Sermon Tone Analysis

THE EIGHT RUDIMENTS OF CELEBRATION

THE EIGHT FEASTS OR FESTIVALS OF ISRAEL

The Sabbath

Leviticus 23:1-3

(festiv1.doc)

*1344: TO BLESS OR TO IMPRESS?*

The following true story is from the life of Louis XIV of France:  One Sunday when he and his royal party arrived at church, no one was there except Archbishop Fenelon, the court preacher.

Surprised to see all the vacant seats, the King inquired, "Where is everybody?

Why isn't anyone else present this morning?"

The minister answered, "I announced that Your Majesty would not be here today, because I wanted you to see who came to the service just to flatter you and who came to worship God."

I wonder how many of us come to church for some other reason than to worship God?

One of the main reasons that God created mankind and one of the main things that God wants from mankind is worship, yet worship is little understood by modern Christians!!!  So, I believe that God has impressed me to do some teaching on celebration.

But I can't teach about celebration, until we review some basic ideas and definitions concerning the concept of worship.

/(So, let's get going!)/

1.

The English word /worship/ comes from the Anglo-Saxon weorthscipe (/weorth/, "worthy," "honorable"; and /scipe/, "ship").

This later developed into /worthship/, and finally /worship/.

It means "to attribute worth" to an object.

*To worship God is thus to ascribe to Him the supreme worth to which He alone is worthy.*

 

1 Chronicles 16:29, "Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come before Him; worship the Lord in holy array."

2.

The meaning of the basic biblical words for worship are to prostrate or humbly submit oneself to God, to fear, reverence or be in awe of God, and to render service unto God.

        *Our God is an awesome God!

He is to be treated with respect, reverence, awe, and fear.*

Deuteronomy 6:24, "So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always and for our survival, as /it is/ today."

\\ 3.      Vine says that worship "broadly may be regarded as the direct acknowledgment to God, of His nature, attributes, ways and claims, whether by the out-going of the heart in praise and thanksgiving or by deeds done in such acknowledgment."

Andrew W. Blackwood said, "Worship is man's response to God's revelation of Himself."[1]

/(But worship entails even more than this!)/

 

4.

*True worship is the sincere expression of devotion to God.*

As such, it can only issue from the depth's of one's innermost being.

True worship is the direct communion of persons from the depth of their beings.

Vincent says, "True worship includes a spiritual sense of the object worshipped, and a spiritual communion with it; the manifestation of the moral consciousness in feelings, motions of the will, `moods of elevation, excitements,' etc."  *This is the communion of God, who is Spirit, with Man’s spirit!!!*

Although the information that we have covered thus far tends to point towards specific observances or rituals of worship, an examination of the NT.

words of worship will reveal that they were used for the believer's total life which is lived to the praise and glory of God.

Thus, worship is not restricted for NT.

priests to certain ritual practices performed at certain places on specified days.

*Worship is an every day affair!!!*

 

/(As I have already stated, I believe that God has impressed me to do some teaching on celebration.

What is celebration, and how are celebration and worhip connected?)/

Well celebration is actually a synonym for worship, i.e. a word which has the same or nearly the same meaning.

But the word "worship" deals much more with the substance of worship, while the word "celebration" deals much more with the outward observances, rituals, and ceremonies of worship.

*The word "celebration" also denotes the festive, merrymaking, grateful, happy aspects of worship.*

*  God has been showing me that humanity needs celebration.*

*  He has been showing me that celebration is a very important part of the Christian life!*

*  He has been showing me that celebration is of special significance and importance to African-American Christians.*

 

\\         Life is a struggle for everybody, no matter what your color or nationality, but for African-American people life is even more of a struggle because of the residual effects of slavery.

We must face more than the other races in terms of subtle discrimination, economic reprisals, educational stereotyping, etc.

After we have been beat up and beat down all week; after we have struggled and striven to achieve life through material and earthly means, we need to take a break from the rat race and return to the human race by entering God's presence for a time of celebration.

Evelyn B. Dandy says in her book, Black Communications, that in the traditional Baptist church "the service is upbeat.

Church is often viewed as a place where people assembled to recharge their batteries so that they can deal with their daily problems throughout the following week.

Mbiti (1990, p. 72) reports that group gatherings to solicit God's help serve to strengthen, encourage, and make suffering easier to bear."[2]  *This would give traditional Black services a strong air of celebration.*

The importance of celebration is illustrated in the Old Testament in Leviticus the 23rd chapter.

