Deuteronomy - Lesson 23

In our previous session, we talked generally about feasting in the presence of the Lord, whether that feast is actually in His very presence at the central sanctuary or feasting at home with the assumption that where God’s people are, there the Lord is. This is the Hebrew understanding. It is not just “where two or three are gathered in My name.” All of life is sacred, including meals. 

But now I want to focus on the gatherings that were national gatherings for the Israelites to keep alive the memory of God’s grace and covenant. Maintaining the faith of Israel through national festivals. And this is Deuteronomy chapter 16. 

Now, when we move from 15:19 to 16, without warning, Moses shifts attention from generosity to economically marginalized, demonstrated through soft hands and hearts and open hands. We’ll come back to that in a later session. But he moves then to instructions on sacrifices offered on festive occasions. Building on chapter 12 through 14, the structure of this section is clear. (Again, the chapter division is not quite right. It should have come after 15:18.) But you will see here we’ve got unscheduled feasting in the presence of Yahweh and at home, 15:19-23. This involves consecration of the firstborn of your flock. Well, that doesn’t happen according to the calendar. Well, in general, I mean, lambs tend to be born in spring, but it’s not coordinated with the birthdates of all the lambs in Israel. When your ewe has her first lamb, you go and offer it. So, this is unscheduled, but it happens because God delights in people in His presence. “Come, bring it, I’d like to see you again.” 

But then you have the scheduled feasting in the presence of the Lord at the central sanctuary, the Festival of Passover, Pesach; and the Festival of Weeks, Shabuoth; and the Festival of Booths, Sukkoth. And then it ends with a summary statement: feasting in the presence of the Lord. 

The first section is prefatory. It’s a preface to our concern here. Our primary current concern is national festivals. But apart from the national festivals, Israelites were invited into the presence of the Lord at the central sanctuary whenever, as if God could not get enough of fellowship with them. So, whether it’s the birth of a firstborn male among the cattle or sheep or goats, or an invitation by Yahweh to the household to come to the sanctuary and eat in His presence, the Lord loves to have the whole family in His presence. These young animals symbolize His delight in their fellowship as individuals and households, not just as a nation. 

Of course, this didn’t mean they could ever treat His invitations lightly or casually. You don’t bring defective animals, which is why He says, “If the firstborn is not whole, you may keep the wool of the sheep (the first shearing), or you may slaughter it, but you don’t bring it to the presence of the Lord.” Defective animals were not to be wasted or treated as trash. They too represent the Lord’s delight in the animals. But He authorizes them to eat their meat in their homes, provided they respected the sanctity of the life of even animals that weren’t perfect. But it is a gift. In any sense, even these meals are sacrifices, for an animal gives its life for the people in the family of God. 

Well, as indicated in the summary conclusion, verses 16 to 18, “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place He chooses,” and then he lists them again. In 1-17, Moses instructs his people on the three annual festivals that all males in Israel were required to attend. And of course, by now I feel so self-conscious when I make this into an imperative. They were required to attend. I prefer to say invited to attend. And of course, we view it as a requirement, not as a legalistic requirement, but God’s great provision of another chance to be with Him. 

They are dealt with in three other contexts. We have them all in the book of the covenant. (“Book” is an anachronism. They didn’t have books in those early days.) But it is the covenant document: Exodus 23:14-17, in the ritual decalogue: Exodus 34:18-25, and in the instructions on holiness: Leviticus 23:1-44. So, we have references to these. 

In his treatment of these subjects, Moses is obviously not intending to give a correction to earlier versions of the festival. Contra what some critical scholars say, he’s not subverting them, but what he is doing is offering a theology of festivals. What is the theological point? He doesn’t give us a manual to guide the head of the household or whoever in the performance of the associated rituals. Rather, he...keep the big point, the big point. And this is the theology of it all. 

And of course, to understand these required festivals, shall we say “prescribed” festivals, we need to have an idea of how the calendar works. And in Israel, the calendar started with Nisan, and then you work your way through so that the Passover (and the size of these circles here reflects the length of the celebration), so the Passover is a big one. It takes a whole week; it’s associated with unleavened bread. So, it’s a whole week. 

