Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 22-23.

God established seven festivals for the people of Israel.  They were to be celebrated as assemblies.  There were seven events when the people of God were to assemble together in order to worship God.  This tells us that it is important for the people of God to gather for worship and fellowship.  In fact, it tells us that worship cannot be completely separated from fellowship with the people of God.  It is not possible to be a faithful Christian in isolation.  OK, that is an overstatement.  One could be a faithful Christian if one was isolated from other Christians by being thrown in jail, or being stranded somewhere where there are no other Christians, but one cannot be a faithful Christian if one chooses to not fellowship with any other Christians who are in one’s vicinity.  Now when considering the festivals we tend to adopt a few misconceptions about them.  The first misconception is that we think of them as annual events, because we often forget that the first assembly named was the Sabbath, which is weekly.  That tells us that we should meet with at least a few of our fellow people of God on a weekly (or near weekly basis).  We need time spent in fellowship and worship with our fellow believers on a regular basis.  The second misconception is that we tend to think of these assemblies as times of celebration.  This is mostly true, but the Day of Atonement was a somber day of fasting to consider the ways we have fallen short of the holiness to which God has called us.  So, we should get together with other people of God on a regular basis in order to worship God and fellowship with each other.  Most of the time those assemblies should be joyous, but occasionally they should be somber reflections.  In both cases, our focus should be on God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.