One of the sweet memories I shall ever have as a pastor is a phone call on a Monday. I think it was a Monday from one of the mothers in the congregation regarding her daughter, who had become a believer. But her daughter came in from being outside and said, I don't think Pastor Martin was telling the truth. What's the matter? What did he do? Well, you know, we sing that song in church that the sky is deeper blue and the grass is darker green and it's the same blue it was yesterday and the grass is the same green it was yesterday. Mom goes, right. Well, this is how poetic things work. And it was very sweet because the person was thinking literally. And I know that person now as an adult and their view is very much in line with the scripture that when you become a Christian, Things that were hidden from your eyes, which you just didn't see because of the dull haze of sin. The Lord gives you back the wonder at the beauty of the creation. And the earth really is a deeper green and the sky really is a more dazzling blue. And something does live in every eye that Christless eyes have never seen. A people set apart, holy leadership, holy worship, holy calendar. Last week, we looked at how holy people are to hold on to biblically revealed religion. And we had another sobering look at things which, at first glance, might not make, in your mind, as part of biblical religion. Well, why is child sacrifice wrong? Well, God says it's an abomination. And to kill babies and think that you're doing favor to me or that you're doing my will, you not only disgust me, but this is an abomination. Holy people do not enter the world of the occult. And he said, if you know someone who's involved in the occult, someone in Israel who's involved in the occult, they should be killed because it's an abomination to me. Child rebellion. And we go, well, how would childhood rebellion be something that God says opposes true religion? Because in both Testaments, the family is the basis of the church. You may have an Orthodox pulpit. But if the men of the church are not leading their wives, and the two of them are not leading their children, and the families as units are not buying whatever the pulpit's selling, they don't care how orthodox your pulpit is, you have a weak church. If men aren't being the men of their homes, if they're not being the spiritual heads of their wives, loving and leading their family to follow the Lord as they are, then you don't have a strong church. You have a weak church, regardless of how you may have an orthodox pulpit. To tolerate children who are rebellious and ruining their homes and cursing their parents is not something that God will have us do. And finally, we saw that there were different sexual abominations that God did not want to be named among his people. And that were, he said, I have, I'm going to destroy the Canaanites who currently inhabit the land I'm taking you to, because basically all these things they're guilty of. They practice child sacrifice. They practice sexual abominations. They allow for the occult. They don't deal with rebellious children. And I'm exterminating them, expunging, cleansing the land from them, and giving you their land. Now today, this is still part of this extended section in the book of Leviticus, in the Old Testament, about how God says, I've saved you out of Egypt. You're now marching through Sinai to the promised land. And during this course of this time, I'm going to teach you and train you. And I've shown you that I want you to be close to me. But because of your sin, you can't come close to me unless you have the sacrifice of a perfect substitute rather than your death, because your sins would necessitate your death if you're in my presence. Coming close to me would be an act of judgment on my part, because my holiness would destroy you. So you need to have my holy justice dealt with your sins dealt with. And so you need to sacrifice. We looked at all those chapters on sacrifices and the kind of sacrifices and offerings and how you do them and when you do them and how you need a holy person set aside, consecrated by me. priest to do this. You can't come to me unless you have a holy sacrifice and a holy priest. And we saw how both of these are pictures of Christ, who was in himself both the holy sacrifice and the holy priest. And he would offer himself, so to speak, to the father on our behalf so we can come close to God. But then after explaining to people how God's grace works, I want you to be close to me. I want you to be in a relationship with me, but you've got to play the game my way, so to speak. He says, now, having saved you from your past and your future, this is how I want you to live. And so we began to look at his call to holiness. And today, these chapters might not at first glance seem part of a holy calling. Like what is there a big deal whether or not we have holy ministers or holy priests? Is it a big deal whether or not we conduct holy worship? Is it a big deal if we even have a holy, specially marked out calendar? And I think we can make the case that all of these things are big in both Testaments. And God does want holy leadership. He wants holy priests in the Old Testament, holy ministers in the New Testament. He wants holy worship. And by holy worship, we mean, if you don't come to me through the mediation of a perfect sacrifice, what you think is worship is an abomination to me. And you're treading on thin ice. And finally, that a holy calendar is something that God wants us to have. He wants us to live our lives according to His schedule, according to His big plan, not just being a member of the culture. Well, let's look at these three things, how God sets us apart by having holy leadership, holy worship, and holy calendar. Chapter 21 and the first 16 verses of chapter 22 are about holy leadership. God does care about who serves His people