You see there in verse 16 where
the psalmist said, I'm the son of thine handmaid, thou hast
loosed my bonds. He refers to himself as the son
of the handmaid because he says you've loosed my bonds. Go with
me to Exodus 23. Remember we saw this last time
back up in verse 12. Talking about the Sabbath day,
the reason for it, it says, is so the son of thy handmaid can
be refreshed. The handmaid of the Lord is the
church. She's the one that's going forth,
sending forth His gospel. And her son is those born through
the preaching of the gospel. And so the psalmist called himself
the son of the handmaid. who you've loosed. And that's
what the Sabbath picture. That's why the Lord said that
the son of the handmaid may rest, be refreshed, be loosed from
his work. That's the picture of what Christ
does for His people. Now, stay there in Exodus 23.
Today we're going to be looking at verses 14 through 19. There were three annual feasts
that the Lord commanded that the men of Israel go up to. He
said, Thou shalt keep the feasts. These were not optional. They
had to go to these feasts. They were to come to the Lord's
altar at the tabernacle, that place where God had ordained
that He would meet with them. That's where they had to come
to. A picture coming to Christ. That's
the place God will meet with His people. It's a picture of
assembling wherever God has raised up a faithful church where the
gospel is preached. That's where God says He'll meet
you. He'll declare the word to you. He'll be there present. That's
what it was a picture of. And they were to go there three
times in the year. That's not every 12 months. That's
every 7 months. This was according to the agricultural
calendar of the Jews and that meant in a seven month period
they went three times. Last week I was pointing out
to you how that these commands are in the form of a sure and
certain statement. Thou shalt do this. Brother Rupert
Ravenborg pointed out one time that when you're under grace
the commands of the law cease being commands and they become
promises of grace. It's what you shall do because
of the Lord's grace. It's not a command anymore. It's
what you shall do by His grace. So by grace, by God's grace,
thou shalt keep the feast. You and I by His grace shall
keep the feast. Every believer does. We're partaking
now of a gospel feast. When we come here this word priest,
we're partaking of the gospel feast. Remember the Lord said,
in this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all people
a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the leaves, of fat
things full of marrow, of wines on the leaves well refined. We're
coming to this gospel feast. We're going to observe the Lord's
table today. This is a gospel feast that the
Lord commanded us to come to, to observe His broken body and
His shed blood. And one day when we get to glory
with Christ, we're going to partake of the marriage supper of the
Lamb. That'll be a feast. So this thing
of the Lord's people, we're feasting brethren. It's a feast of joy. We get up here and preach and
we're serious because it's a serious thing that's taking place, but
don't make any mistake. Believers are full of joy. This
is a celebration of joy. We're rejoicing in what Christ
has done for us. So my subject is the gospel feast. And we're going to see that each
of these feasts picture the gospel feast of faith in Christ. You believe on Christ, that's
when this feast begins. And this is what these three
feasts pictures. We'll take each one of these
feasts for our divisions. Now, first of all, the Feast
of Unleavened Bread. Exodus 23.15 says, Thou shalt
keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Thou shalt eat unleavened
bread seven days as I command thee in the time appointed of
Abel. For in it thou camest out from
Egypt. and none shall appear before
me empty." Now that night in Egypt, God passed over every
house in Israel for one reason. Now He didn't pass over every
house, only those in Israel. And there was one reason. God
had provided them a lamb. And when God saw the blood over
the doorpost, He passed over those houses. That's what the
Feast of Passover typified Christ Jesus the Lord. That's the only
way you and I as sinners will be saved is when God sees the
blood. When God sees the blood. That's
the picture of Christ the Lamb. Passover Lamb. Then after that
Passover came the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That night they ate the
Passover, they were ready to go out. God told them, be ready,
have your shoes on, have your bags packed, be ready to leave
Egypt because you're going out. And they went out so quickly
they didn't even have time to put leaven in the bread for the
bread to rise. They went out with unleavened
bread. And so the Lord said, this is going to be a memorial
unto you from here on. And so this is a feast to remember
that, is what it's remembering. But the spiritual picture is
this, brethren. As soon as Christ, our Passover,
has been revealed to us, just like as soon as they ate that
Passover, then they went right into observing this feast of
unleavened bread. As soon as Christ is revealed
to us, we go right into enjoying this feast. of faith in Christ,
this feast of the gospel. We immediately began to partake
of this gospel feast. Now God commanded here, none
shall appear before me empty. That went for all of these feasts.
