Dennis Tuuri

It’s a versified form of Psalm 122, the psalm we open the service with. And the topic for this Lord’s day sermon is going to be the Bible and family camp. We’re going to go up to Reformation Covenant Church. Most of us spend some time together in August. And we’re going to be preaching on that today from three texts. And I’m going to read all three as the sermon text. The first one will be Leviticus 23:34-43, Deuteronomy 14:22-27, and Malachi 3:13-46, which should be on your outlines. So please stand. We’ll read through these passages of scripture.

Leviticus 23:34-43. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, “The 15th day of the 7th month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord. On the first day shall be in holy convocation. You shall do no servile work therein. Seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

On the eighth day shall be in holy convocation unto you, and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. It is a solemn assembly, and you shall do no servile work therein. These are the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to the holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meal offering, a sacrifice and drink offerings, everything upon his day.

Besides the Sabbath of the Lord, and besides your gifts, and besides all your vows, and besides all your free will offerings, which you give unto the Lord, also on the 15th day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days. On the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath. And you shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook.

And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days, and ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. Ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month. Ye shall dwell in booths seven days. All that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths. That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

Next text is Deuteronomy 14:22-27. Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed that the field bringeth forth year by year. And thou shalt eat before the Lord thy God, in the place which he shall choose to place his name there, the tithe of the corn, of thy wine, and of thine oil, and the firstlings of thy herds, and of thy flocks, that thou mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God always.

And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it, or the place be too far from thee, which the Lord thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shall go into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose. And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth.

And thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thine household. And the Lord and the Levite that is within thy gates. Thou shalt not forsake him for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.

And the final scripture reading, Malachi 3:13-46. Your words have been stout against me, sayeth the Lord. You’ve said, “What have we spoken so much against thee?” You have said, “It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we keep his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts?

And now we call the proud happy. Yay, they that work wickedness are set up. Yay, they that tempt God are even delivered. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another. And the Lord hearkened and heard it. And a book of remembrance was written before him. For them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name. They shall be mine, sayeth the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels, and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not. For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yay, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble. And the day that cometh shall burn them up, sayeth the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the son of righteousness arise with healing in his wings, and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves of the stall.

And you shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, sayeth the Lord of hosts. Remember ye the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb, for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

We thank God for his word and pray that he would illuminate our understanding. Smiths now as well, their teachers. They can meditate on the statutes made plain for them and made appropriate to their understanding.

Now this is really kind of a diversion from the book of Acts, which we sort of formally started last week. Although it really isn’t. We’ll be seeing the book of Acts has a lot to say, of course, about the relationship of communion and community and the establishment of Christian community. And that’s what we’re going to talk about in a sense today as we talk about the Bible and family camp.

I’ve chosen three texts that have meant a lot to me over the last 10 years and that I’ve thought about a lot relative to this particular subject, and I hope it’s useful for you as well.

I was thinking that Saturday is the day of preparation for the Lord’s day, and it’s interesting how yesterday was a pretty busy day in the life of this church. A lot of things going on, community sorts of things. There was a hike. Some members of the community here spent time together hiking around God’s created order. Others spent time helping one of the members of our church put up a fence. Richard and I spent time with the extended community, the sister community we have up in Seattle issuing an ordination examination to Doug H. Other people had their children tested yesterday.

Several of the children, I guess from our church, had their academic achievements tested by an academic tester yesterday, and they were pleased to have other children from the church there as well. I’m sure so there were aspects of Christian community going on all across the face of RCC yesterday, and kind of a nice day of preparation for what I’m going to talk about today, which is essentially how family camp can be one of the means that God uses to build up a community that is proper and Bible-based.

What I’m going to do is talk on these three texts separately. You have the outlines there. I’ve chosen five sub-points under each of them. Go through them quickly and then end by referring to an article that was published in 1978 in a publication called Pastoral Renewal. I have copies of this article, which is called “The Quiet Passing of Natural Community,” on the handout table down in the gymnasium, and I’ll talk about that at the end. I want to talk about the relationship of family camp, these texts, to Christian community and kind of bring it all together by looking at that article shortly at the end.

