God desires that His people feast with the Lord, that is, that we as His people would be joyful and at rest with Him as we are feasting with the Lord and with the saints.
The feasts and the matter of feasting is of great significance in the Bible, for as soon as God gained a corporate group of people – Israel – He expressed His desire that His people would hold a feast unto Him.
In Exodus we see that God called Moses and Aaron and sent them to Pharaoh to tell him to let His people go that they may hold a feast unto Him (Exo. 5:1). This was the first time that such an intention of God was revealed.
God desires that His people would not only be delivered and rescued from the world, the slave house, and from captivity, but that they would hold a feast to Jehovah. This is very meaningful.
What does it mean to hold a feast unto the Lord? It is not merely to eat and drink before Him but to worship Him with the worship that He desires, by enjoying Him in His presence.
To worship God in this way involves sacrificing to Him (Heb. 13:15), and the worship that God desires is that in which we enjoy God as our provision through His dispensing of Himself into us, and then rest with Him in what we enjoy of Him (John 4:24).
This may not be what we think of when we speak of feasting with the Lord, but in God’s eyes to feast with Him us to worship Him by enjoying Him in His presence, involving sacrifices and the dispensing of Himself into us, and we rest with Him by what we enjoy of Him.
God charges us, His people, to hold a feast to Him. The exodus from Egypt shows us that God’s intention in saving us is not just for us to be free from sin and slavery but that we would hold a feast unto God.
The people of Israel held a feast unto God in the wilderness, and when they entered into the good land they were charged that three times a year they would go to Jerusalem together to feast with God and with one another.
Until the Lord Jesus came, these feasts went on, but in the night He was crucified, He ate the feast of Passover with His disciples, and that was the ending of the Old Testament feasts. That night when the Lord ate the last Passover feast, He initiated the New Testament feast, the Lord’s Table.
Throughout the New Testament we are charged to come together week after week to take the Lord’s Table, and every Table is a feast. After the Lord instituted the Lord’s Table, He told us that He won’t drink of this cup until the kingdom, when He will drink of it anew.
This implies that in the kingdom age we will be feasting again. Even in the kingdom she we will still be feasting, we will still be worshipping God, rendering genuine worship to Him.
The goal of God’s salvation of man, ultimately, is that God would be God to His people and man would be His people.
For God to be God to us, we need to render Him proper worship and that we become His genuine worshippers, His true feasters, those who feast with Him. Feasting therefore is not a small matter, for it covers the whole Bible.
Feasting with the Lord by Entering into His Rest and Enjoying Him with the Saints
The feast in Lev. 23 were for rest and enjoyment, and they typify Christ as our rest and enjoyment (Lev. 23:2; Matt. 11:28-30).
After God created man in Gen. 1, man was ushered into rest, for God rested; God intended that man would enter into His rest, so that man would enjoy all that God has done for man.
Unfortunately, after man fell, Satan devised a world system according to his plan to enslave man, occupy man, oppress man, and afflict man, so that man would be filled with anxiety, struggle, and unrest. This is the situation in today’s world.
God’s original intention is for man to enter into God’s rest and enjoyment, but Satan came to afflict man. From morning to evening mankind is filled with anxiety. The Lord Jesus realised this situation and in Matt. 11 He came and called those who toil and are burdened to come to Him, and He will give us rest.
The whole world operates in the principle of anxiety – it is a vicious circle, Satan’s system to occupy, afflict, and oppress man. But praise the Lord, Jesus came to give man rest!
God ordained the feasts so that we as His people might rest with Him and be joyful with Him; He wants us to enjoy with Him and with one another what He has provided for us. This rest and enjoyment in our feasting with the Lord were not individual but corporate (see Lev. 23:1-2).
The book of Leviticus is concerning the priesthood of God for the service of God in fellowship with God, and the matter of the feasts was brought in not in the beginning but toward the latter part of the book.
The feasts are an issue and result of our service to God in fellowship with God. Feasting with the Lord is an issue of our service to God as priests in the fellowship ow God.
Our service to God in fellowship with Him results in Christ as the rest and enjoyment we have with God and with one another. In other words, our service issue in feasting with the Lord, in festivals.
And these festivals were not occasionally but appointed by God, ordained by Him. God ordained the festivals so that we as His people might rest with Him and be joyful with Him! God wants us to feast with Him so that we may enjoy all that He has prepared for us.
First, we need to have the priesthood, then offer Christ as our sacrifices to God, and have a holy and clean life; the result is that we feast with the Lord and with the saints.
The feasts appointed by God were holy convocations, special assemblies of God’s people called for a special and particular purpose (Lev. 23:4). God doesn’t want to have a common people – He wants a holy assembly, a people called to come together and have a special assembly.
