The Sabbath as a Feast

Too many people today see the Sabbath (or Lord's Day) as a fast instead of a feast. Lev 23:3 makes it clear that is is intended to be a feast. "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts. Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places."

We have completely lost the art of feasting and biblical celebration

• We’ve become to pious to party
• We have stripped devotion of any kind of celebration
  
• We have secularized festivity
  

Maybe just to shake up our fragile piety and our fanatical busyness God commands us to do something like this in the context of the Sabbath:

• "...then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the Lord your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household. And you shall not neglect the Levite who is within your towns, for he has no portion or inheritance with you." (Duet 14:25-27)

Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson, in their book “Angels in the Architecture” sarcastically commented on this verse: “Such unthriftiness. Such waste. Such gluttony. Such winebibbing. Such is a command of our holy God.”

They also wrote this:

• Celebration is worshiping God with our bodies, with the material creation He has set up around us. Celebrating – whether in feasts, ceremonies, holidays, formal worship, or lovemaking –are all part of obeying God’s command to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength” (Dt 6:5; Mk 12:30) We are to show our love for God not just with one portion of our being (the spiritual aspect); we are to love God with our whole body, heart and strength and legs and lips.
• Complaint is the flag of ingratitude, and it waives above the center of unbelieving hearts –“when they knew God, the glorified him not as God, neither were thankful” (Rom 1:21). Yet by grace, God’s redemption in creation ought to keep us in a perpetual state of thanks which bursts out in celebration at every opportunity. Again, we are celebrating God’s dominion

We need to restore the Lord's Day to the great celebration feast that it was intended to be. We have been given the victory in Christ. We shall inherit the earth. Christ is on the throne and He is in the process of placing all enemies under His feet. So lift up your glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon with me and let's toast to Christ the King and His Kingdom!

As R.J. Rushdoony says, "To deny the Sabbath, and that the Sabbath was made for man to rest and enjoy his lordship in Christ, is to remove the future from man’s life. The Sabbath truly observed speaks of victories gained in the world to be conquered." He also said this, "Without that association of the Sabbath with work, salvation, and victory, it becomes a day of boredom and another step in a life without a significant future.”