What do you celebrate?

When was the last time you celebrated? I mean really celebrated. As a western culture we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, significant accomplishments and the list can go on.

As I write I can’t help but here the tune in my head by Kool and the Gang “Celebrate good times, Come on!”

When was the last time you celebrated as an act of worship to God?

I have been contemplating this very question because of a verse I read in Nehemiah,

The whole community that had returned from exile made booths and lived in them. They had not celebrated like this from the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day. And there was tremendous joy. (Neh. 8:17)

The people of Israel have finished rebuilding the wall, Ezra has just finished the public reading of the law and now they are celebrating the Festival of booths also known as the  Feast of Tabernacles.

What I find interesting is, Nehemiah says, they have not celebrated like this since the days of Joshua. What is Nehemiah referring to?

We know from Scripture this feast was observed between the time of Joshua and Nehemiah (1 Kings 8:6; 1 Kings 8:65; Ezra 3:4). So what could Nehemiah mean here, could he possibly be referring to the joy expressed, that is a possibility, but I think there is something more here. Derek Kidner points out,

Not that the festival itself had fallen out of use ‘from the days of Jeshua’ (17)—see e.g. Ezra 3:4—but rather, that its camping-out element had meanwhile lapsed or been reduced to a mere token. The feast had two sides to it: it was a vintage festival, the ‘ingathering at the year’s end’ (Exod. 34:22), but also a memorial of the wilderness, when God had ‘made the people of Israel dwell in booths’ (Lev. 23:43). It seems to have been this aspect that had fallen into neglect. Custom, as happens so often in religious history, had overlaid and modified ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’, so that the freshly studied Scripture, like a cleaned painting, now revealed some long-forgotten colours.

What we see is overtime certain aspects of the festival were being neglected by the nation of Israel, which ended up modifying the festival over time. Another aspect we see is the attitude of the heart in which the festival is observed, it became just another thing we do.

How does this speak to us today? Let me point out two ways?

When Celebration Becomes A Cultural Custom

In the early church we see the gradual change of worship from Saturday to Sunday, why? The Resurrection of Jesus. The reason we gather for worship on Sunday’s is to celebrate Jesus rising from the dead and sealing our salvation forever.

Too often as I reflect on my Sunday morning experience it can sometimes feel ritualistic, routine and a task to check off.

As believers we must push back the tendency that Sunday morning church attendance is just another cultural check mark. We must engage in the worship, the sermon and the fellowship. We must examine our hearts to see if I am treating the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection as just another cultural custom like the Israelite’s treated the Feast of Booths because over time, as we see in the case of Israel, their worship of Yahweh gradually changed to idolatry.

Celebration As A Reflection of the Heart

What do you celebrate?

What we celebrate is a reflection of our heart, of what we value and esteem as important.

When we begin to treat the celebration of our Lord as a cultural check mark, we have unfocused and divided hearts. Compromise is creeping at the door.

Sunday morning or whatever day you worship on is a celebration of the risen Lord and we must point our hearts heavenward in celebration of this life altering truth. When you walk into a gathering to celebrate Christ, we should be walking in like the Psalmist,

Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him and bless his name.
For the Lord is good, and his faithful love endures forever;
his faithfulness, through all generations (Psa. 100:4-5)

What do you celebrate?

Until Next Time

Soli Deo Gloria

Kidner, D. (1979). Ezra and Nehemiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 12, p. 118). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.