Passover beginning the midpoint of the first month, then Shabuoth, Pentecost, 50 days later, seven sevens of weeks in Sivan. Then you have Sukkot. Notice at the top end of the calendar, it’s matched at the bottom end by another festival, which is not tied so directly to Israel’s experience, though Booths reminds them of what God did in the desert, so it’s a Festival of Booths, but that is not technically part of the saving event. It’s God’s provision event; He provided for them in the desert, even when there was no food. So that it’s there. 

There are other festivals, but you will notice in this way of presenting it, I take the seventh-day Sabbath outside of Israel’s liturgical calendar. The seventh-day Sabbath was never described as a liturgical event. If you want to figure out what they did in church on Sunday (or Saturday in that context), from the Bible, you can’t figure it out. There are no instructions on how to keep the Sabbath holy, other than – stop work, come in from the fields. So, it’s not part of it. And so, the seventh day, the command of the seventh day in the Decalogue is not a cultic insertion, a cultic erratic. It is an ethical moment and a spiritual moment. Well, this is my understanding of Israel’s liturgical calendar. 

If you want to see the relationships among the three required ones, this is the way it goes. The year begins with Passover—I could never understand why God does it this way. Why doesn’t He have the New Year’s Day being Passover? The first day of the first month of the religious calendar, but it’s on the 14th day, and then Shabuoth 50 days later. And then at the other end of the calendar, you have Sukkoth. 

So, let’s talk about the Passover festival. Exodus 12-13 describes the origins of the Passover as the historical event that marked Israel’s liberation from slavery, their moment of redemption and their birth as an independent nation. This is the day when the destroying angel passes over you because he sees the blood on the lintels of your doors, which means you have declared your devotion to the Redeemer and Yahweh. And he goes on to the Egyptian houses and does his dirty work there. This is the Passover, the celebration of their birth. 

Instructions here differ somewhat from instructions on the festival elsewhere, especially Exodus 12 and 14, you have the charge to keep the Passover here. Instructions on keeping the Passover, verse 7, and then the charge to keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread. In our text, Moses assumes these two are connected, and so it’s part of one festival. In Exodus 12 and 13, they are two separate things. They happen close together, but they are still, you have separate texts describing the two. 

How about the location? This is the big problem. Exodus 12 presents the Passover as a family event observed at home. Moses prescribes its celebration at the central sanctuary. Something has changed. That’s a fundamental shift. How can that be? 

The sacrificial victim. Whereas Exodus 12 called for a lamb or a kid, here Moses calls either for a caprovine or a bovine, sheep or goat, or cattle.

The method of cooking. Whereas Exodus prohibits boiling the sacrificial meat in water, Moses is silent on the method of preparing.

Relationship to unleavened bread. Whereas Passover and unleavened bread are linked but distinct in other contexts, he has thoroughly integrated the two into one long, protracted festival. 

And then finally, literary style. For the first time since the Decalogue, we encounter a text that is largely prescriptive as opposed to homiletical, or descriptive, expository, or hortatory. Now we’re finally getting into stuff we could call “regulations.” He pauses on the preaching thing but don’t overlook the preaching that is there. Through motive and modifying clauses though, he seeks to engage the Israelites’ hearts and minds in the joy of feasting in the presence of Yahweh. He is still preaching here. 

Well, Deuteronomy provides neither a manual for worship nor technical priestly legislation about these rituals, but the instructions are for lay worshipers. “When you worship, this is what you’re doing.” They’re not for the priests who are—in fact, Passover doesn’t involve the priests. They are instructions for lay worshipers, guiding them in their pursuit of Yahweh. “You may seek the Lord at the place that He will choose.” I love that word: “You may seek the Lord.” Jeffrey Tigay rightly says that this means “make pilgrimages to.” It’s shorthand for “seek the face of Yahweh at the central sanctuary. You shall seek the Lord.” It’s a call for a direct encounter with God “at the place that He will choose.” 

Let’s move then to the Shabuoth. 

I should make one more comment about why does Exodus say you celebrate this at home, but Deuteronomy says you go to the central sanctuary for this? As you know, Deuteronomy, the speeches here are given at the end of the journey. “Tomorrow we’re in the land.” Literally, I mean literarily, tomorrow. “Tomorrow we’re settling down. Tomorrow we’re tilling the soil in our tribal allotments. We’re living there. We’re scattered all over the place.” What is the point? For this festival everybody from all your tribal territories comes to the central sanctuary to refresh the common memory. This is what binds us together, our common faith, our common history. Which is why when we said, “When your son asks, ‘What’s the point of all these statutes and ordinances?’ Then you shall say, ‘We were slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out.’” It’s keeping that memory, celebrating that memory. 

