Deuteronomy 16:9-17

“9 Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. 10 Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. 11 And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you. 12 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees. 13 Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. 14 Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. 15 For seven days celebrate the festival 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 Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles. No one 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.”

Last time we saw that a life of celebration involved giving back to God a portion of His provision to us. Not only does celebration involve giving but second we see that it also involves:

• Rejoicing

Verse eleven says: “And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you.” Rejoicing wasn’t something that was reserved for a select few, it included everyone, from the leaders to the last. According to this verse the focus of our rejoicing should be God the Father. We need to remember that our reason for rejoicing is found in our Redeemer not in our current circumstances. Today many of us are allowing our rejoicing to revolve around results and how well we think things are going instead of on how great a God we serve. Rejoicing is not about the results it’s about the Redeemer. When we tie our celebrating to our current circumstances we limit our celebration to only those moments in life where we think things are going good. We end up waiting to worship until things get better and wasting our opportunities to worship. Instead of living a life of consistent celebration we settle for a sporadic one. In truth we end up celebrating our circumstances instead of our creator. Have you fallen into the trap of worshipping the wins instead of the One who is worthy of your worship? To rejoice means to take delight in something or someone, what are you finding your delight in? Are you daily delighting in God? In Philippians 4:4 Paul reminds us, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice” Paul not only calls us to rejoice always but right away he reminds us a second time to rejoice. Remember Paul was in prison when he wrote Philippians, he practiced what he preached. Paul chose to rejoice regardless of his predicament because he was looking to God to lead and provide. You can cry over a half filled cup or celebrate by thanking God that you have some water to drink. It’s a choice, you see no matter the situation we all have a choice to rejoice. You can look for thorns among the roses or be thankful that among the thorns there are beautiful roses. In Habakkuk 3:17-19 the prophet declared: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” The words “I will” reveal Habakkuk’s belief that he could choose his response, either to sink into deep despair or to rejoice in God’s presence and power.  His decision to rejoice was not a denial of the problems, but a choice to praise in the midst of the problems. We will all have times of sorrow and grief, even Jesus wept (John 11:35), but sorrow doesn’t have to have the final say. Don’t let the problems and the pain rob you of rejoicing. The choice to rejoice is available to us every day and to refuse to choose is itself a choice. Are you waiting to worship? Who or what are you really worshipping? Do you need to stop and redirect your rejoicing? Not only does celebration involve rejoicing but it also involves:

• Remembering

Its hard to rejoice where you are unless you remember where you were. If God had not rescued us, we would still be slaves to sin. What about you, has God rescued and redeemed you? We are just like the people of Israel who so quickly forgot what God had done for them. But when we remember we recall His goodness and grace. Today we are called to come to the table and remember how on the cross of Calvary Jesus crushed sin. Without the Savior we would still be slaves, but because of his sacrifice we are saved. Because of Gods mighty hand His people were freed from Egypt, where they had spent their time trying to please the task masters, laboring for that which they did not own. Now because of God’s goodness they had land and crops to give back to God, before they had nothing to give, they were salves and you can’t give away what’s not yours. When we remember where we were and where we are now we are reminded not only of how much we need Him but of how much we have to thank Him for. God’s call is for us to come and celebrate, to remember what He has done and rejoice in who He is. Because of the Lord we get to live it up. If there is one group of people on this planet that should be caught up in a perpetual party shouldn’t it be the people of God? Why are we so sour and sullen, after all we are the ones who are saved and secure.  Yet many of us live lives of constant complaining instead of celebration, we act like we are ruined instead of redeemed. Today will you chose to celebrate? Are you going to remember and rejoice, what are you going to give back to God?

Deuteronomy 16:9-17

“9 Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. 10 Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the Lord your God has given you. 11 And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you. 12 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees. 13 Celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. 14 Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. 15 For seven days celebrate the festival 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 Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Tabernacles. No one 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.”