This chapter “contains in typical language, a record of God’s dealings with man in grace, from the death of Christ, to His millennial kingdom, and to the eternal glory and rest, which lie beyond it.”[3]

In Leviticus 23, Moses lists eight feasts which God commanded Israel to celebrate.

/You can see them, if you would please open your bulletin to the middle section./

These feasts or festivals were celebrations that God ordained for the life of Israel.

It is somewhat of a misnomer to call them feasts, because all of them did not include eating.

One feast, The Day of Atonement, actually involved fasting.

*So, a better English translation would probably be "festival."*

*These eight festivals were not a calendar list of feasts or a completion of the directions concerning the feasts, but a list of the festal days and periods of the year at which holy meetings were to be held.*

"We are all captives of time.

Day by day and hour by hour we look at our watches and our clocks or we consult the calendar.

We plan for the future, and we set dates.

Many of us carry datebooks to help us remember appointments or special days.

*All of us are captives of time.*

But God is not shackled by time.

God is eternal; God lives above time.

However God does have a calendar, and it is important that you and I understand God's calendar.

When we understand God's calendar, we will know what God is doing in this world, and we will know what is really important in life.

Many Christians are wasting time, money, and energy on things that are not on God's calendar!

God's calendar was given originally to the Jewish nation, and it is found in Leviticus 23.  *These festivals make up God's calendar.*"[4]

\\         These festivals were also called convocations.

A convocation is "An assembly or meeting of people who have been summoned" (Webster's Third New World Dictionary).

*Today they would be referred to as conventions, when the people of the Lord meet together in fellowship with each other, and feast together in the exposition of His Word and the other spiritual blessings that are shared*.[5]

Some of these feasts, or festivals, actually overlapped, which yielded three times a year that all males were to appear before the Lord.

Exodus 23:14, "Three times a year you shall celebrate (2287 chagag) a feast to Me."

 

*This represented a great assembly of men.*

We know that there were about 600,000 men who left Egypt in the Exodus.

So, even though there was a whole new generation at the giving of the second law, there probably still numbered 600,000 or more men.

Carl George, architect of the Meta-model, a tool for diagnosing the problems of church infrastructure, stated that research shows celebration to be tied to the number of people present.

*Celebration being defined as the outward observances, rituals, and ceremonies of worship, which are attended by festivity, merrymaking, thankfulness, happiness, excitement, awe, etc.*

He stated that you need a minimum of 100 people to celebrate.

If you have less than 100 you may have fellowship and other kinds of interactions, but you need a certain number of people to celebrate.

He went on to state that the more people you have the more exciting the celebration can be.

Hence, we have celebrations of football, i.e. football games, where 100,000 people pack into stadiums to celebrate.

Now you will better understand the phrase:  "Large enough to celebrate..."  We have enough people to celebrate every time we meet for worship.

We have enough people for a feast, festival, convocation, or convention every time we meet.

*No wonder God forbids His people to forsake the assembling together that was the habit of some.*

*Yet, how often a problem, a headache, a worry, or some pleasure keeps us from gathering together with God’s people in worship.*

Some of you are thinking, "Does this mean that we need to go back and reenact the festivals of Israel?"  *No, We don't need to keep the ritual of these Old Testament feasts, but we do need to celebrate the meaning, principles, and spirit of the feasts or festivals.*

You need a Scripture for that, don't you?

Well the word celebrate only occurs one time in the New Testament, in the NASB, and that is in:

 

1 Corinthians 5:7-8, "Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are /in fact/ unleavened.

For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore *celebrate* the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

The particular feast that is under consideration in this particular Scripture is the Feast of the Passover.

The Feast of the Passover celebrates the deliverance of the Children of Israel from Egypt, effected by the power of the Holy Spirit, based upon the blood of slain lambs.

*They were not to celebrate the Passover they had in slain lambs, but the Passover they had through the blood of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world:  Jesus Christ.*

In the Feast of the Passover, the Hebrewes were to eat unleavened bread.

The Corinthians were not to celebrate the Passover with real unleavened bread, but their worship was to be according to reason, or spiritual as He talked about in Romans 12:1-2.

*They were to rid themselves of the leaven of malice and wickedness, and celebrate the spiritual Passover in Christ with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.*

Therefore, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to celebrate the feast of the Passover - not the ritual feast of the Passover, but the typical, spiritual feast of the Passover.