition. p. 313

So now we should be able to understand more fully, why this physical time of the year is so important. The first month of God’s New Year heralds the coming anniversary of the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, as appointed in Leviticus 23. Jesus is identified in John 1: 1-3 as Creator alongside Almighty God!

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made…” John 1:1-3.

The physical circuit of the sun in the heavens will be completed at the time of the vernal or spring equinox occurring March 20 at 5:24pm EDT in the northern hemisphere. The spring equinox (as well as autumnal equinox) is the moment when neither of the Earth’s hemispheres is inclined towards or away from the Sun. After this point the daylight hours begin to outweigh the dark hours, and the sun can truly be said to have begun another renewed cycle, or year. God's New Year is anticipated to begin with the next new moon on the evening of March 22.

Indeed, it is not foolishness to see the Bridegroom, Jesus the Christ, in the refracted rays of sunlight at the appointed time, spiritually stepping forth from His chamber in the heavens, making His way to the Bride, whom the apostle Paul likens to the Church at Corinth. "I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride to her one husband." 2 Corinthians 11:2.

Mere observation and recognition of God’s appointments does not deliver the spiritual understanding for which they were created. To understand the imagery of the Bridegroom coming out of His chamber as Jesus leaving the throne room, and heading to earth, we must be able to view the heavens in the Spirit, not with the wisdom of the world.

“This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit… But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:13-14,16.

“LIKE A BRIDEGROOM COMING OUT OF HIS CHAMBER…”