So first of all, let’s talk about Leviticus chapter 23, the feast of tabernacles. Now you know, just a caveat, I guess, would be in order. I am not making a one-to-one correlation between the Old Testament feast, the use of the rejoicing tithe, etc., and family camp, but I do think that there are principles, modes of thinking that God gives us through these texts I’ve chosen and that are applicable to what we do in family camp and every Lord’s day.

Actually, we know all the Old Testament Sabbaths are really summed up in the Lord’s day. We don’t want to replace the Sabbath of the Lord with other festivals that the church decides to hold. They don’t have the authority to compel people to come to these things. Nor are they to be placed in the same level as the Lord’s day. But the Lord’s day and the Christian Sabbath give us a model for all of our lives.

And that model is pictured in some ways the application of this aspect of Sabbath-keeping. What we do every week on a once a week basis. This model can be seen as played out very nicely and helpfully to us at family camp. So just a short caveat. Okay. So let’s look at the text now.

Leviticus 23 talks about these feasts of the Lord, Sabbath, and it talks specifically about the three times it mentions by way of reference the three times a year that Israel was commanded to go up and be with God in Jerusalem. You remember we’ve talked before about how one of the beauties of New Testament consummation of worship is that in the Old Testament you’re essentially cut apart from the special presence of God except the three times a year you get to go up to Jerusalem and have a meal with God essentially with the convocated host.

Now during the rest of the time you still had Sabbath day observances. Leviticus 23:1, I believe tells us explicitly that the Sabbath, every Sabbath day, was to be a day of holy convocation. So they had relationship with each other in community but not the special presence of God which was at the temple. And here in the New Testament days, we read in Hebrews that we have both the ekklesia, the super synagogue, so to speak, that great convocation of the people, but it’s also in the presence of God in terms of temple worship. So synagogue and temple are brought together in our worship.

But here in the Old Testament that had not yet occurred, and three times a year they were supposed to go up. And one of these times, and apparently probably the most central of these times, was the feast of tabernacles.

Now we get information on it as the passage goes on. But the first thing that we’re told about is that we do have in the Old Testament prescriptions for God’s people a week-long family camp. This is a camp. They’re going to live in tabernacles, tents, so to speak, and they’re going to go up as families. And it’s talked about families later on in the text. And it lasts about a week—eight days actually, begins with the holy convocation day, ends with the Sabbath day, and the whole week then is spent in this rejoicing before God.

So we have in this prescription of God’s word a requirement for people to engage in a week-long family camp, so to speak.

Deuteronomy 16 tells us there were three times a year that all the males had to appear before the Lord. The emphasis being on the covenantal headship of the men. These were the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and finally the feast of tabernacles. And so we have that regulation pointed out in Deuteronomy and Exodus that there were three occasions, and one of these occasions is stressed for us in Leviticus 23, and that is the feast of tabernacles.

Wenom Gordon Wenom, talking in his commentary on Leviticus, says that the special sacrifices for these three festivals are listed in Numbers 29, and this list shows that the feast of booths, or tabernacles, was regarded as the most important of the year. This is kind of like the model of the three. It becomes the model and the most important of all three of them according to the sacrificial order that Wenom describes there.

Secondly, this week-long family camp is held during a leisurely time of year. And again, I’ll quote from Wenom’s commentary here. He said, “These main group of festivals fall in the seventh month of the year, from September to mid-October in our calendar. In this month, the dry hot summer draws to an end. The grapes and olives are picked. The Israelites start to look forward to the coming of the rains. Farm work was at a minimum, and there was time to take stock spiritually and materially.”

So God had this feast of tabernacles scheduled at such a time as the harvest was now essentially over and there were waiting now for the rains—the winter rains—to begin. So the farming activities at a minimum, it was a leisurely time, and we in our family camp we have a leisurely time of the year—summertime—and we don’t have the same agricultural schedule. Most of us don’t. But nonetheless, summer is seen by our culture more as a leisure time to reflect, to look back, look ahead, and take reflections of ourselves spiritually, materially, and physically and in other ways.

So we also have a time, a week-long family camp that we hold at Reformation Covenant Church once a year in which we do it during leisure time.

Now, they dwelled in arboreal tents is the next point on the outline here. We are told that in verses 40-42, “You shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. You shall keep a feast of the Lord seven days. You shall dwell in booths. Verse 42, ‘Seven days. All that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths.’”

