The Command to Be Altogether Glad Text: Deuteronomy 16:13-15
Introduction: The Grammar of Gratitude
We live in a sour and resentful age. Our culture is marinated in the brine of grievance. Everyone is a victim, every slight is a trauma, and every holiday is an occasion for historical revisionism and sullen protest. The world believes that the path to justice is paved with discontentment. But the Christian faith is fundamentally at odds with this entire project. Our God is not a God of perpetual grievance, but of overflowing goodness. And because He is a God of goodness, He is a God of gladness. He does not merely tolerate our joy; He commands it.
The modern evangelical world often treats joy as a sentimental option, a sort of spiritual sprinkle you can add to your faith if you are feeling up to it. But in the Scriptures, and particularly here in Deuteronomy, joy is not an emotional accessory. It is a covenantal obligation. It is a direct command. To fail in this duty is not just to have a bad day; it is to break faith with the God who has given us every reason for gladness. A glum Christian is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle or a silent trumpet.
The three great pilgrimage feasts of Israel, Passover, Pentecost, and Booths, were the central liturgical moments in the life of the nation. They were the rhythm of the covenant, the annual rehearsals of redemption. The Feast of Booths, or Tabernacles, was the culmination of the entire cycle. It was the great harvest festival, the national Thanksgiving Day, looking back at God's provision in the wilderness and celebrating His provision in the promised land. It was the most joyful of all the feasts, a seven-day explosion of gratitude. And in this command from Moses, we find the grammar of that gratitude, a divinely mandated joy that is both personal and corporate, both backward-looking and forward-looking.
This passage is a direct assault on the therapeutic pietism that has infected so much of the church, which places our fickle feelings at the center of worship. God places His objective goodness at the center and commands our feelings to get in line. This is not a call for fake smiles and forced happiness. It is a call to look at the facts of God's provision and to respond appropriately. And the appropriate response is to be, as the text says, "altogether glad."
The Text
“You shall celebrate the Feast of Booths seven days after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and your wine vat; and you shall be glad in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female slaves and the Levite and the sojourner and the orphan and the widow who are within your gates. Seven days you shall celebrate a feast to Yahweh your God in the place which Yahweh chooses, because Yahweh your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether glad.”
(Deuteronomy 16:13-15 LSB)
The Foundation of Feasting (v. 13)
We begin with the timing and the context of this required celebration.
"You shall celebrate the Feast of Booths seven days after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and your wine vat;" (Deuteronomy 16:13)
The joy God commands is not a detached, abstract thing. It is grounded in the real world of work and provision. The feast was to take place only after the harvest was complete. The grain had been threshed, and the grapes had been pressed. The barns were full. This is a crucial point. God commands them to celebrate His blessing, not to try and generate a feeling of happiness out of thin air. Their gladness was a direct response to tangible evidence of God's faithfulness.
This cuts against two errors. The first is the error of the stoic, who tries to be pious by denying the goodness of material blessings. God gives us food, wine, and full barns, and He intends for us to enjoy them and thank Him for them. Asceticism is not a Christian virtue; it is ingratitude with a halo. The second error is that of the materialist, who enjoys the gifts but forgets the Giver. The world gets drunk at the wine vat and congratulates itself on its own industry. The Israelite was commanded to take the fruit of that wine vat to the place where Yahweh chose to put His name and to rejoice before Him.
The feast was a seven-day affair. This was not a quick "thank you" before moving on. It was a prolonged, intentional, national party. A full week was dedicated to remembering and rejoicing. This teaches us that gratitude must be cultivated. It requires setting aside time. Our modern lives are characterized by a frantic pace that is hostile to deep joy. We are too busy, too distracted, too anxious about the next thing to properly celebrate the last thing God did. God built a rhythm of celebration into the calendar of His people to train them in the discipline of joy.
The Inclusivity of Joy (v. 14)
Next, Moses defines the guest list for this holy party, and it is radically inclusive.
"and you shall be glad in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female slaves and the Levite and the sojourner and the orphan and the widow who are within your gates." (Deuteronomy 16:14)
This is a picture of the covenant community in its fullness. The joy was not to be a private affair for the wealthy landowner. He was commanded to bring everyone with him. Notice the concentric circles. It starts with the nuclear family: son and daughter. It extends to the entire household, including male and female slaves. Then it expands to the wider community, specifically including those who were most vulnerable and easily forgotten: the Levite, the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow.
