Beth Moore - Feast The Soul - Part 2
Now, I'm gonna read to you. I do want you to jot this down someplace, but I'm not gonna turn you to it right now 'cause we got other fish to fry. Well, that was so good. I should've worked all sorts of food jokes into this. Maybe the Lord will anoint me before mornin' with 'em. Psalm 104:14-15, the psalmist is talking about God, of course, and he says this: "You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine," very good, "and bread to strengthen man's heart". "That he may bring forth food". So he said, "You have given us the ability. You have stored within the earth and under the earth. You have already set us up to be able to cultivate".
So here are the parallels on our table. Our grain, or you can put "bread" out beside it because sometimes the verses will go ahead and say "bread" instead of "grain". Grain will represent the Scriptures, and I'm gonna give you Scriptures to undergird every one of these. Grain will represent to us the Scriptures. That's the Bible. I'm hopin' somebody is so new that you would not have known that the Scriptures were the same thing as the Bible. Welcome to Bible study. You have, listen, it doesn't get any more exciting than this book that we've got sittin' in front of us.
This is fun. This is a blast. This is brilliance of God on the sacred page. This is not just dead ink. This is living words, and it comes to life off that page in the Holy Spirit, and it jumps in your bones, and we are different over it, and we're gonna find out that the parallel on our table, "grain" is, what? Tell me one more time. Grain is the Scriptures. Oil will represent to us the anointing. The anointing. Have you ever been curious, or you've heard that used a lot of times? You're not really sure what it means. You are in the best possible place in this little area, perhaps, this weekend, for the Scripture is, not for anything we're gonna bring, for what God is gonna bring to us from the Scriptures for a study, in short form, of the anointing.
Oil will symbolize, what? Tell me again. Okay, wine, wine is going to symbolize, I know that it's very, we really wanna jump to it and go, "Wine is the blood". Absolutely, absolutely, we see that symbolically all over the place, and we will touch on that, but in our metaphor, I pray to be able to show you how and why in our metaphor, for this feast of the soul, wine will be symbolic of gladness of heart. Gladness of heart. Some of us are thinking, "I'm not even jotting down the word 'wine,'" and we'll get to that in just a moment. We Christians are notorious for being unenjoyable.
Christians are notorious for being unenjoyable. That has got to change. It must change because, where we are going to differ so much on where we stand in the Scriptures, if we're also so basically unpleasant and unlikable that no one can stand us, why would anybody want to believe what we believe? Do you have what somebody out in the lost world even wants? Do I? Because, if we don't, I mean, if we are making a religion out of being unenjoyable, we have missed the good news. It's not good news to people. It's like, "I am afraid to receive Christ for fear I will turn out to look like a persimmon". Anybody? We need some gladness of heart.
Now, I wanna deal with somethin' right now, and I'm only gonna deal with it for about three minutes, but I gotta deal with it so it will not become a stumbling block. All three of these things we're talking about on our combination platter, all three of these things are symbolic. Did I say literal? What did I say? They are all symbolic, and the reason why I wanna bring this up is because, in this room, just like it would be anywhere, it's not because it's this part of the country. Anywhere in the United States in a gathering of this kind, we would have such a broad spectrum of how we felt about wine that it would be from one extreme to the other. There are those that feel a deep conviction in this room that wine is absolutely sinful. There are other people in this room that think wine or strong drink is absolute survival. So what we've got here is legalism and alcoholism. Anybody?
Some of you are so nervous right now, you don't know what to do. You're feeling like you are called somewhere else in the morning. Is this literal, or is it symbolic? Okay, stay with me here because I wanna go ahead, and I just wanna say a couple of things. I so get it if you're thinking, "We ought not even be bringin' this up. I can't believe those words are on the screen". Just so you know, some of you are goin' like, "Who even thinks that"? Well, people like me with my background. This is exactly the way I was raised. Like, it was, I mean, "never, no, not ever, not ever". I was even taught, as a child, that, according to the original language, the wine that was at the Passover table that Jesus sat at for the Last Supper, it was not fermented. It was, actually, well, it was just akin to what we would call Welch's today. Y'all, that is just, I'm sorry, but it's not true. I'm sorry. It's not. It's just not.
