The Bible is a book of life, our God is a living God, and we are the living people of the living God called by Him to enjoy Him and feast on Him. Throughout the Bible we see how God cares more for what we eat than for what we do; in His mind what we are is more important than anything we can do for Him.
After giving His people Israel the law in Exodus 19-20, God ordained that they would come together three times a year to keep the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of the harvest, and the feast of tabernacles. God wants us as His people to come together again and again (at least three times a year) to enjoy Him corporately, feast on Him, and bring forth the riches of Christ that we have produced through our enjoyment and experience of Him.
These three feasts are a type of our entire Christian life from its beginning (with the feast of Passover – experiencing God’s redemption – continued by the feast of Unleavened bread – eating Christ as our sinless life supply), our constant enjoyment and supply every day (the feast of harvest typifies the constant enjoyment of the bountiful supply of the Spirit, the resurrected Christ), and ending with the consummate enjoyment in the millennium kingdom and in the New Jerusalem (the feast of Tabernacles points to a full enjoyment of God in the next age and for eternity).
Yes, there are trials, sufferings, persecutions, and struggles in our Christian life, but all these are so that we may be helped to enjoy the Lord more and experience Him more.
May the Lord cause us to turn from “doing things for God” and “keeping God’s word” in an outward way to an inward continual feasting on God in Christ as the Spirit, so that we may be ushered into the full enjoyment of God in the kingdom age and in eternity!
Keep the Feast by Blending with the Saints, Praising the Lord, and Enjoying God!
The Feast of Tabernacles, which is a feast of enjoyment and satisfaction, signifies the consummation of God’s full salvation organically; it was kept after the people of Israel gathered the harvest, and it was full of the enjoyment of the rich produce of the land they have reaped.
Today we are in the process of daily enjoying and experiencing Christ, and one day we will be brought into the full enjoyment of God in Christ; the consummation of this enjoyment is the enjoyment of the fullness of the Father, the fullness of the Godhead, for eternity! For eternity we will enjoy the fulness of the Godhead in the new heaven and new earth together with all God’s redeemed ones! Hallelujah!
Today we have foretaste after foretaste of what God has done for us in Christ and is doing in us through His Spirit, and when we come together – both in the church meetings and in annual feasts, conferences, trainings, and blending times – we enjoy Christ and feast on Him corporately.
The fact that the children of Israel were supposed to get together three times a year to feast with God shows that God wants to blend His people together (Deut. 16:13-15). Praise the Lord for showing us the necessity of the crucial matter of blending, which is in the principle of keeping the feast; corporately we need to get together a few times a year to enjoy Christ together, be blended together, and praise the Lord!
Our blending times in conferences, annual feasts, trainings, and blending meetings cause us to be filled with the riches of Christ and blends us together to be one in the Lord, bringing forth the one accord! We need to blend more! Let’s not be “isolated tribes” or “secluded individuals” but let us blend together and hold many feasts unto the Lord!
When we come together to feast on Christ with the saints, what shall we do? We should not come empty-handed but bring the riches of Christ we have enjoyed and experienced so that others may be fed with Christ.
When we come together to blend, we should praise God with adoration, we should bless God, and we should speak well of God. Our praising the Lord in our meetings needs to be uplifted until we will praise Him unceasingly! We need to praise the Lord with adoration, with blessing, and with much well speaking!
Our coming together to blend and keep the feast is ordained by God and it is “after the harvest”, which means that we are filled with Christ as the bountiful and rich Spirit to praise God with adoration, bless God, and speak well of God.
We may experience sufferings and trials in our Christian life, but all these are so that we can feast more on Christ! Our suffering helps us to enjoy the Lord, and eventually the Lord will bring us into the experience of preparing a table for us in the presence of our enemies – He will make our fighting a feasting and our suffering into a rich table with much enjoyment of Christ! Hallelujah!
Lord, we praise You! You are so good, so great, and so wonderful! Lord Jesus, You are lovely. You are the fairest of the fair. We praise You, Lord Jesus! Father, we adore You and we admire You! How we love You, Lord! You became a man, You died for us, and You’re now the life-giving Spirit one with our spirit. Praise You, Lord, for commanding us to blend together and corporately feast on Christ again and again throughout the year. Lord, we bless You! We praise You! We enjoy You and we feast on You with all the saints! Praise the Lord!
Being Reminded that We are Sojourners on Earth and our Real Rest is in the New Jerusalem!
God ordained the Feast of Tabernacles so that the children of Israel would remember how their fathers (while wandering in the wilderness) had lived in tents (see Lev. 23:39-43), expecting to enter into the rest of the good land.
