Dennis Tuuri

Today’s sermon text is found in Deuteronomy 16:1-17. You can follow along in the handout. I think it’s on the second page of the handout for today’s sermon. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God. For in the month of Abib, the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. Therefore, you shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd in the place where the Lord chooses to put his name.

You shall eat no leaven bread with it. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is the bread of affliction. For you came out of the land of Egypt in haste, that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life. And no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the meat which you sacrifice the first day at twilight remain overnight until morning.

You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide. There you shall sacrifice the Passover at twilight at the going down of the sun at the time you came out of Egypt, and you shall roast and eat it in the place where the Lord your God chooses. And in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents.

Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it.

You shall count seven weeks for yourself. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain. Then you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a free will offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you.

You shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servants and your female servants, the Levite and the one who is within your gates, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are among you at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide. And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. And you shall be careful to observe these statutes.

You shall observe the feast of tabernacles seven days when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your wine press. And you shall rejoice in your feast. You and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, and the Levite, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are within your gates. Seven days you shall keep a sacred feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord chooses, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you may surely rejoice.

Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses at the feast of unleavened bread at the feast of weeks and at the feast of tabernacles. And they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able according to the blessing of the Lord your God which he has given you.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the wonderful picture of the coming work of the Lord Jesus Christ seen thousands of years before his birth and incarnation and death on the cross and resurrection. Help us, Lord God, to understand this text. Help us to see its significance to our gathering today on the day and the place that you choose to have us gather to. Help us, Father, to come to rejoice in you today in spite of whatever we might have experienced this past week. May we join your presence with our families and with the convocated host. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I did first mowing on Monday. First mowing of the season. Those of us that have lawns, kind of an exciting time of year in Oregon. You have this beginning of what will be several months of mowing every four or five days probably. You have this ritual. You ask yourself: Did I drain the tank? Is the gasoline in the mower turned to varnish or not? Did I do that ritual correctly? What buttons do I have to push? And valves do I have to open to remember to get the gas back into the engine? You remember that someone told you’re only supposed to cut it halfway. So you don’t want to cut it way down even though you know it’s going to grow like topsy and if you only cut it halfway that will be you’ll have to mow it again which I did yesterday. Second mowing, first mowing of the season.

The Lord God has given us seasons and he gives us no matter where we live or in what sort of culture we live in various rituals as we go through these seasons. We don’t think of them that way. They’re not universal or religious rituals but there’s stuff we do for the seasons.

I don’t know what was being played this morning. It was beautiful, whatever it was, but it probably would have been good to have heard something from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. This morning, the order of worship has depictions of the four seasons. And we come today to the last portion of Moses’ sermon on the fourth word. The next verse in Deuteronomy 16 will talk about the appointment of judges. That will move us into fifth commandment territory with authorities that are supposed to be honored, and we’ll talk about that. Probably it’ll be a couple of months before we get back to that. Next week I’ll do one more sermon, I think, on the Sabbath, and then do something a little different as we move into the next few weeks.

But this is the conclusion of Moses’ sermon. As you know, if you’ve been here very long, my understanding of Deuteronomy is it’s primarily a set of sermons or one long sermon on the Ten Words. And we’re including today this portion dealing with the Sabbath. The last few verses we looked at were about annual cycles, sabbatical years and years of release and that sort of stuff. And now as it brings to a conclusion this section, God addresses annual feasts.

And here the emphasis, while having some mention of course of showing grace in these feasts to others, the emphasis returns back to what we should do to observe the Sabbath. Remember, as is at the head of the outline today, that in the Deuteronomy version of the Ten Words, the center is giving rest to others. So the Sabbath is a time to remember the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, the work of Jesus Christ.

But, you know, while we do that formally, we also have leave here with a mission and a charge to extend rest, to extend joy of redemption in the context of our culture. So it’s very much a celebration that doesn’t stress inactivity in and of itself, but rather preparation for taking that message of redemption and rest into the world. And so we’ve seen that emphasis as we went through Moses’ sermon in Deuteronomy on the fourth word. And it’s here, too.

But now primarily, we’re going back to make sure you do it. Make sure you keep the Lord’s day or the Sabbath and before the Savior came and make sure you keep these annual festivals.

Now, it’s not as if God comes to a world that he’s unfamiliar with and kind of knows it and says, “Well, so they have spring and then they have summer and then they have fall and then they have winter. So maybe I could come up with some feasts that would sort of work with the flow of the seasons.” Frequently, for some odd reason, we read these kind of comments in various commentaries that God just sort of happened upon all of this and then uses language that we’ll understand relating to the created order. But of course, we know that God created the created order. We have seasons because that’s the way God intended it.

