23:14
The Law is sometimes looked at as having civil, moral and ritual parts to it (or some similar division). It has been said that this is too simplistic an analysis. If it is treated as an absolute distinction between parts of the law, and that one part can only be assigned to one category I would agree, but it is still a useful tool as long as one remembers that it is not a perfect split. Anyway, using this categorisation, we now come to a ritual part of the Law, with the three festivals that the Jews were to observe. The last part “a festival to me” is crucial, these festivals were to be celebrated for the Lord’s sake. In Zech 7:6 the people were castigated for celebrating for their own benefit, not in order to honour the Lord. Today we need to watch what our Sunday services are for. Are we doing them for God, or for us? This warning is relevant both for charismatic type worship, and more traditional worship. We need to guard our hearts.
23:15
The first festival is the festival of unleavened bread, commemorating their coming out of Egypt. The emphasis here is on eating the unleavened bread. They are to remember what it was like. To bring this up to date, we could perhaps say that we are to remember our sinfulness and weakness. It is Christ who has rescued us, we played no part in our salvation, other than to believe.
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