Now at each of these feasts, the children of Israel were to
bring to God the first fruits which God had given to them.
He said in Deuteronomy 16, 17, Every man shall give as he is
able according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He
hath given thee. You see, they're coming to God
with what God's given them. Well, what are we coming to God
with? We're coming to God with what
He's given us. We're coming to God with Christ the Lord alone. You have to come. You can't come
empty. You can't come with anything of your hand, but you come with
Christ, that one whom God has given to His people. He's all
our acceptance with God. And in this gospel feast now,
before God's going to receive us, brethren, we have to come
in Christ alone, submitting to the righteousness of God. He's
the righteousness of God. He's the end of the law for righteousness
because He is the righteousness of God. And He's the one God's
provided. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5.7,
he said, Purge out therefore the old leaven that you may be
a new lump, as you are unleavened. You are unleavened. For even
Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. We're unleavened by Christ. Leaven is a picture of sin and
corruption. and vain works, and Christ has
put away our sin, He's purged our sin, and He's turned us from
vain works to Him, and we are unleavened by God's grace. He says, therefore keep the feasts,
not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. By the finished work of Christ
for us and in us, we're unleavened. Remember, he says there, keep
this feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Sincerity is in the heart. Truth
is righteousness before the law. And the Lord says, blessed is
the man unto whom the Lord will not impute iniquity. He will
not charge us with sin whatsoever because Christ has put away our
sin. So we keep this feast in truth. He said, and in whose
spirit there is no guile. We have a new heart in which
is no sin. And so we keep it in sincerity
as well. In sincerity and truth. We don't
go back to the old leaven of the law. We don't go back to
our works. No, we keep this feast because
we are unleavened in Christ. We keep it looking to Christ
only. And the effect of this feast of unleavened bread is
not for seven days, but for the rest of our lives we observe
this feast. There be no servile work done,
God said. When they were observing this
feast for seven days, no work was to be done. And that's us. We're not doing anything for
righteousness, for holiness, for anything to look for acceptance
with God. We are accepted. No servile work
is to be done, no work of a servant. That's done, that's finished.
Christ served God for us. And they feasted as one family,
as one family. They were all one. Paul said,
the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion
of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is
it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many,
are one bread and one body for we're all partakers of that one
bread. That's one of the reasons why
we started using one single piece of bread when we observed the
Lord's table. It's symbolic of the fact that
we're all one bread. We're partakers of Christ and
in Christ we're one with Christ and one with one another in Christ.
They partook of this as one family. Now, let's go secondly, we're
going to look at this Feast of Harvest. Verse 16, it says, And
the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of thy labors which thou hast
sown in the field. He's saying that's what you bring
during the Feast of Harvest. The firstfruits of thy labors
which thou hast sown in the field. Now, this Feast of Harvest is
the same as what's called in Scripture the Feast of Weeks.
It's called Pentecost. because it's held on the 50th
day after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. After the Passover and
the Feast of Unleavened Bread, 50 days later, you had Pentecost,
and that means 50. It was 50 days later, they observed
this feast right here. It pictures the beginning of
the end gathering of the harvest, or that's what it was. It was
when they When they had planted their crops and their first ripe
fruits, they gathered those first fruits, they came to God with
those first fruits they gathered. And this was the feast for this.
And it's a picture of Christ first starting to gather in His
elect. You remember our Passover was
sacrificed for us and He arose to be with God and 50 days later, Fifty days later, when Scripture
says, when Pentecost was fully come, He poured out the Spirit
and they preached the Gospel and Christ began gathering in
His people. He called 3,000 at one time.
That was the picture of this feast, the beginning of the in-gathering
of God's elect. Scripture says, you are first
fruits. You that are born of God, you're the first fruits.
You're Christ's first fruits. When we come to Him, we come
to Him with the firstfruits. That's what we come to Him with.