and who leads His people. God wants his servants, his priests, to be holy men, careful men, faithful men. In reading those verses, I didn't read chapter 21, but if we went back and read it, they are to be careful as to what they touched. They could not enter into a state of uncleanness by touching a dead animal. or a dead person or things that God said, these things are unclean for me. And if you touch them, that will make you unclean. And you can't go back to serving as a priest until you deal with your uncleanness and your unholiness. They were to be careful who they married. They weren't just to marry anyone. And Old Testament priests were to be married, unlike at least one church tradition. And since the coming of Christ, it says, no, ministers should not be married. And they call their ministers priests. And their priests are not to marry. Biblical priests married in the Old Testament, and biblical ministers married in the New Testament. They were to be careful who they married. They were to be careful how their children behaved. You could not let your children do this. You could not let your child marry such a person. They're to be careful to honor their calling above their personal feelings. Remember when when God struck Nadab and Abihu dead for messing around and worship just after they were fully instructed and consecrated as to what they should do. And those guys are drunk and playing around and God strikes them both dead and gets everybody's attention. He tells Aaron, you're not to weep. You're not to put on the clothes of mourning. You're to fulfill your calling and that there's a sense in which If you don't love me more than your family, then you're not worthy of serving me. Now, is a minister supposed to love his family? Yes. And I can argue probably at least as sacrificially as any layman is to love his family. But my family doesn't come before God does. And your sons were struck dead for rebellion. Why would you want to demonstrate before the people that you're more profoundly upset about your boys being struck dead? than you are about the fact that God was offended and that God comes first. And so I want you to finish your tour of duty as priests, and then you can grieve in private later, but you're not going to grieve in public now. Your calling comes before your family. And if that seems hard, then some of the teachings in the Bible about when Jesus called a man to follow him, he said, well, let me go bury my father first. Right. If this is such a big deal, why did you leave your dad back dead somewhere? And now you say, I'd like to follow you, but I need to bury my father. He goes, let the dead bury the dead. Whoa, Jesus is playing hardball. He's not very warm and fuzzy here. Well, this guy obviously had, I think, had a false excuse. I'd like to be a follower, but I got some stuff going on right now. Well, if he really cared about his dad, he would have been dealing with this already. But Jesus says, let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead. You come follow me. That I have a prior calling in your life before any human calling. That is not an excuse to leave your wife and children. It says in 1 Timothy that you're worse than an infidel. You're worse than a pagan if you don't take good care of your family. But there is a priority in Scripture that Jesus has prior claim on us over everything. And as I've learned over the course of my 39 years of marriage, that if I put my wife number two, she's loved better than if I put her number one. Because if I made my wife number one in my life, I'd be an idolater. I'd be putting her in the place of God. I would not have the blessing of God. And whatever she got from me would not be what she would want from me. But if I put her in the number two position, then I'm honoring God and the calling that he has on both of our lives. And he'll bless me and she'll receive more than if I'd made her number one. The priests were not to think that they could be lax and careless because they had a title. In fact, they were to be extra careful, extra vigilant to honor their high calling with a blameless life. It's always a potential failing for people who are given a position to think, I have a position. I'm important. Other people have to follow the rules, but I don't. And ministers, if anything, should follow the rules more carefully. And in fact, ministers had to be physically perfect. And I go, well, then you wouldn't be a priest because you're not physically perfect. Well, by physically perfect, it meant they had to be without blemish or bodily defect, that you couldn't be crippled or lame, blind. You couldn't have all the different kinds of bodily afflictions. You could be a part of the Clevite clan, but you couldn't serve as a priest because he said, as a model of the priest who is to come, you must have no bodily defects. Wow, that seems pretty hard. We'll come back to that. Priests had to conduct the worship of God and the sacrificial offerings precisely. This is a little detail, but in verses one through nine, God makes clear that priests who become ritually unclean, who have not been made clean yet and therefore holy, cannot eat of the sacrificial food. But then the question comes up, you know, priest. all belong to the tribe of Levi. All priests were Levites, but not all Levites served as priests. You get that? And the Levites, when they came to time to apportioning the land, all the 12 tribes, the other 11, each got a chunk of land, which you flip in the back of your Bible and you can see Simeon, Naphtali, Dan, all these different tribes had a space in Israel. But you look and go, well, there's no place for the Levites. The Lord was to be their portion. And the ministers or priests were to live off the Lord. The Levites were to trust the Lord. And the other tribes were to give to the service of the temple or the service of the