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Colin Smith: What we celebrate is very important and says a great deal about us. In fact, you can tell a great deal about a family by what they celebrate and by what they don't celebrate. You can tell a great deal about a church by what it chooses to celebrate. Tell a great deal about a nation by simply looking at what it celebrates.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith. I'm Steve Hiller, glad you're with us today. Colin, let's rewind the clock a little bit. Thousands of years ago, God told the nation of Israel that there were things that they were to celebrate.

Colin Smith: Yeah, that's right. Why that's important is it tells us what matters to God, what brings joy to the heart of God, what does God say to us is worthy of celebrating? It really is true that at every level of life, what we celebrate reflects what we love and what we value.

If we want our lives to be shaped by the word of God, then what better place but the book of Deuteronomy to go back and say, "Now, what does God say we should be celebrating and where we should be finding joy?"

Steve Hiller: Well, we're going to find out what God did say about that in Deuteronomy chapter 16. So grab a Bible, join us there as we begin the message, "Celebrate All That Is Yours in Christ." Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: We've been looking at what it takes for people with a faith to become people with a mission. We've been looking at what it means to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and out of all your strength. We've been looking at what it means to really love your neighbor as yourself. What it means and how we can go about getting out of the clutches of pride and into a lifestyle of praise.

But these are searching things, and I'm sure that there are going to be more challenges ahead of us in this series, but I've got some good news for you today. Today is all about encouragement. So you can relax. You can enjoy.

God wants to feed our souls, and this passage of scripture is all about the strengthening, the encouraging, and the nourishing of Christian believers. I want you today to savor what is yours in Jesus Christ. I want you to see and to enjoy, perhaps with fresh perspective, what Christ has done, what he is doing, and what he will do in your life and in the life of every other Christian.

Now open your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter 16. Remember that the whole of this book records the teaching of Moses in the last weeks before he died. So you have the feel of it by now. The old man is pouring out his heart to a younger generation. He's saying everything that he can say under the direction of the Holy Spirit of God.

Here are these people and they're about to enter into the promised land. Moses is saying when you get there, "Don't forget the Lord. Remember to teach your children. Cancel debts, free your servants," and all these things that we've been looking at.

And then right plum in the middle of the book, here in chapter 16, Moses, as it were, pauses. Then he says, "There's something else I've got to say to you. When you get into the land, rejoice. Enjoy. Celebrate." In fact, that one word "celebrate" is the word that you could write as a banner over the whole of Deuteronomy chapter 16.

Do you see it there? Verse 1, "Celebrate the Passover." Verse 10, "Celebrate the Feast of Weeks." Verse 13, "Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles." Verse 11, "Rejoice before the Lord your God." Verse 14, "Be joyful at your feast." Verse 15, "Your joy will be complete."

I read this chapter and I think immediately of Romans chapter 5 and verse 11 in the New Testament when Paul says, "We rejoice in God." That's what this is all about. This is the character of the Christian community. This is the mark of a Christian church. We are the people who rejoice in God.

Right back in the Old Testament, Moses is telling God's people how they are to do this, how they are to cultivate a spirit of joy that with all the pressures and all the difficulties of life that come wherever you're placed in this world, that we should learn what it is to rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now I want you to notice that Moses tells them to observe specific occasions, particular events that have the single purpose of cultivating joy. There are three festivals that are picked out by Moses here. There are many more that are in the Old Testament, but these seem to be the top three. Moses attaches special importance to them, and they were a big deal because they were held at one location.

So whatever you were in the nation of Israel, you had to come to one place in order to celebrate each of these festivals at different times of the year. So you see that in verse 5, for example, "You must not sacrifice the Passover in any town." This is not some kind of a local deal. You're to do it in the place that God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You find the same thing being said in verse 11 and the same thing being said in verse 15. The whole nation is to gather for a great celebration, and Moses says it's to happen in these three ways at these three distinct times of the year.

Now you say, "Where is this place that God would put his name?" That's referred to three times in the chapter. Well, later, King David identified that place as Jerusalem. This was indeed the place where God had chosen to put his name, and so people would come from all Israel for these three different festivals, these great feasts where the nation gathered at three points in the year in the great city of Jerusalem.

Of course, when you roll through to the New Testament, you find that these feasts were important in the life of our Lord Jesus. For example, in Luke chapter 2 and verse 41, we're told every year Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. They went every year. So this was part of the rhythm of the life of our Lord Jesus growing up as a boy. Every year, his parents went to Jerusalem for this feast that's described in Deuteronomy 16.

You may remember in John chapter 7, there's a long section there where the brothers of Jesus say, "Now you should go up to Jerusalem for the feast." They were referring there to the Feast of Tabernacles, that's the third one mentioned here. Jesus says to them, "No, my time has not yet come."

So the brothers go up, and then later Jesus goes up, not with them, but John says Jesus went privately. He went secretly. Then do you remember in John chapter 7, it says on the last and greatest day of the feast—that's the Feast of Tabernacles—on the last day of that feast, Jesus stood up and he said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." Can you imagine the drama of that? This great crowd in Jerusalem, then Jesus speaking these great and glorious words.

