The first festival mentioned, on the first day of the
seventh month, is called the feast of Trumpets.
It is the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, celebrated on the day that the
ancient sages believed was the first day of creation. The celebration is simple, trumpets, no
ordinary work and a food offering. The purpose
of the blowing of the trumpets is not like our New Year's revelry with horns,
this serves a solemn purpose, to call the people to remember their sins in
preparation for the Day of Atonement ten days later. The Day of Atonement requires afflicting
yourself and abstaining from not only ordinary work but any work at all, both
of which carry severe penalties for violating.
The final feast is the Feast of Booths where all Israelites build small
dwellings to live in to remember the time in the wilderness. It is also a time of great rejoicing for the
nation, coinciding with the finish of the agricultural harvests. The lives of the people were to be governed
by these festivals forever and so they are today. There is a rhythm to life that is imposed by
God on all His people and we, in the Anglican tradition, determined that such a
pattern was worth keeping in the new covenant as well.
That last sentence of the Gospel reading is haunting, “Not
everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." We have taken a lot of commitments from
people over the last few decades and led people to believe that either they or
those they love are in the kingdom because they once said, "Jesus is
Lord." The one who enters the
kingdom is the one who does the will of the Father. It is by faith that they do the will of the
Father, it is always about faith and not works, but the two can't be
decoupled. A life of faith has certain
contours that a life without that faith lacks.
The best place to go to understand the difference is Galatians
5.16-23.
Paul's prayers for the Thessalonians are based entirely in
the faithfulness of the Lord. He is trusting
in the sovereignty of God in the lives and salvation of the people to whom he
has preached the Gospel. What is the basis of their faith and their strength? "May
the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of
Christ." It is the love of God and the
steadfastness of Christ that make all the difference. If they will rest in those two things all
will be well, there will be neither fear nor doubt because salvation rests on
those two things. The love of God is
proven by sending His Son to die for us and the steadfastness of Christ is
proven by His persevering to the end in doing the will of the Father. In this, we are to be like Him.
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