And so these seasons are part of God’s ordained cycle of things and it’s sort of built into the nature of who we are as human beings and certainly as those who reverence God and his creation.

We’re in a season of the church, Lent. And Lent comes from lengthening. It just means the days are getting longer. But this season of the church has been one that’s been seen as preparation for the death and resurrection of Christ. And it’s a 40-day fast usually of some sort, although it lasts for more days than that because you don’t fast on the Lord’s day, but it’s a season. And the church has sort of, you know, adopted some aspects of what we’re reading here today with seasons, right?

So we move from Easter and then Pentecost and these are Christian feasts. So we have this sense of the rightness and appropriateness of flows of our lives, times of planting, times of hard work in reaping agricultural produce in the text before us, times of celebrating the first harvest, and then finally a time of celebrating the great harvest at the end of the agricultural cycle.

So here, God takes these seasons and to a people that are primarily agricultural, he gives them significance by looking at the agricultural movement itself. And now we have to translate a lot of that. Most of us don’t work in farming anymore, but still we can see the basic idea that there’s a pattern that resonates here of planting and work and then harvest that we can understand and resonate with.

Now, it’s kind of difficult for us to keep all these feasts of the Old Testament in our minds. But, you know, really, it’s the beginning and end of the agricultural season. That’s what it is. The first feast of Passover has to do at the beginning. You’ve planted a little bit. The very first shoot comes up and first fruits is then harvested. In the context of the Passover, over an unleavened bread. So that’s the beginning of the agricultural cycle. And then at the end is the feast of booths or tabernacles.

And now all the feasts, all the product produce rather, the grain crops, the wine, everything’s been harvested, your threshing floor, your wine presses, everything’s in. So we have that harvest home idea at the end of the feast.

So there’s really this, you know, beginning and end of the agricultural cycle marked by these feasts.

Now, this is the inspired word of God. It’s important that we work a little bit at trying to understand these feasts, what their flow is. You remember the Bible or the Mosaic law can be thought of as a prism. It takes things that are fundamental at the beginning of the created order, prisms them out to show us aspects of them, and then with the coming of Christ, the prism light is refracted back together into the single work of Jesus. So we have a Sabbath on the seventh day of creation. And then we have these Sabbath instructions that we’ve been looking at in Deuteronomy. And here we have that single weekly Sabbath is prismed out into three major festivals. And then all this informs what we do today. This is what we’re doing. What we’re doing today is keeping the commandments that we just read in Deuteronomy in some sense. Okay? Because they show us the significance of the work of Jesus Christ and we’ve talked about this. So that’s what’s going on.

So there’s two basic things. The beginning of the agricultural season and the conclusion of it. The beginning it begins with Passover and it’s all everything’s put in the context of a reminder of redemption from Egypt.

Now there’s a third feast in the middle here in Deuteronomy 16. That’s the feast of Pentecost. That’s the middle. So we got the beginning and the end. That’s easy to remember. And each of the beginning and the end, by the way, have two—there’s actually three things that happen in the context of that uh of those feasts.

And I think you know I’ve given you some charts that you can look at in your homes. but let’s make this really simple. It’s really not that hard. It’s a 3-1-3 deal. Okay. So there’s the major and the ending and then the middle. At the beginning of the agricultural cycle is the feast of Passover which starts everything off. The year begins. This is actually March April of the year. But it’s the first you know liturgically it’s the liturgically it’s the beginning of the new year. It’s the month of Abib.

One other thing about that sometimes this confuses us because we read about how Passover is in Nissan. Same month two different names for the month. Abib was the Hebrew name. Nissan was the name that they used in exile in Babylon. That was the name Babylonians used. So when they come back they call it Nissan. But it’s the same month. It’s just the beginning of the agricultural year and really sort of the beginning of everything.

And you got three things going on there and we’ll see in the text today these three things. But just by way of overview, you got the Passover. We all know what that is. You got the feast of unleavened bread. You don’t eat leaven for, you know, a week. And then you also have first fruits, the waving of the first little sheaf. The agricultural year is beginning. The crops have been planted prior to this. And in March, they get a couple of shoots up from the harvest. There’s no real grain yet. But that first little chute is cut off at the side presented before God. It’s the first fruits of the harvest. So that’s how it all begins. Three things. Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits.

And then after the initial harvest comes in, the first barley harvest, we have the feast of Pentecost or weeks. And you know, crops come in at different times. This is the first crop. And after 49 weeks or 49 days rather, 7 weeks, they’ve diligently tended to the growing of this stuff. They’ve reaped it carefully. They’ve prayed a lot, hoping that the harvest will come in good. And Pentecost is the celebration of the beginning of the harvest. That’s at the middle.