I didn’t really study that Israelite born passage too much, but it is interesting that in our family camp we essentially do have some visitors, but essentially it’s a time primarily for family of Reformation Covenant Church and those who share our theological distinctives, etc. And in this time the feast of tabernacles, there was no emphasis placed upon the aliens’ presence with them in this particular feast. There were Israelites born who would dwell in these booths, but in any event they made these booths. There’s some—you know, we don’t know exactly what these booths looked like.

Some people think they were like wooden boards with then covered with these branches, but the point is they dwelt for this week—this week-long family camp, so to speak—in arboreal tents, tents made in reference to trees and to God’s creation of trees.

Now I could I want to just mention briefly James B. Jordan’s book. We are having Mr. Jordan out to speak to us this year at family camp, and his book Through New Eyes. He has a whole chapter on trees and thorns and the significance of trees and thorns in the scriptures. And here we see the reference to palm trees and in the specific verse we have Mr. Jordan, and whether he’s correct or not, I cannot say. I’ve not done the research.

But he does make a serious attempt in admitting that it is only attempt to look at the development of trees and their significance for the advancement of the kingdom of God. And let me just—what I mean by that is this. He looks at various periods of covenantal history, redemptive historical progress of the scriptures, progressive revelation. And he sees that for instance in the garden of Eden, the emphasis of course is on two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Now, I don’t know if he mentioned this or not, but you could also see the use of the tree. Well, in any event, we’ll just focus on those two trees. I was going to mention that Adam and Eve did try to cover themselves with trees, but God of course required the branch—the leaves of trees—but God required animal coverings instead.

In any event, Eden has the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the Noaic period, he says the preeminent tree imagery, so to speak, is gopher wood, gopher wood comprising the ark. In the time of Abraham, the terebinth, or oak tree, seems to have significance during that time of redemptive history. God focuses on that tree. In the wilderness wanderings, the acacia—for the tabernacle—is what’s stressed. In the settlement period, palms. And that’s this period we’re in here in these feasts.

In the settlement period in Israel, palms are stressed. And that’s the kind of tree we have listed specifically here to comprise these tents, or booths, that they’re to dwell in. In the Davidic era, he sees the preeminence of the cedar tree. In the time of the temple, the olives, the cedar, and cypress are all stressed in the construction of the temple. In the kingdom period, the fig is mentioned repeatedly.

And in the time of restoration, when they come back from the captivity, it’s the myrtle tree that takes preeminence. And then in the new covenant, the mustard tree and olive tree are the ones that are stressed.

Now he goes through each of these periods and describes these trees, shows the multiplicity of references to these particular trees, and then tries to draw some spiritual significance from it. And you may think that’s just a lot of hoofie or allegorical thought, or whatever it is. But he’s right that God did give us specific trees at specific times. And maybe we don’t know why that is. But if for no other reason, it’s nice to when we see trees to think a little bit about the diversity of trees and the various things they do picture to us in terms of God, his protection from shade, the humbleness of the mustard seed growing up into a large tree, etc.

So it is probably not a bad idea that one thing you might want to do in preparation for family camp is to think a little bit about trees in the Bible. We’re going to be camping in the midst of a lot of trees. And these trees are created by God to give us pictures of various things to help us remember his transcendence as well as our ability to be protected by him and nurtured by the leaves of the trees, etc.

And I want to read a little bit now and give you the way that Jordan goes about doing this in terms of this Mosaic era and the feast of tabernacles specifically. He says, “In the Mosaic era, other trees are mentioned from time to time. The tree that seems to stand out is the palm. God’s placing of Israel in the land of Canaan is repeatedly spoken of in identical terms as his planting, his grove of trees.”

And then he gives a lot of scripture references with this idea that God refers to his people as a planting or as a grove of trees has great substantiation in scripture. “This grove of human trees are on God’s gracious footstool. For the ark itself was made of wood overlaid with gold, and was celebrated annually at the feast of tabernacles. And then speaking of this, he says, ‘Of course, the tabernacle itself was built of boards, acacia wood, this time, and pillars covered with gold, a symbol of God’s glorified human host.

So if God’s hosts are somehow related to trees, if you got a tree, a pillar made out of wood covered with gold, it shows our maturation are going from glory to glory. The glorification of his human host. The divine forester not only plants his trees, but also planes them, fitting each into his house. It was no accident that our Lord was a carpenter. He is both planter and harvester, builder, both alpha and omega, both the creator of history and the governor of destiny.

So if men are grown, so to speak, he mentions originally how in Genesis both men and trees come out of the ground. And so if God brings us up out of the ground, so to speak, as human trees, so to speak, he also then takes us and fits us, planes us in terms of placing us into the communion of the faith and the particular local church and our relationship to the extended church as well. He makes us fit for being included in his house.

When Israel came out of Egypt, she encamped at Elim where there were 12 springs of water and 70 date palms. And here’s that palm reference again. In my opinion, the 12 springs here stand for the 12 tribes. The 70 palms for the 70 nations of the world. And that’s a repeated theme in scripture—70 nations of the world who are to be fed by Israel. It was Israel’s mission to give grace to the world. A mission she certainly failed to carry out.

Such spiritual water would grow new palms to replace the old. The first city destroyed by Israel in Canaan was Jericho, known as the city of palm trees. And he gives a couple of references for that. Once the counterfeit city of palm trees was destroyed, God began to grow his own. Fittingly, Deborah judged Israel under a palm tree. When fully grown, the true city of palm trees was the temple, which was frescoed with palms all around inside, representing God’s oral host.

Now, you know, like I said, you can like that or not like it. It may be helpful to you, not helpful, but it’s a good thing to think about trees and their significance, and particularly when they’re talked about in this relationship in terms of God’s word. And here, they were actually commanded to use a particular kind of tree to form these tents, or tabernacles, for their week-long family camp, so to speak.

Okay? So we’ve got a week-long family camp during a leisure time, dwelling in arboreal tents, remembering God’s past provision.

Why does he have them dwell in these booths? Well, he tells them verse 43 of Leviticus 23 that “your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, for I am the Lord your God.” So God tells us that he does this to remind us of the tabernacling or the booth construction that he provided for the people in the wilderness. These were temporary things.

Now you can look at that two different ways. One way to look at that is to look at it as God’s provision in the past. And that’s the fourth point of the outline here. God provided covering for the people from the sun, which can be good or bad. It can be a good sun or it can be a blazing hot sun. He provides covering for them, protection when he curses Egypt and brings them out, and he causes them to dwell in booths and to rejoice in booths. Other scriptures tell us that in the wilderness.

And so he reminds them of their past provision that he has made for them.

But then fifth, he also—the fifth point of the outline here—the second part of this particular verse. It also can be seen as reminding us of the glory that he gives them once he’s brought them through the wilderness and brings them into the land of Israel. This is not, I don’t think, some sort of back to nature and nature is good and what we do in civilization is bad idea.

And again I will quote here from Wenham. Wenham says that these emphasize the important features of the feast of booths as far as layman are concerned. These verses—we’re talking about—they are to live for the week in shelters made of branches. This was to remind them how they once had to live in tents when they came out of Egypt and make them appreciate the good housing they now enjoyed. It is only when we are deprived of our daily blessings—health, food, clothes, or housing—that we realize just how much we ought to be thankful for.

And he talks about how God continually warns us in the book of Deuteronomy when he gives us blessings, don’t take them for granted. Don’t think it was your power that got them for you.

So one way for us to do that is to go to family camp and live in dwellings that are not as nice as the dwellings we normally live in. And it reminds us that God has provided for us. Maybe some of us had houses when we first got married, when we first had our own independent housing from our parents, that were somewhat similar. I know our house, 15, 20 years ago in my marriage, was far smaller and not as nice as the house I have now. And it’s a remembrance though that God provided for us back then. And it also was to make us joyful for what we have now.

Several years ago, we took a trailer—some of you know—down to California, spent three or four weeks in the thing. Well, actually I got my vacations mixed up. Before that we had an even smaller camper. So you had this camper trailer, this movement, this progression of blessing from God. We had a little camper. I don’t know if many of you remember it or not. It was in the back of a little pickup truck. We spent a week in that living in this little tiny thing. And when we came home, I could not believe how big our house seemed to me. It looked like a mansion. It just was huge.

You know, because we’ve been used to this. When you leave family camp, happy for the time you had there, but usually you’re also then happy to get back to the conveniences of your home. And so family camp can serve for us as well to cause us to ponder God’s creation, the arboreal atmosphere of family camp. It’s a week-long time to get back to reflect upon what God has done, a leisurely activity. It reminds us of God’s past provisions in terms of less nice housing than we have now.