tabernacle. And the Levites were to trust God that they would be taken care of by God working in the hearts of his people. Now, since priests, in a sense, got a free ride, they didn't have farms, they didn't have herds, they didn't have crops. They had to trust the people, God working in the hearts of people who did have crops and tribes, etc. And the priest's family participated with the priest in the kinds of offerings that you could eat. Some of them were consumed entirely and shouldn't be touched. Others, they only burned up part of their offering, and the rest of it was basically just cooked and set aside for priestly food. The question that came up was, right, how far do we take this, the priest's family can eat with the priest? Do you see the problem here? Does everybody who's ever known this guy get a free ride? I mean, who are the people who can benefit from the priest's special standing that he gets to eat freely of the sacrificial food, whereas other people just have to go home and raise and make their own food? And so there's stipulations there. The question might arrive, which relative can live off the priest? It spells that out. We want our priests to be careful. We want them to be circumspect in everything and not take advantage of their status. We started off as servants. But do we let our position go to our head and we become masters and masters find themselves not wanting to play by the rules? We need to go back to being servants and living by the rules that God has set for his people, for his servants. Holy leadership, I want priests, I want leaders who live a special consecrated life. They're not to play the angles. I know of a well-known minister who wrote a book called Working the Angles. I'm not sure what he meant in that book, but that's not a good title. Being expedient is not part of our calling. Being slick, working the angles, being clever is not part of our calling. We're to be forthright. We're to be faithful. It's required of a steward that he be found faithful. What does faithful mean? You're given a standard. Did you operate according to that standard? You were asked to do this. Did you do it? I was at a pastor's conference in 1995 and the speaker was kind of berating the 300 ministers there. He goes, And he was using Martin Luther as an example. He said, you know, Martin Luther had a new Greek and Hebrew and Latin, and he wrote something significant every two weeks of his adult life. What are you slackers doing? That's basically how he came across. And I watched those men kind of march to lunch by this, like this, and they're sitting around big round tables and they were kind of, each had their little cat of nine tails and they're whipping themselves that they weren't Martin Luther. And I just kind of sat there and listened and watched for the first half of lunch I said, well, this ain't my conference, and I'm not the BMOC, but I'm going to launch out of this and be the gadfly on the ecclesiastical rump, so to speak. So I said, tell me, how many, those of you guys who know church history, how many Martin Luther's have there been? Well, just one. Right. So probably the chances of any one of us being the next one are pretty slim, right? In other words, it isn't an everyday thing. Have there been a lot of Spurgeons? No. So God raises up exceptional men, but I shouldn't beat myself that I'm not Spurgeon. Or Luther, I should be the best Steve Martin that I could be, but I shouldn't beat myself. I'm not Marty Luther or Chuck Spurgeon. Okay, yeah, okay, we get this. And I said, and this guy was saying we needed to be creative and innovative. We need to push the envelope in our generation. I said, you know, normally we leave creative and innovative and push the envelope to the heterodox, or to worse, the heretics. I said, what do you want chiseled on your tombstone? It's required of a steward that he be found Creative? No. Innovative? No. He pushed the envelope in his lifetime. No. He was faithful. And one of my dear friends remarked years ago that if you're 25, the goal of being faithful sounds so vanilla and so nothing and so wimpy. It's like, oh yeah, that's for old guys to have as goals because they can't do nothing. When you're 25, you're a world beater. I'm going to change the world for God. Maybe. Probably you'll just be like everybody else who's been a minister, but your goal is to be faithful and to be faithful and to make it and to get there and not screw up and not to fall into life affecting sin and not to ruin your testimony and not to drop the torch of truth and not to lose the gospel. It's huge. Being faithful is hard. I talked to my brothers here. I'm 63. I talked to my brothers in their fifties. Has it been an easy road getting here? No, man. Sometimes it's really rough. Sometimes it's really hard. As they spit out the bloody tooth. Sometimes it's really hard. Getting there is hard. Being faithful isn't an easy thing. It's like talk to a soldier who went through combat in World War II. So how was it? Was it an easy thing? No. But I made it. I'm here. I got to go home. God wants his ministers to be faithful, to do what they're told, to hold to the torch of truth, to hold up the gospel and not mess it up and not mess up their lives and their titles. God wants holy worship. God cares about how his people worship him. And this section in chapter 22, verse 17 through verse 33 to the end of the chapter is that he said, I want the priest and I want the people to be very clear. When they bring a sacrifice, it has to be perfect. You can't bring in some mangy thing, some lame thing, some half-dead thing that you're called out of your herd going, man, that cripple, I don't want it. Here, we'll use it for sacrifice. I'm not going to accept that mangy thing. In fact, their perfect sacrifice, without blemish or defect, was to symbolize, obviously, the perfect sacrifice that was to