YOU SHALL KEEP - SUKKOT

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• Exodus 23:14
• You Shall Celebrate

​Day 1 – HAPPY SUKKOT!

Exodus 23:14 reads, “Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast to Me” (NASB). I want to focus on that word “shall.” But let’s look at it in another version first. In the New King James Version, it reads, “Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year.” The Hebrew word for the phrase “you shall keep a feast” is hāḡaḡ. Hāḡaḡ simply means to keep a pilgrim feast.
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Now, to me, when I read that phrase in the Old Testament, “you shall keep a feast,” this applies to practices someone should do forever. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word "keep" as "to be faithful to" (as in keeping a promise); "to conform to in habits or conduct" (something we maintain in doing). But it is the intransitive verb form that I want to look at closely. In its intransitive state, "keep" means "to continue to maintain" (as in to preserve); "to continue usually without interruption" or "to persist in a practice" (as in conduct or manage).
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YOU SHALL CELEBRATE

Let’s read the verse again in the Amplified version: “Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast [dedicated] to Me.”

Every year, the LORD expects HIS people to celebrate three annual feasts to HIM (Exodus 23:14-16):

1. Feast of Unleavened Bread
2. Feast of Harvest (Weeks, Pentecost, or First Fruits)
3. Feast of Ingathering (Booths or Tabernacles), also known as Sukkot

“Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast [dedicated] to Me.” So, the expectation here for GOD’s people is that they are to keep, or continue without interruption, or persist in celebrating this Holy Day called Sukkot. Drop down to verse 16 in Exodus chapter 23, it reads: “… You shall observe… the Feast of Ingathering… [Sukkot] …at the end of the year when you gather in the fruit of your labors from the field.”
 
In modern times, the fruit of our labor can be any business pursuits we have achieved, work or labor we have accomplished, enterprises we have pursued, anything we have created or made, any products we have produced, or anything we have achieved.
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The point we need to understand is this: whatever we have achieved, we are expected to come before the LORD during the annual event to celebrate before HIM each year at Sukkot – the Feast of Tabernacles (Booths), in remembrance of the time GOD’s people wandered in the wilderness when they lived in temporary shelters.