These feasts signify the gathering of the believers as the church to have a corporate rest and enjoyment of Christ before God, with God, and with one another (see 1 Cor. 10:16-17).
The church life is a meeting life, where we as saints come together to feast with the Lord, enjoy God, and feast with one another. We cannot have a proper church life without coming together.
The Lord wants to gain the proper church life, and our meeting together is to feast with the Lord and with one another on Christ! There’s something special that God commands for His people to assemble ourselves together and feast together.
Lord Jesus, thank You for commanding us that we feast with the Lord and with the saints! We come to You, Lord, to enjoy with all the saints all that You have provided for us in Your complete salvation. We come to You to rest with You and enjoy You. Amen, Lord, recover the proper church life with the meetings of the saints in oneness to enjoy the Lord, feast with the Lord, and feast with one another on the riches of Christ before God. Recover our corporate rest and enjoyment of Christ before God for His satisfaction!
Ceasing our Work and Resting by Enjoying God with All the Saints in the Church
The first feast God has ordained is the Sabbath, which is a weekly feast; the Sabbath signifies the rest that God’s redeemed people enjoy with God and with one another (see Lev. 23:3).
Every seven days there was a day for rest and enjoyment. God charged His people to keep the Sabbath; they had to rest on the seventh day. This indicates that on Sabbath God’s people were to gather together and enjoy God; God’s desire is that His people would come together to feast with the Lord and with one another in rest and enjoyment.
The principle of the Sabbath is not a matter of the day – that is, keeping Saturday or Sunday as the day for enjoying God; rather, it is that working with the Lord requires that we learn how to rest with Him and enjoy Him.
The real meaning of Sabbath is not merely ceasing from our work; rather, as seen in Gen. 2:2, God rested on the seventh day, and we as men created by Him enter into His rest.
To God Sabbath is the seventh day, but to us it is the first day. God created the heavens, the earth, and everything necessary for man to exist for the fulfillment of God’s purpose, and finally He created man on the sixth day; then, on the seventh day, God rested.
Why did God rest: did He work so hard that He got tired and now He needed to get some rest? No, God rested because He just created a man in His image and with His likeness for His expression and representation, and so now He could rest, for this man satisfies Him.
God rested because He was satisfied with man, and He brought in rest because of us; we therefore need to enter into God’s rest and feast with the Lord by enjoying all that God has done.
The principle of the Sabbath is that we should cease our work because God has done everything for us and has become everything for our enjoyment (Gen. 2:2-3).
This rest includes the rest of the Sabbath day (Exo. 20:8-11) and the rest of the good land (Deut. 12:9; Heb. 4:8) in the Old Testament, the rest of the Lord’s Day in the New Testament (Rev. 1:10; Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), and the rest of the millennial kingdom (Heb. 4:1, 3, 9, 11).
The consummation of rest is the rest of the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem, in which all the redeemed saints will express God’s glory (Rev. 21:11, 23) and reign with God’s authority (Rev. 22:5b) for eternity. Hallelujah!
We should not try to keep the law or do things for God, but first we should enjoy God by faith, feasting with the Lord and with one another.
God wants man to rest first; our natural man is full of the idea of doing things for God by exercising our own effort and endeavor, but God desires man to rest first and enjoy the Lord, and then from rest he would work.
All our work should issue from our resting in Christ. To grow in the Lord we must learn never to exercise our efforts to do something for God to please God, but first learn to enter into His rest, and out of that rest comes the real work.
Lord, we want to enter into Your rest. We cease our work because You have done everything for us and You have become everything for our enjoyment! Amen, Lord, we stop ourselves, we stop our efforts and our works, and we just come to enter into Your rest and Your enjoyment. Keep us in Your rest, and may all our work for You issue out of our rest with You. May we never exercise our efforts to please You but first enter into Your rest, feast with the Lord and with the saints, and be filled with Your enjoyment!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Leviticus, msg. 52 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 8, The Feasts (1) – The Sabbath, the Feast of the Passover, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
- Hymns on this topic:
# The goal of God’s complete salvation / Is to make His redeemed people / His dwelling place on earth / That they may fellowship with God, serve God / And be God’s holy people living a holy life / Through the tabernacle with the offerings, and by the priests— / All types of the all-inclusive Christ— / To issue in the gaining of Christ as their mutual rest / And enjoyment typified by the feasts. (Song on, Christ in Leviticus)
# God’s presence and God’s speaking mark / God’s Sabbath rest for us; / He speaks, we rest, and all is done. / His way is effortless. (Song on, The Living Word of God)
# At Thy coming, in Thy kingdom, / With all saints that overcome, / We anew will feast upon Thee / And Thy loving Bride become. (Hymns #221)
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