So turn once again, please, to Leviticus chapter 23. Leviticus 23. And as always, as we're approaching the end of a book, and we're not terribly far away from the end of Leviticus, I appreciate your input on where to go. I've received several suggestions. some in my mailbox tonight and I appreciate them very much. So I will take all of that under consideration. Leviticus chapter 23, let's just go ahead and pray and then we will turn our attention to the chapter. Father, we pray your blessing upon our time together. We are new covenant people, obviously, and we rejoice that we live in the reign of grace. And yet we are built upon and need a great appreciation for the law of Moses. And thank you for those saints who served you faithfully in that time. Minister your word to us that it would be precious to us this evening. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, this, of course, is our second week in Leviticus 23. Leviticus deals with the feast days, the major feasts of the Jewish people. And last week we worked our way down through chapter or through verse number 22. And we made that the cutoff point because 1 through 22 would be what we would call the spring feasts. They begin in the middle of April with Passover. And then 50 days after that, so sometime late May, the very early part of June, would be Pentecost. And that would conclude kind of the first half of the year festivals. And then the Lord turns his attention, and we will, in a moment, turn our attention to the fall festivals. Several of these, and I'm just going to read from Exodus 23 for a moment, Out of these festivals, the Jews are commanded to collectively appear before the Lord three times. Exodus 23, 14, three times shalt thou keep a feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread. Thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days as I commanded thee in the time appointed of the month of Abib. For in it thou camest out from Egypt and none shall appear before me empty. and the feast of harvest, the first fruits of thy labors, which thou hast sown in the field, and the feast of ingathering, which is known also as booths or tabernacle, which is in the end of the year when thou hast gathered in thy labors out of the field, three times in the year, all thy males shall appear before the Lord God. And so, and obviously, and it's not accidental, It is not designed to inconvenience people for the sake of inconveniencing them, but to remind them that God is their priority. In an agricultural world, spring and fall are very busy times. And so no doubt there was always some temptation on the part of somebody to calculate a reason why they couldn't observe these feasts. That's not our concern this evening. We'll turn our attention then to Leviticus chapter 23, beginning with verses 23. And the first of the fall festivals is trumpets. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto the children of Israel, saying, in the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and holy convocation. You shall do no servile work therein, but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. So the concept of Sabbath here, right, you shall have a Sabbath. The idea there, the way the word is constructed, means a sabbatical observance, right? And of course Sabbath means literally the number seven, and it also refers to a resting place or a time or period rest. And this is to be a memorial to them. It is a time of remembrance. That is the purpose of the sabbatical. It is not really downtime. It is not really vacation time. It is not really take care of yourself time. It is a memorial time. It is something to remember. And it is, of course, a holy convocation, a sacred assembly. And the trumpets, within the framework of Old Testament people, the trumpets had two primary purposes. They would either call the people just to assemble, right? God is calling us to assemble. Or they would be calling the people to war. So trumpets was always something that was used when it was used publicly like that to gather the people. And so this is why we think this is the very beginning, because the fall festivals all kind of scrunched together, that's probably a terrible way to put it, but they all occur within a relatively narrow window of time. They are not spread out unlike the spring festivals where you have 50 days until Pentecost. And so trumpets is the call, the gathering, the summons, and then there are other festivals that come in conjunction with it. Nothing specific is said other than this, no servile work is to be done. And servile has reference, it actually can have reference to slave labor. You may have a note, depending upon what kind of study Bible you have, hard labor. So these were not work days. They were not days for people to do their work. It was time to stop. It was time to remember. The Lord had called, the Lord had gathered his people, and they were to make their offerings by fire. So it was a time of offering. So that's kind of how it is presented in the book of Leviticus. Again, I would just remind us, Leviticus 23 is not presented much in the perspective of a lot of details about what sacrifices and how and when, like the first seven chapters are, but more as a manual of these are the things that need to happen. And you can look elsewhere for specific details about the types of offerings. Within the New Testament, and in some of these feasts, I'm going to kind of blend both the New Testament in a kind of a modern dimension to them. This is actually what the Jews call Rosh Hashanah. That's where the Feast of Trumpets would fit. Then Rosh Hashanah, if we were Hebrew speakers, would translate into something like the head of the year, or the beginning of the year, the first of the year, in the Jewish calendar. And we kind of talked about this, that unlike us, who are tied into January 1st as the beginning of the year, no matter what, the Jews recognized the beginning of the year in a variety of ways. So we're not, right? because God says of Pentecost, or not of Pentecost, of Passover, this will be the beginning of months to you. And then this is the head of the years, the beginning of the season. There is no correlating, and of course with most of these, there's no correlating feast. I don't know how much I want to get into this. But it's maybe worthy of a note. Because, you know, we are Baptists, and that is our heritage, and that's great. I mean, I'm happy to be a Baptist, have got saved through a Baptist church, and I'm a Baptist by choice and conviction. But it's kind of easy when your entire world is the Baptist world, to orient everything else that goes on in Christianity as either supportive of or in opposition to your Baptist heritage. And I'm specifically