Now, so long, for the past 40 years, they’ve been a camp on the move, on the march, and they’ve been all together. And they have been a sacred camp so that there are specific instructions for how to keep a community clean, even when you have lavatory functions that you’ve got to take care of. The whole camp is a sacred, is a holy place. 

But the Israelites are already camped around the central sanctuary. There’s no need here to distinguish between when you celebrate in your homes. We’re right there because I can see this, the glory of the Lord over the tabernacle over there. It’s in the midst of the camp, the whole time. So, we are in the presence. But once geography changes, your location changes, then there is the need to specify, “Hey, this is to call you all back together to celebrate this great moment.” 

Let’s look then at the festival of Shabuoth, which is the word for sevens. It’s seven sevens, which climaxes in Pentecost, which is the 50th day. So, seven weeks of seven after the Passover, you have Shabuoth. This one is never assigned a precise date on the calendar. Passover is the 14th day of the first month. This one is never tied to a date, but here Moses actually links it with the agricultural activities. “Seven weeks from the time the sickle is put into the standing grain.” That’s the beginning of the grain harvest, the early grain harvest. It would be the barley harvest, which is the first of the grains to mature. Seven weeks from when that harvest activity starts, you move to the festival of Shabuoth. He doesn’t tie it to any liturgical events. 

Leviticus 23:15-16 doesn’t mention the feast by name, but it defines the timing vaguely as “seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath.” That’s not the seventh-day Sabbath; it’s the Passover Sabbath. “That is from the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering” and “50 days to the day of after the seventh Sabbath.” This does become, in a sense, a harvest festival because of the timing, but in Jewish tradition, it was much more than a harvest festival. 

I have taken groups to Israel four times. Our trip was aborted a year ago because of COVID. Ten days before we were to get on the plane, they called it off and everybody was so, so sad. Still are. But in any case, we’ve been there twice or three times in May, and the newspaper headlines in May were, “Today Netanyahu was reading the book of Ruth,” which is what they read at the time of Shabuoth, the Festival of Weeks, because Naomi and Ruth come back to Israel. There’s no date there, but it says, at the beginning of the barley harvest. So, in Jewish tradition, at home, you read the book of Ruth on this date because of the barley harvest in that book. 

But in the Jewish ritual at the central sanctuary, this very quickly became a covenant day for officially when they gather, they hear the, not just the Torah read, but particularly they here recite together the Decalogue. The words that God spoke from heaven, and they call it the Festival of the Giving of the Law. 

I am sorry about the name because it reflects what I consider to be the problem. God didn’t call His people to…He didn’t call Israel to keep the Law. He called them to Himself, “You’ve seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I brought you out of Egypt, how I carried you on eagle’s wings and brought you to Myself.” That’s what happened in Sinai, the marriage. It’s covenant, it’s not law-based world. It’s a covenant based. This was the moment of the covenant. I’m okay with the fact that they recite the Decalogue, but I am not quite okay with the fact that they speak of this as the celebration of the giving of the Law. The Law is subordinate to covenant always. This festival links them to Sinai in its timing. 

This festival is rarely mentioned in the First Testament. Elsewhere, it’s called Festival of Harvest Day, of First Fruits, or whatever. But it was celebrated 50 days after Passover. Later Greek texts refer to this festival as Pentecost, but this comes at the end of it. 

By New Testament times, the tradition of Pentecost was calculated 50 days after Passover, or seven weeks from the first Sabbath of the week-long festival of Bread. 

Regardless, the festival would have fallen in the month of Sivan (May to June), so that festivals of Unleavened Bread and Weeks respectively are the book ends of on either side of the grain harvest. Passover is at the beginning of the grain harvest; this one, seven weeks after you put in the first sickle into your harvest. 

Although the First Testament never links the festival with Horeb/Sinai, in Jewish tradition it was celebrated, they celebrated the establishment of the covenant and on this day recited the Decalogue. 

So, a reminder of our calendar here. We have talked about the first, the two big ones at the beginning (Passover), and at the end you have the festival. No, we’ve talked about Shabuoth. Now we need to go to the one remaining one, the big one at the end. I am still talking about Shabuoth here. 