Now, again, there are other feasts in the Old Testament, but Moses picks out these three that were tied to specific events that had special importance for the people of God. He says, "Celebrate these feasts every year. It will strengthen your faith and it will increase your joy." So let's before we get into this, just remember the importance of celebration.

See, what you know can leave you unaffected, but what you celebrate will shape your life. What you know can leave you unaffected, but what you celebrate can shape your life. So folks, if you think about it, what we celebrate is very important and says a great deal about us. In fact, you can tell a great deal about a family by what they celebrate and by what they don't celebrate. You can tell a great deal about a church by what it chooses to celebrate. Tell a great deal about a nation by simply looking at what it celebrates.

I've just been making a list here. What do you celebrate? In terms of personal celebrations, birthdays. Everyone is glad if someone sends you a birthday card. There's someone else in the world who's celebrating you and it brings joy. We celebrate anniversaries because of the importance of marriage.

Then there's the hallmark celebrations, as I like to call them. Valentine's Day, a celebration of love. That's worth celebrating, isn't it? The gift of love. Mother's Day, Father's Day.

National celebrations. No other nation in the world to my knowledge has Thanksgiving. What a marvelous celebration of God's goodness in sustaining life. That's a great thing. It says something wonderful about our nation.

Think about our national celebrations. Independence Day, 4th of July. You know, the question I've been most asked in 14 years is, "Do they have the 4th of July in Great Britain?" People ask that question all the time. Let me tell you this, it always amuses me. In this marvelous country, we set off fireworks to celebrate Independence Day. In Britain, they set off fireworks on the 5th of November to celebrate what? A failed terrorist attempt sometime in medieval days in which a man by the name of Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. In America, we celebrate independence; in Britain, they celebrate the failure of terrorism. I don't know what that says, but it says something about a nation when you look at what it celebrates.

What does the church celebrate? Well, the church is given these two distinct celebrations. We celebrate union with Christ, and baptism celebrates that union sealed, and the Lord's Supper celebrates that union sustained. Then, of course, there are the great Christian celebrations in the broader culture. Christmas, the incarnation of the Son of God. Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Lord.

The festival that seems to me to be growing more than any other these days in our culture is the one that confuses me. Halloween. And I'll tell you this, it confuses me because I cannot work out exactly what is being celebrated. Can you? I've got better things to do than mount a campaign against Halloween, so I'll resist that temptation.

Just so you know, our kids when they were growing up could never resist the opportunity of gathering a bag of candy, and we enjoyed that with them. So if you want to make a big deal of Halloween, I am not going to criticize you for that. But seriously, what is exactly the great truth being celebrated? What is the great event? What is the great doctrine that is at the core of this?

I've read the history. You don't need to send me an email on that. It's not especially edifying. But the idea of celebrating darkness and fear leaves me completely cold. Celebrations matter because they identify what we value.

That's why Deuteronomy chapter 16 is so important in the Old Testament and that is why it is so important for us because it raises the question for the people of God, what is worth celebrating? What is there that's so important that you want to get it beyond the level of what you know, you want to get it worked into you so it shapes your very life? Moses has three answers to that question.

Number one: Celebrate the Feast of Passover. Now, you can read the story of Passover in Exodus and chapter 12. Many of you will know the story well. But to refresh our memories, God's people were slaves in Egypt. They'd been like that over 400 years. They had been oppressed by a cruel tyrant who defied God and abused his people. God said to the tyrant, "Let my people go," but the Pharaoh cared nothing for the word of God.

So God came down in judgment and in mercy. The judgment broke the power of Pharaoh, thank God. His mercy protected his own people. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, and death came on that night of the Passover to every home in Egypt. It was an awful night of God's judgment, as the final day of God's judgment will be an awful day.

But God said to his people, "Sacrifice a lamb and take the blood from the sacrificed animal and paint it over the lintels and the posts at the frame of your door." Then God said, Exodus 12:13, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you."

Now you see that's where Passover comes from. From Exodus chapter 12 and verse 13. God says, "When I see the blood of the sacrificed animal painted on your doorframes, I will pass over you." God saved his people from fearsome wrath in his judgment and brought them out of slavery and made a covenant with them through the blood of a sacrifice applied to them. Moses says, "Celebrate this."

I often think, what would I have done? What would you have done if you had been one of these people and Moses had said, "You've got to sacrifice an animal and you've got to paint the blood over your doorframes"? Can you imagine being out there with the guy next door? You're saying, "Do we really need to do this? Are you going to do it? Will it work? Will it make any difference? Have you ever heard anything that sounds so strange?"

Would you have taken God at his word? Would you have done what he said? Well, God said it and his people did it, and through the blood of the sacrifice over them, they were saved from God's judgment that came over the whole land and brought into a covenant in which God says to them, "I will be your God and you will be my people." Now Moses says that is worth celebrating.

