Today we read a summary of the Passover, feast of weeks and feast of booths. Events with highly specific instructions, “at the place that the Lord your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice.” Repeated again for other feasts. Yet these were feasts designed to give the Israelites an opportunity to rejoice at their deliverance from slavery, from a life where every aspect was dictated and enforced, offering nothing but hard labour and death.
It would appear the Israelites had traded one form of slavery for another. But one was a slavery without hope, the other offered deliverance and a promised land. We too have traded one form of slavery for another. We “were the servants of sin, but… became the servants of righteousness.” We have cause to rejoice, just as the Israelites did. Freedom from a slavery that offers only death, instead a hope producing “fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life,” a motivating and encouraging hope that can help get us through the trials of life.