“Celebrate a festival in my honor three times a year. Observe the Festival of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you are to eat unleavened bread from seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, because you came out of Egypt in that month. No one is to appear before me empty-handed. Also observe the Festival of Harvest with the first fruits of your produce from what you sow in the field, and observe the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather your produce from the field. Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What kind of celebrations do you have as a regular part of your family’s rhythm? Are they all calendar holidays, or do you have some that are more personalized than that? Those celebrations, whatever they happen to be, are more significant than you might realize in terms of shaping your understanding of the world and how it works. Celebrations like that give us a framework for what we understand to be true. This doesn’t necessarily mean they help us get the truth right, but they create a belief framework for us. In the same way, they frame out for us what is right and what kinds of things are important. When God was going through the process of establishing Israel as a people, He gave them instructions to create some regular celebrations as a part of their rhythm. Let’s take a look at the first real introduction He gives to these here.

The festivals we see being introduced here are some of the oldest continually celebrated festivals in the world. In fact, other than some references to what appear to have been really ancient ceremonies among what might better be called proto-humans, but which aren’t celebrated anymore, I have trouble easily finding reference to festivals older than these three. Today we know them better as the Jewish holidays of Passover, Shavout, and Sukkot. All three of these have their roots in this text written as much as 3500 years ago. That’s an old festival.

The reason we have festivals and holidays is because we are a forgetful people. We remember what we celebrate. For example, many nations around the world have some sort of an independence day celebration. Why? Because their national leaders want them to remember when they were founded. They want to encourage a sense of patriotism and national pride. They want the people to remember and honor the struggle of those who achieved their independence for the rest of them. And, yes, they sometimes want to simply give political justification to a particular ruling party in the nation. Perhaps the biggest reason is that it is important for the people of that nation to think of themselves as an independent nation whose interests and sovereignty are worth safeguarding against foreign threats. Without that sense of national identity, no nation will survive for long.

Well, as God was laying out the foundations for Israel, He knew there were things they were going to need to remember as a people if they were going to walk the path He was blazing for them with anything like the faithfulness it was going to require of them to stick with it and receive all the benefits He planned to make available for them if they did. Because of this, God instructed them to periodically have fun together. This was purposeful fun, of course, but these festivals were supposed to be a good time for everyone involved in them.

They were to continually remember how they became a people in the first place when God led them out of slavery in Egypt. That’s Passover. He’s already made that clear to them and they’ve had the initial celebration of that. At this point in the journey, they haven’t been out of Egypt long enough to have celebrated it a second time. The point here was to remind them of God’s faithfulness to them as a people in order to encourage their own reciprocal faithfulness to Him.

The next festival here is known today as Shavout. This one isn’t quite as familiar as Passover and Sukkot. On Shavout today Jews celebrate the giving of the Torah to the people. What it originated as here was a celebration of the firstfruits of the field. I have three tomato plants in pots that I’m hoping will produce fruit this year. I planted them about a week and a half ago with a nice head start courtesy of a good friend. I noticed last night when I got home that one of them already had tiny little tomato nubs showing. Those will be the firstfruits of the season for us. God instructed Israel to have a celebration when those firstfruits arrived. It was to remind them that He was their provider.

The third festival is called Sukkot today. This is also known as the Festival of Booths or the Festival of Tabernacles. Here, God calls it the Festival of Ingathering. While it has developed quite a lot of other significance today, it was originally intended to be a harvest festival. This came at the end of the harvest season when they had brought all of their crops in and were finished for the year. They were to rejoice in what God had provided for them and look forward with hopefulness for the future because He does not change.

At three points in this passage around where God describes the festivals themselves, He gives them instructions for celebrating more generally. He starts in the beginning by telling them to hold the festivals in the first place. In the middle of the passage He tells them they are all to bring something to Him as a part of the festivals. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.” They are to express their gratitude to Him physically. They are to express their trust in His ability to provide for them physically. Those physical expressions matter. They deepen and strengthen the reminding power of the festivals. They teach the people something and create good rhythms for them.

Then, at the end of the passage, God tells them that everyone is to be involved. The language He uses is that all the males are to appear before Him, but when we do a bit of cultural translating, we understand that this meant everyone was to be a part of the festivals. If you were a part of the nation, these festivals were for you, and you were expected to take part. God didn’t want the situation in which half the nation was celebrating while half the nation was forgetting. Everyone needed to remember together.

And that, I think is the real key here. As I said before, we are a forgetful people. When something is not regularly before us, we are remarkably quick to put it out of sight and out of mind. We need regular reminders of what is true and important and good. For followers of Jesus today, giving right and due attention to things like Christmas and Easter, and doing so in such a way that doesn’t merely fall into the broadly secular patterns of celebration our culture has developed for those is worthwhile. In fact, it is vital for our healthy faith growth and development.

We need more than that too, though. If, as a family, you have experienced the goodness of God in some way, find a way to mark that occasion as part of your regular annual rhythm. Celebrate together the goodness of God. Have a special dinner each year on that day. Go to a certain place where you can remember together. Gift special gifts to each other. Decorate the house a little differently than normal. With just a little bit of effort, these kinds of things can become generational pointers toward the goodness of God in your family. They can become signposts for your kids and grandkids to know which way to go in life. They can help make sure you are passing the faith on to the next generation. Doing all of this takes effort, but it will eventually be effort you’ll be glad that you gave.