come. Now, there were such things as thank offerings. I just want to thank God for his mercy in my life. Or a free will offering. It's not required. You could do it anytime you wanted to. You could use an animal that wasn't perfect, but it stipulated what defects it had. For example, if it had one leg longer than the other ones, it wasn't minus things, it was plus things. You could use that for a free will offering, but you couldn't use it for the sin sacrifice because it wasn't perfect. The sin offering, the atoning sacrifice had to be perfect without any blemish, without any defect. And I had to ask myself, well, what would be the application of that today? Well, when I come to worship, did I come this morning trusting in only Christ as my substitutionary sacrifice? Was I trusting in something I did or was I feeling wrongly? I couldn't come. Because I sinned this week, or I sinned several times. I did these things that I can't come today. Well, what? So you don't bring any sacrifice at all, but still go through the motions of worship? When you and I come to the Lord's Day, and we come to worship with His people, we have to come self-consciously. Do you know what the word self-consciously? I think it through. I get a hold of my mind and say, OK, I'm coming on the basis that all of my sins were put on Christ. And He atoned for every one of them. And his perfect righteousness was candid to me as a Christian, as a minister of the gospel. And so I can come and worship and lead you in worship, not because of the kind of week I've had or haven't had, but only because of Christ. I need a perfect substitutionary sacrifice in my place to think that God would accept my worship and be excited about me coming. And that's how it applies to us today. Aaron, the priest and the people were to remember that God was calling them to holiness and verses 31, 32, and 33 is repeated again. You are to be holy for I am holy. And it's again, it's not hard to see how all of this forms the background of what Christ came to fulfill. One author I was just reading this week said, if you don't understand the book of Leviticus, you'll never understand the book of Hebrews. And a lot of what Christ did will be a little fuzzy to you because he's fulfilling these things that were set out back then. He's the perfect priest. He's the perfect sacrifice. He sprinkles his bride so she was without spot or wrinkle or blemish of sin that she might be holy. In the New Testament, Christ fully, once and for all, worked on the cross as the savior of his people. And because he saves cripples and the maimed, the blind, those with physical defects and definitely with spiritual defects, and we can enter into God's kingdom on the basis of what Christ has done. We are all lame and blind sinners. We're all imperfect in body and corrupted in soul. But Jesus Christ cleanses us from all of our defects. He makes us whole and holy to be presented as his perfect bride, holy and uniquely dedicated to him. Holy calendar. I want you to have holy leadership. I want you to have holy worship. You come to worship. trusting in my finished work so that everything that happens in the worship service is pleasing to me. A holy calendar. God cares about how his people regulate their time. We tend not to think time is very important. In one sense, we don't think about, well, what is time? Well, that's when your watch goes around. No, that's your watch showing you how you're marking time. But what is time? Time is a creation. There was a time when time didn't exist. You shouldn't use the word to define a word. But what was that, Steve? Mr. Clear? Well, in eternity, God didn't mark out time as we think of time. There had to be the creation of the cosmos, all planetary space, our planet, beginning at the creation. Then we start marking time. Before that was nothing but eternity past. At the beginning of the creation, the clock starts ticking, so to speak, we count time. Time didn't exist before God created the heavens and the earth. But before there was time, God always existed in eternity. You go, this is kind of mind-boggling stuff. It's meant to be. It's meant to remind us that we're creatures and God alone dwells in eternity. When God first created the heavens and the earth, the concept of time began. Little increments of present reality as the sovereign creator of his people and the sovereign savior of his people. God cares about our time and how we use it, how we store it up, how we squander it or whether we are good stewards of our time at all. Several times in the Bible, God talks about how I want you to be stewards and careful how you use your time. Moses. Oh, excuse me. And David in Psalm 31 says, My times are in your hands. It's an acknowledgment that I'm a creature and the times, meaning the events and happenings, the unfoldings over the course of my life, my times are in your hands. I'm a creature. You're God. You sovereignly rule over providence, every molecule and every happening on the planet. And my times are in your hands. I know what's going to happen in your life. God says, I hold your life in my hands and the events of your life are in my hands. And I love my people and I order all things together for good for my people. Psalm 90, Moses said, Lord, teach us to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. Lord, help me to understand the importance of time. And when he says number our days, he's basically saying, help me to organize my life so that I use the time allotted to me wisely. How do you use your time? I don't know. Go through day to day, I don't even think about it. Well, I'm going to need to be at work at a certain time. Class bells ring here, or my favorite programs on at then. But I don't think about time. But God says you ought to, because this is not a study of time. But if we did a bigger study of time, both Testaments are full of Scripture saying you ought to be careful how you use your time. Ephesians 5, 15, and 16, the Apostle Paul says, be careful how you walk or live your life. Not as unwise people, that'd be somebody who's stupid or ignorant, but as wise people making the most of your time because the days are evil. You don't live in morally neutral times. The flow of history is evil going a certain direction. You're out in the midst of the flow. If you aren't purposely trying to live differently, then you're just going to be carried downstream with the flow. If you don't order your time, the devil will be glad to come along and order it for you. If you don't order your life, what are you doing with your life? I can remember my great fear of graduating from college. What am I going to do with my life? I have no clue. No clue. Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? Existential questions. Just to suck up air and mark time and then die? Doesn't seem very purposeful, very important. I wasn't asking to be someone great, I just wanted a clue as to what I should do with the time allotted to me. Or as a phrase you've heard me say, I think it must have come from my parents' generation, but you don't want to pour your life down a rat hole. What did he do with his life? Oh, he went over there and just poured his life down a rat hole and there was his life. Now, the temptation is to think, I want something great. Show me something great to do. I don't want to do mundane, everyday things like the hoi polloi, the great unwashed multitudes. I want to do important things. That's where our sin nature goes. The Lord says, you don't need to do great, important things. You just need to be in a relationship with me and be faithful to what I give to you. You need to be faithful to what I give you. It's required of a steward that he be found faithful. Are you a faithful husband? Are you a faithful father? Are you a faithful kid? Are you a faithful worker? Are you a faithful citizen? So God says in the Bible, I want you to be careful how you mark your time, because it's entrusted to you by me. You have so much, you don't know how much it is, but I do. All the days of your life are written in my book, Psalm 40. All the days of your life are already written out. God knows how long you're going to live. They're all marked out. He knows what day you're going to die. What are you doing with the time He's entrusted to you? Well done, good and significant servant? Well known, good and famous servant? No, well known, good and faithful servant. I gave you something to do. Did you do it? Did you do it to the best of your ability? Did you do it to me when nobody was watching? Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the kingdom prepared for you by my father before the creation of the world. It's part of our eternal covenantal plan. The so-called Feast of Israel are really not literal feasts, but appointed days of public gathering for worship. They're festival days. They're a festival to celebrate what God has done, what he's promised he's going to do. And so God is going to teach his people the annual cycle of life. This is your every year calendar. You have an every week deal going on, the Sabbath, but then you have certain months when there's other festivals besides the weekly festival. And I want you to order your calendar by this. Nations have holidays. There are special days set aside to commemorate something special, something of importance in the nation's history. We have Columbus Day because there was a time when Europeans didn't know we existed and Columbus discovered the new world. President's Day, we kind of lump together Washington's birthday and Lincoln's birthday, and they both lose their birthdays and become part of President's Day. We have Labor Day in the fall, Memorial Day in the spring. We have other holidays, but they're not holy days. They're just festivals set aside by our government and by labor. We have Fourth of July. We have Christmas and Easter. Israel wants to have a calendar marked out by the days God said, I want you to set aside these times as special. There's the once a week deal, the Sabbath, but there's other things coming and some of them last a whole week. And some of them are real times of feasting and times of celebration, but they're all times to be marked. How you spend your time marks you out and divides you from other people. The fact that you're here and not playing golf. You're not racing around a basketball court somewhere. You're not out jogging. You're not playing video games. You're not reading the newspaper. Why aren't you doing those things? Well, because I'm a believer and God calls us together on the Lord's Day to worship him. OK, you're spending your Lord's Day marks you out as different from the pagan you might have been before. Certainly before the pagan I was before. And so we have not just weekly times, but there's times during the year by you setting them apart and marking them out is both a reminder to you and a teaching tool, and it's an honor to me, but other nations who are watching, other people who are watching say, well, you know, we all profess to be Christians in this block, but there's the only car that ever leaves the house and goes to church and comes home and goes out a second time. Those people are really fanatics. I think it's a cult, actually. When we started the second service, I had someone tell us that our church was a cult. Because people would go to church in the evening, too. How over the top is that? You can froth at a football game for three hours and people say, he's normal. But if you go to church twice in Sunday, he's part of a cult. He's a fanatic. Right. Let's look at these festivals and these special marked out times. First of all, the first one was the weekly Sabbath, a time of entering into God's rest. Chapter 23, verses one through three. God established