Three Feasts God Wants Us to Celebrate “unto Him” -- Exodus 23:14-17

“Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast to Me. You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread; for seven days you are to eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the appointed time in the month Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. And none shall appear before Me empty-handed. Also you shall observe the Feast of the Harvest of the first fruits of your labors from what you sow in the field; also the Feast of the Ingathering at the end of the year when you gather in the fruit of your labors from the field. Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.”
 

I do not know about you, but I have often thought that we have too many holidays.  If you subscribe to an on-line ‘holidays’ software package in conjunction with your computer calendar, you will soon notice that just about every day of the year it seems is a ‘holiday’ somewhere. In North America in January, we have New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In February there’s Groundhog Day; Lincoln’s Birthday; Valentine’s Day; Family Day, Louis Riel Day, Islander Day (these last three in Canada); President’s Day; and Washington’s Birthday. Do I need to go on through the rest of the year? Yes, some are even religious holidays although we have done our best to change even that.

There are many references to feasts in the Bible, but here in this short passage, God is requiring that we celebrate three of them “unto Him” annually. Without going into great detail about each of these feasts, let us focus on what we believe to be God’s purpose in having us celebrate them “unto Him”.

The first one, the Feast of Unleavened Bread was intended for us to remember that it was God who brought them out of slavery from the land of Egypt and how miraculously He did it. For us today, it would mean celebrating and remembering how God brought us out of our sinful state and saved us through the miracle of His Son Jesus Christ coming to earth and dying in our place.

The second one, the Feast of the Harvest in which the Israelites were to present God their “first fruits” from the annual yield of their fields, was intended to keep reminding them that it is God that gives the harvest and arranges for it, not they themselves. For us today, it would mean celebrating “unto Him” and thanking Him for the fact that we can and are totally dependent on Him for all of our earthly needs and the products of our labor.

The third one, the Feast of the Ingathering (also known as the Feast of Booths) takes place after the last harvest of the year is gathered.  It was for the purpose of giving thanks to God for His provision of the right weather to allow the Israelites to process their crops, especially grapes and grain, before the yield would be useful for eating. In those days all the winepresses and threshing floors were outdoors and the Israelites needed favorable weather to carry these activities out.  Again, for us today, this would mean giving God thanks for how He is involved in our day-to-day lives, taking care of the details if you like.

In asking them to celebrate these three feasts, God makes two stipulations.  First (provided at the end of our passage) that “all the males” should gather together at these three events and that they should eat together at them (after all, that is what one does at feasts). And secondly, God tells the Israelites that no one (no male) is to appear before Him at this celebration “empty-handed”.  On this latter point, Matthew Henry writes,

“Some free-will offering or other they must bring, in token of their respect and gratitude to their great benefactor; and, as they were not allowed to come empty-handed, so we must not come to worship God empty-hearted; our souls must be filled with grace, with pious and devout affections, holy desires towards him, and dedications of ourselves to him, for with such sacrifices God is well-pleased.”

In our modern world, full of hustle and bustle, and never a spare moment, we have developed the ability to do more in less time.  We have fast-food, drive-thru bank services, stay in your automobile carwashes, texting (vs. writing or calling or even emailing) ‘sounds’ or ‘short-forms’ rather than full words, and I am sure you can think of many more shortcuts that you take. We seem to have done the same thing with the Feasts that God wanted us to observe. We now have one annual Thanksgiving Day (at which many do very little giving of thanks and some don’t even feast) to replace all three feasts God had prescribed we celebrate. And you we claim to love Him dearly.

I humbly suggest that as a minimum at our next Thanksgiving Day Feast, we try to consider what God wanted us to remember through the three feasts He describes in this Scripture passage. Let us at least take time to thank Him for delivering us from sin, His provisions for our daily needs, and His involvement in our lives.  And if you are really up to it, try establishing three different feasts for your family.

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And by the way, No Leaven in the House, Or Else -- Exodus 12:15-20

“‘Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.  And on the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day; no work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by every person, that alone may be prepared by you. You shall also observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt; therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance.  In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.  Seven days there shall be no leaven found in your houses; for whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the land.  You shall not eat anything leavened; in all your dwellings you shall not eat unleavened bread.’”
 
