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Celebrating The Festivals of Faith (Sukkot Edition) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  But oftentimes people complain about, man, holidays are so commercialized. And guess what? Hallmark has not gotten a hold of any of these holidays, as far as I know. Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:25
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Today, we're talking about celebrating the festivals of faith. I love this conversation. I love this topic. I want Jeremy to speak mostly on this from experience and wisdom. But one thing I'll say, which is interesting, is I bet if you're listening, if you're a common Western Protestant Christian, even selling saying talking about the biblical holidays probably made you either cringe or immediately put on your skeptical glasses, right? You're kind of like, oh, I don't know about that. That seems legalistic. That seems this, right?
• 0:53
  And the first thing before Jeremy talks that I'll say is, do we realize how non-consistent that is with our own holidays, right? Just that feeling alone you just maybe had is interesting because we never even do that with our own holidays, right? We embrace Christmas and Easter and all these other holidays without even thinking twice, man-made ones, but yet we're all of a sudden skeptical the minute it's actually from the Bible. Like, doesn't that seem weird to anyone else? That seems weird to me. But yeah, Jeremy, what would you say about this?
• 1:23
  Yeah. So do you have to celebrate the biblical holidays? No, you do not. It's very clear in the New Testament. You don't have to. Paul says that in Colossians chapter two, let no one judge you according to what days you keep. And you don't have to celebrate cultural holidays or Christian holidays either.
• 1:42
  However, I love this conversation because one of the things that I'm constantly asking as a father is how might I better immerse my kids in the story? What kinds of things, tools am I given to help story my children so that they will have faith in the gospel? And man, like holidays are amazing.
• 2:04
  awesome at this. I mean, this is what they are for. And so I just find this as like a tool that I find irresistible. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, Paul did say in Colossians to don't let anybody judge you based on a holiday, but we know he celebrated holidays and he even wrote the Gentile churches about them celebrating holidays in 1 Corinthians 5.
• 2:23
  He says to them, Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for us. So let us celebrate the festival now with old bread of wickedness and evil, but with the new bread of sincerity and truth. And so I have an assignment for you guys.
• 2:37
  I think it's important as fathers that you just get to know your father's curriculum for training his people in faith. And that is these holidays. Right. So and so you can look at any of them. I always if people are skeptical, I always tell people start with the festival of Sukkot. Most people don't know about that one. They might have heard about Passover and Passover is a little bit more of a somber holiday.
• 3:01
  Sukkot is just awesome, immersive fun. And so it's a holiday where one time a year, fathers are told to take their kids out of their house and to build a little hut and then to point back at their house and say, that is not our home. Remember, our identity is we are sojourners on the earth. We are walking in faith. And so we will not be held captive by material things.
• 3:23
  Our faith is in the Lord alone, and we are on a journey of faith to the new Jerusalem. And man, I can't imagine a more exciting thing to celebrate than that. And so we've been celebrating this for over a decade, and it's been such an incredible part of our family's life. So I just want people to be aware that when God was crafting these holidays in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible—
• 3:45
  He made them immersive. He made them full of meaning. And he made them all very fun. I mean, they all have some really amazing, fun elements. And so there are seven holidays there in the Torah. Don't read them all and try to do them all in one year because you will overwhelm yourself.
• 4:02
  Um, but oftentimes people complain all the time about, man, holidays are so commercialized. And guess what? Hallmark has not gotten ahold of any of these holidays, as far as I know. If they have, it's not gotten to me. Like, it's just, they're all based on what we believe and they're all centered on the person of Jesus.
• 4:17
  And so it's really exciting to learn these things. And so we're not going to be able to unpack the meaning of all these holidays to you guys. We maybe will in subsequent podcasts, but I just want to overall say, man, I love the fact that God, as a father, designed holidays. You can design holidays if you'd like. You can take the ones from our culture.
• 4:38
  and redeem those. And we do a lot of that in our family. You can take the ones from the Bible and really experience the meaning that comes from those. We've done a lot of that in our family. And so these are all great. And I love the fact that holidays are a place where we story our children and we get to experience immersive, fun, meaning as a full family.
• 4:59
  I'm really excited for you guys to hear just practically how to do this. So just a kind of big picture of the accelerator. Every single month we pick a theme and we drill deep into this theme to try to help you guys give you tools for how to build a multi-generational family team. And some of these tools are going to be like, whoa, that's awesome. Let's do that. And other tools you'll be like, no, we're going to pass that one. That's fine. We just want to give you guys lots of great tools to work with. And that's how we see these holidays. These are not things that we feel obligated to celebrate. We're going to be like, oh, that's awesome.
• 5:25
  In order to keep the law, we believe Jesus perfectly kept the law when he came and he died on the cross. And so we have already perfectly kept all of the holidays. Good job, guys, everyone. You're in Christ. You've kept the holidays. But it is really amazing to get to experience them. This is an option in the same way that you don't have to celebrate Christmas.
• 5:45
  You know, you don't have to celebrate birthdays, but they can do an incredible job of forming our identities. And oftentimes what I find is that, you know, moms and dads who are trying to build family teams are looking for tools for how to deepen family identity. And so something like 20 plus years ago, our family started just with one biblical holiday. And it was the one we're going to spend most of our time talking about here, Sukkot. And it did more than any other thing, practically, besides maybe our Sabbath dinners.
• 6:14
  to help form our family's identity. I was blown away by how well God designed this holiday. And one of the reasons we get excited about these is because they are God-designed holidays. In the Accelerator during September, we'll give you guys a whole playbook. We have this amazing Sukkot starter kit that you guys get this month if you're in the Accelerator.
• 6:33
  So we'd love to give you that. The second week will be a Zoom call. So if you guys have questions about any of these fall holidays, you can ask them then, especially about Sukkot. And then we're just going to help you guys get something started. I think it's going to be so meaningful for you guys. And then we're going to give you guys a little tutorial video in the Accelerator on the third week. In the fourth week, we'll do a town hall with our family. And also we can drill into Sukkot or any other topics you guys want to talk about at the end of September. So that's what's coming. And so if you want to get in the Accelerator, go to familyteams.com. Just click on that.
• 7:04
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.