And you see how they celebrated the Passover? Verse 3, "They ate the bread of affliction." For seven days eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction, so that you may remember the time of your departure from Egypt. Imagine this, if you're living up somewhere in the north of Israel, as the Lord Jesus was in Nazareth, and the whole family comes down on foot all of these miles to Jerusalem, long, long journey. You come for this great festival. What do you get to eat for seven days? Dry crackers! Imagine the kids, "We came all this way for this? Dry crackers."

Centuries after the Exodus, God's people were to taste life as it would have been if it had not been for the mercy of God. But then verse 7, they sacrificed the lamb. Sacrifice the lamb when the sun goes down, verse 6, roast it and eat it in the place the Lord your God will choose.

Now let's ask this question here. Where does the New Testament go with all of this? You remember when John the Baptist first saw Jesus, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He's looking at Jesus, he says, "Here's the lamb who will take away the sin of the world."

And then you remember that the Lord Jesus was crucified at what time in the Jewish year? Passover. That's why on the night he was betrayed, the night before he was crucified, he says in Luke chapter 22 and verse 15 to his disciples, "I have eagerly desired to eat the Passover with you."

And as he eats the Passover with them—this is straight out of Deuteronomy 16—what does he do? He takes bread, he takes the dry cracker. He breaks it and he says, "This is my body and it is given for you." Then he takes a cup. In the same way after the supper, Luke says he took the cup and he said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you." Now you see what Jesus was saying in the Passover right there.

He's saying this mighty intervention of God in the Exodus, the greatest thing that has ever happened in all of Israel's history—this mighty intervention that we are celebrating in the Passover tonight—is only a shadow, he says to his disciples, of what God is right about to do. Because God is going to make an even greater intervention and here is how he is going to do it. My blood will be poured out, my body will be broken. I will become the sacrifice by which you will be redeemed from divine wrath. I will become the sacrifice by which you will be set free from sin's power.

And so when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we don't roast a lamb because the sacrifice has been made. But we take the bread and then we take the cup and we remember that Christ's blood was shed and that by faith when the blood of Christ is applied to your life, you are saved from the wrath of God. You are brought out of the position you used to be in as a slave to sin. You are brought into a covenant with God in which he says, "I am yours and you are mine."

And folks, this is not a process. It is what has been accomplished. God gives you this feast so that you won't spend the rest of your life wondering if he loves you. God gives you this feast so that you will see that he loves you as faith approaches the cross. And God gives you this feast so that you will not spend the rest of your life wondering if you will be forgiven. You are forgiven in the cross and faith sees that.

God gives you this feast so that you will not spend the rest of your life living as though you were still a slave. You see, this is the whole point of the Passover. God's people saw that he had put them in an entirely new position and no matter what their difficulties in life, they were not slaves. That's what God wants you to see.

You may face all kinds of problems, you may have all kinds of battles, you may experience many defeats, but you are not a slave. You are redeemed. You are set free by the blood of Jesus Christ. Sin will always be your enemy, but it is no longer your master. Christ redeemed us, and that is something worth celebrating, isn't it? It is.

Steve Hiller: That's a great place to have to hit the pause button, isn't it? Christ has redeemed us and that is something worth celebrating. You're listening to Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called, "Celebrate All That Is Yours in Christ." We're going to continue this message next time, so I hope you'll join us. If you ever miss a program, come and listen online at openthebible.org.

Open the Bible is a listener-supported ministry. It is your generosity that allows us to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching each day. As you give a gift to Open the Bible this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of a book written by Brad Wetherell called, *Saved to Sin No More*. And Colin, who is Brad Wetherell and why should we read this book?

Colin Smith: Well, you know, I've often said that we should choose books not by the title, but by the author. And the reason for that, of course, is that when you read a book, you're actually reading a person. You're reading what has come out of that person. So who has written a book is really very, very important.

And I'm just so glad to have the opportunity to introduce Brad Wetherell. His name may not be widely known. He is my successor as the senior pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church. I served that church for 30 years. I've worked with Brad for more than 15. I stepped down from being the senior pastor just over a year ago to focus full-time on the ministry of Open the Bible.

And so Brad is someone that I feel very, very close to and very, very confident in. He has a deep, authentic walk with the Lord. That's always the first thing you want to know about someone who you're going to read. He has a wonderful gift of preaching and a wonderful gift of writing. This is his first book, and he's chosen to write on a subject that he studied very deeply and it's this wonderful truth of union with Christ. I think this may be the most important and least understood doctrine in all of the Bible. People often look a bit quizzical. Union with Christ? What's that? Well, folks are going to love this compelling and clear introduction to what I think is one of the most encouraging truths in all of the Christian life.

Steve Hiller: Well, the book is called *Saved to Sin No More: How Union with Christ Empowers a Life of Holiness*. And we want to send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for financially supporting Open the Bible this month. You can call and give over the phone. Our number is 1-877-OPEN-365 or give online at openthebible.org.

Again, our phone number is 1-877-673-6365 and the website is openthebible.org. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. Open the Bible Weekend is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: At Open the Bible, we're grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the gospel around the world. And to that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints. You know, in the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it's not always clear how we should obey it. And this is where Global Fingerprints comes in.

Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website, openthebible.org/gf. That's openthebible.org/gf.