This is a stunning rebuke to all forms of selfish individualism. Your joy is not complete until it is shared. The man with the full threshing floor was not permitted to celebrate his abundance while the landless Levite, the foreign immigrant, the fatherless child, or the grieving widow went without. His personal blessing was meant to be a community blessing. God's provision to him was intended to flow through him to others. This is the principle of the gospel. We have been blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing, not so we can hoard it for ourselves, but so we can be a conduit of that blessing to the world.
This verse is a foundational text for Christian hospitality. True biblical joy is expansive and generous. It pulls others in. It sets another place at the table. It recognizes that in the covenant of grace, social distinctions are flattened. The master and the slave, the native-born and the immigrant, the powerful and the powerless are all called to rejoice together before the same God. This is a foreshadowing of the great feast to come, where a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue will stand before the throne (Rev. 7:9). If your joy makes you exclusive, it is not the joy of the Lord.
The Reason for Rejoicing (v. 15)
The final verse summarizes the command and grounds it once more in the character and action of God.
"Seven days you shall celebrate a feast to Yahweh your God in the place which Yahweh chooses, because Yahweh your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether glad." (Deuteronomy 16:15)
The feast is "to Yahweh your God." This is the crucial directional pointer. The celebration is not ultimately about the harvest; it is about the Lord of the harvest. The joy is not in the produce itself, but in the God who gives the produce. This is what separates godly feasting from worldly partying. The world worships the creation. The Christian worships the Creator through the creation.
The reason for the joy is stated plainly: "because Yahweh your God will bless you." The verb is in the future tense, but it carries the force of a settled promise. He has blessed you, and He will continue to bless you. The joy is based on the unwavering, covenant-keeping faithfulness of God. He blesses the "produce" and the "work of your hands." God is not opposed to industry. He designed us to work, and He delights to bless the fruit of our labor. This is the foundation for a robust theology of work and economics. Our labor, when done in faith, is a partnership with God, and the results are a reason for worship.
And the result of all this? "So that you will be altogether glad." The Hebrew here is emphatic. It means to be nothing but joyful. Completely, thoroughly, and entirely joyful. This is the goal. God is glorified not by our moping, but by our gladness. He is honored not by our long faces, but by our feasting. John Piper has famously said that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. This verse is the Old Testament foundation for that truth. God commands our complete joy because our joy in Him is a powerful witness to His goodness.
The Feast Fulfilled
Like all the Old Testament feasts, the Feast of Booths was a shadow, and the substance is Christ. It pointed forward to a greater reality, a greater harvest, and a greater joy. The temporary booths they lived in for a week were a reminder of their wilderness wanderings, but also a pointer to the temporary nature of this earthly life. We are sojourners, living in tents, awaiting a permanent city (Heb. 11:9-10).
The feast celebrated the final ingathering of the harvest, and this points directly to the great harvest of souls at the end of the age. This is where a robustly optimistic, postmillennial eschatology makes sense of this. The gospel is the mighty threshing instrument of God, and the history of the church is the story of the great harvest. Jesus said the fields are "white for harvest" (John 4:35). The Great Commission is our harvesting task. The Feast of Booths, therefore, is a picture of the mission of the church, gathering in the nations, so that all the peoples of the earth will come and celebrate before the Lord. The prophet Zechariah saw this explicitly, predicting a day when all the surviving nations would come up to Jerusalem "to worship the King, Yahweh of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths" (Zech. 14:16).
This is not a picture of a defeated, retreating church, but a victorious, celebrating church, whose joy is so infectious that it draws the nations in. This is the future of the world. History is not ending in a whimper, but with a shout of joy. It is culminating in the marriage supper of the Lamb, the ultimate feast, the final ingathering.
And it all comes to a sharp focus in Jesus Himself. During the Feast of Booths, on the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'" (John 7:37-38). He is the true provision. He is the living water that they celebrated in the temple ceremonies during that feast. He is the reason we can be "altogether glad."
Therefore, the command is still for us. We are to be a feasting people. Our weekly worship is a feast. The Lord's Supper is a feast. Our hospitality is a feast. We are to rejoice in the finished work of Christ, our completed harvest. We are to rejoice with the whole covenant community, leaving no one out. And we do this because God has blessed us in Christ, and He will continue to bless us, until the day when the final trumpet sounds, the harvest is complete, and we sit down at the great feast, altogether glad, forever.