Beth Moore - Feast The Soul - Part 1
I have never studied this before, and I'll explain to you in a minute how I got intrigued with it. But I cannot wait to see what God's gonna do with it. I wanna tell you a little story. A couple of years ago, Keith and I were in a Mexican food restaurant. Nothing, nothing unusual about that whatsoever. We would not even dream of going a week without some kind of Tex-Mex. More likely we would have it two or three times in the course of any given week. It is just part of living in the part of the country where we get to dwell. So we were in a Mexican food restaurant. It was just the two of us and we were just at the point where we had not made our order yet. All we had gotten was some chips and salsa. For me that's a beautiful thing, and fine with me for just a little while.
So we were just eating it up, and it was almost just, the restaurant was just about, oh, I'd say about half full, and right over to the side, about four tables over from us, there was a long table, what appeared to us, and I believe that it was, to be family. So it's several generations sitting there. There were some kids that were younger and then there was, like, a boy that I would give to be about either in older middle school or I would really believe him to be in high school. And then there were the parents' age, and then there were some grandparents, all this. I don't know if they were celebrating a birthday, what was happening, but all of 'em at this long table, everybody laughing, having a good time. They already had all of their plates and were just busy eating and a lot of chatting going on.
And Keith and I are just doing our thing, having chips and salsa, and all of a sudden there starts to be a ruckus over there. Do y'all use "ruckus" here? I mean a ruckus over there. There just start to be, I mean, I am talking the chairs, they jump up from the table. Chairs not only go scooting back, but a couple of chairs go falling over. Everybody jumps up. Everybody starts yelling. I'm trying to make out what on earth is going on because I felt like the salsa was a little bit weak but not that weak. I thought, "I just don't feel like it was something to get that mad about. It's not great, but it's not that bad". And I'm like, "What in the world"?
I look over at Keith. Well, you know, I just live for moments that just kind of take your breath away like that, where you just... as long as everybody's gonna be okay. But for a while, I did not know what on earth had happened and I finally look, 'cause there's this big crowd around. I finally see that one of the larger men comes around and grabs this high schooler, older middle school boy, I mean, does the Heimlich on the dude. I mean, so, he's choking. His face is, like, absolutely blood red, and so everybody's just yelling and yelling, and I mean, he starts pulling on him and starts just like, you know how they do. And he does it about three or four times, and then on that last time, that I tell you, if you've ever seen a cork pop out of something? Girls, I cannot express to you, something came flying out of there.
You know, it was like a fast pitch. It was like, I mean, it came flying out. I even looked in my salsa. I thought, "Where did it go? Where did it go"? I know that it was a corn tortilla. I feel absolutely certain about that. It had that whole look to it, but I mean, it just, like, came up in a ball and it just flew. Well, what was so strange to me, I mean, I would be, I felt like they might need ministry. I mean, this was like, I looked at Keith and went, we could not get over it. I could not ever even concentrate on my meal for what had happened at the table four tables over. I could not even get my thoughts straight. But they acted like, they all sat down and went completely proper, completely. It was like none of us could see the sweat on their brows.
They sat down, they continued eating like nothing had ever happened, but one by one about five of them got up and went to the restroom, and just like this... But I leaned over to Keith and I said, "I would bet you $10 if I were a betting woman that they're going in the bathroom and going like this: Ahhhh "! Don't you know it? Don't you know? They'd come back to the table, sit down; nothing. Nothing's wrong, absolutely nothing is wrong. Is anybody stepping in this with me? Because let me tell you right now, I don't want you to do that in this series. If something's wrong, you drag that out. Let the Word address it. Let him speak straight into your present circumstances.
If you're in a fight with somebody, let that be on your mind while we study. Don't let it be your focus. Let the Word of God be your focus. But you're here at this time because of the very situation you are in, so do not disengage your situation. Let it speak. Let God speak directly into it because he's timed it just so. Here is what I'm praying for this particular series. Did anybody come this particular event to have a blast with Jesus? Because we are going to have one. I am not sure that everybody in the room realizes that you can have a blast with Jesus, that he can be the absolute thrill of your life, not just your sovereign ruler and authority, and he is that. He is Master and he is Lord, but I want you to understand that what God is gonna place before us in this series is a feast, and I need somebody to know Jesus is a feast. He is our joy.
It doesn't have to be that our spirituality is always solemn. There are times for that. And we live in times for that. But let me say to you, if we do not balance it off with some feasting in Jesus, and some joy, we are gonna have a rough time getting through the tenure on this planet that has been entrusted to us. Anybody hear what I'm saying to them? Jeremiah 31, I want you to go with me to verses 11 through 13. Now, you have different translations. That's a beautiful thing. I love that, I love that, I do. My study Bible is one, the Bible that I use for my Scripture reading in the early mornings is another translation. I love that we have access to that. I'm gonna read to you out of the ESV. I love the NIV as well. I love the New King James. I love 'em, I love 'em. I love the NAS. But I am going to lock into some wording that is in the ESV.
