#DailyDevotion The Lord God Loves A Good Party

Easter Week 5 Tuesday

Read Lev 23:1–22

Lev 23:1-4  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.  (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.  (4)  “These are the appointed feasts of the LORD, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them.

 

The Lord God wants his people to rest and he wants his people to party.  To that end he gave them the day he rested from his work, the seventh day so they could rest from theirs.  He also gave them three feasts in which they would bring food and drink before him for several days of good times with good food to be shared with the priest, the poor, the widow, the orphan and the foreigner at the gate.

 

All these feasts were a foreshadowing  of the New Heavens and New Earth.  Jesus compares it to a wedding feasts several times: Mat 22:2  “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son,” Luk 5:34  And Jesus said to them, “Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? Rev 21:2  And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

 

The Sabbath rest is still for us but not as the Old Testament has it.  Hebrews writes: Heb 4:9-10  “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,  (10)  for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”  The Christian Sabbath then is not that we don’t work on Sunday or Saturday.  It is that we no longer rely on our works to be pleasing to God.  If we are pleasing to God it is only because we trust in the work of Jesus Christ to make us justified, sanctified and pleasing to the Father.

 

It is only then when we trust in Jesus and his work that we actually get around to the fun of being “good.”  For without faith, Hebrews says, it is impossible to please God.  This is why so many do gooders are so worked up in Churches.  They are relying on their works to be pleasing to God.  But when they trust in Christ’s work, they can relax and have fun doing the will of God.  It is no longer a burden because they are no longer being judged.  Indeed, when we enter the rest of God, we probably do more good than we ever did when we were working hard to please him by “our” works.

 

And there is still the New Jerusalem Sabbath where we enter into the wedding feasts.  Now one works at a wedding feasts who are guests or the bride unless they are just fussbudgets, and they won’t be allowed anyway or at least they won’t be that way anymore in the resurrection.  It’s just dancing, singing, eating and drinking.  I’m looking forward to it.  The good news is you are invited to it today by Jesus.  Just tell the guy at the door Jesus sent you.

 

Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending us Jesus, our Sabbath, that we may rest from our works, trusting in his work, that we might enter into the eternal Sabbath at his return.  In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.