Deuteronomy 16:9-12

What'd you just say? Um, why are Saturday and Sunday the strongest day? That sounds like a bad dad joke. Why? Because all the other days are weekdays. Well, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. After that, we're going to need a little bit of coffee. Deuteronomy 16 verses 9 through 13. Today, we're going to talk about the Feast of Weeks. Let's have some coffee. I might need to pray for you. Have some coffee, we'll pray and we'll get into God's word. You're going to drink coffee this morning? No? I thought so. All right, let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for this day. Lord, thank you for the blessing it is to get to read your word and to spend time with you this morning. Lord, we pray that you would please teach us, help us to follow you and love you in Jesus's name. Amen. All right, so we're at Deuteronomy chapter 16. We only get four verses this morning. You want to read them? Uh, sure. Okay, go ahead.
You shall count seven weeks for yourself. Begin to count those seven weeks from the time you get, you begin to put the sickle to the grain. Then you shall keep the feast of weeks to the Lord your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand which you shall give as the Lord your God blesses you. You shall rejoice when the Lord, before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, and the Levite that is within your gates, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow, who are among you and at the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide. And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and you shall be careful to observe these statutes. OK, so this is talking about which feast? The Feast of Weeks. The Feast of Weeks. Some people might call this like the Feast of the First Fruits or something like that.
Right. So this is if you notice, it's the seven weeks for yourself. Right. So count off seven weeks to begin the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain. Do you know what the sickle is? Where you cut the grain. Yeah, right. And so the grain is coming up. So it's a grain harvest, seven weeks, putting it down. Right. And so what are you supposed to do as you're harvesting this grain? Yeah, right.
They would actually take some of this and they would go to the tabernacle. And when they went to the tabernacle there, they would give some to the Lord and everybody would rejoice. Why would they rejoice? Because the Lord had given them the crop? Yeah, the Lord's the one who gave them the crop, right? Did Baal give them the crop? No. Did Asherah give them the crop? No. Did Molech give them the crop?
No. Did Marduk give them the crop? Who's Marduk? Another pagan god. Oh. No. Did the gods of Egypt give them the crop? No. Did the gods of the Hittites give them the crop? No. The gods of the Amorites give them the crop? No. The gods of the Moabites give them the crop? No. The gods of the Babylonians give them the crop? No. Well, the Babylonians didn't exist yet, but... Right, yeah, so all these, right, no, who gave them the crop? Who gave them their food?
God. God. Who brought them, who's brought them or is bringing them into the promised land? Um, God. Who gave them the land? God. So who are they supposed to thank? God. Exactly. Right. This is this Feast of the Weeks. This Feast of the Harvest was to celebrate what God had done, giving them food, bringing them into the promised land, blessing them with harvest. So that's what this is about. What do you think is the best verse to summarize this? If you had to choose one verse, what would you choose?
Nine. OK. Oh, OK. That's the one I just read to you. OK. All right. So great. Yeah, I just it's interesting that you shall keep the Feast of Weeks, the Lord your God, with the tribute of a free will offering from your hand, which you shall give to the Lord as the Lord your God blesses you. Right. So when they gave, how much were they to give? Oh, very well, offering so they could give as much as they wanted. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Good. So let's go to see calling. So you said verse nine, you would underline is the best verse. What would you do for calling?
What are you called to do? Does it show us anything about Jesus? Does it tell us anything about the covenant? Does it tell you how to live your life? It teaches you how to yawn, huh? What principle do you think you could draw out of this for your life? To give some of your crop to the Lord.
Okay. Spiritually and physically. What do you mean by spiritually and physically? Like give like yourself to the Lord? OK, yeah, so maybe right, giving giving the Lord the best of our time or of our heart and things like that. Yeah. And I think maybe giving to the Lord, recognizing that he's the one who's given us all of our good things.
Right. And so when mommy and daddy ran our photography business, did we give the Lord whatever was left over? No. No. Right. When when we you make money for chores, what are we encouraging you to do? Yeah, right gives give some of back to the Lord, right? Who's the one who blessed you with that work to do? Yeah, right.
So it's God that we can be thankful for. What do you think we can be most thankful for knowing that God's not a stingy God or somehow like, you know, just an overlord like, oh, if you don't give me your feast of weeks, I'm going to just squash you. Or is that what the Lord is like?
No, God had given them the land. What's he given us that's even better than land? Jesus. Yeah, he's given us Jesus and he's given us the promise of the new heaven and the new earth. Right. And so we can come to him not like, oh, man, we got to pay God a ransom. But he loved us so much that he gave his own son for us that we might have eternal life.
It's a lot to give him thanks for, isn't it? You ready for me to pray? Hmm. Let's go ahead and pray. God, thank you so much for this day. We pray that you would please fill our hearts with thankfulness. We pray that we would. Follow after you. Or that we would love you. And we would not think of you as one who is a mean, rumpy tyrant.
But Lord, that we would know that you are loving Heavenly Father. who has shown us love even while we were sinners. And that you gave us your son and you've promised us eternal life. Father, in this life, the things that we have, we pray that we would freely give them unto you.
For we are but stewards of all the good gifts you've given us in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, may you rejoice in Jesus Christ. May you be filled with thankfulness. May you love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.