So I want you to listen carefully, but when we land on it, when we land on it in verse 14, I'm gonna tell you, 'cause we're gonna adopt a little part of the sentence just as it is said in the ESV. So listen up with me. Jeremiah 31, verses 11 through 14: "For the LORD has ransomed Jacob and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him". I'm gonna stop there just long enough to say, has anybody been in hands "too strong" for you? Anybody? I come from a background of early childhood abuse, so I certainly know what it is like to be in "hands too strong" for me. I have the strangest feeling that I am not the only one in the room. Somebody in this room has been through date rape. Somebody in this room has been in a situation where, honestly, you would have done anything you could have done in order to fight your way out of the situation, but truth be told, you were in hands too strong for you.
If you've ever been there in your life, could I just see just the smallest hand right here? Because let me tell you, it is a beautiful thing when Jesus says, "I have come to redeem you from those hands that were too strong for you". I know somebody wants to say "Amen". "They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD". Wouldn't it be a gorgeous thing if we were radiant over the goodness of the Lord? "Over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden". Look at these words. "And they shall languish no more. Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. And I will turn their mourning into joy". Somebody is here for this series to have their mourning turned into joy. This is the house for you.
"I will comfort them, I will give them gladness for sorrow". Here we go, it's gonna be these five words that are gonna become so important to us; verse 14. It's said this exact way in the ESV: "I will feast the soul". I'm gonna say that again. "I will feast the soul". I want you to repeat it after me. Oh, I wanna hear it again. And that's God speaking to us there. "I will feast the soul of the priests with abundance, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, declares the Lord". We are going to have a feast of the Lord set before us. We have not come to be meager in what we're gathering around. You and I have come to a table in this series, a table that is going to be filled with a feast, and we are gonna feast our souls. Could anybody's soul use some feasting?
We have not come to be meager in what we're gathering around. You and I have come to a table in this series, a table that is going to be filled with a feast, and we are gonna feast our souls. Could anybody's soul use some feasting? Anybody's soul use a little feasting in the house? Now, here's what got me going. I wanna go back to verse 12. And I checked every major translation, and it should say this, very, very closely in almost all of the translations that you would be looking at. I want you to hear verse 12: "They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, they shall come and be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; and their life shall be like a watered garden".
Well, I looked at those three words and I can't ever explain why something just lands on me the way it does. I'm a curious student, I love to study, so things just, like, kind of get to me and start me wondering what that particular phrase is about, what that word means, where else that word is used. I just, I love those kinds of things. And so, for whatever reason, I have to attribute it to the Holy Spirit, because why on earth I would do this, I do not know. But I just decided to think, "Well, I wonder why grain, wine, and oil? Why grain, wine, and oil"? He's gonna feast the souls of his priests and satisfy them, the people with his goodness, and it's going to be over, they're gonna be radiant over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and be like a watered garden and they shall languish no more. And I don't know about you, but I want that, I want that.
So here's what I did. There are all sorts of ways we do this now. We used to do it with a Bible Concordance. It was always a hard copy, and I loved it. I still use it sometimes. But these days, you can just get right on your computer, you can Google it online, you can get on all sorts of Bible sites and you can do a word search and you can bring up phrases. And so I decided to put in the phrase, "grain, wine, and oil". Because I thought to myself, "Why that triplet, why"? It came up just like that, 21 different times. Several more times with it saying "oil, bread, and wine" instead of the grain. And over and over and over again, oil and wine appeared in verses together, and I thought, "What is the deal with the grouping"?
And so here's what I wanna do to try to make my point. I am gonna put up on the screen several verses. A number of 'em I'm saving so that we can have them together as part of our study. We'll be looking at them as we study together this weekend. But for now, I wanna put some verses up on the screen that came up on my word search, and here's what I wanna do. I'm gonna read them to you. You don't need to look 'em up. You're gonna look right on the screen. But every time you see an underlined word, I want you to say it out loud.
Now, this is when I really want you to be noisy, just like I feel like it is your just, like, your portion before the Lord in this series. I want you to be noisy with it, and every time you see an underlined word, I want you to say that out loud and read that part with me, and I will read the rest of the verse to you. So here we go, and I think you'll begin to get exactly where we're going. It says in Deuteronomy 7, verses 13 and the very beginning of 14: "The LORD will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples".
Nehemiah 13:12 says this: "Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil into the storehouses". This one is especially relevant and will become extremely relevant when we learn about the priesthood and we see what the connection is. Listen to this one. This is Numbers 18:8-12: "Then the LORD spoke to Aaron, 'Behold, I have given you charge of the contributions made to me, all the consecrated things of the people of Israel. I have given them to you as a portion and to your sons as a perpetual due. All the best of the oil and all the best of the wine and of the grain, the firstfruits of what they give to the LORD, I give to you.'"