And then at the end of the year, there’s three things that are associated with the feast of booths. First, trumpets are blown to call everybody together. And then the day of atonement happens a few days later, and all the sins of the people are rolled back. And then finally, the great feast at the end of the festival cycle is the feast of booths, not booze, but booze is drunk there, wine, beer, etc. But it’s the big rejoicing party, eight days of celebration at the end.

So you’ve got the beginning of the agricultural year, you got the end of it in rejoicing. In the middle, you’ve got this one feast, Pentecost with the single. So you got three things. Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, then the middle, feast of weeks, first harvest, then the end. All the crops are harvested. Now everything’s in. When trumpets are blown, you have the day of atonement, and then you have the feast of booths or tabernacles when people rejoice together in the presence of God.

So it’s really pretty simple. That’s the structure of what’s happening here. But in Deuteronomy, we are told of three major feasts. Okay? So it puts them in the context of three feasts. So there’s three things. Passover, Pentecost, ingathering or booths, right? rather at the end. But the first and third feasts have a couple more things added to them. Passover is unleavened bread. First fruits, the tabernacles is at the end. And that includes trumpets. They’re gathered together. And before they rejoice in celebration, they have the feast of the day of atonement rather.

Now I’ve also given you a chart from Leviticus 23. Leviticus 23 lists these feasts. A little different perspective. It lists them, but it begins with the Sabbath day. Okay, there’s a chart. Look at the chart. It says new time for the new man. So do you see where number two, Passover and unleavened bread are actually put together? If we were to turn to Leviticus 23, we’d see that they’re one unit.

So there’s seven units. But to make matters a little confusing for us, two of those, Passover unleavened bread, are put together. as the second feast. Why? Because the Sabbath is included as the first feast. And again, think of this as a prism. The weekly Sabbath reflects truths that God gave to the people of Israel in terms of seven agricultural feast days or festivals. So the Sabbath is the beginning of the whole thing. It’s the culmination of it.

And eventually once the Mosaic calendar has been put out of effect by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re not supposed to keep those feasts separately anymore, but we are supposed to keep them all together on the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day. They inform us what we’re doing here. And there’s a relationship we could take. We won’t take the time today, but if we wanted to, and you can take this home and look at it, you probably looked at it a lot before, but there’s a relationship to the seven days of creation.

The covenantal feasts that are described in Deuteronomy 16 are feasts that ultimately are describing a new creation that happened as a result of the Exodus from Egypt. And ultimately, it’s picturing the new creation that comes with the Lord Jesus Christ where on the eighth day of the week, the third day after his death, the day of resurrection that we’ve sung about today, all these feasts find their fulfillment in the work of Jesus Christ.

And this is what we do today is to keep these feasts, not individually, not in hendrial ways anymore. Paul makes it clear that’s not what we’re to do in the New Testament, but all these things are now fulfilled in Christ, so they’re all wrapped up together in the new creation that comes as a result of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All right, so that’s kind of an introduction. Now, let’s turn to the text itself and we’ll look at these three feasts.

The first is the feast of Passover and unleavened bread. And while it doesn’t say it, it’s also the feast of first fruits. That’s related in here as well.

So here we have the feast of Passover and we’re pretty familiar with this. But you know there’s something that has been interesting lately. Passover so far in the history of the Christian church and of the Jewish church, the word Passover was thought to have meant to simply pass over something. Right? So the people of God are delivered out of Egypt because the angel of death passes over them that are marked with the blood of the lamb, ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ. But recent Hebrew scholarship of the last 30 or 40 years suggests that the word actually has implications of consideration of or compassion toward those that are passed over.

And whether we see it in the actual Hebrew word or not, it’s very important that we recognize that the beginning of our life in Christ, the beginning of the cycle here involves the commemoration of a feast or an event rather in which God compassionately of his grace and mercy passed over the people of Israel in bringing death to the firstborn of Egypt. So it’s a compassionate gracious act of God and this is described for us in the feast here that’s described.

So what do we read? We read in the text that you’re to observe the month of Abib keep the Passover. These are terms that we’ve seen before in Sabbath legislation. And the point is that given at the very beginning of this, you’re to do this because God brought you out of Egypt by night.

Now, this begins a theme that really kind of perpetuates the first portion of the agricultural year. It’s night. Night’s not a pleasant time. Night’s a time of anxiety. Night’s a time of death. Night’s a time of loss of ability to see, discern and control. And in the middle of night is when God brings his people into the new creation. The world is dark and the Holy Spirit brings forth light and the people of God are in darkness and at night God brings them into salvation and redemption by leading them out at night. This is the beginning of an understanding of what this agricultural thing is about.