This is not “going down the memory lane” to remember how the forefathers lived in tents but a reminder that we as believers are still living “in the wilderness”, that is, we do NOT belong here on earth, our home is not here, and our seeking is for a city which has the foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
The people of Israel had to perpetually be reminded how they used to live in tents, and even God used to live in a tabernacle (a bigger tent); the Feast of Tabernacles is a reminder of our history with God and God’s history of living in us and among us to make us His testimony.
This remembrance is in the principle of the Lord’s table, which the Lord Jesus commanded us to keep by eating the bread and drinking the wine in remembrance of Him (Luke 22:19-20).
God ordained the Feast of Tabernacles so that the children of Israel would remember how their fathers, while wandering in the wilderness, had lived in tents (Lev. 23:39-43), expecting to enter into the rest of the good land. Hence, this feast is a reminder that today people are still in the wilderness and need to enter into the rest of the New Jerusalem, which is the eternal tabernacle (Rev. 21:2-3). Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also lived in tents and looked forward to this eternal tabernacle (Heb. 11:9-10), in which there will be a river of water of life proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb to quench man’s thirst (Rev. 22:1, 17). At the end of such a feast, which had such a background, Christ cried out the promise of the rivers of living water, which will satisfy man’s expectation for eternity (vv. 37-39). (John 7:2, footnote 1, par. 3, Recovery Version Bible)
As believers in Christ we need to be reminded again and again that we are not of this world, we are merely sojourners here, and this is a foreign land to us; just like our forefather Abraham, we are looking for the New Jerusalem, the city of which God is the architect and builder.
The earth is not our home: we look for another city! We are here merely in a tent, a movable and mobile dwelling, and we blend with the saints regularly so that we may feast on Christ and remind one another of our real dwelling place, which is the New Jerusalem.
The real rest and satisfaction is only in the New Jerusalem, which is the eternal tabernacle of God with man (Rev. 21:2-3); in the New Jerusalem we will remember what God has done in us and for us!
Even though the New Jerusalem is a solid city built with gold, pearls, and precious stones, it will still be called a tabernacle, as an eternal reminder of what God has done in us and for us while we were living on earth, that is, a reminder of how we enjoyed God and experienced Him both individually and corporately, while looking for and expecting the real rest and satisfaction in the New Jerusalem!
Lord Jesus, cause us to see that we are NOT here as earth-dwellers but as sojourners and strangers, looking for the city which has the foundations and whose architect is God! Lord, may we be reminded that today we are still in the wilderness and we need to enter into the real and consummate rest of the New Jerusalem, the eternal tabernacle of God with man. Oh Lord, we want to keep the feast by enjoying You and experiencing You today as a foretaste of the full taste in the New Jerusalem! Praise the Lord, God is among us, we are His people, and the tabernacle of God is with man!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Minoru Chen’s sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of Exodus, msg. 179 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (2), week 9 / msg 9, Keeping Feasts unto God Three Times a Year Typifying the Full Enjoyment of the Triune God in Christ.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Look! God’s tabernacle now is with the saints; / Emmanuel—God with us, we proclaim. / Everything is done, so let His children come; / Christ and the church—where God and man are one! (Hymns #1222)
# Blend us, Lord, blend us, Lord, ’til we are in one accord. / Hallelujah—the saints going on! / Blend us, Lord, blend us, Lord, open hearts we can afford. / Hallelujah—the churches go on! / As the members of / His organic Body, / We need the others to go on. / As local churches, / We do also need / One another for our going on. (Song on being blended together)
# As a pilgrim here I wander; / While afflicted, I rejoice, / For a better land I soon expect to see; / Though all others seek for earthly gain, / The Holy City e’er / Will my aspiration be. / I’ll be raptured into glory, / In the Holy City dwell— / New Jerusalem, New Jerusalem; / With the overcomers shouting, / How our praises then will swell, / In the New Jerusalem. (Song on being strangers on earth)
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God ordained the Feast of Tabernacles so that the children of Israel would remember how their fathers, while wandering in the wilderness, had lived in tents (Lev. 23:39-43), expecting to enter into the rest of the good land. Everyone had a tent, and God had a tabernacle among these tents, so the Feast of Tabernacles was a remembrance of God’s story. This points to what the Lord said when He established His table. He told us to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of Him (Luke 22:19-20). The Lord’s table is a remembrance just as the Feast of Tabernacles was a remembrance.
This feast is a reminder that today people are still in the wilderness and need to enter into the rest of the New Jerusalem, which is the eternal tabernacle (Rev. 21:2-3). Although the New Jerusalem will be solidly built with gold, pearls, and precious stones, it will be called a tabernacle. (Witness Lee, Crystallization-study of the Gospel of John, pp. 70-72)