So here is what we're gonna be doing in this series. We are gonna be drawing parallels in the spiritual context to what the wine, the grain, and the oil was to them in a very literal context, because you and I are after a feast of the soul, and I hope to show you in Scripture that we can draw this parallel, that so many of the other things are just as literal to us in the New Testament as they were to the people of Israel in the Old Testament, but there are many times where what was very literal to them, that God gave them, for instance, he spoke to them of perimeters of actual land. I mean, land on this planet that he was giving them.
For us as New Testament believers, it's lives more than land. The way that we are prospered is not physical prosperity, it is a spiritual prosperity. Prosperity of spiritual gifting and prosperity of satisfaction of soul. It's a spiritual prosperity and not a physical or literal kind of rendering for it. There are all sorts of ways. We're gonna see that we're called to be a spiritual priesthood. They were called to be a literal priesthood, dressed exactly so. We could come up with example after example after example where we would see that something that was applied to them in a very literal sense is applied to us in a powerful, powerful, no less blessing, in a spiritual sense. And we're gonna see that in all three of these cases, in this gorgeous feast before us, that every single one of these have a parallel to something of us in the New Testament, this side of the cross and the Resurrection of Christ.
A parallel, that word, I love word studies. The word "parallel" means, "para" means to put something beside. It means beside. And the rest of the word means "one another". So it's to put something beside one another. So we're gonna lay down the grain and put it by something for us in the New Testament. We're gonna lay down the oil and put it by something for us in the New Testament. We're gonna put down the wine and put something in the New Testament beside it so that we can see the connection between the two, and I am hoping to be able to suggest to you biblically that if we would begin to feast on what is symbolic for us in the grain, the wine, and the oil, you and I would live in a feast in a time in this world of great famine. You don't have to do it. You can starve if you want to. But here's what I'm gonna tell you. Jesus has placed before us a feast for the soul, for any taker. None will be turned away.
So I'm gonna give you a series of points and then some other things I'll ask you to write down along the way as we're building these parallels between what was very literal to them and what is spiritual to us. And number one is this: "Christ set our table with a feast for the soul". Christ set our table with a feast for the soul. Now, did I say, "Christ set our table with a meal for the soul"? Because somebody, if you're not careful, is gonna start already translating this in your mind as "We are set at a table for a meal with Jesus". We are not talking about a meal here in this series. We are talking about a feast.
And I want to remind you what a feast is. I looked it up in Webster's and I'm gonna read to you the definition of feast: "An elaborate and usually abundant meal often accompanied by a ceremony or entertainment; banquet". B is this, I love this: "Something that gives unusual or abundant enjoyment," anybody? "Something that gives unusual or abundant enjoyment". What if we learned how to actually enjoy the Lord Jesus Christ? Not just to obey him, and I pray we're seeking to do that, but to literally enjoy who he is to us, to enjoy his presence, to enjoy his impartation to us, to flat-out enjoy Jesus. I am praying for that kind of feasting to happen in this series because there is a big, big difference between a meal and a feast.
You can drive through and get you a meal. You can keep driving, you can just eat your French fries right out of your console. You young mothers or mothers of young children, maybe you know that you could eat whole meals from what is under the seat of your car. Years and years ago, I had a friend, she said, "I am so sick of women saying you could eat off my floor". She said, "It just makes me sick. I wanna say to them, 'You could eat off my floor too: crumbs, you can eat ends of peanut butter sandwiches. You can eat all sorts of things off my floor.'" 'Cause that's real living, isn't it? We're not just talking about a meal here. You can't drive through a feast.
Now, maybe you're thinking to yourself, "Oh, yes you can, 'cause I can get, like, a double meat with cheese and I want it upsized". No, that's just a big meal. That's not a feast. You have to sit down and enjoy a feast. You have to know you're there, not think back later, "What did I have for supper"? You remember your last feast 'cause you laughed, you talked, nobody got up quickly. There was a lot of sitting around the table. I come from a whole bunch of smokers, and one of the things that my people used to love to do, I always wanted to smoke when I grew up, and somehow I never got around to it and I don't know, but I had planned on it.
I planned on it for years. And the reason why I did is because at my house, the thing to do is that whoever smoked and drank coffee, they tarried at the table. Everybody else got up and left. And I thought, "Hah, I'm gonna smoke". Because I wanted to sit at the table with them. I wanted to drink some coffee, I wanted to inhale and exhale, and I wanted to blow it up like this... and then say what I came to say, amen? Because it was like feasting. You just sat around and you just kept eating and kept eating till everything was gone because there's a very big difference between a meal and a feast.
What we have before us in this series is a combination plate. When was the last time you got a combination plate? Because you and I are going to learn about a combination plate, and if you would get this combination plate down in your head, if you would memorize these three items on your combination plate, I am telling you, based on the authority of the Word of God, you can live with a radiance on you, with an awareness of the goodness of God. You can be released from hands that are too strong for you. You can know the feast of the soul with one combination platter.