Like Passover and the Festival of Booths, this festival was a pilgrimage festival, ḥāḡ. It’s called a ḥāḡ, actually - I have a spelling mistake there. The ḥāḡ requiring all males, encouraging entire households to gather at the central sanctuary. 

Now, this is interesting because in this text, I think we’ll come back to it, but if you look, for instance, at verse 11, “You shall celebrate before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servant and the Levite.” It’s not just for the men. Yes, men and boys are required to come, legislated to come, but bring everybody! It’s not that the others are excluded from worship. 

So, pilgrims from the far corners of the land, for them, it would require a lot of effort to bring the whole family every time. But the festival is cast in the most positive light as an opportunity to celebrate together. It’s also a joyful celebration with greater enthusiasm than the earlier invitations 12:12 and 18, the catalog of participants in verse 11 includes everybody. “Y’all come.” 

And the interesting thing is even resident aliens. And there’s no stipulation that in order to participate in these festivals, you have to be circumcised. Resident aliens presumably would not be because they are temporarily here. They are not really members of your household. Now, they may be working for you, and so, what he is saying is, “Bring them along, too.” And I think this is a part of the evangelistic effort. Israel, the nation of Israel and its environment is supposed to be so, become so attractive that outsiders want to come and work for these people. It’s bringing the mission field in. And how do we inform them of the brilliant gospel? By living it every day ourselves, of course. But then on the festival occasion, bring them along so that they may hear your story, “We were slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out, and you can join in that drama.” It’s a magnificent way of doing evangelism. 

It’s a memorial celebration. Breaking rank with accounts of the Festival of Weeks, Moses links the observance to Israel’s experience of Egypt as previous appeals to the people’s oppression at the hands of others was intended to motivate charitable conduct toward others. Here, associating what was otherwise an agricultural festival with Egypt, highlights the conviction that all Israel is and has a gift. 

Like His provision of salvation in the first place, Yahweh’s provision of harvest calls for free and spontaneous expressions of gratitude. Shabuoth. 

Booths, Sukkoth. 

The timing. Exodus 23 ties the festival to the end of the farming cycle. A Shabuoth is at the beginning, this is at the end. Technically, though, this wasn’t a harvest festival but it is after all the stuff you’ve brought in has been processed. You have stored, not olives necessarily, but in the meantime, you have ground, pressed the olives and got out the oil and you’ve got vats of oil in your house. You may have ground a lot of grain into flour and you’ve got big tubs of flour in your granaries, or the grain is simply stored in granaries. And the grapes have been processed some, I mean, you can’t keep grapes very long in the climate without refrigerators or whatever. So much of this would be processed and then stored in that process version at the end of the processing, that’s when we do the Festival of Booths. 

Celebrating the blessing of harvest and the safe processing of the foodstuffs was the happiest of the festivals. The Lord has blessed us, and now you’ve got a concrete proof of everything. He has blessed the work of our hands in plowing the dirt, in planting the seed, in tilling for weeds, and in the harvesting, and in the processing. Our hands have been very busy, hence the emphasis so often blessing the work of our hands. That’s what is happening here. 

According to 23:16 of Exodus and 34:22, the festival was to be observed at the outgoing of the year, bĕṣēʾt haššānâ, or at the turn of the year respectively. (I’m trying to get back here.) The outgoing of the year. At this point, we are not yet calling it Rosh Hashanah. That is in our time, it is the Jewish New Year, head of the year, as if it’s the beginning, but it isn’t actually the head of this year. The head of this year is Nisan. That’s the first year. 

So, this is very confusing in Scripture. Rosh Hashanah here is head of the year. I think it’s actually climax. It’s the peak of the year, the head of the year. But it did become in the agricultural cycle, New Year’s. So, if the Israelites celebrated a New Year’s festival, it would have been there. I don’t think they actually did, not in, not Orthodox Israelite. 

But we actually have two calendars at work at the same time. The religious calendar, the head of the year is at the beginning of Israel’s history. “This is the new year for you,” remember that expression in Exodus? But at the head of the year at the other end, which became to this day, New Year’s Day in Palestine, is at the bottom of the calendar, not in the spring. It’s an autumn festival. Well, it’s a joyful festival. 

What else can we say about the Festival of Booths? Celebrating the blessing of Harvest and the safe processing, it’s a happy time. The Festival of Ingathering. 

