God delivered His people Israel from the tyranny of Pharaoh and the usurpation of Egypt so that they might serve Him; God delivered us from the usurpation in the world so that we may serve Him, that is, that we may hold a feast to God and offer sacrifices to Him.
It wasn’t merely because God had mercy on the harsh treatment the people of Israel had under the Egyptians that He delivered them; God had a purpose in mind, and His enemy opposes that purpose: God wants His people to be freed from any usurpation and serve Him by feasting unto Him and offering Him sacrifices.
When Moses and Aaron went to the Pharaoh to ask him to let the people of Israel go, they mainly said that God wants His people to go in the wilderness and serve Him, hold a feast unto Him, and offer Him sacrifices.
This is why God desires from us, and this is what our Christian life should be: being freed from any usurpation of Satan to be separated unto God and feast unto Him with the sacrifices He ordained.
Why did God save us? It was so that we serve Him. When He regenerated us with His life we became not just believers in Christ, sons of God, members of the Body of Christ, and children of our heavenly Father, but we also became servants of God, those who choose to serve God.
And our service to God is not primarily doing things for Him but being separated from anything that would usurp us and our time – unto the Lord, so that we may enjoy Him, hold a feast to Him, and offer the sacrifices that He desires.
Our concept of worshipping God and serving God needs to change; to serve God and to worship God, according to the Bible, is to feast to the Lord and to enjoy Christ as the reality of all the sacrifices. God’s goal is not merely to separate us from the world unto Himself; He desires that we would hold a feast to Him and sacrifice to Him.
God’s salvation is not merely His deliverance (“so that we may go to heaven”, as some say); it includes our feasting on the Lord, with the Lord, and in the Lord’s presence, so that we and God would be mutually fed and satisfied. Then, whatever comes out of this feasting and enjoyment, is our service to Him.
The Best and Highest Relationship Man can have with God is to Feast to God and with God
God told Pharaoh through Moses that He wants His people to leave Egypt and hold a feast to Him (Exo. 5:1); this indicates that, when God’s people are feasting, God is happy, for their feasting is to Him and with Him in His presence.
Actually, even before they were delivered from Egypt, God ordained that His people would stay in the house and feast on the roasted lamb with the bitter herbs and the unleavened bread. The way God delivers us from the world is by putting us in Christ and giving us to eat Christ, the One who has been roasted by the fire of God’s judgement, as our supply.
What makes God happy is when we feast to Him, serve Him, love Him, and enjoy Him. The best and highest relationship man can have with God is to feast to God and with God (see Exo. 23:14-17).
This matter of enjoying God is not something common or plain; God desires that we enjoy Him and feast to God with God, and this constitutes our worship of God.
When we are praying in spirit to the Lord, when we are in spirit, when we pray over His word, and we enter into His enjoyment, we are face to face with the Lord, and we are nourished by His life, we are touching Him, and we are rejoicing in Him.
This is our worship and service to God, and we will do this for eternity: in the New Jerusalem we will be serving God as slaves by eating the tree of life and drinking the water of life.
God doesn’t want us to do many things for Him; He doesn’t appreciate our many endeavors for Him but He loves when we enjoy Him. To have a feast to God means that we feast for Him and with Him, and the more we feast, the more enjoyment He has and the happier He is.
This is what Moses did forty days and forty nights on the mountain with God: he didn’t eat physical food or drink physical water, but he was there enjoying God, feasting with God before God, and worshipping God.
This feasting unto the Lord is dispensational worship; that is, it is worshipping God according to what has been dispensed into us. As we eat, drink, praise, sing, and rejoice in the presence of God, we hold a feast unto Him. As we shall see, such a feast is also a sacrifice unto the Lord. To sacrifice is to worship. Dispensational worship is worship in which God is dispensed into us for our enjoyment so that we may feast in His presence with Him and unto Him. This is the worship God desires. This is not only revealed in the New Testament but also implied in the Old Testament. Witness Lee, Life-Study of Exodus
Wow, what an expression, “dispensational worship”; it is not our sweating or doing many things for God that makes God happy but our first receiving Him, absorbing Him, assimilating Him, and receiving Him, and in that dispensing we are enjoying Him and serving Him.
Out of this enjoyment of God we offer something back to Him for His enjoyment; this is dispensational worship.
God ordained that at least at certain set times His people would just stop everything and simply feast to God, for God, and with God; it gives God much pleasure when we set time aside from our busyness and feast with God in worship to Him.
When we stop and enjoy God’s dispensing, letting Him work Himself into us in our fellowship with Him, we offer God what He desires, the real and true worship – the worship in spirit and in truthfulness (John 4:23-24).
Lord Jesus, we want to have the best and highest relationship with You by simply feasting to God and with God! We love to enjoy You, be open to You, and receive Your divine dispensing. Lord Jesus, keep us feasting with You and for You all the time. Save us from merely doing outward things without the inner supply coming from the feasting with the Lord. We want to first absorb You, assimilate You, receive You, and enjoy You so that we may worship You in the divine dispensing for Your satisfaction!