There's just no way to come up with that. That is just, it's just not true, and so, when we act like that is true, well, actually, it's not true, and so let's let that one go. That doesn't mean, I mean, I'm still gonna go back home to my church, and we're still gonna have Welch's for our Communion, and I'm all about it. I'm all about it because what we're doing something that represents something else. I don't have any problem with it, but I'm just sayin', when we're just tryin' to go, "Jesus never let a cup of wine touch his lips," wowzers. Okay. I was raised, in my household, I was raised that there was, the cardinal sin was drinking. I'm gonna try to hold my tongue here a little bit.
What happens, when there's a lot of hypocrisy, not everyone in my family was hypocritical, but there was a key player or two in very authoritative situations, and it's an odd dynamic when everything else is game, and you never stop the young ones in the family from doing any of it, but, "By golly, nobody better drink," and I think it might not be a coincidence that the biggest stronghold in my family is alcoholism. The biggest stronghold. I believe it became a rebellion that said, "If you're going to say it's wrong, and you do all of this, all of this and then march around like a religious fanatic while we're all watching this dynamic, then the one thing you forbid of us is a one thing we're goin' for," and, man, did my family go for it. Am I just getting in anybody's business? Anybody's business?
So I get it. I get it. I get why it can be a really, really big problem. I wanna say just a couple of things, three things: Wine is indeed in the Bible. It's in regular circumstances, it's in good context, and it's in bad context, just like normal life. He talks about it in context of a feast. He talks about it in context of drunkenness and sinfulness, and he talks about it where it's just in a regular context, and it's not got any connotation to it whatsoever. It's just there in that Scripture, so it's just much like we would see it today. So it's in the Bible. Without a doubt, drunkenness is a sin. Without a doubt, drunkenness is a sin, and I wanna say one more thing: Some people don't ever need to have a sip of anything, of anything alcoholic.
Some people. And you need to know if that's you. If that's you, then you know it's not about legalism. It's about your liberty. There's a verse, and if this is makin' any sense to anybody, I want somebody to write it down. If you need to, write down 1 Corinthians 6:12, somewhere in your notes, 1 Corinthians 6:12, because it says the most gorgeous thing. It's Paul talking, and he says, "Listen, all", well, he doesn't say, "Listen". He just says, "All things are lawful for me". In other words, "I'm free in Christ". In fact, he talks about this kind of thing when we have people that are just all about what food and drink and bringin' all sorts of condemnation on that and all sorts of legalism on it. He even addresses that in Colossians, and he said those things, not tasting, not touching, not handling, he said that does nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh.
So he says right here, 1 Corinthians 6:12, listen, "'All things are lawful for me,' but not all things are helpful. 'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything". So I say to you, if you have a problem being dominated by anything, you are the one, you are among many that just need to abstain, not because you are in bondage but because you are free not to drink. So let's just have some liberty in the room and know what your freedom is. And now here's what we're gonna, now we're gonna switch gears because what you and I are talking about is not literal. It is symbolic, so from this point forward, when I bring up wine, it's gonna mean something different than we could put in a glass. It's going to be symbolic.
So, if someone leaves here and says, "Beth affirmed drinking wine," I want you to also say, "She also told us to drink a glass of olive oil," and have fun with that because, if I'm telling you to go have a glass of wine, I'm also telling you to go have a glass of olive oil because that's what we're talkin' about too, and that should be a great time, a great time. I'd like to say this too. If I could be so bold, if we would learn to feast our soul, our addictions would lose their power. I just would like to go ahead and say that. So many of our addictions, both substance and visual or sexual originate in a craving to fill up or to feed a vacuum in our souls. If you and I would learn to feed our souls and feast our souls, we wouldn't have a need to just stuff ourselves with all manner of stuff. That was just free.
