I was not very picky growing up. I would eat pretty much anything put in front of me. But to this day I still can remember certain meals that seemed impossible to stomach. There seemed to be an endless amount of unwanted food and the best I could do was to nibble at it just trying to get some off the plate. I would finally resort to cover-ups: mashing, spreading, hiding, all the while just waiting for it to be over.
This sadly is how we as Christians so many times treat our walk with God. We come to the Word grudgingly and thus find it tasteless, we kneel in half-hearted prayer and feel no relief, our souls stay dissatisfied and unaffected. We pad this over in conversation with others hiding our lack of true affection under a guise of memorized-speech. We fill our days with iddy-biddy bites of this and that and thus become iddy-biddy in our faith and life. Unhappy, unsatisfied, restless nibblers. John Piper puts it like this:
“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”
And this could not be truer.
A Call to Feast
But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ (Luke 14:16-17)
The call of salvation is several times compared to that of a call to feast. We see this in several of Jesus’s parables: a marriage feast (Matthew 22:4), a great banquet (Luke 14:16-17), and a celebratory meal (Luke 15:23-24). And this is no accident. We are called to be filled and delight ourselves in Christ above all things. Just like a table would be prepared with every good thing we are called to delight ourselves and feast upon the abundance of His hand.
Too many times we treat God as a spiritual McDonald’s, food that’s not too great but gets us by, a fast meal or like a feel-good-pill to be taken daily and quickly forgotten. We find ourselves spending more time endlessly scrolling through social media or jump-clicking from one stimulating video to another rather than sinking our teeth in the all-satisfying Word of God. We lie in our bed at the end of the day and realize that we have barely thought upon the things of God. Our enjoyments of spiritual things become increasingly seldom and short-lived. But this is not how it should be. The banquet table of salvation is not laid with second-hand dishes or measly meals but with the choicest and most desirous delicacies heaven can offer. It the best of the best in superabundance. God calls us to stop wasting our time with shallow and fake foods and fill ourselves with what is true and good (Isaiah 55:2). He does not hold back from His children and neither should we hold back in our seeking and our feasting.
Life-giving
This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. (John 6:58)
This feast is as well life-giving. Unlike earthly transient foods, we are called to partake in something much more meaningful and lasting, in fact, everlasting: in Jesus. The bread from heaven in the Old Testament could only sustain God’s people for so long, but our new bread from heaven, Jesus, is an eternal one (John 6:51). Christ tells us to partake of Him in order that we might partake of life, without this he says there can be no life (John 6:53).
Like sheep are led into the field to feed, our Good Shepherd brings us into His rich pastures to delight and be filled (Ezekiel 34:14). We are called to feed and sustain ourselves upon the richness of God and His word. In the Lord’s prayer, Christ instructs us to pray “give us this day our daily bread”, likewise Jesus, in response to the devil’s temptation, says ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3. Do we come with this same desperation to the throne of God? Do we see it as important as food? As precious as life? How many of us starve ourselves and then wonder why we don’t see growth, why we don’t seek after God, why we don’t see fruit, it’s because we don’t have life! We need to partake of Christ daily, feed upon His faithfulness (Psalm 37:3), sustain ourselves with the living Word, or else we will starve to death.
A Love-Feast
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son,” (Matthew 22:2)
Finally, this is a feast of love. Jude in writing on apostates entering the Church calls them “spots in your love feasts…” (v. 12). Now, what does this mean? Well in the same way that back then weddings were accompanied with great feasts, we as the Church are given as Christ’s bride and are chosen to partake in the celebratory banquet of His covenant love. We are brought into the courts of the King, clothed in the robes of Christ’s eternal righteousness, and called to feast upon the bounty of His everlasting love. Christ has drunk the bitter cup and given to us an overflowing one of sweetness, conquering our enemies and setting before us the choicest of tables (Psalm 23:5). “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” (Song. 2:4).
This is not only our hope now but forevermore, as we see in Revelations 19:9 “And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God.’ ”. This truth is our final destination of fullness when shadows will become objects and bones become fleshed in; when we will feast face to face with our Savior for endless ages under the banner of His boundless love.
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” (Isaiah 25:6-9)
Are You Hungering?
We are called to something far richer and fuller than anything this world can offer. Our calling is to an all-satisfying, superabundant, life-giving, love-feast. Christ did not give Himself to ransom His bride from sin and death so she could nibble at His blood-bought banquet, but to feast and be satisfied in His overwhelming goodness. We must seek to cultivate our appetites for His splendor, to hunger and thirst after His righteousness as He has promised to fill the longing soul (Matthew 5:6). Come to the Word, come to prayer, come to worship, with this attitude, not as to a trifling meal but as to a feast above all feasts. Come, delight, and be filled.
Setting The Example 