In Deuteronomy 16 we see Gods call to come and celebrate. It is interesting to note that God had to tell His people to celebrate, it’s not our natural default. Many of us get caught up in complaining instead of choosing to celebrate. The first celebration that is mentioned came at harvest time but their thanksgiving wasn’t just tied to the harvest but to the One who made the harvest possible.  After a summer’s worth of work and waiting the time had come to gather the harvest in. This was a time to celebration the bounty and the blessings of God. The credit belongs to the creator not the creation, for without His help there would be no harvest. Out tendency is to take the credit for self since we are the ones doing the work, we do the hard work of tilling the ground and clearing the weeds but then why are there weeds? Because of man’s sin, we want recognition for the weeding but do we take responsibility for the disobedience and sin? We may be the ones who plant the seed but He is the One who created it. Its easy to claim the credit but when we do we end up worshipping self. This was not just a onetime celebration but a series of three feasts. Our culture has more in common with once a year annual celebrations, like our Independence Day, or our birthday. We tend to gear up to celebrate for one day and then abruptly stop, we are not used to a lifestyle of celebration. So why the call for continual celebration? First it reminds us of the size of our God, God is so big that you can’t just celebrate what He did once a year. His works and His wonders will never fit into one celebration. Who or what are you celebrating and how often, are you living a life of celebration? Our tendency is to blame God for the bad and boast about the good. Does your celebrating involve giving the credit to Christ or claiming it for yourself?  Second we are a people that easily forget and without a regular reminder we would not remember and rejoice. Now this was not just a call to celebrate but a command, verse 16 said that they MUST appear, today we have allowed celebration to be an optional part of life but it’s really obligatory. As Christians how much of our lives do we spend complaining and how much celebrating? In reality we have lots to celebrate and little to complain about, yet we often get them reversed. We have a big God but so often we give priority to our problems instead of praise to our provider. We need a proper perspective when it comes to praise and taking time to celebrate has a way of calibrating our hearts. Scripture tells us that heaven regularly rejoices, in Luke 15 we find three story that remind us to rejoice. It is here that we learn about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son who were all found. The result was rejoicing, so let me ask you how much of your life revolves around rejoicing? How often do you call your family to come together and celebrate? The first thing we need to know is what does celebrating God look like? First God’s call to celebrate involves:

• Giving

The call to celebrate involves an invitation to give back to God. We celebrate by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessing the LORD has given. It’s not based on what others are doing but what God has done for you. Many of us have convinced ourselves that we can’t afford to give because from our perspective we really don’t have much but have we ever stopped to count our blessings? More often than not it’s not from a lack of blessing but from a lack of counting our blessings. As the old hymn says, “Count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.” This is a gift of the heart not the head, based on blessing not obligation. Do you have a giving heart or a grumbling one? Our rejoicing is a recognition that it is God who has blessing us. A heart that holds back is basically saying that God does not bless. But when we rejoice we reveal the heart of God the one whose first act after creating us was to bless us, Genesis1:27-28, “So God created human beings[a] in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them” One of our greatest enemies to gratefulness is entitlement. Entitlement breeds an expectancy of rights without responsibility. Let’s get one thing clear God doesn’t owe you a thing but He has given you everything. Celebrating is about count your blessings not your burdens. So many of us are tempted to withhold our praise because we have based our giving on the bounty of the harvest instead of on the heart of the Giver, God. Are you withholding, or complain, have you stopped giving because of this and that, look the word of God says GIVE because of God. Its not about the amount it’s about the Almighty, 2 Corinthians 9:7 says that we “should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” So many of us give reluctantly because we have rationalized our rejoicing, it’s a decision of the heart not the head. When we refuse to give back to God we refute the message of Bible, that God is a God of blessing. Not only is our gratitude of giving back to God being destroyed by the enemy of entitlement, but it is being murdered by materialism. Today serving is being suffocated by stuff. We have become a people of plenty, whose needs are more than gratified, notice I said needs not wants. Think back with me to last Christmas and those you sought to buy gifts for. Your biggest problem was probably not so much figuring out where to get the money to buy the presents but what to buy for people who have everything. In truth the answer to that problem should have been self-evident. What do you buy for those who have everything? NOTHING, but how many of us had the guts to do that? Most of us just wondered up and down aisles searching and hoping that somebody somewhere had invented something new that nobody needed so we could buy it for people who have everything. This is not an absurd description of a reasonable world, it is a rational description of an absurd world. In a world mesmerized by materialism stuff has become what we serve and celebrate. We wait anxiously for the next new phone, tablet or piece of technology, we celebrate its launch, even being willing to line up for hours to get our hands on it. Yet we are unwilling to listen to God’s Word for even an hour. In our technological trend God and his blessings have become an antiquated idea that seems to belong to another time. But when we give back to God a portion of what He has blessed us with we are witnessing to the World who we really worship. Are you living a life of celebration, how much of a giver are you. Do you spend more time giving or grabbing? What if today you would count your blessings and then choose to be a blessing?