Party On, Moses! (Leviticus 23) Series

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Leviticus 23.

If you’ve been keeping up with the reading plan, this week you finished Leviticus! that means you’ve made it up one of the big hills on this marathon! That’s great news!

And now we are in Numbers. And I know that over these past couple of days, you’ve been thinking that this isn’t much better. Unless you are an accountant or a Sunday School Director, an entire book about counting people doesn’t sound all that exciting.

However, I think you will be surprised. Once you get past the censuses in the first few chapters and the last few chapters, the stuff in the middle is pretty great.

And remember that every word of the Bible matters. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us that

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God[b] may be complete, equipped for every good work.

So even in Leviticus and Numbers, we are reading words that were breathed out by God, and that are profitable. And my prayer is that you are going to see this in Leviticus 23.

So, In chapter 23 of Leviticus we have the festivals of the year. Look at verses 1-2 with me:

23 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts.

What follows is a description of one weekly observance and seven annual feasts that were to be observed by the Jews. And these were not low-key, somber events. They were parties!

God is saying to the children of Israel, "Once a week, and seven times a year, you’re going to celebrate the relationship you have with Me. It’s going to be a party. And you are going to have these celebrations every week, every year, in every generation, whereever there’s a community of Jews, until the end of time.

And so the title of the sermon this morning is “Party On, Moses.” Let’s pray, and we will dive in.

[Pray]

The first feast Isn’t an annual feast. It’s a weekly observance. Look at verse 3:

3 “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

When you look at this verse, what is the word that jumps out at you? Rest.

Even today Jews in Israel take this day of rest seriously. It truly is a celebration. Families dress up a little nicer. Parents will often buy little gifts or toys for their kids on their way home from work on Friday. Most men buy flowers for their wives every Friday for the Sabbath. And if you happen to live in a tourist town, wealthy families will often have shabbat dinner at one of the swanky hotels where Gentiles do the cooking. [Tiberias story]

The Sabbath was a gift, not an obligation. God gave us the seventh day and said, “Thou shalt chill.”

But at some point, religious leaders decided they needed to clarify what was and wasn’t considered work on the sabbath. They compiled a list of 39 activities that were prohibited from doing on the sabbath, such as bearing a burden, because that was considered work.

But that wasn’t enough. They decided they needed to clarify what it meant to “bear a burden.” Let me give you just one example:

• Is it forbidden to wear artificial teeth on the Sabbath? (Who knew they even had false teeth in the second century BC?) So, could you put them in on the Sabbath? No, because that would be work. So what if you put them in before the Sabbath? Then you wouldn’t be working but you’re still bearing their weight on the Sabbath. On the other hand, you need your teeth to eat, and if you don’t eat, you’re neglecting your body’s need for food, and that breaks another commandment.

So, here’s where they landed: As long as they were simple false teeth, then yes. But if it was a gold tooth, then no, because that would be vanity. So, no grillz on the Sabbath. [click]

The Talmud is a commentary on the Torah. In the Talmud, there are twenty-four chapters full of this stuff!

Can you see how keeping the Sabbath was hard work? And that's why Jesus said "The Sabbath was made for man. Man wasn't made for the Sabbath." So if you get fixated on what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath, you’ve stopped making Jesus Lord, and instead made the Sabbath the Lord over you.