But it also then reminds us of the beauty of God’s bringing us into a more mature state now as well. And you know, “Don’t miss the water till the well runs dry,” so to speak. And it helps to appreciate what you have when you go to family camp and have facilities that are somewhat step down in terms of niceness. That’s why you don’t want to have a nice resort when you go to family camp. Okay, so there’s Leviticus 23, feast of tabernacles, feast of booths, and some correlations to what we try to do every year here in seeing in relationship to God’s word and provision.

Okay. Now, next passage of scripture is Deuteronomy 14. We have in Leviticus 23 the establishment of this week-long family camp, so to speak. And I’m making an analogy, not drawing a one-to-one correlation. And in Deuteronomy 14, we’re told how this is financed. But in being told by God how it’s financed, he also tells us a little bit more specific details about what these week-long festivals in Jerusalem are supposed to be like.

So now we turn to Deuteronomy 14. And we see first of all in Deuteronomy 14 that the financing of this is by—I have on the outline there—sacred silver, or consecrated money. And this is a little bit controversial. A lot of commentators disagree on what this is all about.

In verses 22 and 25, “Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed that thou—that the field bringeth forth year by year.” And he tells them then that they’re going to use this tithe to finance these week-long festivals, three of them in Jerusalem. And certainly the feast of booths would be the preeminent one here that’s spoken of because it becomes the preeminent of these three festival weeks before God and in his presence.

So it’s financed through the tithe. In verse 25, it read, “Thou shalt turn it”—that is your tithe, in other words, your grain, your first things of your flock, whatever it is—”you shall turn it into if it’s too far for you to actually carry it there, turn it into money and bind up the money in thine hand and shall go into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose.” Money here is silver.

Okay, and there’s a lot of dispute here. What is this? In other portions of the Pentateuch, we’re told that the tithe belongs totally to the Levites. And here it says to use your tithe to finance this trip to Jerusalem and this week-long festival with your family. And we’re going to see later where you get to buy whatever your heart desires and have a good time rejoicing in the presence of God. How do you put these things together?

There’s been various attempts. One way that R.J. Rushdoony, for instance, believes this is a completely separate second tithe. And so if you make $20,000 a year, $2,000 would be tithed to the church for the support of the Levites. And $2,000 would go into a rejoicing fund that you would use to finance your rejoicing times together with the church.

Now, part of that, as we’ve said, could be used to finance your meal here every Sunday. We said before that all these Old Testament festivals are preeminently gathered up into the Sabbath, the observance of the Lord’s day in the New Testament. And so the rejoicing time we have together at the agape can be financed by a portion of this tithe or by this second tithe that R.J. Rushdoony and other commentators believe is in place here.

Josephus and many other commentators agree that there’s a totally separate tithe here.

Another way of looking at this though is that this isn’t a tithe at all. That what this is tithe used in a generic or symbolic sense to speak of consecrated money. Money that is set aside for whatever throughout the year to do this particular activity. That seems a little weak to me.

A third explanation, and one that I think is more to the mark, is that a portion of the tithe is here being spoken of. The earlier laws in the of the tithe in Leviticus, for instance, that say the tithe belongs to the Levites gives the general principle of what God requires with that 10 percent, that is his tax on his people. As we move into the land, we have these provisions in Deuteronomy that tells them how they’re going to go about giving this to the Levites. And part of the way they’re going to go about doing this is by using a portion of it to finance their festivals at Jerusalem.

And the Levite is included in that rejoicing as well.

So, you know, it—what I want you to do is realize a couple of things here. One, obviously, you must tithe. It’s God’s tax. It’s what you’re supposed to do. If you believe this is a second tithe, a totally separate second tithe, then you should in good conscience obey that prescription. If you believe that it’s a portion of your tithe, you should obey that prescription. Remembering, of course, that the bulk of the tithe is to be used for the support of Levitical ministries.

So I guess what I’m saying here is don’t take my position on this. Take what you believe this portion of scripture is best understood as. And I have tapes on this particular tithe. I’ve got a whole tape just on the rejoicing tithe. And it may help you as you study to see if you’re being obedient to that to listen to that tape. And I give a much more detailed explanation of the different views.