In a way, there’s 50 days, 57 days of darkness. You plant the crop, you get your first little sheaf, you wave it before God, and then you begin to count down 49 days, praying as you’re counting, may the Lord God give us food to eat. May he bless us. You don’t know that he’s going to bless you. You don’t know what the weather’s going to be like. You don’t know if there’s going to be robbers or thieves break into your crops or your animals and kill them. You don’t know if some natural disaster is going to happen. It’s a time of anxiety that leads up to a celebration.

So the feast of Passover sort of sets the mood for that when it says that God brought us out of Egypt in the context of night. He brought you out of Egypt at night. And there’s a structure to this that’s on your handouts. There’s a little structure. And then as we move into the center, you’re to do this at the place where God says you’re supposed to do it.

So remember that what’s going on here is we’re in a new time of history. They’re about ready to enter the promised land. God’s going to have a centralized sanctuary unlike the decentralized sanctuaries prior to this in the time of the patriarchs. And so that place is where God wants you to do this stuff. So at the place and this has significance for us because as we think of what we’re to do today, we keep the feast in the place where God has told us to meet.

You know, you don’t go off to the beach and sit in your house and do your own little thing apart from a church. The church, the gathering of God’s people on the Lord’s day is the place where these feasts are ultimately celebrated as fulfilled in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the place. So the sense of place now is decentralized. But there’s still a place where God wants you to do this stuff and it’s not with a couple of friends on the beach, okay? It’s in a church.

So place informs us about that. The third section in there are seven days that you’re to eat the bread of affliction. So Passover and now it’s the feast of the unleavened bread. Unleavened bread. Why? Well, because it’s not good bread. God has nothing against donuts. He says they’re great, friends. Bread is good. Nice big puffy bread is what God says is good. Unleavened bread isn’t better, it’s worse. And it’s associated here with the bread of affliction. You had to leave Egypt in haste. You couldn’t wait for the sourdough put into the lump to make it all, you know, grow up and get nice and tasty. You had to eat it as pita bread, flatbread, and it’s not as tasty.

So you’re coming out of affliction. It’s dark. You’re in a time of affliction. You’ve been in Egypt where things are bad and difficult. In fact, the word Egypt itself is very similar if you just put a little different vowel points in it. It’s the same word for affliction, distress, a tight place. I had an MRI this week. And if you’ve ever done an MRI of your whole body, it’s a tight place. You don’t want to open your eyes much. Oh, that thing’s right there on top of me. You—it’s a tight place. That’s what Egypt was for them. They were in a tight spot once the Egyptians turned on them and salvation is coming into a broad open space. It’s getting out of the MRI tube.

Now again, this is important because they’re in an MRI tube. They’re in a period of affliction also as they wait for the crops to develop. This is relates to us. These verses inform us. We have difficult lives. Things happen. Bad things happen to us. Difficult things. And God says in the midst of that darkness that the movement of time. The inevitable spinning of the planet will bring you out of night into day, will bring you out of affliction and tightness and a difficult spot into stress into salvation which is a wide open space.

So God is telling us here that he is going to move us as well. And at the very center of this, you’re supposed to remember Egypt. You remember the day which you came out of Egypt. Remember—remember that the word remember is to memorialize. They’re memorializing the exit from Egypt. We memorialize the greater exodus of the Lord Jesus Christ at this feast. When we memorialize what Christ did at the feast, we’re memorializing our redemption from Egypt. We’re doing all these feasts are being memorialized here in the context of Christian worship.

This is why we have to have the Lord’s supper every week. It’s not an option. It’s central to who we are. It’s central to keeping the Lord’s day. It’s the memorialization of redemption and that’s at the center and then you have this seven days where you get rid of leaven from your home.

Now leaven isn’t sin. One of the sacrifices that God commanded was to be leavened. Jesus uses leaven as a symbol of the kingdom. The kingdom’s inserted into the world and it leavens to fill the whole thing. So leaven is the remains of something, right? I mean it’s the little bit of sourdough you keep from the thing to make the next—it’s the starter for the next loaf of bread. And that’s what leaven is. It’s a reminder. They’re to be breaking with Egypt. They’re to be leaving behind the leaven of Egypt. They’re to be leaving behind that sort of thing.

And as we’ll see in the New Testament when we get to Jesus in this feast, we’ll see a very interesting application of this leaven concept. But so they had no leaven. They were supposed to get it out of their homes.

And again, then as we back out from the center, it’s at the place where God chooses. So it’s very important. and then you turn and go back to your tents at the end of that section. So and then again six days you eat this stuff and on the seventh day there shall be a sacred assembly to the Lord your God. You shall do no work on it. Okay. So that’s what the text tells us to do here.

And it’s a reminder of redemption of course now but there’s something else that’s important to mention here before we go on to the middle feast.