The word ‘leaven’ is used to refer to an agent, such as yeast, that causes batter or dough to rise, especially by way of fermentation.  Wikipedia says that yeasts are microorganisms that are part of the Fungi kingdom.  They are unicellular, for the most part.  Through fermentation (the conversion of sugar to acids, gases and/or alcohol using yeast or bacteria), the yeast converts carbohydrates (fermentable sugars in the dough) to carbon dioxide and alcohols (primarily ethanol).  For thousands of years the carbon dioxide has been used in baking and the alcohol in alcoholic beverages.  So, why did God say “absolutely no partaking of anything assisted by leaven and don’t even have it in your house” during this special celebration period each year?

The words translated ‘Leaven’ and ‘unleavened’ are mentioned many times in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  When the word ‘leaven’ is mentioned it usually refers to sin or evil.  Any reference to ‘unleavened’ had as its symbolic meaning, a pointing to Christ.  Here in our passage the Hebrews were commanded to celebrate the “Feast of Unleavened Bread” which immediately follows as a continuum the Passover Meal which is referred to in verse 14.  The weeklong Feast of Unleavened Bread goes from the 14^th day of the 1^st month of the Jewish calendar to the 21^st day.  During that period the Israelites also had to remove all leaven (representing sin and evil) from their houses.

The thinking was, as can be drawn logically from the simple scientific explanation provided above, the ‘leaven’ causing the rising of bread or dough is due to the corruption of the dough with which it is mixed.  Some historical scholars believe each year just prior to the beginning of the Feast week, the Jews would search their houses with extreme care to make sure every particle of leaven was removed.
The symbolism for us today may well be that we need to regularly search our hearts and remove every immorality we find therein.  If we are leaders in the Church, we also need to make sure that we remove from our heart and our teaching any false or corrupt doctrine which is not crucial to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but is held on to because of tradition or in the name of ‘separated uniqueness’ – unfortunately often keeping us from fellowship with our own brothers and sisters in Christ.  The reason for this purging, we read much later in the New Testament, is that a “little leaven (corruption) has the effect of corrupting the whole loaf of bread”.  We know from experience in life that one lie begets many; one sinner pulls many down; a little legalism in our gospel destroys the purity of the message; and so on.

You can see therefore the significance of God saying, “Eat anything that was made using leaven and you are cut off from Israel.”  And here’s the symbolism I find interesting – that goes for both genuine biological children of Israel and those that joined their family as “aliens”.  So, does God’s willingness to cut off from Israel both His original children and those ‘non-native Israelites’ that were adopted into their families, because they ate food with leaven, or for having sin or evil in their houses, mean anything for us today?  I believe it does.  I believe and as the references to ‘leaven’ and ‘unleavened’ in the New Testament indicate, we can indeed be cut off, become unrecognizable to the Lord, perhaps because we “never knew Him”.  While many today say under the new covenant we do not need to worry about sin and evil if we are believers washed in the blood of Christ (as the Israelites had sprinkled the blood of the lamb on their doorposts), I am not finding it is that simple a matter in the Scriptures.

I also find it interesting that this week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was to commence and end with a “holy assembly” or ‘convocation’.  God required the people to be called together for a special purpose – that is what convocation means.  When we celebrate our Feast memorials I believe the Church has a role to play.  It must “call us together”.  It must “encourage us to celebrate”.  It must ensure we celebrate in the way acceptable to God, so that we are not “cut off”.  And the Church does this at the beginning and the end of the Feast.  This is not a time to begin the Feast as a spiritual memorial and to end it as heathen holiday.  For the entire Feast God wants us to live it, celebrate it, without ‘leaven’, without sin or evil in our lives.  And to help ensure that very thing in the days of Moses, God made it clear that the only thing the Israelites could do on those two “assembly days” was to have their food cooked for them.  The days were to be treated like Sabbaths by them.  Later on, God would have more to say about the keeping of the Sabbath both in the Ten Commandments He gave to Moses and in the New Testament.

So where are we?  How do we celebrate our Feasts – Passover, Communion, Christ’s Birth, and so on?  What does our New Year’s Eve look like, especially after we’ve celebrated Christmas Eve and Christmas perhaps in the Church?   These are all questions that can only be self-answered, but they must be asked.  Not to do so would mean we might be missing the full blessings God has in store for us.

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Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

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It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.