But in any event, consecrated money, whether it’s a second tithe, a portion of your tithe, or money that you set apart for this particular purpose—convocating together with God’s people in these week-long family camps, so to speak—consecrated money is used to finance these times of rejoicing in God’s presence and with our families and neighbors.

Now, I say silver to remind you again here that money here in this particular verse means silver. We think of money as Federal Reserve notes. I’ve talked before. It’s very important we keep this. Whenever we see verses in the Bible that talk about money, silver, a weight, whatever it is, remember this is what we want long term. Again, we’re not content with the vain imaginations of men parading as money.

The only thing that backs up your Federal Reserve note essentially is confidence. And when the people lose confidence, people will not take your Federal Reserve notes. That may be a long time away, maybe a short time away. We don’t know. God’s in control of history. You can if things happen real fast, take it over a long period of time, but eventually those Federal Reserve notes are going to be worthless and real money—God’s money, silver and gold—will be established again.

And we ought to think that way and we ought to be training our kids that way.

Well, in any event, so consecrated money, sacred silver, so to speak, is used here in this—is the mechanism to pay for these rejoicing times in Jerusalem, including the feast of tabernacles.

Now secondly, we see in verses 23-26 that this sacred silver is used to finance this holy convocation. I would just say there that the holy convocation is spoken of, but I really probably shouldn’t have used that term. That’s kind of a special term that refers to the Sabbath days themselves specifically. But this time of rejoicing together, this is what the sacred silver is used to finance these times of joy—this consecrated money is used to finance these activities.

And then third, that in this they partake of the desires of their heart. And many of us are familiar with these verses already, but I will just mention it here. You go up to the place that your Lord your God shall choose. And then in verse 26, “you shall bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for ox, for sheep, for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desires. Thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice. Thou in thine household.”

And that’s what we do at family camp. We take things that we like to eat and like to drink. And this word here “strong drink” means beverages that are capable of intoxicating. These are alcoholic beverages of beer, whatever it is, distilled spirits. I don’t know. It doesn’t say specifically, but the word means that most any commentator that will deal with the text honestly, at least in my opinion, the term definitely means beverages that are capable and producing inebriation.

Now that’s there’s two aspects of that for us. One aspect is that it’s wrong for you to judge people for drinking alcoholic beverages and say that in itself is wrong. It’s not wrong. God says here if your soul desires it, you should drink it. That doesn’t mean you should drink it if your soul doesn’t desire it, but you should drink it if your soul desires it. But that doesn’t set aside all the prescriptions, all the commands of God not to engage in drunkenness.

You know, the Puritans—if you engaged in public drunkenness, they would whip. Well, at least the colonial settlers in America, the colonists, the colonial period, they would put you in stocks sometimes if you got publicly drunk and whip you. The idea was if you didn’t act like a man, you became like a dumb beast and didn’t know when to stop and became drunk and in public, then you were to be chastised in public. That’s probably a good model for us.

It’s a warning, a very strong warning. I want to issue a strong warning that while we think alcoholic beverages are good and proper and we know it based on this text and other texts, yet it’s very important that when you hear that kind of a message, you also hear the message that drunkenness is a great sin to God and you should not engage in it. And if you do engage it at this church in a public fashion, I think that Richard and I would both agree you should be chastised publicly for public drunkenness.

Okay. So the idea here obviously is that you’re not supposed to drink so much that you’re rejoicing in the spirit of the liquor. You’re supposed to be drinking this beverage rejoicing in not your own state of inebriation but in the joy of the Lord. And the scriptures make a real clear distinction about being guided and directed by the Holy Spirit in whom is all joy and then the joy of drink and intoxication.

So you’re to use this money to finance this holy week-long holy convocation, particularly the feast of tabernacles which talked about in Leviticus 23, and you partake of the pleasures or the desires of your heart—whatever your heart desires. The scriptures remind us if you delight in the Lord, he’ll give you the desires of your heart. And this is one of the ways, the secondary means he gives us to give you the desires of your heart. But the other half of that is delighting in the Lord. This is not in isolation from—this is in context of delighting in the Lord.

Fourth, this text tells us that this delighting occurs in the context of friends. As I said, it isn’t just you buy this stuff and you’re off by yourself. No, says “you shall rejoice, you and your household.” And of course all of them are going up at the same time—Jerusalem in the Old Testament. So it’s done in the convocation of all the assembled people who love God and fear him.

