Come and Celebrate!

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
Leviticus 23 (click the link)


FOCAL VERSES:
33 The Lord said to Moses, 34 “Say to the Israelites: ‘On the fifteenth day of the seventh month the Lord’s Festival of Tabernacles begins, and it lasts for seven days. 35 The first day is a sacred assembly; do no regular work. 36 For seven days present food offerings to the Lord, and on the eighth day hold a sacred assembly and present a food offering to the Lord. It is the closing special assembly; do no regular work.

37 (“‘These are the Lord’s appointed festivals, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies for bringing food offerings to the Lord—the burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings required for each day. 38 These offerings are in addition to those for the Lord’s Sabbaths and in addition to your gifts and whatever you have vowed and all the freewill offerings you give to the Lord.)

39 “‘So beginning with the fifteenth day of the seventh month, after you have gathered the crops of the land, celebrate the festival to the Lord for seven days; the first day is a day of sabbath rest, and the eighth day also is a day of sabbath rest. 40 On the first day you are to take branches from luxuriant trees—from palms, willows and other leafy trees—and rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. 41 Celebrate this as a festival to the Lord for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters 43 so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.’” (Leviticus 23:33-43)


REFLECTIONS:
The focal verses for today are a description of the Feast of Tabernacles that the Jews celebrated and are commanded to celebrate perpetually to the end of time.  It is a permanent festival in the Jewish calendar.  The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar and doesn’t quite jive with our Roman calendar which is based on the sun.  The Feast of Tabernacles is celebrated usually at harvest time between Sept thru October (Roman calendar) depending where the lunar calendar falls.  This large feast consists of three separate parts:  the Blowing of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and Succoth (pronounced Sukkot) which means “Booths”.  The third part of the celebration or Succoth is what this passage above is referring to.  Up to this third part, there had been a national turn to God in prayers of humiliation and repentance to prepare to COME BEFORE a holy God on the Day of Atonement FOR EXAMINATON.   It was also the Day when their sins were wiped clean with many sacrifices of the blood of animals.  The Day of Atonement is then completed by the blowing of a ram’s horn…to announce the future coming of the Messiah who would fulfill the Day of Atonement services.  After this, the Succoth would be built and celebration would begin as they gathered family and friends into it to praise God for their release of sins and to celebrate the Glory of God.  They would build small booths or Tabernacles (like a tent, but with branches of the required trees), symbolic of their release from Egypt and their temporary housing during their pilgrimage to the Promised Land.  The festival was a seven day affair of complete celebration, feasting and rejoicing because of their new found freedom and release of their sins.  It was the grandest seven-day campout you could ever imagine!!!

While the description of this Festival is fun and interesting, the symbolism is explosive.  It is a picture of Jesus… our Messiah that has already come, has already removed our sins, and has already made our bodies a small version of these temporary booths that were built to house the Glory of God.  The Feast of Tabernacles is already under way on a permanent basis inside you.  We are in the midst of a permanent celebration of our Awesome God that dwells permanently in our hearts as we lift high praises on a continual basis to a God that did not leave us in Egypt (symbolic of Satan’s Power), but broke the chains on our hearts and released us from the penalty of Death to live out our days in celebration and worship in the PRESENCE of the one who LOVES us beyond anything we could imagine.  Makes you want to celebrate doesn’t it.  Well, go for it…


POINT OF ACTION:
God has made our spiritual heritage rich with Old Testament stories that illumine the fulfillment of all Jesus did.  I could spend days and days studying about them.  My encouragement to you is to take the time to go deeper than to just to read a passage in your Bible and ponder it.  Dig in and study it.  There are many reference books that can help you delve into our rich heritage from our Jewish roots.  It may seem a little overwhelming at first, but as you begin to SEE the symbolism you will marvel at how BIG our God is and from the beginning he had YOU IN MIND.


PRAYER:
Jesus, let our lives take on the celebratory tone that you set out for us in this festival.  Make me to be a grateful daughter and one full of worship 24/7.  You made us for worship, you died so we would be able to worship, and you live as one worthy of ALL our worship.  We celebrate you.


WHO AM I?
I am June Criner, and I have studied extensively my spiritual Jewish roots.  I believe you need to know where you came from to know where you are going.  Our Father has laid out a rich inheritance for the saints.  We must understand WHO we are and WHO HE is.  History depends on it…The Kingdom depends on it… (A good place to start is to read anything written by Kevin J. Conner. He has written more books on this than anyone else. You can get most of them on Amazon.) Here is a picture of me checking out the Alamo—we did the tour of all the Missions in San Antonio—a great tour, I recommend it.