When you exodus you also move toward an isodus. Exodus is to draw the meaning out of a text—is Jesus—is to read it into a text means out of ice means into. God’s people don’t just exodus they’re exiting to go to a place. In Joshua the first thing they do before they conquer the land is they get circumcised and they celebrate the feast of Passover and unleavened bread because they’re preparing for their isodus, their entrance into take control of the land that God said is theirs.

So Passover isn’t just being released from something, it’s being released or commissioned to something as we see from the Joshua text. So we’re coming out, but we’re going towards something. What they’re going to go toward third, the next festival is receiving the law of God from Sinai on Pentecost and harvest associated with that. But the important point to remember, you know, we’re not saved from something alone.

We’re saved to something. Okay? They’re to commemorate. They’re to memorialize their redemption and remind themselves they’re God’s people. He’s purchased them. We’re to remember we’re God’s people. He’s purchased us with the precious blood of Christ.

So we’re not just saved from hell or the effects of Egypt or whatever it is. We’re saved to follow him as complete saints and who are dedicating all of our lives to him. So that’s the feast of Passover.

The second feast is the feast of unleavened bread. I’m sorry, not the feast of—that was—that’s associated with Passover. The second major festival here is the feast of weeks or Pentecost.

One other thing, God is giving these instructions to individuals. Now, he’s giving to them to engage in corporate activity, but engaging in the corporate activity isn’t the end of the deal. The church has been saved from something to something, but so have you as an individual. Commemorating what Christ has done at the table is a reminder of your need to work afresh, to consecrate yourselves anew, to work on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ. These festivals were reminders of who they were, who their identity, what their identity was in relationship to God and the history that God had created them with.

It’s the same thing to us. The table is a reminder of who we are. We’re people that have been brought out of the kingdom of the realm of darkness into the kingdom of light. We’re people that have had an exodus and an isodus an entrance into something else. Okay.

Second feast is the feast of weeks. This is Pentecost. And in the text we go on to read, you shall count seven years or seven weeks to yourself. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain.

Now there’s the reference to first fruits. So you know we had Passover and unleavened bread. And here it says this feast, this putting the sickle to the to the harvest. That’s first fruits. That’s that reference is there. And after first fruits, you were to count down 49 days. You’re to count them off. That was part of the ritual. That was like, you know, looking at the gas tank or filling it or doing the right things with the hoses or whatever you got to do. The ritual was established. And the ritual included a counting down, you know, 49, 48, 47, maybe counting up, I don’t know, but a counting of the days, seven sevens until you get to the time of Pentecost.

Now, this is as I said earlier, this is related to the fact that they’re counting anxiously. They’re waiting for something. They’re waiting to see if the Lord God will bless them in the context of the harvest or not. So they’re waiting. They’re waiting anxiously. They’re sort of counting it down. and then at the end of this, it says that you shall then keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a free will offering from your hand, which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you. You shall rejoice before the Lord your God.

So what we have here is a reminder that while it is true that there is anxiety involved with counting down to the day of the feast, while it’s true that our lives are sort of difficult and have times of affliction and distress, ultimately the harvest is one in which we’re going to offer things to God. He’s going to bless us and we’re going to rejoice. This feast is a reminder again of who we are. We’re people that labor, they work very hard for 49 days to create the crops, protect the crops, water the crops, do whatever they got to do with them. Eventually, then to begin to harvest the crop, and at the end of that first harvest of the first crop, they rejoice in the presence of God.

God doesn’t give us work to do that will end ultimately in vanity or futility. God’s people will be blessed by him and we’ll be brought through the days of affliction and difficulty and hard work to a season of great blessing from God and rejoicing.

Now the some feasts are some harvests are big, some are little but the point is a harvest comes and God wants us to know that. So this idea is that we count down to it.

Now in the cycle of things again these are commemorating the events coming out of Egypt and if you look at the chronology of when they leave Egypt with the Passover you’ll find that 49 days later they come to Sinai and receive the law of God. So the Jews have always connected and has the Christian church Pentecost to the giving of the law of God as well.

Now in the New Testament we have the giving of the spirit. Of course Jesus ordains to send forth the spirit. And so if you look at these things together then we know the spirit and Sinai are connected. The spirit speaks through means of his word. He doesn’t speak apart from his word. And that word is delivered at Sinai in the Old Testament and now the coming of the spirit is to reinforce God’s word in our life.

Now it’s interesting that there’s a festival or there’s a book rather in the Old Testament that is concerned with these 49 days between the beginning the ritual beginning of the harvest and then the fullness of the barley harvest. It happens in that period of time. You know what book that is? It’s Ruth. The book of Ruth is interesting. It it by the way has been used by Jews as one of the readings, the alternate reading for this feast of Pentecost.