They came with firstfruits. We give ourselves to spread this
gospel of our Redeemer because we're assured, brethren, He's
going to gather in all His elect. We don't have to worry about
that. He's going to gather them in. We got testimony of it at
Pentecost. The first thing our Lord did
as soon as He arose and sat down at God's right hand is He began
calling out His sheep. That's what He did. Listen to
this. Go over to Isaiah 43 and look
at this with me. Isaiah 43. You don't have to
worry. We can commit ourselves to this
because we know God is going to gather in His people. That's
why we are preaching. Some people say, you know, if
I believed in divine election, predestination, I would never
preach. I would never preach unless I did. Because this guarantees
us Christ is going to call out His elect. Look here, Isaiah
43 verse 5, Fear not, for I am with thee. I will bring thy seed
from the east and gather thee from the west. Our seed is God's
elect, our brethren that Christ is going to gather. He said,
I will say to the north, give up, and to the south, keep not
back. Bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends
of the earth, even everyone that's called by my name. For I've created
him for my glory. I've formed him. Yea, I've made
him. So he's going to call out every one of his elect. And not
one's going to be lost. Now thirdly, let's go to this
feast of ingathering. back in Exodus 23. So we got the first feast is
the feast of unleavened bread. We are unleavened by our Lord,
so we don't go back to the works, we don't go back to any of that.
We come to God in Christ only. And then we saw the feast of
harvest, the beginning of harvest. Christ began calling out His
people on that exact day of that feast, on the 50th day, on Pentecost. And He's continuing. Your first
fruits He's gathered. He's going to keep gathering
out His people. And then the next feast we see
here is the feast of ingathering. This is verse 16. He says, He says in the middle part there,
he says, and the feast of ingathering which is in the end of the year
when thou hast gathered in thy labors out of the field. Now
that's all the labors are done. They've finished now. They've
gathered in all the harvest now. And they've put it all in the
barns and in the vats and it's over. They've gathered it all
in and it's done. This is the same feast of tabernacles
It's the same with that Feast of Tabernacles and that's when
they stayed in tents. And it was to remind them that
when they were in the wilderness, they were pilgrims and they were
just passing through. You know, and that's when we're
partaking of this Gospel Feast, we're constantly reminded that
not to be too attached to things in this world because we're pilgrims
in this world. We're not here to stay. We're
passing through. We're looking for a city whose
builder and maker is God, who has foundations that will be
there for eternity. That's what we're going toward.
This earth will not be here for eternity, but that one will.
On the eighth day, that harvest was completed. And when that
harvest was completed, it was a time of great celebration.
Don't you know After they finished the work and they were out there
hot and tired and they finished all this work and the eighth
day, a feast began, a celebration began. And that was what this
was. And I know that was a day, a
great day of celebration. And just think about when Christ
is gathered in the last of His elect and He calls us to glory
with Him. You think about what a celebration
that will be. Go over to Revelation 21, I'll
show it to you. And this is what brother Henry
began experiencing. Look at this, Revelation 21. I saw a new heaven and a new
earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. I think we ought to stop using
the term He passed away. Because a believer doesn't pass
away. All of this stuff passes away
from him. The earth passes away from him
and all this passes away. All that's passed away. There's
no more sea, no more division. And I, John, saw the holy city,
new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared. nothing to be done, is prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out
of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people,
and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be
no more death. Neither sorrow nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed
away. And he that sat upon the throne
said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write,
for these words are true and faithful. And he said to me,
it's done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning
and the end. I will give unto him that's a
thirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that
overcometh shall inherit all things. And I will be his God
and he shall be my son. So you see, we have everything
pictured here really in the life of a believer in this celebration,
these three celebrations. We have Christ our Passover sacrificed
for us, and when we are made to behold He is our Passover,
He is the one that is sacrificed for us, immediately through faith,
the feast of unleavened bread begins. We cease trying to come
to God by our works, we see we are leavened, we come in Christ
alone. And then we begin to see the ingathering of God's
elect. He's gathering in His people.
He's the beginning, He said, and He's the ending. He's going
to gather everyone until He gathers the last one. That's what Peter
was talking about in 2 Peter 3. He's longsuffering, not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
And He said, so you can account that the longsuffering of God
is salvation. He will save all His people.