I'd like to suggest to you that, if there is someone in the faith that you don't want to be like, it is very likely that they have an unbalanced plate, an unbalanced plate. Something's lacking of the grain, the bread, or the oil. Maybe they're all about the bread, and there is no oil. They're all about the oil, but there is no wine. They're all about the wine, but there is no grain. You understand what I'm saying? I am wanting to present to you and build a case for this. I want to say to you that, if you find a person that truly does feast their soul on what is representative to us of the grain and the oil and the wine, I promise you, that is a person that you are drawn toward. That is a person that is magnetic. That is a person you are taking notice of because something about their life seems to be working.
If that plate has got all three of those components on it, if that combination plate has all three of those things and they're feasting their soul, I am telling you, you would want what they have. That's the case I wanna build. That's the case I wanna build. Some of us think that it would just be boring. Listen, here's the beauty of it: With this combination of grain, of oil and wine, symbolically, between the three of them, the diversity of how it looks and lives out is so beyond anything we could live long enough to fully experience. The boredom will not be an issue. It's just the grain with no oil that can be boring, the oil with no grain that can be boring, any of it without the gladness of heart that can be boring. You put it all together, girlfriend, I promise you, in Jesus's name, you will not be bored.
We also binge and purge. Would you like to know how? We go to Bible study. "Oh, we're gonna go to Bible study". We are in every... some of us are doing three Bible studies all at once. Are we ever in Bible study? We teach Bible study. We live Bible study. But here's what happens: Then we walk out the door and we get into situations where then it comes time to live it, and we, just, like, throw it up. Anybody? Just, "blaaaah". Or here's what we do. Here's even better. This is binging and purging. We're gonna binge, binge, binge, binge, binge, and then we're gonna purge it on our husband. "Blaaaah".
Some of you are already thinking, "I've got a word for my husband already tonight". If you think that you, like somebody that's not here, and you've gotten a Word for them, and you can't wait to tell 'em, you may have texted them already, what you've done is you've binged and you purged, "blaaaah". 'Cause it's not going down into us, no, no, no. We're just transferrin' it. We're just gon' chew it up, and we're gonna spit it out and go, "Enjoy that". They don't want it. Is that fair? They don't want it. Binging and purging.
Okay, I know...are y'all finished with that point? I think we're finished with that point. Okay, each element on the table requires process and participation. The reason why you see six elements on the table is because three are their beginning point, and three are their goal or what they're supposed to achieve in the end result. So, for instance, if you want to make you a Reuben sandwich, you are not gonna put your corned beef, your good sliced deli corned beef on your wheat and your grain. You're gonna need to do somethin' with that stuff right here because you can't just take this and put your turkey on it and your Swiss cheese and put your mustard on it. It just does not work. It's chewy. It's crumbly. It will get all over you, and it doesn't taste particularly good. Why? Because there was something to do with the grain.
Grain was supposed to be processed until it became...tell me again. Grain, all right. The same is true for the other elements. Right here, we have... can anybody see what this is? We've got our olives right here. It starts as olives, but somehow, it's got to go through a process that takes man's participation. Do you remember, in Psalm 104, when the psalmist was saying, listen, "You've made the earth in such a way that you would enable us to bring forth the fruit from the ground," and so God put, when he put Adam in the garden, remember, he gave Adam work before there was ever a curse. Work is not a curse. It's, just, it became something, it became a labor then, and he would work with the sweat of his brow. But to participate with God in the process is a beautiful, beautiful thing, and so you have to, if you're gonna get to this, if you're gonna get to the olive oil, and when the Bible talks so often about oil, you're gonna see, overwhelmingly, it's talking about olive oil.