Why? Well, because the book of Ruth happens in the context of this cycle. We read at the beginning that Ruth entered Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. That’s Ruth 1:22. And the scene on the threshing floor took place at the harvest festival which marked the conclusion of the grain harvest, the feast of weeks. So the story of Ruth is a picture of this movement from Passover and the initial first fruit thing to then the completion of the barley harvest 49 days later.

Ruth is tied to that. Now Ruth is a virtuous woman. That’s what Boaz calls her. And in the Hebrew order of the Old Testament books, I hope this doesn’t get too difficult for you, but you know our books are laid out in one way. The Hebrew books are laid out a different way in the Old Testament. Ruth follows Proverbs. Proverbs 31:10 says, “A virtuous wife who can find her?” And in certain Hebrew manuscripts, the very next page includes the citation from the book of Ruth because Ruth is put after Proverbs where Boaz refers to Ruth as a virtuous woman.

Now, that word virtuous woman is only used three times in the Bible: Proverbs 31:10 and then in the book of Ruth, and then also one other time in earlier in Proverbs chapter 8. So there’s this connection whether you like the connection of the books of the Bible the Jews use as opposed to ours or not. The point is an obvious one. The point is that yeah a virtuous wife can be found and in this case she’s found by Ruth. She’s Ruth.

Now it’s interesting because in the rest of the flow of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, the arrangement of books, the next book is the Song of Songs. And the Song of Songs is about finding a wife and bringing her up at the center of the Song of Songs. She is brought up in Solomon’s caravan from the wilderness. Who is this coming out from the wilderness to be married to the representation of the King of Kings? It’s Ruth.

So in a way, this is the story of us as well. We move from the beginning through difficult times and trials, but we’re reminded that we’re moving toward a consummation of things that joyfuls us and that what we have here is kind of like a wedding feast. There’s a very real sense that as we move through the cycle of time, as we think about our lives and the movement of them, we can identify with Ruth.

Now, the interesting thing about that is that Ruth was a Moabitess. And the same book of Deuteronomy said Moabites were to be excluded from the congregation of Yahweh. Okay? Moabites who didn’t convert. Ruth attached herself to a believer in Yahweh. Ruth is a picture of the redemption of the whole world, Moabites and all through the work of the coming one that she was the great grandmother of David and became then in the lineage of Jesus Christ and is so pictured for us.

Okay. So the feast of Pentecost is central to the meaning of the book of Ruth and it’s a reminder to us that while our lives may move with difficulty and struggles and trials, that’s what Ruth begins with, right? Husband dies no food, trek back to a place that doesn’t like Moabites much, you know, but her obedience to follow Yahweh does that for her and brings her to become a picture of the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ itself because she’s a virtuous woman.

So Pentecost is a reminder to us of difficulties, trials, tribulations, afflictions. We’re hoping that things will happen and God says at the center of the celebrations we shall find joy and that’s what Pentecost is all about.

So the feast of Pentecost. The final feast is the feast of ingathering or booths. And if you look on your handouts, you can see the little structure we’ve created for it there.

You shall observe the feast of tabernacles seven days when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your wine press. So all the harvests are in now. Now the great feast happens. Everything’s gathered in and it’s time for the big party in Jerusalem.

You shall rejoice in your feast. So here at the very beginning of this feast is a statement of rejoicing. This rejoicing involves other people, female servants, Levites, male servants, the stranger in your gates. And then at the center we read that because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands so that you surely rejoice.

This word, this translation surely rejoice, it could be translated as you shall rejoice in nothing but—you shall rejoice in nothing but rejoice. No sadness here. We come together on the Lord’s day. The picture of this coming together, the great culmination of everything through the work of Jesus Christ. And at the center of this final festival described for us in Deuteronomy 16 is rejoicing and nothing but rejoicing.

So we have this movement. We have this movement from night to day from difficulties, stress, trials and afflictions in Egypt into a new promised land flowing with milk and honey. It happens as we go through a wilderness, right? Like Ruth, who’s this that comes up out of the wilderness. God’s people move through a wilderness first, but their movement is sure and steady through those times of affliction and trial. They come to the place where they eat fruit that they didn’t have to even plant originally. They come into the gracious harvest of Yahweh.

And so we have this wonderful picture of this in this great final rejoicing feast at the end of history. Yahweh himself has brought us through the wilderness into the promised land and given us joy and festival time before him.

The church is always seen in this in these elements of what we’ve looked at here a reflection of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who has prepared these things for us. He is the ultimate culmination of all the feasts described for us here.

One last thing before we talk directly about Jesus is Christian worship of course is the Lord’s day and it’s the commemoration. Look for just a minute at the chart that says receiving children the trinity and child rearing talk number two. This is from a talk I gave in Poland. But I want you to see this connection.

