Blessings of the feasts
Apr 4
The Three Annual Festivals
14 “Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
15 “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
16 “Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field.
“Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.17 “Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD.
19 “Bring the best of the first fruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
God’s Angel to Prepare the Way
20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. 24 Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to pieces. 25 Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, 26 and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.
27 “I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. 28 I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. 29 But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. 30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.
31 “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you. 32 Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. 33 Do not let them live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you.”
This morning I woke up and went and watched some of the preaching programs that I had taped from television in the last week. There were one or two things which really touched me and one of them was from a program by Paula White and she was discussing the blessings of the feasts.
And so this morning I went and read the passage in Exodus chapter 23 from first 20 speaks about the keeping of the three feasts. There are seven blessings which flowed from these feasts. One of the first things that I noticed was that most of the blessings on linked to conditions and things which we have to do first in order for the blessings flow. This is the established pattern and the way in which God works. Guard tells us that if we do something then his blessings will be as follows and he goes on to explain what those blessings are.
The first blessing that we read off speaks of our sending an angel ahead of us to guide us and to bring us to the place which he has prepared for us. However, the first goes on to say that we must listen to this angel in order for God to do the next thing for us which is to make our enemies his enemies. If we listen to this angel, which is really just speaking about the voice of God, then we will have the blessings which had been promised.
A little bit further on, we read that if we worship him God’s blessings will be on our food and water. Once more the blessings are conditional on us worship the Lord. If we understand the principles of God’s Word, then we will realise that when we do what God says we should do, he will be faithful to bring those blessings into life.
As I turned on the news a little while later, I saw that one of the great leaders of our country was murdered last night. The potential for retaliation is very real. We need to pray for our country that peace will prevail and if ever there was a time to listen to the word of God it is now. We need to pray that sanity will prevail and that people will not take the law into their own hands.