the one day and seven principle back in the book of Genesis when he created the heavens and the earth. And on the seventh day, he rested. So it's laid down in creation. What did God do? Was he tired? And so he laid in the hammock for a couple of days and got over the creation? No, it's not because God was tired. It was symbolic of the fact he had stopped his labors, he had stopped his creative acts, and he was basically now enjoying and admiring and savoring what he had done. ceasing from your labors, resting in what you've accomplished. And it's also, for believers, a mark of trust in God. No, I'm not doing work getting ready for Monday because, you know, all my pagan buddies, they're getting ready on Monday. And if I don't keep up with them, I'm going to get behind. God says, why don't you trust me? Why don't you see if I can bless you in six and give you better than what your neighbors get in seven? Or students have to go, but I need Sunday to study because I can't do the work and everybody else is studying on Sunday. Well, you got to deal with it now because you'll hear the same argument everybody else was working on Sunday. And so you need to get ahead by using the Lord's Day for other things. And he says, why don't you trust me? It was the same in agricultural Israel. If we don't go out on this seventh day and harvest, we're going to lose a significant part of the harvest. Why don't you trust me? Why don't you exercise a little faith and see if I can't bless you in obeying me and not doing what a pagan might do if he was running the same show? At the creation, it says the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was created after God created man. And Jesus pointed to the Pharisees and said, you've gummed it all up. You've made it upside down. Man isn't made to fit into the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was created as a blessing for man. And Israel was later marked out from the pagan nations because they did observe the one day in seven principle. It was interesting at the pastor's fraternal when Pastor Jerry Slate spoke on the Lord's Day, how when the French Revolution hit in 1799, ten years after our American Revolution was over, the radicals in France, based upon their pagan philosophers, decided that we're going to have a revolution, but it's not going to be like the American Revolution. And one of the things we're going to do is, besides killing the nobles, is that we're going to outlaw the church. They took a prostitute and called her Lady Reason, and they took her to Notre Dame Cathedral, and they crowned her as the Queen of France. And we're going to go on a 10-day work cycle. Everything will be nice and even. Ten, a hundred, a thousand. None of this one-day-and-seven stuff that the rest of Christendom practices. It didn't last very long, and the very people who, at the first time, were tearing down the houses of the nobles and killing the nobles, He said, this is killing us. We just don't function on this one day in ten deal. I mean, how does it take you long to figure out? See, one day in seven is a better deal than one day in ten. So let's go back to the one day in seven principle because when most people didn't have machines and you had to physically do everything, having a day to rest from your labors feels really good. You know, we have people, I'm one of them, who goes out and sometimes walks long distances on the Lord's Day just to kind of keep me active and peppy. Well, that's not what most people in history have done, and is there a place I can crash? I want to rest from my labors, but a lot of people take naps because they're fried. Well, one day in seven is a better deal than one day in ten. The French Revolution failed at that point, and they had to go back to the Christian calendar. They had tried to outlaw the Christian calendar. Even as atheists and secularists today, we no longer have B.C. before Christ and Anno Domini in the year of our Lord. We have the Common Era and the before the Common Era. B.C.E. instead of before Christ, before the Common Era. And since Christ came, it's no longer called in the year of our Lord 2011. It's called Common Era C.E. 2011. Well, in the long run, it's not going to work because ultimately God's created time and he's created the markers. And as much as they want to blot out the work of Christ, they can't. But he has created this one day in seven principle that we rest from our labors and rest in what he has done. It's interesting, the book of Hebrews says that the Sabbath principle isn't finished, that it will not ultimately be fulfilled until we are finally resting in heaven. But we're to mark out this one day in seven principle and we're to mark it as Practice for heaven is what I like to think of it as. You know, if you think, well, I don't mind going to church, but the whole idea of giving the whole day to God really kind of just cramps my style. You probably won't like heaven either because it'll be 24 hour, seven days a week, 365 church. Not with someone boring like me preaching, but Christ will be there. And if you don't like hearing about Christ and talking about Christ and singing about Christ, for a couple hours, let alone a whole day, then you probably don't want to go to heaven. But then you have other real problems, don't you? Second is the annual celebration of deliverance from bondage, the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. God says, besides the weekly marker, I want you to have the annual marker of the fact that you were slaves in Egypt and I freed you from bondage. I brought you to myself. I've taken you. Out of the land of bondage, I'm taking you to the promised land. So every year they had a giant billboard to remind them of their salvation was due to someone else. Because the Passover was, God said, I want you to slay a lamb. I want you to take its blood. I want you to put