May
27
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Keeping ‘the feast’ on Memorial Day
Pay attention to all that I have said to you, and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips. “Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. – Exodus 23:13-15
In Exodus 23, God instructed Moses to tell Israel that on every seventh year there was basically to be no farming. The land was to rest. In addition, the people were to leave their farms and households three times during that year to gather together and keep a feast before God. It was a time to worship, for reflection regarding duties to such our awesome and merciful God, and to once again be reminded that it was God who had delivered them from Egypt.
Today, America has many “feasts”. We celebrate in diverse ways the holidays of Thanksgiving, July 4th, Christmas, New Years , Memorial Day, etc. Part of celebrating these days, of course, is the food. Lots of it!
It’s reasonable for us to be reminded that, as Christians, we too have been delivered from Egypt, a type of the world. We too share the shortcomings of the Israelites. Let’s face it, Christians in America struggle with idolatry just as they did! During the feasts, Israel was to remove any thoughts of other gods of their heathen neighbors and to focus on total devotion to God, honoring Him alone, their deliverer without any concerns for their possessions and property they had left behind.
Today is Memorial Day, and I cannot help but be reminded that honoring others more than God is still a problem. It was a sin not confined merely to the Old Testament. In fact, in Matthew 23, the last “woe” Jesus directed against the Scribes and Pharisees was for the memory of dead saints.
Jesus said:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous,
The Pharisees pretended to honor the prophets yet they were blinded to the loveliness and amazing beauty of the living Savior!!
In regards to Memorial Day, we would do well to be reminded that our Lord God is due the most honor, the occupier of our hearts, moreso than those who have fallen in service to our country. He is the one Who has delivered us from Egypt, who has transferred us out of the kingdom of darkness into His kingdom of light.
Honoring the dead more than the living is still a problem. Read this excerpt from the Berlenberger Bible:
“Ask in Moses times, who were the good people, they will be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not Moses – he should be stoned. Ask in Samuel’s times, who were the good people, they will be Moses and Joshua, but not Samuel. Ask in the times of Christ, who were such, they will be all the former prophets with Samuel, but not Christ and His apostles.”
While we honor fallen Americans who served in the military, let us guard our hearts lest we honor the dead more than the living, lest we place more thought, allow more room in our hearts, and give more devotion to the dead when “the feast” belongs to our living Lord.
In short, we should not honor the dead more than the living! And Jesus lives!
Moments ago, I posted the following on another site:
Time and again the Bible promises total victory over our enemies when we are obedient to His commandments, statutes, and judgments and casualties when we disobey. America has been formally and nationally in rebellion to her God since 1787, and we’ve suffered innumerable casualties in every war since. So, what do we do? We institute a holiday to celebrate our losses and rebellion, which, in turn, encourages more of our sons (and now daughters) to sacrifice their lives (or limbs) on behalf America’s imperialistic industrial-military complex for the sake of the New World Order international bankers.
And, no, I’m not a pacifist. I believe in Biblical warfare, provided it’s Biblical:
“…The power to declare war is a serious responsibility. Why were the framers so vague in defining the parameters of war and the conditions under which it could be declared? Section 8, Clause 11 is the only place of significance where warfare is mentioned in the Constitution. Little wonder this power has been abused. Luther Martin [one of Maryland’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention] protested:
‘…the congress have also a power given them to raise and support armies, without any limitation as to numbers, and without any restriction in time of peace. Thus, sir, this plan of government, instead of guarding against a standing army, that engine of arbitrary power, which has so often and so successfully been used for the subversion of freedom, has in its formation given it an express and constitutional sanction…. (Luther Martin, Jonathan Elliott, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, 4 vols. (Washington, DC: Jonathan Elliott, 1836) vol. 1, p. 59.)
“John Quincy Adams predicted the consequences of America’s international military entanglements:
“America … has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings…. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.… She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors, and usurp the standard of
freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force; the frontlet on her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster, the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the
ruler of her own spirit.’ (John Quincy Adams, quoted in William H. Seward, Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams (New York, NY: C.M. Saxton, Barker & Co., 1860) p. 132.)
“Because the framers provided no Biblical parameters, unbiblical warfare has been the rule ever since….”
For more see online Chapter 4 “Article 1: Legislative Usurpation.” Click on my name, then our website. Go to our Online Books page, click on the top entry, and scroll down to Chapter 4.