Deuteronomy 16:13-17
13 Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. 14 Be joyful at your Feast--you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. 15 For seven days celebrate the Feast to the LORD your God at the place the LORD will choose. For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete. 16 Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles. No man should appear before the LORD empty-handed: 17 Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way the LORD your God has blessed you.
God is the Lord of the love who has given the grace to all of us. He is the Lord of everything, all creation, and manages it all as his pleasure. Therefore, something can disappear if it is God's will, and every living being is under God's absolute authority.
The difference between living beings and human beings is that living beings have a one time existence and will be disappeared some day but human beings are having souls and will be judged as to whether we have lived righteously and given thanks to God for receiving the grace or not. Likewise, human beings seem to live by our own will, but actually we are living in God's law, grace and love. The law given to us by God is His will and expression who wants to keep us from depravity. Therefore, whoever denies God's love or law, will not be able to avoid depravity (Hebrews 2:1-4). This is the work of the devil which is against God and makes God's law of grace corrupted (1 Timothy 4:1-2).
There were not only Jewish soldiers, teachers, elders, priests and Pharisees who crucified Jesus on the cross. It is whoever receives God's grace but does not give thanks to Him. The Lord has served us by blood on the cross, gifts, the Holy Spirit, good words and power. By all of those things he has given, we have been forgiven and raised from death and hell.
God loves us so He made annual feasts for us to keep. This is chance of love for us who may forget His grace and are about to be corrupted. The reason that God ordered the Israelites to keep the Feast of the Harvest is that He wants people to remember the time of being slaves in Egypt and to give thanks to God for freedom from Pharaoh's oppression (Deuteronomy 16:10-12).
However, the grace we are receiving from God is a lot bigger than the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gaining the land of Canaan. It is because God has sent us Jesus Christ, saved us from curse, sin, death and hell, gave eternal heaven as our inheritance and made us to be children of God by giving us His name. The Israelites gave thanks to God for their freedom from Egypt, for giving the law and the land of Canaan and for making them to harvest and they kept the Feast of the Harvest and gave offering for thanksgiving as much as they could (Deuteronomy 16:16-17).
Offering for thanksgiving is just God's order. God has never met us empty handed. God made His son to be torn on the cross and to die instead of us. In this way, God has completed the name of Jesus and He has met us with His blood. God has loved us with all His heart..
The Son, Jesus Christ, also cried out in Gethsemane for a serious matter, the cross. My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will (Matthew 26:39). Although He cried out and prayed, the Father said nothing. The Father wished to meet you and me by blood which He made the Son to die and shed. So the feast for thanksgiving is filled with personal interest from God to human beings and our interest is toward God.
God has promised that whoever keeps the feasts which God will receive will extend their territory which nobody can take. As the Israelites gave thanks to God and every feast and struggled to have the best interest from God, let's be the one whom God is interested in at the Feast of the Harvest. So we can extend our territory and make our family to see the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And let's boast that we are in the love and grace of God.
2013.6.30