To Serve God is to Hold a Feast to God and Sacrifice to Him by Enjoying Christ
On the one hand we need to feast to God, and on the other hand, we need to sacrifice to the Lord, that is, offer Him the sacrifices that He desires. The children of Israel were to sacrifice to the Lord (see Exo. 3:18; 5:3, 8, 17); sacrifice is a word parallel to hold a feast (see vv. 1, 3).
To the children of Israel, the feast was a feast, but to God it was a sacrifice. Without the sacrifices, there was nothing to feast on; the feast was with the sacrifices, for the children of Israel were to feast on the very sacrifice they offered to God.
What do we feast on when we come to serve Him in worship? We feast on Christ, the reality of all the sacrifices; Christ, the Passover Lamb and the fulfillment and replacement of all the Old Testament sacrifices, is our feast.
Our real enjoyment and feasting is on Christ, the unique and true sacrifice. God doesn’t want us to go to a special place and “prostrate ourselves before Him”; He desires that we would sacrifice to Him and hold a feast unto Him.
This is God’s complete and full and perfect salvation: not only to deliver us from the usurpation of the enemy but to bring us into a place where we can hold a feast unto Him and sacrifice to Him. What a wonderful salvation!
To sacrifice to God is to offer something to Him, and to hold a feast to God is to enjoy with God what is offered to Him. This should be our church life; our whole church life should be holding a feast. We need to keep the feast, a life-long feast on Christ with the sacrifice for God’s satisfaction and pleasure.
One very simple way to keep the feast is to offer Him a sacrifice of our lips confessing His name (Heb. 13:15). When we say, O Lord Jesus! this is a sacrifice of our lips, and this is worship and service to God. One of the main thing in the church life is the believers praising the Lord and calling on His name, thus offering the sacrifice of their lips confessing His name.
Christ, the Son of God, has come to be the replacement and fulfillment of all the sacrifices, and now we can enjoy Christ, feast with Him and on Him, assimilate Him, and offer Him to God for our mutual enjoyment and satisfaction; this is our service to God and our worship to Him.
For us to worship God and serve Him, we need to be separated from anything worldly and be freed from any usurpation, and we need to just call on the name of the Lord and enjoy Him in His word.
When we pray-read the word of God and fellowship with the Lord and with the saints, we worship the Lord, we hold a feast to God, and we offer sacrifices to Him for His satisfaction and our satisfaction.
Lord Jesus, we want to offer You the sacrifice of our lips confessing Your name. Oh Lord Jesus! We love to call on Your name and open our being to You to pray-read Your word and thus receive the divine dispensing. Lord, may our Christian life and church life be a life of continual feasting on the Lord. We want to keep the feast – the life-long feast as our service to You. Thank You for being our burnt offering, sin offering, trespass offering, wave offering, and drink offering; You are the reality of all the offerings for us to enjoy, feast on, and offer to God for our mutual satisfaction!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Minoru C. for this week, and portions from Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 50, 139 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (part 4, 2016 Summer Training), week 3 / msg. 3, Serving God.
- Hymns on this topic:
# With all the cleansed ones feasting, / How rich the Christ we eat! / Oh, this is true communion, / The only way to meet. / We bring our full thanksgiving / And e’en would make a vow— / We’re for the Lord’s recovery / As He is for us now. (Hymns #1104)
# Jesus is the living Spirit, / He is our rich feast; / As the Body now enjoys Him, / Praises are released. (Hymns #1142)
# Calling, “O Lord Jesus!” / Oh, it makes our spirit strong! / We can really touch Him, / And our gloom is turned to song! / Don’t listen to Satan, with all His distraction; / Just turn to your spirit, and spring into action! / Calling, “O Lord Jesus!” / You’ll enjoy Him all day long! (Song on Calling on the Lord’s name)
About aGodMan
Jehovah also demanded that Pharaoh allow the children of Israel to sacrifice to Jehovah their God (Exo. 5:3). Sacrifice is a word parallel to hold a feast [v. 1]. To the children of Israel, the feast was a feast, but to God it was a sacrifice. Without the sacrifice, there was nothing to feast on. What the children of Israel were to feast on was the very sacrifice they were to offer to God. The Passover illustrates this. The lamb sacrificed to God was food for the children of Israel. This reveals that the feast and the sacrifice are two aspects of one thing. Whatever we sacrifice to God spontaneously becomes our feast. This also is dispensational worship. This kind of worship does not require that we prostrate ourselves before the Lord. God did not say, “Let My people go into the wilderness so that there they may prostrate themselves before Me.” God does not want His people to do this. He wants them to sacrifice to Him and to hold a feast unto Him. W. Lee, life-study of Exodus
Amen !!! Praise the Lord !!!
Amen! Praise you Lord for being the all-inclusive offering to us.
Amen, Praise the Lord!
Amen Lord. Always keeping the feast.
Amen, feasting on God is the real service to Him. The more we feast the happier He is. Oh Lord Jesus bring us all into the enjoyment of you. We are feasting on the living bread, we are drinking at the fountainhead.