Celebrate and Live Your Faith
Reading - Leviticus 23:1-14 Study – Chapter 23
Are you the kind of person that gets excited about belonging to Jesus?
Do you find there are times in your life when you celebrate your faith rather than live it?
Maybe my questions confuse you. After all we are all here living our faith so what can I mean by suggesting we need to celebrate it to?
Well in today’s scripture passage we see that God instituted a series of FEAST Days for His chosen people.
God had given them the law He had freed them from Egypt, He had provided for their safety, for their well being with Manna from heaven and on and on the list goes.
God provided a series of specific laws and commandments for His people to follow.
In all of this God also knew we need to have time to celebrate.
I don’t know about you but I love a really good party with friend’s family, special foods lots of desserts and times of sharing and catching up.
What I really enjoy is sharing this time with God. For I know that none of it would be possible without Him in my life.
Well God does want us to live our faith the way that Jesus demonstrated; he wants us to be loving, kind and forgiving. He wants us to be growing and helping others to come to know Him.
God does not want you to think of your life in Christ like a stale existence. God does not want you to come to church out of obligation or duty.
Yes there is a lot to living a life of faith. We decided to turn our back on the way the world lives and to embrace a new standard for our lives. We chose a Godly standard.
That does not mean it has to be boring or tedious. It means we are to be faithful and let our lives be examples.
God wants us to be alive in Christ, he wants us to take our faith seriously but also take it joyfully.
Do you have joy in your life? Not happiness or contentment but joy. Is there a wellspring in you that overflows every now and then with praise for God, praise for what Jesus has done with you as a person.
Many people confuse happiness with joy but they are two different things.
Happy means to be content or feel fortunate. Joy means to have great delight or pleasure.
I don’t know about you but I have meet hundreds of Christians who are happy but only a handful who are joyful.
Joy is like the cork in the Champagne bottle. Joy is not the bubbles that would be happiness no joy is the cork flying out because happiness within can no longer hold it there.
It flies out at an incredible speed and you hear it “Pop” as it exits. When is the last time you popped because of Jesus?
God is good my friends, God is great my friends, God is alive in me and He wants me to pop off about it every now and then.
I feel so very, very blessed to be a part of this church. I mean it of all the places God could have put me He put me with you.
I love it hear and part of the reason is that you know how to celebrate your faith. Many of you know how to pop off for God.
You do it when we have special events that for many seem like just another annual thing. But for a few of you it is a celebration that causes you to pop like a cork out of a bottle.
You become enthusiastic and light up the room your actions are hurried and planned as you prepare that celebration day and invite us all to share it with you.
For some of you that day is our Bowling Day with the kids, for others that day is our Annual Pork BBQ and for others it is our Fall Bazaar or Halloween Party or Christmas Sharing Tree or one of our other special days of celebration.
The point is that you celebrate these special days with joy.
It is that joy that is electrifying and contagious. We want to be around you and the events of the day.
That is the kind of joy that God wants built into our church family and it is the kind of joy that God instituted for Israel.
For them it was the celebration of Feast Days like Passover or Rosh Hashanah which is this September 30th or it was Yom Kippur which is this Oct 9th.
God designed our religion with celebration in mind. Celebrations that had a purpose, celebrations to honor Him and reflect on His goodness and His everlasting love towards us. Things that when we think on them cause us to pop off like a cork in a bottle.
Israel is about to enter into a time of celebration and this should remind us that we too need to celebrate with them for their God is our God.
What are their Feasts and what do they mean, well quickly this is what I learned:
Passover – God’s deliverance from bondage in Egypt.
Pentecost (Shavuot) - The giving of the Torah by the Living God
Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah) – A time to get your life right with God
Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) - Day of Atonement is the day in which the people of Israel are to be judged by God and the sins of the nation of Israel are atoned. The Day of Atonement is also referred to as “the Day of Redemption.”
Tabernacles (Sukkoth) - The Feast of Tabernacles begins five days after Yom Kippur (September or October). It is a drastic change from one of the most solemn holidays in our year to one of the most joyous. The word Sukkoth means “booths,” and refers to the temporary dwellings that Jews are commanded to live in during this holiday, just as the Jews did in the wilderness. The Feast of Tabernacles lasts for seven days.
Hanukkah (Chanukah) December 22, 2008 (24th of Kislev, 5769)
Hanukkah is an annual festival of the Jews celebrated on eight successive days to honor the restoration of divine worship in the Temple after it had been defiled by heathens. Jesus kept this festival. (John 10:22) Went to Jerusalem for the festivals (Luke 2:41)
Purim - the Feast of Lots is observed on the fourteenth day of the Hebrew month of Adar (February-March). This is a celebration of the deliverance of the Persian Jews over one of the most dastardly plots in history to exterminate the Jewish people. The book of Esther in the Old Testament tells the story of how the beautiful Jewish woman Esther (Hadassah) and her cousin Mordecai thwart the evil Haman, who plots to massacre the Jews. The name Feast of Lots comes from the fact that the day was chosen for the Jews to die by way of lottery. It is interesting to note that the word pur is not Hebrew, but Persian.
http://biblicalholidays.com/purim.htm
Each one of these special days is cause for celebration and to let the joy of the Lord come out of you like a cork out of a bottle.
Friends live your faith, but do it every now and then with joy and your joy will cause others to see Jesus in you.
Let us pray.
