This post is only addressing religious festivals that are outside of Christianity and Judaism. There are some Jewish festivals that Gentiles can observe and some that they cannot. In no way am I speaking against Jewish festivals in this post. That is another subject, for nothing Jewish of biblical origin, can be declared wrong in itself. Merely, the interpretation of the Jewish people and the way they practice it, may be wrong.
Romans 11:16-18 – If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.
17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.
In this scripture, Paul is explaining to us that we must not consider the Jewish people and their ways as unholy. When Jesus explained to his disciples to beware of the teachings of the Pharisees, he was warning them of the Pharisee’s interpretation of scripture. Not of scripture, itself. So I am only speaking about religious festivals outside of Judaism and Christianity. With this in mind, let us proceed.
Deuteronomy 12:13-14 – Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. 14 Offer them only at the place the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.
When dealing with other religions, we are not to worship anywhere that we wish, meaning we cannot claim another religion’s church/place of worship, as a place where we can worship our God. When the children of Israel entered the promised land, God told them that they must destroy all the places where the nations before them worshipped their false gods.
Deuteronomy 12:1-4 – These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land. 2 Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. 3 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places. 4 You must not worship the Lord your God in their way.
We must not worship the Lord God in the same places as other religions or in the same way as other religions. These decrees still stand for Christians today. Christians should not worship any other god but the one and only living God, and follow only in the ways of the God of Israel, and no other. For Christians, this means that we can only worship God through the teachings of Jesus and no other. We must not follow any other teachings or philosophies and must align our beliefs according to Jesus only.
Deuteronomy 12:29-32 – The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, 30 and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” 31 You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods. 32 See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.
Christians must not actively seek to learn about the ways of other religions in order to follow them. Nor should we mix their ways with the teachings of Jesus. This would be adding or taking away from the word of God. In Jeremiah, we see more warnings from God regarding following the practices of other religions, which includes feasts, festivals and celebrations.
Jeremiah 10:1-16 – Hear what the Lord says to you, people of Israel. 2 This is what the Lord says: “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. 3 For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. 4 They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. 5 Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” 6 No one is like you, Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power. 7 Who should not fear you, King of the nations? This is your due. Among all the wise leaders of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you. 8 They are all senseless and foolish; they are taught by worthless wooden idols. 9 Hammered silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Uphaz. What the craftsman and goldsmith have made is then dressed in blue and purple— all made by skilled workers. 10 But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God, the eternal King. When he is angry, the earth trembles; the nations cannot endure his wrath.
11 “Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’”12 But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. 13 When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. 14 Everyone is senseless and without knowledge; every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. The images he makes are a fraud; they have no breath in them. 15 They are worthless, the objects of mockery; when their judgment comes, they will perish. 16 He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the Maker of all things, including Israel, the people of his inheritance—the Lord Almighty is his name.
We must not worship the Lord God in their way. This includes religious festivals and feasts, as they celebrate and highlight different concepts, characteristics and priorities than Christianity. Every religious festival has a story behind it with a deeper meaning (philosophies). We must be careful not to allow these ways (philosophies) to infect our way of thinking as per the Bible.
Exodus 32:1-8 – When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”
Festivals and feasts are directly related to the worship of a god.
Numbers 25:2 – These women invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, so the Israelites feasted with them and worshiped the gods of Moab.
Judges 16:23-25 – Now the rulers of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying, “Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands.”
24 When the people saw him, they praised their god, saying,
“Our god has delivered our enemy into our hands, the one who laid waste our land and multiplied our slain.”
Amos 2:8 – At their religious festivals, they lounge in clothing their debtors put up as security. In the house of their gods, they drink wine bought with unjust fines.
The Apostle Paul also speaks of this:
1 Corinthians 10:18-20 – Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? 19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.
We must be careful not to participate in any sacrifical process or worship of a false god or idol of another religion. This includes attending their festivals, celebrations and feasts.
The same festivities which included eating, drinking and celebrating, occurred during the time of Moses.
Cont’d Exodus 32:6 – So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
This scripture is what Paul quotes as idol worshipping; the element of eating, drinking and indulgence of revelry. Celebrating evil philosophies.
1 Corinthians 10:6-7 – Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.”
Celebrating a false god is a part of worshipping a false god.
Cont’d Exodus 32:7 – Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.
The celebration of a false god and its philosophies corrupted the people.
Exodus 32:8 – They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
Our attendance in such religious festivals is worshipping a false god and is prohibited according to the word of God.
Exodus 34:14 – Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
We are not to follow or acknowledge the ways of other religions in any way, shape or form. This includes attending their religious festivals, as it is a way in which the unbelievers’ gods are acknowledged and worshipped by us (not that there is actually such a thing as another god). For a believer, it is the danger in believing that there is such a thing as another god through our attendance of such a festival, celebration or feast. This would arouse God’s jealousy.
1 Corinthians 10:21-22 – You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Also, for a believer, there is the danger of an immature Christian seeing us attending another religion’s festivals. They could take this as acknowledgment that there is such a thing as another god. This would cause the weak believer to stumble and this is a sin for the immature Christian and the mature for being a stumbling block.
1 Corinthians 8:4-7 & 9-13 – So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), 6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
7 But not everyone possesses this knowledge.
Weak and immature Christians may believe that there is such a thing as another god and we must not reinforce this lie in any way through our actions. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled.
Cont’d 1 Corinthians 8:9-13 – 9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? 11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12 When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall.
So we must never attend such a sacrifice or celebration/festival, lest we cause another to stumble, whether believer or unbeliever. For there is no other god but the living God of Israel.
Isaiah 43:10 – “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
Isaiah 45:5 – I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.
By attending festivals of other religions, we cause an unbeliever to further believe in a lie, that there is such a thing as another god. Our actions of attendance will be accepted as an acknowledgment of their so-called ‘god’. We must seek also, the good of others (believer or unbeliever) and not attend such festivals.
1 Corinthians 10:31-33 – So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 32 Do not cause anyone to stumble, whether Jews, Greeks or the church of God— 33 even as I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.
1 Corinthians 10:23-24 – “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. 24 No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.
We would also cause a weak believer to stumble by our attendance, which is a sin. It would be interpreted as our acknowledgment of another so-called god. Lastly, we must always be careful that although we may know there is no such thing as another god, we may arouse the Lord’s jealousy through our attendance of another religious festival.
1 Corinthians 10:22 – Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Exodus 34:14 – Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 4:24 – For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Deuteronomy 32:21 – They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
Exodus 20:5 – You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me…
NEXT POST:
Can Christians Eat Food Sacrificed To Idols?