We’ve talked a lot about this church about how the worship service moves in a three-fold measure, right? We’re forgiven of our sins. We’re restored to glory. We get new knowledge from God in the preaching of the word and then we have rejoicing life together. Community is built by giving respect, honor and glory to each other through forgiveness, exchanging our ideas and who we are with one another and rejoicing together in community. Marriages are built by honoring each other, increasing communication as a result of that, making good decisions that cause us to rejoice. Worship is what life is about.

And here formally, we have this movement of these three gifts that God gives to us in worship: the restoration of glory, true knowledge from the word, and rejoicing life together. And these three gifts relate to these three feasts that we have just spoken of.

As you can see down in the chart, I’ve got three feasts. And you know, again, you can—I would encourage you to keep this in your permanent files to review occasionally as you think about the flow of the Bible, these echoes of the scriptures. But there are three feasts, right? Passover, with unleavened bread and first fruits. And then there’s the feast of Pentecost. And then this third feast in Deuteronomy 16 is the feast of trumpets, the feast of booths together. And that includes trumpets rather and atonement.

Well, those things really kind of connect up with these three movements of the scriptures. Passover, we’re redeemed from sin and death. We’re brought out of all of that. The dishonor of Egypt, the reproach of Egypt is rolled away from us. We’re restored to glory and personhood. And then at Pentecost when God gives the word, we have the preaching of the word to us here in the middle of the service. We get new knowledge from God. Heavenly perspective. He brings his scriptures to us to give us knowledge. Pentecost, the spirit takes the word of God, teaches it to us, transforms our lives by it at the center of our worship. And so we have the gift of knowledge.

And then finally, the feast of booths. We celebrate together the great culmination of things through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So these three festivals given to us by Moses as an exposition of the single weekly Sabbath day are also an exposition of Lord’s day worship. They’re the gift of God of glory to his people of new knowledge in the midst of the worship service. And then finally rejoicing life together in Jesus Christ.

All of these things of course are fulfilled by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is as the New Testament tells us the end of the law. That doesn’t mean the elimination of the law. It means the completion, the bringing the thing to perfection in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He’s the fulfillment. Not in the sense that it doesn’t have any relevance. But if we want to know who Jesus is, he tells us. He told his disciples on the road to Emmaus, if you want to know who I am, and it’s in the significance of this, know your Bible. I’ll teach you the Bible from the beginning of the scriptures on. He reveals himself. Christ has been revealed to us in these festivals, in these seven feasts or the three major feasts as we think of them. Jesus is the culmination of the law.

And while we do not agree with those that would want to actually perform kendrial feasts, that’s wrong. Paul makes it clear that no man can serve as your judge in matters of these yearly cycles. They’ve been put out of joint. The prism effect has come back together in the single Lord’s day now in Jesus Christ.

So we don’t keep these feasts separately to do so it would almost be a denial that they all find their completion in the single solitary work of the Lord Jesus Christ who came who died for us who was raised up who sent his spirit to us and who leads us into rejoicing life with his people.

So we don’t do that. We don’t keep the kendrial feast but we certainly keep the feast as the scriptures tell us to keep it.

1 Corinthians 5 is an interesting relationship. Shows the relationship of Jesus to the first of these feasts at Passover and unleavened bread. You’re probably familiar with this text. Turn to 1 Corinthians 5, please. and look at verse 6.

1 Corinthians 5:6. Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore, purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast not with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

See there it is. The beginning of the festivals Passover unleavened bread are obviously understood by Paul to find their completion in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ without sin without any leaven in his life and beyond that looking for no leaven in the context of the church.

He is our Passover. He does bring us to the feast and we’re to celebrate this feast with a knowledge of the need to purge out leaven. Now what’s interesting about this? If you look just before and just after this text, what do you read about? You read about the man who should have been subject to church discipline and who Paul tells him to excommunicate. Paul applies the unleavened bread perspective on the feast of the Lord Jesus Christ to the necessity to purge out members who are walking in obvious disobedience and rebellion to God.

And so Paul meditates upon the feasts of the Old Testament, their completion in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and finds application to them that we wouldn’t normally think of. And yet there it is. Jesus Christ is the culmination of the feasts of God. He is our Passover. And as Paul makes quite clear, he is the feast of unleavened bread and we’re to celebrate this feast in sincerity and in truth.

Jesus Christ of course is the first fruits. The first fruit was waved three days after its selection and Jesus Christ was raised on the third day as the first fruits of God. And this is told us again and again in the scriptures. It identifies Jesus Christ in 1 Corinthians 15 for instance.

Now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. The beginning of that agricultural cycle is a picture of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then Pentecost is the resurrection of 3,000 people. That’s a promise, a down payment of the spirit, so to speak on the resurrection eventually of the whole world through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so the flow of these feasts are related to the work of Jesus Christ as our first fruits.