There are some exceptions to that, but overwhelmingly, this is the oil. So it goes from... to... all right, and then we have gotten, if we're gonna have some wine, like, you can put this in your glass all you want to, but, listen, nothing's gon' happen there. It's just not gonna happen there. It's just gon' be like a clump of grapes are gonna fall out on your face because something's got to happen between the grapes and the glass. Something's got to happen between the grapes and the glass. So we got the grapes, and then we've got the...and we've got the...and we've got the-and we've got the.... because there's got to be a process, and we get to engage in that process so that we are workers together with him.
Paul talks about it. It's the coolest thing, and he talks about Timothy, in 1 Thessalonians, being a coworker with God, a coworker with Christ, that we're participating with him in a work. He provides for us the olives, and he says, "You know what's gonna just thrill me is to watch a little bit about what you do with it. What's gonna thrill me is to see what process, how you're gonna engage with me, how you're gonna feed on what I have set before you". So there's this process. It's a beautiful thing because all three of 'em take crushing. All three of 'em, all three of 'em, all three of 'em come forth when pressed. All three of 'em do. Christ enabled every one of them for us.
Isaiah 53, tells us that he was literally crushed for our iniquities, crushed for our iniquities. That's what the Word of God says, been a crushing, an oppressing that have caused these things to be on our table. So what we're gonna be doing, and we've done it. We've acted it out tonight, which is why we don't have to sit on it as firmly as we will the other two, but we're going to see where all three of them are represented in Scripture, where we can see the parallels come together. Here's what I want you to do.
Turn to Jeremiah 23:25-28. This is the Lord, saying, "I have heard what those prophets who are prophesying lies in my name are saying. They're saying, 'I had a dream. I had a dream.' Those prophets are just prophesying lies. They are prophesying the delusions of their own minds. How long will they go on plotting to make my people forget who I am through the dreams they tell to one another? That is just as bad as what their ancestors did when they forgot who I am by worshiping the god Baal".
Verse 28, this is key for us: "Let the prophet who has had a dream go ahead and tell his dream, but let the person who has received my message report that message faithfully because what is like straw cannot compare to what is like grain, and I, the Lord, affirm it". Do you hear it? "Let the one who has a dream that's gonna take, let that take over the Word. Just go ahead and let him prophesy his dream," but I'm gonna tell you something: Straw has nothin' to do with grain. All over my journal, I've got this written at the top of the page, randomly. Every time I go to teach, I ask myself this question: "Are you gon' give them straw, or are you're gon' give them grain"? Because you can even either give them the Word of God, or you can just give 'em, listen, "Go, go talk about your dreams. Go talk about your vision".
It's not that those things can't be legitimate. They are not the Scriptures. Our huge temptation in the coming years and decades with us getting so incredibly unpopular in our nation, our huge overwhelming temptation will be to distance ourself from the Word, and here's what we're gonna want because we're, you know, 'cause we have a heart for God, we're still gonna want the wine, and we're gonna still want the oil. We want the anointing, and we wanna be glad. We still wanna eat grain.
Now, I gotta tell you something. Here's what happens. Here's what happens when we decide to let go of the grain and only have the wine and the oil. When our stomach is empty of bread, we get drunk on the wine, and we get sick on the oil. There's got to be the grain. There's got to be the grain because what's gonna happen, if we don't have the grain, and, yet we wanna be big people in the Spirit, we want a lot of anointing, we want a lot of gladness, what will happen is that we will get drunk and stupid because let me tell you somethin': Oil and wine have to have a place to land. You have the grain because it catches the oil and the wine.
Without the grain, there's nothing to absorb the oil, and it will make you sick, the wine, and it will make you drunk, and I do mean even symbolically. If we're all about "We're just gon' be glad about everything," well, not everything is always fun unless we have the assurance of the Word of God, that he is workin' all things together for good. When we lose his Word, listen, we got nothing to offer that has any guarantee to it that we can hold in our hands. Once we set down the Word, we have got to have the grain.