it over the doorpost and the lentils. That's a two side post of the door. And when I send the death angel to kill all the firstborn in Egypt, when he sees the blood over the doorpost and the lentils of a particular home, He will pass over that home and he won't kill whatever firstborn are in that building. He says, I don't care if you're Gentile or Egyptian or rather Egyptian or Jew, if you don't have the blood of the sacrificial lamb guarding you, you will be taken out by the death angel. Well, something worse than the death angel is coming, it's death and judgment. And all those who are not in Christ, We'll find it an awful day, but those who have the blood of the sacrificial lamb, so to speak, smeared over the doors of their hearts will find that their judgments already been paid by Christ. We're released from the bondage of sin and the bondage of the devil by God providing his own Passover lamb, Jesus. Sinners today who die in Christ find a judgment day that God's wrath has passed over them because it's already been meted out on Christ. The blood of the lamb has spared them judgment again. A third annual festival they were to honor was the Feast of First Fruits. It's interesting how all of these point to Christ and the Christian life, and later several of them were celebrated in Christendom. By the way, Christ was crucified on Passover. Did you know that? That Christ was crucified on a Passover Friday. The annual celebration of first fruits marking the good things to come. What are first fruits? Well, not being agricultural people for the most part, some of you grown up on a farm might know this, but a field does not become ripe all at once. It's not like you go into the grocery store and go, look at all these things there, all these pre-packaged corn on the cob. Did you know that they were all out there in the fields pre-packaged and we just went out and picked them and we brought them in here to the store and they're ready to go? Well, even a whole field of corn doesn't come ripe at once because fields are not flat. There's always some undulation and the way the rays of the sun come on a field and the angle of the sun and the kind of soil it's in and all kinds of things determine that some part of the field will become ripe first. And there's actually a small, very small part is the very first part of the whole field that ripens. It's the first fruits. And so what you're to do is you're to take your first fruits and you're to take it into the priest. And barley was the first fruit that ripened in the fall. And they would take the first fruits of the barley and the priest would wave it before the Lord and thank him for giving them another faithful harvest. Now, as one man pointed out, God was gracious. He didn't even want a tenth of their barley. He just wanted the first fruits. And that was to be waved before the Lord in an acceptance because he has given us this great harvest. And these are representative first fruits. In First Corinthians 1520, the Apostle Paul says, Christ is the first fruits of all those whom God will raise from the dead. Christ was raised from the dead. If you're a believer in Christ, you'll be raised from the dead, too. You're part of the great harvest out here, which God is going to bring in. But the first fruits of this harvest, the very first one to be raised was Christ. And it's interesting, too, that as God had the priest wave part of the Barley, that one sheaf. He didn't wave a palm frond. He didn't wave something else. He waved a part of that which he was going to raise from the dead. And Christ, being a man like us, was harvested on Easter Sunday. And the festival took place on the first day of the week, our Sunday. And Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. All these things just tie in together. The fourth festival was the Pentecost, and they later called it in Greek, is the Feast of Weeks. Seven Sabbaths later in a day, Pentecost came, as they would call it. And this came after the Feast of First Fruits. And we have the barley harvest is in and now we brought in the wheat harvest soon afterwards. And they were to celebrate God's bounty and giving them a harvest and supplying all of their needs. God said, I will supply all of your needs according to my riches and glory in Christ Jesus. I will take care of my people. Seven weeks later, after Christ was raised from the dead, seven weeks in a day was Pentecost. And that's when the Holy Spirit was poured out. A provision greater than any other promise God could have given us, because the Holy Spirit will see to it that we make it to heaven. You've been given a provision that will inexorably see that you'll make it to heaven. I'm not just giving you a 20 year supply of food, a 20 year supply of water, a 20 year supply of oxygen. I put my Holy Spirit within you as the new cleansed temple. And he is the down payment or the earnest money he's called in another place. He will see to it that you make it to heaven. And that was poured out at Pentecost. The fifth celebration was the Feast of Trumpets. A great time of in-gathering. All the people of Israel were to gather for the Feast of Trumpets and they were to blow, the priests were to gather horns and have this giant display of trumpet playing. Not Louis Armstrong jazz trumpet for some of you. Oh, funky. No. A calling to attention, a calling to solemn assembly and the people were to gather. And it was the first day of their new year. Rosh Hashanah, as they say in the Hebrew, and sacrifices were made, prayers were offered, sins were confessed, and a new beginning was promised for the whole nation. The purpose of the blowing of the trumpets was to gather the people together for a solemn assembly to evaluate your lives, confess your sins, re-consecrate yourself afresh to the Lord for the new year ahead. Now, pagans today, how do they celebrate the new year? Well, they