The title of this sermon by Pastor Ramsey, on Deuteronomy 16, is 3Gs, the three Gs refer to guilt, grace and gratitude. Pastor explained how God taught those concepts to Israel via the festivals.
I’m happy to say that during this sermon, I finally understood the following words of Jesus from John 6: 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread3 the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus4 said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
Sermon highlights [although there are a lot of points below, because this is such an important sermon, you will still do well to hear the 27 minute mp3; underscoring, emboldening and bracketed statements are mine]:
- Guilt: sin, misery, effects of the fall
- Grace: Christ’s work of salvation, how we can be saved from our sin and misery in Him
- Gratitude: the Christian life, how we are to live since we have been saved
- By means of the three feasts in Deuteronomy 16, God taught Israel truth about guilt, grace and gratitude; we must live by these same truths today and pass them on to our children
- The Passover festival is closely connected to the feast of Unleavened Bread; verses 1-8 deal with these
- These two festivals commemorate the exodus from Egypt
- Israel was enslaved by Egypt; Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go; hence God sent plagues, the last of which was that the Angel of Death slew all the first-born sons of both humans and animals in Egypt
- The Angel of Death Passed Over all the Israelite homes because they were instructed by God to slaughter lambs and apply the blood of those lambs to the doorposts of their homes
- Every home covered by the blood of the lamb was safe
- Pharaoh kicked Israel out of Egypt after all the first born were slain
- In Deut. 16, Moses instructed Israel that they are to keep the Passover festival in the Promised Land
- Like the first Passover, they are not to eat leavened bread; this will be a reminder of their affliction in Egypt and how they left so quickly they did not have time to use leaven
- Israel was not sinless and the Angel of the Lord would have slain Israelites also, had they not smeared the blood of the lambs on their doorposts
- That is, they needed deliverance from their sin
- Observing the Passover and eating unleavened bread for 7 days was a reminder of their sin and misery; of who they once were; of where they once lived and of how God had saved them on that momentous night
- That is, it impressed upon them these fundamental realities that they had guilt and that God was gracious
- The Passover festival also taught Israel of the future work of the Messiah, who would come to enact the true exodus
- All men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; they are dead in sin, enslaved to sin and under the reign and tyranny of the Evil One
- All are born in Adam into this present evil age; therefore all by nature eat the bread of affliction; but God sent forth His Son, our Lord Jesus, to deliver us from the bondage of sin and from tyranny of the kingdom of darkness, to lead us to the new heavens and new earth, to the age of the Spirit, to eternal life, to the resurrection, to the kingdom of God
- That is why, when John the Baptist saw the Lord Jesus, he said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world
- That’s why Jesus said in John 6, unless you eat His flesh and drink His blood you have no life in you
- Whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood Had eternal life, He will raise them up on the last day
- In John 6, Jesus was saying what John Baptist had said of Him; that He is the Lamb of God, the Passover Lamb that God provided for His people so they might be saved from the Angel of Death
- That is, just as Israel was to feed on the Passover lamb; we are to feed on the Jesus flesh and to drink his blood: we need to participate in that sacrifice; we need His blood sprinkled on our door post; we need to be connected to Him and His sacrificial death so we can be delivered from sin and death
- John 6 – whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him
- As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on my flesh will also live because of me
- Because He is the Passover Lamb whose shed blood saves us from the Angel of Death
- This is precisely why Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper at the Passover meal – He was declaring that He is the Passover Lamb that takes away the sin of the world; and so He said, This is my body which is given for you ; and this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins
- The apostle Paul in 1 Cor. 5: 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
- 1 Peter 1: 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
- How do we participate in the sacrifice of God’s Passover Lamb?
- We can’t eat His flesh or drink His blood; we can’t take His blood and put it on our door posts
- How do we participate and be covered by the blood of God’s Passover Lamb?
- By faith, by looking to Jesus to save us from our sins; by trusting in Him to save us from the Angel of Death
- 1 Corinthians 11: 23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for5 Do this in remembrance of me.”6 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
- When we partake in the Lord’s Supper, we are hiding behind the blood (as if His blood were on the doorposts of our house) of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re proclaiming His death until He comes
- 1 Corinthians 10: 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
- Jesus is our Passover Lamb; so the Passover of the Old Testament and the Lord’s Supper of the New Testament teach us about our guilt and God’s grace
- [When we participate in the Lord’s Supper, it is the same as when the Israelites ate the Passover in Egypt and the Angel of Death spared their lives because they were hiding behind the blood on their doorposts; since Christ is our Passover Lamb, we do metaphorically, at the Lord’s Supper, what Israel did in the first Passover, when they ate the lamb whose blood was used on their doorposts to protect them from God’s Angel of Death]
- GRATITUDE is emphasized in the Festival of Weeks and the Festival of Booths [regarding the following points, consider them in terms of the displaying of gratitude to God]
- God saves us FROM something TO something
- He saved them, brought them to Himself at Sinai where He pledged to be their God and called them His people; He led them to the Promised Land and gave it to them as an inheritance – a place where He would dwell among them and would bless them and prosper them
- During these feasts, His redeemed people celebrated His abundant goodness
- The Feast of Weeks is also called Feast of Harvests; it is also known as Pentecost because it occurs 50 days after the Passover Festival
- It was called the Feast of Harvests because it took place at barley and wheat harvest times
- They were to offer first fruits of their harvests to the Lord because He not only redeemed them, but He provides for them
- Their hard work would have been in vain if God had not blessed them; hard work is necessary, but it is not sufficient to produce the crop – God provided the necessary things, heat, water [seeds… The Parable of the Seed Growing Mark 4:26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how….]
- Psalm 127: 1 Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
- Rejoicing and feasting at the festivals was a way of acknowledging what God had done as their redeemer and provider
- As God is good to us, we are to be good to those around us
- Deuteronomy 16: 9 “You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. 10 Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the LORD your God blesses you.
- They were to invite people who could not repay them; that is, people who needy; thereby, they could love their neighbors
- 16: 12 You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.
- In 2 Corinthians 8 the apostle Paul emphasized the same kind of generosity: 1 We want you to know, brothers,1 about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, 2 for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. 3 For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, 4 begging us earnestly for the favor2 of taking part in the relief of the saints— 5 and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.
- Regarding Pentecost, we can’t help thinking of the outpouring of the Spirit: the Spirit of the Resurrected Lord was poured out on His people as the first fruits and guarantee of our eternal inheritance, as the grace and glory that we will one day possess and experience in all of its wonderful fullness
- Just as the first fruits of the grain offering was a taste of all that was to come afterwards; so the pouring out of the Spirit of the Resurrected Lord is the way we experience the first fruits of our salvation
- Because we experience the love of God in Christ, and enjoyed the first fruits of our salvation, we are now able to love God and love our neighbor
- We have died to sin and risen to new life in Christ because we have the Spirit; we don’t let sin reign in our mortal bodies, but we pursue holiness and righteousness
- The Feast of Booths was at the end of the agricultural year, after all the grain and grapes had been harvested, processed and stored
- It was a feast of joy and rejoicing, as all the work of the harvest was complete, there was enjoyment and rest
- This feast points forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb
- Pastor used a vision of the prophet Zechariah regarding the festivals to tie the above ideas together in terms of what they say of God and our future inheritance
For other sermons by Dr. Patrick Ramsey, at SermonAudio, click the following link: