After God led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he commanded them to hold feasts throughout the year that would celebrate his goodness and provision. Some Israelites began to celebrate these feasts the same way we celebrate Memorial Day and Labor Day: a good excuse to go outside and grill up some meat, and not much more.
But God had something much deeper in mind when he commanded them to party. He wanted his people to establish a lifestyle of celebration, praise, and worship. And when he initiated these feasts, he gave us some clues as to what a lifestyle of celebration looks like.
1. It’s continual.
God said, “Three times in the year they shall keep a feast to me.” (Ex 23:14). Which means once the Israelites got to the promised land, they would have to walk to Jerusalem three times a year for all these celebrations. Depending on where they lived in Israel, that could be 150 miles each way! Which means it could be two weeks to get there, and two weeks to get back.
Many Israelites were celebrating God’s goodness 3 whole months out of the year. Which tells us that celebration is something that’s ongoing and continual. The Israelites went to these feasts whether times were good or bad. Whether their farms had a record year and they were swimming in wheat, or they were barely scraping by. They always celebrated.
Don’t just celebrate God’s goodness when times are good. God is always good, whether you can see it or not.
2. It’s life-changing.
“You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened” (Ex 23:18). Leavening and yeast were biblical symbols of evil (yeast spreads quickly and influences everything it touches). God didn’t want his people to come to these feasts, and worship and praise and celebrate, and then go right back to the same old life of sin they always lived.
If you’re going to enjoy God’s love and grace, then you need to allow his love and grace to change you! Don’t go to church and sing a few songs, and go right back to the life you’ve always lived. Let God transform you.
3. It’s wasteful.
God said, “Do not let the fat of my feast remain until the morning” (Ex 23:18). When you made a sacrifice to God and put a cow on the altar, there might be some fat left over that didn’t get burned. In our culture, we usually try to avoid fat, but in those days the fat was the best part of the animal. So the Israelites would have been tempted to go back the next morning, and have some fat for breakfast (mmmm! bacon!)
But God said, “No, it all goes to me! You need to burn it all up.” And all of the cheap people like me would be thinking, “But … but … that’s just so … wasteful! … That meat could feed a lot of people!” We want to make sure everything goes to some practical purpose.
We’re like Judas. Remember what he did when Mary poured out a whole jar of perfume on Jesus’ feet? Judas was offended! “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” He didn’t read Exodus 23.
God makes it clear that when we celebrate him and his goodness, sometimes it’s going to feel like a waste. A waste of time. A waste of energy. A waste of money and resources. But God’s worth it.
4. It’s wholehearted.
“The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.” (Ex. 23:19). When you celebrate God, it can’t just be leftovers of your time and energy and emotion. He wants the best of your firstfruits. So don’t work out in your yard all weekend, then straggle into church all exhausted. Don’t stay out late on Saturday night, and come to church with your eyes barely open. Come give your best.
And then the rest of the week, keep giving him your best in everything. In Romans 12 Paul says, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Celebrate God’s goodness by giving him your whole life as a living sacrifice. Your first and your best.
5. It’s countercultural
A lifestyle of celebration is going to look different from the way the rest of the world operates. That’s what God implies in Ex. 23:19: “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
In the context of this passage, this verse has nothing to do with what you eat, or how you cook. It has to do with the way you worship. Because this is exactly what many cultures in the ancient world did as part of their worship ceremonies. It was part of a fertility ritual. Many of the cultures surrounding Israel worshiped a god who was represented by a goat, and they believed that this god would give them a baby if they boiled a goat in its mothers milk.
The world believes you can get things for yourself if you do things for yourself. Today, if you want a baby, you don’t boil a goat in milk anymore, you just go to a fertility specialist and start taking certain drugs and doing certain procedures. My wife and I went down that road 15 years ago. There is nothing wrong with (most) medical procedures, but there were some questions we had to start wrestling through: “Who do we really trust? God, or the doctors? What do we pursue first? Procedures, or prayer?” When we were honest with ourselves, we didn’t like the answers we had to give to those questions.
There are many times in life when we’re tempted to take things into our own hands. When something goes wrong at work, is your first response to pray, or is it to fire off a bunch of emails? When you’re stressed out, is your first response to pray, or is it to plan a vacation that will take you away from that stress? There’s nothing wrong with emails or vacations. What’s wrong is when we go there first, rather than going to God.
When you live a lifestyle of celebration, you’re going to be fully aware of all that God’s given you. As a result, you’ll be driven to depend on God to provide everything you need. That’s what all this celebrating leads to: greater faith and dependence.
The more you celebrate, the more holy you become. What a great reason to party.