Happy New Year!
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· 6 viewsA New Year is a good time to gather to worship God and remember all He has done for us.
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What do you do for New Years?
If context allows, let students give some answers.
Any resolution people? Anyone want to share their resolutions?
If context allows, let students give some answers.
You may be surprised to learn that New Years resolutions are not found in the Bible! That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, just that the Bible doesn’t say anything about them.
But that got me to thinking, what does the Bible tell us about celebrating the new year?…
Get ready for a history lesson you didn’t know you didn’t want! So here is the Jewish calendar…
The first month is Nisan
The seventh month, half-way through the year, is Tishri. This is the agricultural New Year.
Some time after the Jews were exiled from Israel (after these biblical books were written), the Feast of Trumpets came to also be known as Rosh Hashanah, which means “head of the year”, the Jewish New Year celebration.
But Scripture doesn’t tell us anything about this, so we’re going to focus on what it does tell us about, the Feast of Trumpets…
read Lev 23:23-25 and pray
A New Year is a good time to gather to worship God and remember all He has done for us.
A New Year is a good time to gather to worship God and remember all He has done for us.
God doesn’t tell us to observe all these feasts and holy days anymore…
Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day.
but we can still learn from what God was telling the Israelites to do in this festival. We see a few different principles at work!
God called his people together to worship Him.
God called his people together to worship Him.
We see in Scripture that it’s never a bad idea for God’s people to get together! The Trumpets that were blasted to begin this feast were to call God’s people to assemble.
We just got through the bowl season. (Tennessee fans, it was a touch down. That’s really tough.) But it’s been a good college football season. It was great to see stadiums full after last year when they were mostly at limited capacity. I went to a game last season and the stadium was at like half capacity and it was weird. I didn’t act the same way as when the stadium has more people. Something happens when we gather with others for a common purpose. There’s more encouragement in that purpose. This is certainly true when we think about gathering together with God’s people!
At this feast, and all their feasts, God wanted his people to gather together. Verse 24 calls it a sacred assembly. Really this is supposed to be a very regular part of the Christian life.
And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.
A New Year is a good time, any time is a good time, for God’s people to gather together for the purpose of worshiping God. Specifically for that purpose. It’s not the same as getting together with some people who are Christians to hang out or to play ball. We need to make sure that we have a habit of gathering with God’s people for worship. That’s why Sunday mornings are so important!
God called his people together to worship. And there are a few different ways he told them to worship at this celebration the closed and opened their agricultural year.
Worship through rest.
Worship through rest.
The people took time away from their work to focus on and worship God.
Did anyone have any personal projects they were able to get done over the break from school? I had a week off work and in that week we were able to move our boys rooms around. Two of them are in new rooms and we put up two beds. That break from work gave us the opportunity to turn all our attention to that.
God tells his people to take time off work to put all their focus on worshipping Him. A day of “complete rest” from their “daily work”.
This is built in for us because New Years Day is a holiday for most people.
The change of a year is a great time to have some rest to focus on God and worshipping Him. When you have a holiday, be sure you take advantage of that opportunity for rest and spend some time focussing on God. It’s important for this to be a normal thing for us. Jesus encouraged his disciples to rest.
He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a remote place and rest for a while.” For many people were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.
Another part of resting from work that will mean more to y’all later is that it requires trusting God. When the Israelites rested from work, they also weren’t getting paid. They had to trust God to provide for them…
Worshipping through rest shouldn’t just happen for you at New Year, but it should be a regular part of your routine.
Rest wasn’t the only thing that made them trust in God’s provision.
Worship through sacrifice.
Worship through sacrifice.
They were called to make multiple sacrifices on this day as a part of their regular and special time of worship.
read Num 29:1-6
Making these sacrifices required them to trust that God would still make sure they had all they needed. In the same way, when we give back to God from what He has given to us, when we give a tithe or offering from our pay check or from our Christmas money, we are showing thankfulness to God and we are showing trust in His provision.
Making sure to do this at the beginning of the year, or even making a special sacrifice or offering, helps us to set a tone for the rest of the year…
Making these sacrifices also led them to worship by reminding them of their sinfulness (which created the need for animal sacrifices) and reminded them of God’s grace in forgiveness. We no longer make animal sacrifices because Jesus was the final and perfect sacrifice for us and we must remember this and worship Him for it every day!
Worship through remembering.
Worship through remembering.
The final thing we’re going to see that God told them to do at this festival was to remember. It was to be a day of commemoration or memorial.
Is signing year books still a thing? I used to love signing year books and getting the signatures. We’d write goofy stuff like HAGS. One guy in middle school actually drew a very detailed pile of poo in my year book and wrote, “Hope your summer is better than this.”
I’ve got some of my year books still and I’ll go back occasionally and look at what people wrote and remember…
Thinking back helps us remember good times, people in our lives, lessons we’ve learned, mistakes we’ve made.
That’s why God wanted the people to do this at the turn of the agricultural year. To remember his provision and goodness. To remember their need for Him. Remembering should be a part of the normal rhythm of God’s people.
Remember the wondrous works he has done, his wonders, and the judgments he has pronounced,
This is something all people understand. It’s why we see all the countdowns at the end of the year…
We remember all the good He has done for us. Another part of the remembering of this day that Moses didn’t talk about but has come to be a very significant part of this day is spending time in repentance over our past sins. This day came a few days before Yom Kippur…
Thank goodness that today we can remember what Jesus has done for us, made a final payment for our sins…
This festival was named for the trumpets that were sounded. Today Christians look forward to another trumpet blast…
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
This is the promise for all who have placed their faith in the perfect sacrifice, Jesus…