And that is the last point of this particular aspect from Deuteronomy—is fearing God is a portion of this as well. “The Levite that is within thy gates, thou shalt not forsake him for he hath no inheritance with you.” One of the things going on there is the Levite is a reminder of the presence of God. And the context for this is that you’re to fear the Lord.

In verse 23 when we began talking about this used to finance the holy convocation, it says “you shall eat before the Lord.” It goes on in the rest of the verse. The end of the verse in verse 23 says “that thou mayest learn to fear the Lord thy God always.” So we try to image this in our family camp. We try to take these principles and apply them in terms of the feast of tabernacles being financed with a portion of sacred money. Desires of your heart are partaken of at family camp. But it’s all in the context of fearing the Lord. And the primary characteristic then of family camp must be fearing the Lord, rejoicing in him.

And that leads us into the third passage I want to speak on from Malachi. And while Malachi doesn’t have reference specifically to the feast of tabernacles or the times of rejoicing in the Old Testament, it has a lot of significance for this last aspect. If we take these models from Leviticus and Deuteronomy where we do indeed have a week-long family camp during the leisure times of our summer, dwelling in tents and cabins that are rustic, remembering God’s past provision and present and future and the present mature blessings he’s given us, if we do that and if we finance that with sacred money, financing our holy convocations and partake of the desires of our heart, rejoicing with friends and fearing God, all of that is to be characterized by what you’re going to read now in the book of Malachi.

And like I said, it doesn’t relate particularly to that, but as we go about doing this at the family of Reformation Covenant Church, this is quite important for the correct spirit in which this is engaged in. It’s not just a party. It’s a party with a very specific purpose. That purpose is to cause us to rejoice in God, to fear him, and to prepare us for the future as well.

So let’s look at Malachi now as our last text. Malachi 3:13-46. Now, I threw in verses 13-15 as they’re kind of the introduction for what happens in verse 16. You have to know what’s going on in the first few verses to understand in a fuller sense these next verses. And I also put it in to remind us of the times in which we live because verses 13-15 tells us that what’s going to be spoken of in the end of Malachi takes place in the midst of very corrupt times.

And these are corrupt times in the covenant community as well. You know, we read about these Old Testament prophetic books and we make correlations to ourselves, the church, and those people who don’t profess Christ, but that’s not really what usually is going on in these Old Testament prophetic books and warnings. The people that in opposition to God are those within the camp and yet have perverted true religion.

That’s the people that are normally being spoken of in these prophetic books. It’s Israel. It’s the church. And it’s those elements of the church who have fallen away from God’s law, fallen away from an understanding of God’s judgments in history. Those are the elements of the church that are the perverted ones. And they produce the corrupt times in the world around us.

The church rules the world. I believe that. And when the church is apostate, as it’s been in America for a hundred years, the world runs down real quick because the influence of the church turns into a negative influence. Long before the Constitution was watered down as the document of our land, the scriptures were watered down by the churches and seminaries. So don’t get upset about the Constitution without realizing it’s judgment from God. He shows us that if you will not honor my word, you will not be able to honor the words of your own creations either in terms of your governmental structures.

I talked at a political action thing a couple weeks ago. Told them it’s hypocritical for any church that does not excommunicate people who have abortions or participate in them to ask for civil sanctions from the civil magistrate. God through the civil magistrate’s failure to enforce justice reminds us that the church is not teaching justice today. And so judgment begins with the house of God.

And that’s what’s happening here in Malachi—in the midst of very corrupt times. Those who fear God speak often of him. I love these verses. When we first started this church, these verses were on our minds a lot. And we knew this is what God was doing. He was calling us out to speak often of him. And the relationship of who he is revealed in the word to every area of our life and thought. And we get together and we talk about this as we still do today.

But it was exciting times for us to see these very verses being fulfilled in our lifetime, not just here, but across the country and other communions and communities as well.

Those who fear God speak often of him. In the midst of these terrible times, verse 16, then in the context of these corrupt times, “they that feared the Lord spake often one to another.” Hankenberg in his commentary on this says, “The conversations of the truly pious handful in defense of God are here opposed to the charges brought against God in the congregations of the ungodly mass of the people who thought themselves religious.