have a party. They watch a peach come up or go down. They watch a ball come up or go down. They get drunk. They engage in debauchery, partying, false expectations. That's not how God's people were to celebrate the coming of the new year in Israel. They were to mark it off as the time of let's evaluate our past year. Let's evaluate our lives. Look at God's grace to us. Let's confess our sins. Let's be cleansed afresh. We have expectations of better things in the year ahead. It's interesting that Paul says in the book of Thessalonians, second Thessalonians, and John says in the Revelation that part of being called to heaven at the second coming of Christ will be a mighty calling of the trumpets. And we shall be called to a solemn assembly to celebrate the finality of our salvation. It will not be to have a holy convocation in Israel, but to have a holy celebration that we've made it. Christ has come for us. The end of our journey is over. We made it. The sixth festival, I'm going to finish this, is the Day of Atonement, which I won't spend hardly any time on because we looked at Leviticus chapter 16 earlier. But it was the happiest day in the year because every sin was cleansed, every defilement, every stain, every bit of pollution of sin was dealt with on that day. And the entire nation and everyone in it was clean. And that was the Day of Atonement there to celebrate. And. As I said, this was on a pass, this was also on a Passover. And excuse me. Christ was crucified on their day of atonement, and it's interesting that we talk about Good Friday, we can say a better Sunday, but Christ took our guilt. And our shame and the condemnation He took it all upon himself. There's nothing at all that God is the least bit displeased with any of his people, because it's already been justly dealt with on Christ. And he gives you Christ's righteousness. So when he sees us running around, he sees those clothed in the righteousness of Christ doing his bidding. Finally, the last feast, the last festival is the Feast of Booths, or as I tried to say, tents or canopies, symbolizing all those years of wandering in the wilderness. How did they make it? How do you have Two to three million people wandering around the desert of Sinai. No water, no stores, no motels, no anything. How do they make it? God provided the water, God provided the food. Again, two to three million people. That's like moving a city out and making it wander. They're going to starve to death. They're going to become, you know, they're going to faint for lack of water. They'll be dehydrated. No, they won't. I'll provide water. I'll provide food. I'll provide shade. I'll provide everything they need and they will make it. And he said, you're to celebrate this because you are going to get to the promised land. And when you get there, celebrate this feast of booths or of tents or canopies to be reminded, hey, at one time it was really tough and the Lord helped us and the Lord got us here. And he'll lead you to the promised land and you can enjoy him forever. And that begs the question, can God forget a promise he makes to you? No, we forget. We tell people we'll do things and I had a phone call last week. from a fellow we agreed to talk on the phone. And I was counseling somebody on the phone and I saw this phone number and I said, I wonder what he wants. I didn't think of it. I did an appointment actually. And I got home and Cindy said, did so-and-so call you? Yes, was that who that was? I called him back and apologized. We had a later appointment. Well, we can forget. We can be well-intentioned but forget. Can God ever forget a promise he's made to you? Well, he can no more forget a promise made to you than he can forget his own character. It says in Hebrews chapter six, God promised to do things for us. And he made the promises to his saints, particularly Abraham in the Old Testament. And he says to doubly encourage you to say that there's two things to encourage you. Not only do I promise, I solemnly swear. And because I can swear by nothing higher than myself, I swear by myself. May I cease to be God if I don't come through for you. And so the author of Hebrews says by two inviolate things. the sovereign promise of God, the sovereign swearing of God, these things will come true. And his promises are yea and amen in Christ Jesus. And he who began the good work in you shall continue to perform it until the day of Christ. It was at the Feast of Booths in John, chapter seven, when Jesus stood up and said, is anybody out there thirsty? Well, yeah, this is Palestine. There's no water fountains, there's no Dasani water outlets around here. We're all a little bit thirsty all the time. If any of you are thirsty, let them come to me and drink. And out of your inmost being shall flow rivers of living water. Not a thimble, not a teacup, not a bucket, but rivers of living water. So shall I refresh you, so shall I make you an overflowing person. And this was to happen at the Feast of Booths later. There's a picture of Christ who would supply all of your needs. The better that you have the Holy Spirit, that you have a year's supply of food, a year's supply of water, a year's supply of oxygen. If you have the Holy Spirit, you'll make it through everything. You'll make it to heaven. God saved us to be his unique people. He wants us to be holy leaders and he wants us to engage in holy worship only through Christ and observe a holy calendar and have markers in the year that remind us of what Christ has done and what God has promised he will do. He's cleansed us from all of our sins. He says, I promise you'll make it to heaven. You're engraved in the palms of his hands, it says in Isaiah. I don't think he's going to forget you. God sworn by himself that he will fulfill his promises. I don't think he's going to forget you. You will make it. We are a blessed people. Let's pray.