He will not lose one. And so we have the whole life
here, the whole work of Christ and the whole life of a believer
here to the end. Now, He did give three restrictions
after He gave these celebrations. He gave three restrictions, strict
rules here. Now go back to Exodus 23, I'll
show you what they are. Verse 17, He said, three times
in the year, all the males shall appear before the Lord God. Now, the men were required to
attend these feasts. The men were required as the
heads of their houses. Now, they could bring their wives
and children. He wasn't forbidding them to
bring their wives and children. It was better if they brought
their wives and children. But the males are called on here
because they're the head of the home. And it's their responsibility
to bring their wife and children. And you and I, men who are heads
of the home, it's our responsibility to lead our family in the way
of Christ. It's our responsibility to have
them under the gospel. It's our responsibility to lead
them in the right way. To teach them Christ. when they
would go up there to that three times in the year, God controls
the thoughts of men. And God would put it in the thoughts
of the men, those people around them that lived around them.
And it never entered their mind to come over and try to steal
their property or break into their homes or do anything to
any of their belongings. Never. And I'll tell you this,
If you're wanting to serve God, if you want to be in His house,
worshiping with His people, and you just say, I'm committed to
it, I'm going to do it. I can promise you this. God will
provide. God will provide. He told Eli,
them that honor my Son, I will honor. And them that lightly
esteem my Son, I will lightly esteem. You know, people want
to act like, well, I'm going to wait until everything gets
just right in my house and with me and then I'll start attending
where the Gospels preach. That's not faith. Remember I
said when we were buying this building, I said we don't save
up the money first and make sure we got everything in place and
then try to start securing a loan. We go ahead and step out there
and do it. And as we did, And here comes
all these offerings in and the Lord provided. That's faith.
Trusting the Lord is going to provide. And you know, so people
await till everything gets just right and then they never come. Because nothing ever gets just
right. But you just decide you're going. You just decide you're
going and I'm going to go. I'm going to serve the Lord.
I'm going to the feast. God will provide everything you
need. There's never been anybody, I guarantee you this, You won't
know this until the last day. You can ask God in the last day,
but I guarantee you nobody's ever caught a cold being baptized
for the Lord, obeying the Lord. And I bet you nobody's ever become
a blazing drunk because they partook of the Lord's table either.
God's not going to let you fall into disobedience because you
obeyed the Lord. It ain't going to happen. He's
going to provide. He's going to provide. And then,
look here now, he said, no leaven could be offered and no leaving
the sacrifice. Look at verse 18. Thou shalt
not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, neither
shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning. Here's
what he's telling us, brethren. We must worship God by faith
in Christ alone. We can't mix any of the leaven
of our works with Christ. They were to partake of no leavened
bread. We can't mix any of the leaven of our sin and that's
all our best deeds are is sin. Our very best righteousness is
filthy rags before God. It's sinful. And so God says
you can't add any of that to my sacrifice. And not only that,
He says you have to Don't leave the fat to the morning. And that's
a picture of you have to take all of Christ. All His person,
all His works. You can't just take part of Him.
Well, I got a deficiency in this area so I need Christ to make
up that for me. Nope. We got a full total deficiency
across the board. We need Christ, all of Christ
to save us. And nothing of ourselves. And
so that's what's pictured here. Go to Galatians 5 and let me
read this to you. This is what Paul was telling
these Galatians whenever they were coming in there trying to
preach law and bring them back. And you understand this now,
they didn't care, they didn't mind at all if these folks believed
Christ. They wanted to add to Christ.
They were saying, now that you believe Christ, you've got to
add to law. And listen to this, people will say, well they're
talking about ceremonial law. You won't find a division in
the law. There's no division in the law. If you're under the
law, you're under all the law. There's no division in the law.
