The Great Celebration - ANB W2, D6 - 3.16.13

Saturday, March 16                                                        The Great Celebration

Ezra 6.19-22

Now that the temple was complete, a new beginning in the lives of the Hebrew people could begin. Their worship of God could resume as it did in the days of old. Our calendar does not equate to what the Hebrews used to keep dates. In those days, the festivals and months were calculated by the cycle of the moon. However, make no mistake in the sequence in which these events occurred. In the passage from yesterday we learned that the completion of the temple occurred “on the third day of the month of Adar” (6.15) and we read today of the Passover being observed on “the fourteenth day of the first month” (6.19). Without going into a long explanation of the Hebrew calendar, this was about six weeks apart. The temple was complete just in time for the Levites to begin preparation for the Passover festival. God’s timing is impeccable.

This may seem slightly insignificant, but trust me, in the life of the Israeli people it was not; and neither is it in our lives as Christians. The Passover was symbolic of salvation. It represented new life, calling to remembrance the miraculous way that God’s Spirit passed over the children of Israel and caused death to spread through Egypt, which in turn became their release from bondage under Pharaoh. This was God’s salvation. For us, the time of the Passover was the time when Christ was handed over to the hands of the Jewish mob and subsequently crucified for the atonement of our sins. This was in deed a significant time both for the people of Israel, but also for us. The temple was prepared in God’s manner and in God’s time. While we cannot put exact dates or timelines on it, it is very similar to Christ preparing for the crucifixion. Do you remember what He told the Jewish leaders in John 2.19? “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And at the end of His early ministry, as He and His disciples were preparing to head into Jerusalem for the Passover feast, He told the disciples, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death and will hand Him over to the Gentiles to be mock and scourge and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up” (Matt. 20.18-19). It was indeed a very important time for the people of Israel.

In this instance, the Passover celebration served the Jews with more than just a ritual remembrance of the way God delivered them from Egypt. This Passover, in particular, served as a reminder to them of the God they served and how they were to serve Him. It is significant to note that Ezra chooses to include in verse 20 that “the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were pure.” This is a subtle, yet poignant indication that the regular practice of these officials had not been carried out. Whether they segregated themselves or had not cleansed themselves at all is not clear, but what is clear is that the cleansing required of them by the holiness codes given to Moses had not taken place since the foundation of the temple had been laid, nearly 20 years prior. Further, the people of Israel had not kept themselves separated from the unclean people (the Gentiles, or non-Jews) of the land, likely referring to an intermarriage of both the self and religion, which were both prohibited in the Law. They had forgotten how to properly worship the God of their salvation and deliverance, but this Passover brought to their remembrance what it mean to be a child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

If you want, you can call this great celebration a revival. This monumental day in the life of Israel marked both a new beginning for them in their land, but more importantly in their spiritual lives before God. They remembered how they were supposed to worship and live. It is not very difficult to see what this means for us. There must be great importance placed on how we should worship and live. A new beginning at Hopewell must begin with a new beginning in our lives, a new beginning in how we worship, and a new beginning in how we live. This will be our GREAT celebration.

Prayer:

Lord God, revive me. Bring a new beginning into my life. I repent for the way I have excluded Your worship from my life. Please show me a new way to live that I might have my own great celebration.