thinking about the broader contemporary church movement, which we would, of course, have our views on and opinions on. But many of the things that really are part and parcel of the contemporary movement are not really issues to us at all because we never did them. One of the first things to take over the contemporary church movement, that the contemporary church movement went after, was things like religious calendars and religious languages. Not languages, but religious definitions. So for us, this is an auditorium. That's pretty much all it's ever been. Some people occasionally call it a sanctuary. But we talk about a foyer. We don't use language like knave and narthex. We don't speak like that. We're not tied to the religious calendars like some people are. Pentecost and, you know, I'll have conversations with people. What do you do? I'm a pastor. Oh, Easter must be a busy time for you. I have tried to explain that Easter is not a busy time to me a hundred times. I give up. I just give up. People who are entrenched in thinking about the religious calendar just don't quite understand our calendar or the way that we do things. So all of that to say, we don't have a specific feast and there's no part of even the Protestant calendar where in like Passover or Pentecost or Good Friday, we talked about that, where trumpets is tied specifically to anything Apart from this, even in the New Testament, trumpet language is the language of gathering God's people. For instance, Matthew 24, 31, Jesus says of God, He shall send His angels with great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. Or 1 Corinthians 15, 52, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." So we don't carry over the trumpet feast, but the trumpet usage comes over clearly into the New Testament. And Revelation 1, 10, 4, 1, 8, 13, and 9, 14 both describe the voice of God as being trumpet-like and as an announcement from Him. there is the Feast of Trumpets. That brings us down to verse number 26. And the next fall festival is verses 26 through 32. And the Lord spake unto Moses saying, also on the tenth day of this seventh month. Right? So in the first day of the month, we have a Sabbath, the trumpets. On the tenth day of the month, it shall be a day of atonement. It shall be in holy convocation unto you. And ye shall afflict your souls, and ye offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. And ye shall do no work in that same day, for it is a day of atonement to make an atonement for you before the Lord, before the Lord your God. For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people. And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be unto you a Sabbath of rest, and you shall afflict your souls. In the ninth day of the month, at even, from even unto even, shall you celebrate your Sabbath. So this is atonement, and this is the second mention of atonement. It is given the entirety of Leviticus chapter number 16. It is on the 10th day of the seventh month and all of the particular details about the practice of it, the scapegoat and the offerings that are made on that day, again, are discussed in that chapter. It is, again, a holy convocation. It is to be a sacred assembly. And this is the only one of the festivals in which the Israelites are commanded to afflict their soul. It is only here, and it is, oh I'm sorry, it is only this event, because you find the same instruction in Leviticus chapter 16. You will afflict your soul. It means to put down low, or to humble, or to make stoop. And to the Hebrew mind, the soul was what you were. Right? We've done this and I just have come across some really good information by a guy that I respect who has written several articles on body, soul, and spirit. But God breathed into Adam the breath of life and he became a living soul. So soul is the whole man, and I guess all I'm trying to say is that the affliction of the soul is not some attempt to get at any one specific part of you, but again, it is just like saying you. You, whoever you are in your entirety. Part of the challenge in that is that we do not know exactly what it requires to afflict your soul. How do I know if I have done that? And one helpful reference is Psalm 35, 13. If you want to take a minute and look at it, I will read it to you. But because here we have a specific, in Psalm 35, 13, we have a specific activity associated with the affliction of the soul. But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth. I humbled, and that is the word afflicted. I humbled my soul with fasting, and my prayer returned into my own bosom." So part of that is, right, part of the affliction, it appears, is some form of self-denial, right? I mean, you know, we could say, and probably rightly so, that it is to be as best as possible an intellectual and spiritual humbling, a lowering, but when you include fasting it is reaching the whole man, the entire person of who they are. And obviously this is very serious because if a person doesn't do this, God says, right, if you don't afflict your soul and then if you do work, one of the two, either one of the two is adequate to have you cut off from the people, which we've talked about this periodically, implies more than just simple excommunication, but the very risk of death. And this is another one of those perpetual statutes. It exists in perpetuity. At last I would understand these perpetual statutes to last as long as the law of Moses does. When Jesus comes to fulfill the law and the law has gone away, the perpetuity of these commandments and statutes is as gone as are the other observations of the law. And it begins on the evening of the ninth day and it lasts for 24 hours. It goes into the tenth day. And of course, again, within the Jewish framework, really within the biblical framework, the evening and the morning constitute a day. That's the way God describes creation. The evening and the morning were the first day. And so the Jewish calendar to this day, if you were to go to Israel, the Sabbath begins on Friday at about 4 p.m. And then it goes until about 4 p.m. on Saturday. And that's just the way that they orient themselves and always have. Once again, with reference to New Testament considerations, we don't have a corresponding feast for this. Right? We observe the one time and one time only crucifixion of Christ, Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10, goes to great lengths to make that very clear, that we don't need the work of the earthly priest who regularly, systematically first made atonement for his own sin and then for the sins of the people. We don't need that. So we don't have that kind of a day. However, We do have a very, what is probably the most sober of activities, and that is the