Additionally, Hankenberg says, “We have here historical truth that this is what happened, but is also given as a way of injunction to us that in the midst of corrupt times, this is what we should do. The way to turn it is to speak often of the Lord and to consider his influence in our lives in every aspect of them.” This brings great reward from the Lord. Verses 16 and 17, “the Lord hearkened and he heard it and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name.

There’s the other half of speaking often of the Lord—thinking upon his name. That’s what we try in a special focused sense to do during the seven days of family camp—to speak of God, to think upon his name, and yes to rejoice before him in the good gifts, but remembering that’s what the rejoicing is in—is in the person of God and the work he’s created.

God rewards those who do this. He brings great reward to us. He hears it. The scriptures say he writes a book of remembrance was written before him from them that feared the Lord. Hankenberg said that the Persians—it was a common custom of them to enter into a book the names of all such persons as had performed anything meritorious in the service of the king along with an account of the peculiar services they had rendered.

Psalm 15 says that one of the entrance requirements to get into worship, to abide with God forever in his holy hill, is to honor those that fear God and do his will. And here’s a way of honoring him—to write a book of remembrances. That’s what we’re to do. It’s what God does as well. He remembers when people speak of him and think on him. And we could think of each other and maybe think in our own homes, writing down things with people that we saw in the context of our home and the extended community of the church when they do things that are meritorious, to reward them, to display affection, love, and regard for them in the context of their service to the kingdom of God.

God gives great reward to those who speak often of him in the midst of difficult times. He tells us in verse 17, “they shall be mine, sayeth the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my jewels, my treasure.” There were like gold—there where gold is a picture of God’s glory, but it’s also a picture of the treasures of God’s people as they relate to him. He’ll make them up as his jewels and he will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.

And of course that’s the reason why all this happens—because we’re in his beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to do the father’s will. And we focus on that at family camp. And we recognize that God’s blessings are upon us as we speak often of his name.

These blessings take various forms. And just real quickly, first of all, there is discernment in verse 18. Verse 18, “Then in the context of what’s going on here, shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.”

And I had originally thought of this verse in relationship to the fact that when you begin to speak of God and think on his name and think about who he is and his relationship to our world, you receive discernment from God. We’re again this year at family camp, we’re going to have the speaker speak from the book of Proverbs. The theme is “Wisdom from Above.” We have registration forms down at the gym today. Wisdom from above, discernment, and how to run our lives.

But Hankenberg thinks, and I think he’s probably right, that’s not really what’s being said here. That the reward here that God gives us is discernment coming to those who had rejected God earlier in the text. And let me just read from Hankenberg. He said, “It’s as if the murmurers were saying we do not see what between the righteous and the wicked means.” That’s what they’re saying up in verse 13, 14, and 15.

The wicked times are fair discernment on the part of most of the church to understand righteousness and wickedness. Everything’s okay. And that’s the way it is in most churches today. Everything’s okay. There’s no discernment capability. And people are actually pulled back from exercising biblical discernment. And God says his solution to that is he brings out a remnant in the son Jesus Christ who think often on his name, who speak often about him.

And God then begins to move in history to bring judgment on those who don’t and to exalt those who do. And Hankenberg says, “We do not see,” the murmurers, “what between the righteous and the wicked means. The time will come,” replies the prophet, “when you will see once more the between in relationship to the righteous and the wicked.” And then he quotes from Isaiah, a parallel verse he believes. “Behold, my servant shall eat, but ye shall be hungry. The differences are made clearer. Behold, my servant shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty. Behold, my servant shall rejoice. That’s what we’re going to do in August. But ye shall be ashamed. Behold, my servant shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall howl for vexation of spirit.”

These verses, if this is what we’re trying to do in all of our lives and is exemplified in family camp—that what God’s response to this—he tells us in Malachi is things start to happen. The judgments start happening. And folks, there’s a time coming in this country. We don’t know when. We don’t need to know when. But the time is coming when those who don’t have the base of delighting in God will howl for vexation. And there may be people who hear this tape or here in this church right now—if you reject the Lord Jesus Christ as the center of your thoughts and the center of your actions—when the times come, when the sifting starts happening in an increased sense from God, you may howl for vexation.

And God says the difference will be made more and more apparent as he works out his judgments in history. He brings us discernment and that discernment is giving us wisdom. But it’s also discernment that he will demonstrate through historical actions.