The essence. The name sukkot - booths, from sākak - to weave, derives from the character of the temporary dwellings the Israelites lived in, are to live in, during the seven-day festival. They don’t build houses in Jerusalem to live in permanently. No, they get stuff together to make booths that’ll shield them from the heat of the sun in the autumn and give them a little warmth in the fall at nighttime. But it is all temporary. 

If you think of it, though, this is a disaster ecologically. I mean, what a waste. What a waste. But on the other hand, if the Israelites were historically all the way through what God wanted them to be and do, the flourishing of the land, I think, would have been such that it would have been easily taken care of. It wouldn’t have been a problem. 

Leviticus 23:40 suggests the shelters could be made of any kind of branches, palm fronds, leafy branches, willows from the brook. But yeah, you build it as a temporary. Must have been a mess in town cleaning up afterwards. Your garbage pickup services would have had lots of work for a long time here. 

But it’s also a celebration, śāmaḥ. It’s treated as an invitation to celebrate. It’s a holiday, a holy day in the very true sense of the word. 

Like the Festival of Weeks in the spring, this invitation was for the whole community. Nine classes of invitees: you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, female servant, Levite, resident alien, fatherless, and the widow, like the Festival of Sukkoth. But it is a place where we celebrate the Lord’s blessing on the efforts of human hands. Yes, you put in the work, but the fruit depends upon the blessing of God. In contrast to the deprivation and miraculous provision in the desert, God has blessed your work. You have worked hard. God rewards it. 

16:16 to 17 offer us the summary statement, “Three times a year all your males shall…” (May. I prefer to have a more volantive sense here, may come.) They “may appear before the Lord your God,” it’s the host who invites them, “at the place He will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and Feast of Tabernacles.” 

A person may not appear before Yahweh empty handed. This is important. You never come to a superior, if a superior invites you into his presence, you never come without a gift. That is inappropriate. Out of respect, you bring a tribute offering, acknowledging the superior’s superior status over you. “I am your servant, and I gratefully accept your invitation. Thank you.” And so, you bring a gift. “Each must bring a gift in proportion to the way the blessing that Yahweh your God has lavished on you.” 

A few summary conclusions. Participants: this invitation is addressed to males, zĕkûr.  That it’s addressed to males reflects the patri- and androcentric character of Israelite society. You can’t get away from that. It is that. Economically and functionally there’s clear division of labor and roles in these households. It’s evident also in the masculine pronouns all the way through, you and he; it’s always masculine. 

What is remarkable, though, is not the androcentrism of the text, but the insistence earlier that males attending the three festivals are to bring with them their daughters, female slaves, and widows. They’re all welcome. It’s mandatory for males but in keeping with the tone of verses 1 to 15, the invitation is open to all. The command to males but invitation to all without respect to gender or age identity 

The host: rather than highlighting Yahweh’s sovereignty over Israel, the Lord Yahweh, as we saw in Exodus 23, here the deity. Moses refers to the deity is Yahweh your God, all the way through. Yahweh your God. He’s not just the Lord Yahweh, Adonai Yahweh. No, it’s your God. The emphasis is on relationship. 

"And to appear in the presence of Yahweh,” this is royal court language. I mentioned earlier that at the end of Kings, the King of Babylon invited Jehoiachin, got him out of prison, invited him to eat regularly in his presence. That’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal. It does not in this case, doesn’t imply a literal seeing of God’s face, to appear before the face of God, no, but it is in His very direct presence. 

The collective significance of these festivals. The invitation goes out to every home. But the point is, God wants the whole family together three times a year. The whole extended family. As national events celebrated at the central sanctuary, these festivals were designed to keep alive the memory of Israel’s origin in redemption, in covenant, in desert provision, and the gift of land. All of it. It’s all gift. This is the gospel. 

Now, of course, people are doing their family worship in their homes, whatever form that takes, we don’t have much information on it. And they will have had community festivals and celebrations, and we should also say, times of mourning. These would be things; those would happen in the villages all around. But three times a year, everybody comes to the central sanctuary and they are there to celebrate God’s gift of everything, life itself for the nation. 

According to Joshua 5:10, the crossing of the Jordan was timed so that after they had entered the Promised Land, one of the first items on the agenda was celebrating the Passover. Our new life starts with a new calendar. The Passover and Unleavened Bread is the first thing they do on the 14th day of the month. Before they launch their campaigns against the Canaanites, they paused for worship. 