Lord's Table, which is our memory of the crucifixion. When we observe the Lord's Table, we always do it together as a church, right? It's not an individual practice, so it has that dimension to it. It is a community activity. And it is to be done very respectfully because we are memorializing the death of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So on the other hand, not on the other hand, but to go back to the New Testament dimension or modern dimension, the Day of Atonement is to what the Jews now call Yom Kippur. So they have Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur. That brings us to verse number 33 of Leviticus chapter 23, the third of the fall festivals. And this is tabernacles or booths. And the Lord spake unto Moses saying, speak unto the children of Israel saying the 15th day of the seventh month. So we've had the first day and the 10th day and now the 15th day of the same month, the feast of the tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord. On the first day shall be an holy convocation, ye shall do no servile work therein. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. On the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you, and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. It is a solemn assembly, and ye shall do no servile work therein. These are the feasts of the Lord which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering, and a meat offering, a sacrifice, and a drink offering, everything upon his day, beside the Sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and beside all your vows, beside all your freewill offerings, would ye give unto the Lord. Also in the 15th day of the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land, ye shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days, On the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath, and ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. And ye shall keep at a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. Ye shall celebrate it in the seventh month. Ye shall dwell in booths seven days, All that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. And Moses declared unto the children of Israel the feasts of the Lord. So this is the last of the feasts. It is sometimes called tabernacles. It is sometimes called booths. It is sometimes referred to as ingathering. It goes by a variety of names. It occurs on the 15th day of the seventh month, and it lasts for seven days. The first day is the Holy Assembly, and no servile work or heavy, hard labor may be done. And then for seven days, there are offerings made, and then on the eighth day, there is another assembly. And then there is, in this section, and I'm not even gonna begin to probe The reasoning why it is there, the speculation is endless, but nobody knows. There is an interjection, verses 37 and 38, that functions as a summary to the entire passage. And then the Lord returns to the free feast of Booth with further explanation, verses 39 through 43. What the Bible calls a booth, we would probably more commonly think of as a tent. And it is a reference back to the 38 and a half years when Israel dwelt in the wilderness, when they lived in tents as tent dwellers. And so, right? I mean, seriously, folks, right? I have made jokes about camping trips. But imagine if a camping trip was mandated for all of us from the mouth of the Lord. If once a year in observation of the wilderness wanderings, we left our home, we left our heat, we left our air conditioning, we left our electricity, we left our internet, and we went out and lived in a tent for a week. I'm just going out on a limb here and guessing that there would be a fair amount of grumbling that it would not always be met with glad shouts of joy. But this is the command and the instruction of the Lord. And it was designed to be a memorial. We ask sometimes, what is the point of some of these things? It is to be a memorial. And by the way, folks, the book of Zechariah, and I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, I'm pretty sure it's Zechariah. I don't think it's Isaiah. It might be the end of Isaiah, but I'm pretty sure it's the end of Zechariah. makes mention of the fact that the feast of tabernacles will be observed during the millennial kingdom. And that poses a few challenges to the traditional dispensational view, admittedly. But God addresses it, and he talks about other nations that will suffer if they do not come up. for the Feast of Tabernacles, and so that is one of the things at least that will be re-implemented, and I don't want to get into eschatology. I have my own... I want to be careful how I put that. The Lord is going to do what the Lord is going to do. I have tried to sort through that to come to an understanding that seems plausible to me, and the Lord may find it absolutely laughable. From a New Testament consideration, again, we do not have a correlating feast or day on our religious calendar to observe this. However, we are commanded to remember, we are commanded to have God in mind and to not forget always our own history of both God's deliverance and the bounty that he provides. And we are supposed to be grateful for that. And just John chapter 7, by the way, and you can turn to that if you want, I'm just about finished, but John chapter 7 occurs during the Feast of the Tabernacles. John chapter 7 occurs during the Feast of the Tabernacles. John chapter 7 verse 37, in the last day, That great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth of me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spake of the spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. For the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." And so this is where Jesus is in John chapter 7, at the Feast of the Tabernacles, so again, It has no commanded church orientation, but it is a part of our religious heritage and part of our biblical history. So, right, verses 37 and 38 are kind of summary, again, summary statements for the Jews about this. God instituted a variety of sacred assemblies that he expected his people to honor, that he expected them to show up for. He used the agricultural world, they're all tied to some kind of agricultural event, or most of them are, and they rely upon agricultural things, animal sacrifices, food offerings, to remind people both of his redemption and his provision. This is what they're, they're either celebrating his redemption, Passover and Atonement, or they're celebrating his provision, tabernacles and Pentecost, those kinds of things. And they were designed for the benefit and the betterment of the nation of Israel, not as obstacles to their joy. Okay, I'm going to stop there. If you want to take your prayer bulletin out.