Pentecost is the coming up of the next group of harvest 3,000 people—by the way from including gentile converts like Ruth you have gentile converts there and so that’s all pictured for us and Pentecost is the giving of the Lord Jesus Christ of his spirit to his people to the purpose of the harvest of the world.

Jesus Christ is the one who blows forth his trumpets. There’s a last trump that shall be sounded on the last day but there are many trumpet blasts before that. When John in the book of Revelation is called to heaven, he’s called with the voice of one Jesus whose voice is as a trumpet sounding. Every Lord’s day bells ring out, trumpets are blown, whatever imagery you want to use. But the feast of trumpets is a picture of the gathering of Christ’s people in that weekly celebration that’ll point to the final gathering at the end of time.

The day of atonement is obvious. We’ve been redeemed with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in that was pictured in the one the goat that would take upon himself the sins of the people Jesus Christ is that for us and so Christ is Passover he’s unleavened bread he’s first fruits he’s Pentecost and giving forth his spirit and building his body of the church he’s the trumpet that calls us together he’s the reminder that Jesus Christ has made full atonement for our sins that we celebrate on the Lord’s day.

And finally, he rejoices with us at the feast of booths, the ingathering of the people. We come together today with our families, with our children, with our friends ultimately to feast and to celebrate the great culmination. Jesus got up, the gospels tell us, on the last day of the great feast and said, “Come to me all you who thirst. I’ll give you water.” That was the last day of the feast of booths.

Jesus Christ is the culmination of the kendrial cycle of the Old Testament. It’s an interesting fact that I mentioned Jewish readings for these festivals. And what’s kind of an odd thing is that the reading for the feast of booths was from the book of Ecclesiastes. Why would that be? The book of Ecclesiastes—Ecclesiastes is a kind of a downer, right? That’s the way we think of it at least. Why would they choose that particular book?

Well, we—while we can’t get into the explanation of why, it seems a careful analysis of the book of Ecclesiastes reveals that in the midst of the difficulties and trials, the realities of life that Ecclesiastes presents to us, we know that there are peppered throughout it statements of joy and specifically joy in the fruit of the harvest, the fruit of your work and with members of your family. There’s nothing better Solomon says in Ecclesiastes than to rejoice in this particular way.

Now, the interesting thing is that at the center of Ecclesiastes, there’s—if you look if you try to find the absolute center of the book of Ecclesiastes, while it’s can be somewhat difficult, the center is found in Ecclesiastes 6:9 which says this, “Be satisfied with what you have.” Contentment with what the Lord provides us is at the center of Ecclesiastes. Now there’s 111 verses in Ecclesiastes. You got this one in the middle, 55 on either side.

And the middle of these verses, okay, the middle of these two sections are Ecclesiastes 3:12 and 9:7. Listen. This is what they say.

I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good as long as they live.

And then in chapter 9 verse 7,

Go eat your bread with rejoicing. Drink your wine with a merry heart for God already approves what you are doing.

Now that’s an appropriate text. That’s an appropriate book to meditate on at the great celebration of the feast. It’s a reminder that as we came out of night into daytime, we came out of affliction and distress into a wide open space. We came out of waiting for the harvest to then God bringing the harvest to fruition. That all of our lives are marked, yes, with difficulties, trials, and tribulations. But at the center of them, these seven feasts tell us at the culmination and what we see at the center of the book of Ecclesiastes is a joy before God that is symbolized in the completed harvest of the feast of booths.

Jesus Christ has come. The great harvest has begun. And in essence, it’s completed in Jesus Christ. We come together every Lord’s day to process what’s happened to us during the week to come to joy at this table to remind ourselves that yeah, it’s real the struggles we go through, the difficulties that happen, the trials and tribulations, the disappointments, but in the center of our lives focused on the completion of these feasts and the person and work of Jesus Christ. At the center of our lives, at the center of Ecclesiastes is contentment. And the two centers beyond that are joy.

Eating together the work from the produce of our hands, the fruit of what we produced in the context of the community that Jesus Christ has provided to us. Joy at the center is what Ecclesiastes gives us. Joy as the culmination to our Christian lives is what the feast teach us about the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for our lives. We thank you for the various times that we seem to feel in affliction and difficulties and tight spaces. We thank you, Father, that in the midst of all of these things, you teach us to remember the great exodus that was accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ in bringing us out of sin and death and redeeming us, Father, and bringing us into a place where all of these things have already been approved through the person and work of Jesus Christ. All of our work and that we’re to rejoice in your presence. Thank you for telling us that the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day, is first and foremost a time to get together and rejoice. Nothing else. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.