Taking Time to Celebrate

Read Deuteronomy 16.

Three times every year the nation was to stop and celebrate together.
1. The Feast of Unleavened Bread (The Passover).  This week long celebration was to remind them of where they came from and how they got to where they are.  When the nation was enslaved in Egypt, the final plague that resulted in their freedom was the death of all the firstborn.  God told Israel to apply blood on the doorposts of their homes so death would passover them and go the next house (Exodus 12).  At the same time they were to be packed, dressed, even eating the meal standing up, and ready to leave Egypt.  This was done in faith of God's deliverance.  They were not to take time for the yeast to rise in the dough.  So they ate unleavened bread.  They were never to forget what God did for them and the price of their freedom.

2. The Feast of Weeks (Pentecost).  This was a time of rejoicing at the seventh week when the harvest began.  The word pentecost means fifty.  Seven weeks would be forty-nine days, and the next day would be the Sabbath, the fifth day.  It is also known as the Feast of Harvest or the Day of First-Fruits.  The first fruits of the harvest were dedicated to the LORD.  They were to bring an offering of thanks to God for His blessing of soil, seed, and rain for the produce.   By faith, they looked to God for the rest of the harvest.  Never were they to forget that God was in control of the very elements of their livelihood.

3. The Feast of Booths (Tabernacles).  Also known as the Feast of Ingathering, at the end of the harvest, they were to rejoice together again for an entire week.  The feast was to remind them that all their gain came from the hand of God in order to bless them.  The LORD wanted them to take time to rest from their hard work and enjoy what they had been given.   

For believers today, it is good for us to stop, remember and celebrate what God has done for us.
Jesus' death on the cross was at the Feast of the Passover.
"For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.  Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Corinthians 5:7-8)

In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit came to fill and indwell believers on the exact day of the Pentecost feast. 
"In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory."

About 700 B.C., the prophet Isaiah said that a virgin would conceive and bear a child.  "They shall call his name Immanuel", or God with us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23).  But we long for the day that Revelation 21 describes: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from  God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place (tabernacle) of God is with man.  He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God."