Now look at what Paul said. He said in Galatians 5, and really
it begins in verse 4 and verse 31, after he gave that allegory,
he said, So then brethren, we're not children of the bondwoman,
but of the free. Stand fast, therefore, in the
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled
again with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you
that if you be circumcised, and you can put anything you want
there, if it's necessary, if people tell you it's necessary,
you just fill in the blank. If you do it, Christ shall profit
you nothing. You can't mix any leaven with
this. He says, For I testify again
to every man that circumcised, he's a debtor to do the whole
law. Christ is become of no effect
unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, you're
fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait
for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ
neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision,
but faith which worketh by love. There you go. That's the rule
we're under. Faith which worketh by love. We're not under the
law. We're not under the law. And that's what the Lord's picturing
here. Now go back to Exodus 23 and there's one more strict rule
He gave here concerning the first fruits and concerning no idolatry. He says in verse 19, The first
of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house
of the Lord thy God. And he says, Thou shalt not see
the kid in his mother's milk. The firstfruits are the bestfruits. They're the best. My grandfather
always had a huge garden and set firstfruits out of that garden. He would call me down and we'd
have a feast. And they're the best, the firstfruits.
And that's what God's saying. Don't bring anything to Him but
the best. Come to Him with the best. We
begin coming to Him with Christ. He is the very best. Come with
the best, with Christ. And then whatever we do in the
name of our God, we give it our best. We're not giving God anything. God gave it all to us. What do
you have that you didn't receive? And, you know, even if we're
given to somebody or given to some cause in the name of the
Lord, we ought not to consider it our giving because we're just
given what God gave us. That's all we're doing. And so,
Scripture says He'll make all grace abound towards you always
so that you, always having all sufficiency, should be able to
abound to every good work. And He's providing for His people.
When you come into the house of the Lord, you know, I got
for a while there, I was on you about the way you dressed and
I'm not trying to put rules on you. I'm just saying when you
come to the house of the Lord, you come with your best, you
know, just like you did when we went to the wedding. You go
with your best. I'm going to a funeral tomorrow.
I'm not going to show up there in my jeans. I'm going to show
up there in a nice suit. to show respect. That's what
we're talking about. You put forth your best in whatever
it is you're doing. And it goes for anything, not
just that, for anything. And you know, my best may not
be your best. My best may not equal your best.
But it's my best. And that's what you're talking
about. A man may come dressed in overalls. That's alright. If that's his
best pair of overalls, that's fine. But you see what I'm saying? It's a heart thing. You want
the Lord to have your best in every area of your life. I was
talking to Melinda the other day about our children doing
chores around the house. And I said, we need to instill
in them not to just try to do what they can to get by. And
I said, Emma professes to believe the Lord. Teach her to do it
as unto the Lord. That's whatever you do, do it
as unto the Lord. That's what He's talking about.
Give your best. And then we mix no superstitious idolatry with
anything we do. This heathen would see the kid.
They'd get a baby kid, a baby lamb or goat and they would see
this in its mother's milk. And then they would take that
broth after they soaked it in its mother's milk. They take
the broth of this and they would go around and pour it on all
their crops and that's supposed to give them good luck, you know,
and bring in a good harvest. There's no such thing as luck.
You know, I know we mistakenly sometimes say that word, you
know, good luck to you or whatever. We ought not say that because
there is no good luck. God's working everything by His
direct hand. There's no good luck. So we're
not to mix in any idolatrous superstition with this. This
is all trusting God. So, here's what we've seen. In this gospel feast, brethren,
we're coming to God with Christ alone. Christ alone. Faith in
Christ alone. We're trusting all of Christ.
All of Christ. We trust Him fully for everything. We need Him for everything. And
we acknowledge that everything came from God's hand. That's
what we're acknowledging with the very best, the first fruits.
Everything came from God's hand. We're coming with no works of
our own, no leaven. We can't offer anything to God.
He's pleased with His Son alone. And no idolatrous inventions. We keep a simple service. We're
not inventing anything into this thing. anything new into it. It's simplicity. We come in here
and we read scripture, we sing, we preach. That's it. Folks come
and want to know what you have for the kids, we have the preaching
of Christ and Him crucified for the kids. Same thing we have
for the adults. And we're not mixing in anything
else with it. And so that's the feast. Now
we're coming to this table and what are we doing? We're coming,
observing everything we saw in this feast. We're looking to
Christ only, His broken body and His shed blood. We're remembering
Him and that's the sum of it. Christ is all. Christ is all. Alright. Brother Scott, you and
Brother Kevin pass out the elements.