1 Samuel 20:6

A yearly sacrifice for all the family.

The family festival

The word in this verse rendered “sacrifice” is in the margin of our English Bible rendered with somewhat greater felicity “feast.” There comes to view, therefore, in the narrative an unusually interesting fact; namely, that the family of Jesse continued to keep up their residence in Bethlehem, and carefully observed the household festivals through the year, as in earlier days they had been accustomed. The members of that scattered circle summoned each other regularly to a social reunion annually.

I. The advantages found in the observance of this yearly thanksgiving festival.

1. Of course, first and chief of these is the consideration that for all God’s love and care for us there is due at least full acknowledgment of the hand which has given them to us. “Count up your mercies.” A day in each year is surely not too much to be given to this formal rehearsal before God of our plentiful gains and prosperities.

2. In the second place, there is manifest advantage in these annual festivals growing out of the cultivation of our domestic affections and the perpetuation of our home tastes and feelings. It mingles religion with our best sympathies. He cannot be called a manly man who did not feel himself a weaker man from the month when his praying mother died and was buried, or who does not feel himself a braver, better man, if now perhaps the beloved old voice still lives to be his counsel and his inspiration.

3. Again: there is a manifest advantage in these thanksgiving festivals found in the perpetuation of ancestral memories to which they are calculated most strongly to minister. It is instinctive in the heart of every true man and woman to desire to live beyond the limits of an immediate generation. We toil hard for many a season to keep our name unsullied and preserve our fair fame unstained for the sake of our offspring.

4. And this leads me on to mention a fourth advantage derived from this annual feast; namely, the opportunity it offers for kindling and quickening a true patriotism in the hearts of the people.

II. With this exhibition of manifest advantages I can hardly need to argue further for such observance of the day. If we go with David at all on his errand, it must be in imagination only. And I think it will be profitable now to ask and answer where he did go.

1. To his own city.

2. In the second place, I suppose David went straight as was possible to his own home in Bethlehem.

3. Then, finally, I imagine David would want to go to various houses of his brethren. I take this from the fact that this day’s invitation was given by his brother. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

Christmas and New Year festivities

I. Remember to exalt God in your family festivities.

II. Thoroughly survey the history of the year since your last family festivities.

1. It was a yearly sacrifice. Year short space in time, but may be long in events. What changes may crowd into its weeks. Christmas does not always find the family in the old home.

2. On some homes shadows lie thick, others bathed in sunshine. Here Jacob has lost his Joseph, or Rachel mourns her children; here sportive childhood cries, “Oh, call my brother back to me, I cannot play alone.”

3. And then, they who come to the festivities come from such various scenes. Here at Bethlehem was David from the court; and Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah from the camp.

4. Nor will any true heart give a secondary place to changes on character the year has produced.

III. Consider the personal obligations each owes to the family.

IV. In your festivities think of others. (G. B. Johnson.)