And I suppose, I’ve mentioned earlier, that the defeat of Jericho is for this generation what the defeat of the Egyptians was to the earlier. So, what they are actually doing here is celebrating the microcosmic experience of salvation represented by the earlier one. 

According to the First Testament records, these instructions were honored more in the breach than in the observance. (The old Shakespeare thing here.) It’s very difficult to find many references to the people actually doing this, and this is part of the problem. They were intended to keep the people on track with Yahweh, focused with Him, but they forgot very quickly. By the time you’re into the book of Judges, there’s no hint of any of these festivals. They’re not doing this. They still know that you have to gather, you know, where the sanctuary is, if you want to seek the Lord’s will on who shall go up first. So, in the presence of Phineas, the High Priest is the one who does some of those things, so we are at the central sanctuary. 

But these festivals, 2 Chronicles 8:13 notes that in the wake of his construction of the temple, Solomon led the people in the celebration of all the holy days in Israel’s religious calendar, including the three mandatory pilgrimage festivals: Unleavened Bread and Passover, Weeks and Booths.

But toward the end of the seventh century, as part of the reforms, the Passover was celebrated one more time. But the comments of the Deuteronomistic historian and the chronicler are telling: “Not since the days of the judges who led Israel, nor through the days of the kings of Israel and the kings had any such Passover been observed.” And then you wonder why we’ve gone off track. The very provision God had given to keep them on track with Him, the festivals, has been neglected. If we don’t keep reminding ourselves of our story, the gospel, “as often as you gather, do this in remembrance of Me. Take eat, this is My body given for you, this is My blood shed for you. Do this.” Keep doing it. Otherwise, we might think that we are self-made and we forget, or we credit others. 

The Festival of Weeks and Booths are rarely mentioned. By New Testament times, it never mentions the Festival of Weeks by this name, but Pentecost happens three times: Acts 2, Acts 20, and 1 Corinthians 6:8. If this festival (Shabuoth) involved covenant ceremonies (including the reading of the Decalogue), as Jewish tradition holds, then the significance of the remarkable events on Pentecost described in Acts 2 are heightened dramatically. 

What happened at Pentecost? This is, it is Pentecost. Why are these Jews in Jerusalem from all over the world? It’s one of the three required festivals. They have here come to Jerusalem to celebrate the covenant. But in this gathering of Jews who believe in Jesus, the great Pentecostal moment happens: the Lord pours out His Spirit on these people and it is reflected in people speaking in languages from all over the world, and of course, the cloven tongues of fire. Greg Beale has a fine essay on this. This is a miniature Sinai. The fire is a sign of God’s presence. And of course, the speaking in tongues is a manifestation: the Lord is here. This is a covenantal moment. This is a covenantal moment, which actually happens four times. 

Here Peter quotes explicitly, “This is the fulfillment of what Joel was saying, ‘I will pour out My Spirit on flesh.’” Well, this isn’t on all flesh. These are Jewish people. It’s Jews who believe in Jesus who are in this moment, and the Lord pours out His Spirit on them. This is not the regeneration moment. This is a covenantal moment. 

In my interpretation, this is the moment when Yahweh seals the New Covenant community as His own. From now on, the true people of God are Jews who believe in Jesus. Apart from Jesus, there is no true membership in the people of God. That’s what’s happening, in my view. 

The interesting thing is here, we’ll come back and talk a little bit more about the rest of this. This, I call it the “liquid metaphor,” (we had a private conversation yesterday about this). This liquid metaphor, “I will pour My Spirit on all flesh.” That expression happens four times in the prophets. Well, it’s actually five, but Zachariah is a different context. But it’s in Joel, which Peter quotes. It’s in Ezekiel 39:29 at the end of the Gog and Magog story, and you have it twice in Isaiah. Four times, “I will pour My Spirit.” 

In every one of these four occurrences, it is at the moment or after the Lord has restored His people. God has put the triangle back together again that we talked about yesterday. In every case, it looks forward to the eschatological moment when God will renew His relationship with His people. But it’s always with Israel. It’s always with Israel. And that’s why the first time it happens, it’s in Jerusalem. And it’s with Jews who believe in Jesus here. This is now the defined, but it happens four times in Acts. 

