For the Joys Set Before Us!
The Celebration Set Before us!
Deuteronomy 26:1-11

† In Jesus Name †

May the grace of God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ create in you a great desire for the Celebration when we are before the Father’s throne!

• The Boring Commands of Deuteronomy?

I would love to ask this question of you all this morning, but I won’t. I will state the question anyway.

“How many of you have read the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy?”

Maybe I should ask it this way, “How many of you enjoyed reading the Old Testament Book we call Deuteronomy”

Yeah, when we think of Deuteronomy, we usually don’t think of pleasure and enjoyment. If we know the book, it’s basically a cross between a pastor’s manual and California Penal Code, detailing the law of Moses, and the punishments for breaking those laws God put into play.

But some of the laws…well, you almost can’t think of them as laws. I mean – hear this one, “— This is a time to celebrate before the LORD your God at the designated place of worship he will choose for his name to be honored. Celebrate with your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites from your towns, and the foreigners, orphans, and widows who live among you.” Dt 16:11

Here’s a command from God… CELEBRATE!!!

Oddly enough to not do so, is a sin.

It doesn’t sound so much as a command in our reading this morning, but it is, “¹¹ Afterward you may go and celebrate because of all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household. Remember to include the Levites and the foreigners living among you in the celebration.

Have a great celebration, ahave an incredible time celebrating how good God is, and be so amazed by that goodness that you drag everyone in town, including all the pastor types and immigrants to the celebration!

That’s why they call them Old Testament Feasts!

And while the Jewish people in the desert looked forward to that feast whey could finally enter the Holy Land, we have a feast to look forward to – one with God, as we boldly enter His presence, and are welcomed home.

• The Preparation/Confession

Here is a question for you.

How longer after a incredibly successful Advent Tea do you think it is prior to Carol and Linda starting to prepare for the next Advent Tea?

This year I think they were procrastinating, because they waited until after church on Sunday before they asked me about the theme for Advent 2025. Obviously procrastinating!

Preparing for the feast to be held when Israel finally entered the Holy Land took 40 years! Forty years of dealing with the sin that had ensnared Israel after they were freed enslavement in Egypt.

When they finally arrive in the Holy Land, what they are commanded to do is to remember and confess that God had to rescue them.

⁵ “You must then say in the presence of the Lord your God, ‘My ancestor Jacob was a wandering Aramean who went to live as a foreigner in Egypt. His family arrived few in number, but in Egypt they became a large and mighty nation. ⁶ When the Egyptians oppressed and humiliated us by making us their slaves, ⁷ we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors.  get us out of Egypt with a strong hand and powerful arm, with overwhelming terror, and with miraculous signs and wonders!

They had to confess a need to be rescued and that God did that! Oppressed and humiliated, they needed to be helped, even as God had already told them He would.

Lent is our memory, not just of oppression and bondage to sin, but of the way in which God sustains His people and prepares them for the feast. Whether that is the feast of Israel, or our feast celebrating the Lord’s Supper, or what both are a glimpse of, the feast in heaven of all God’s people gathered in His presence.

• The Feast

That is what this is all about – from the feasts on the Sabbath and the Lord’s Supper on Sundays, to Passover and Maunday Thursday/Good Friday, to Tabernacles and Pentecost – all are a picture of the celebration that occurs when all who are rescued by God arrive before His throne. Every thing in Christianity points to this incredible celebration that is set before us, that we are moving towards, in which we are promised entry, because Jesus would die on the cross and rise again to guarantee it.

Hear the words again,

“O Lord, I have brought you the first portion of the harvest you have given me from the ground.’ Then place the produce before the Lord your God, and bow to the ground in worship before him. ¹¹ Afterward you may go and celebrate because of all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household. Remember to include the Levites and the foreigners living among you in the celebration.

While we are in Lent then, why don’t we spend as much times as we can, considering what God has provided to us through Jesus Christ, and then praise Him for it!

After all – when we think about what God has given to us from the ground, we might be able to remember the words from the other night, and remember that we are what came to life, as Christ was planted in the ground!

And then, let’s feast—including all those who, like the Levites serve the people of God, and those who are not yet part of the family…the foreigners living in our midst….

After all, we are commanded to enjoy this grace, together!