You don’t have the quotation of the text, but in Acts 8, Samaritans believe in Jesus and the disciples go to check it out and what happens when the apostles appear? The same phenomena appear. What’s happened now to the covenant community? It includes Samaritans who are half Jews physically because they are the descendants of the mixed marriages between the people that the Assyrians brought into the northern Kingdom and the few people, Israelite people, who stayed there. That’s who they are. But they’re also within the Orthodox tradition. Moses is their prophet. He’s the only prophet they know. They have the Torah as their Scripture. So, they are half Jews, spiritually and physically. They are now full members of the community. 

It happens a third time in Acts 10, Cornelius. Well, who’s Cornelius? He’s a Gentile, a God-fearer in the land of Israel, you know, so we got those triangular things still happening. But here is a person with non-Jewish blood. His whole household is converted and the same phenomena happened. The boundaries have now expanded. The true community of God, the covenant community, includes Gentiles who haven’t become Jews.

And then finally, of course, it’s in Acts chapter 19. Now we’re way out there in Ephesus, way outside the land, and the people there come to faith after the correction of the John-the-Baptist-kind-of-baptism, it happens there again. And now the story is full. 

We can reflect this diagrammatically something like this. You have the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts four times redefining the covenant community. 

It happens first: Acts 2: Jews in Jerusalem who believe in Jesus. 
Acts 8: Samaritans who believe in Jesus; and 
Acts 10: a Roman centurion who believes in Jesus and his household, and then 
in Ephesus: Gentiles, way out there in Ephesus. 

This is the redefinition of the covenant community in the New Testament based upon Pentecost. It’s a covenantal moment. It is not accidental this happens at Pentecost. The Covenant is here. 

Now the Festival of Booths is mentioned in the New Testament, only in John 7:2. It was being observed in Jesus’ time. What lessons do these teach us? First, lessons on worship. True worship involves an engagement with God and is focused on Him. That’s what this is all about. In accordance with Jesus’ words to the woman of Samaria, true worship focuses not on the place, but on the person of the Lord, eating in His presence. And of course, Jesus is Yahweh incarnate. 

Second, true worship transpires at the invitation of the Lord and must be conducted on His terms. Everybody worships, but not everybody’s worship is true. True worship is at His invitation on His terms. 

True worship is communal. In worship, the redeemed gather to celebrate the kindness that God has lavished upon us. As a community, we need to stop all the first-person singular subjects of verbs, “I love you, Lord.” I mean, there’s so many things wrong with that song. One of which is “I.” And if you ask, grammatically, what’s the most important part of a sentence? It’s the subject. it’s what it’s about. And so, when I’m singing, “I love you Lord and I lift my voice,” whom are you worshiping? It’s self-worship. You’re singing about yourself. Our song should not be about our love for Jesus. It should be about His love for us. That’s the point here. Don’t forget what He has done, it’s not about you. God doesn’t need to hear us say that. He needs to see us live it. And celebrate His love for us. 

And if we’re going to use first-person pronouns, it should be “we.” We are God’s people, the people of the Lord. We gather for corporate worship. It’s not about, close your eyes and meditate and think only about your own private thoughts. No, this is we. We’re here together. But we’ve got this so tipped over. 

True worship tears down barriers of gender and class and race. In the First Testament, there’s no hint of marginalizing outsiders in worship. “Y’all come.” There is no Court of the Gentiles in any First Testament temple. There’s no Court of Women in any First Testament temple. That is an inter-testamental development. And when Paul says, “In Christ, there’s neither male or female, Jew nor Greek,” he’s not fixing an Old Testament problem; he’s fixing an inter-testamental issue. And so, the true worship is communal in all of those respects. What else have we got? As Paul writes in Galatians…

True worship is driven by a deep sense of gratitude to God for his redemption and second, His lavish provision. “All that I am or hope to be O Lamb of God, I owe to thee.” It’s not about us. Here I am, Lord, aren’t you lucky? I’ve come to worship you. I said the other day I could be golfing. And we feel so proud of our piety. It’s not about us. 

And there are lots of other twisted things we do in worship, like, “Oh Lord, we invite You to this gathering.” Who called the event? Who do we think we are? We barge into His house and then we invite God to come into His house. That is so twisted. It is so tipped over. We don’t call the shots. In true worship, the Lord invites us. 

And our response is, we come into His presence, we fall down on our faces and we bow in submission and homage before Him, “I can’t believe He invited me. How did I get here?” By grace. Only grace. And that’s what this is about. 

All right. That’s it for the festivals.