Can Feasts And Celebrations Please God?

Can feasts and celebrations please God?

Celebrate the Festival of Shelters for seven days. Also invite the poor, including Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows. . . . You will be completely happy, so celebrate this festival in honor of the LORD your God. Deuteronomy 16:13-15, CEV

As long as that word [holiday] remains, it will always answer the ignorant slander which asserts that religion was opposed to human cheerfulness; that word will always assert that when a day is holy it should also be happy. G. K. CHESTERTON

CECIL RHODES, for whom Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was named, was a famous and wealthy businessman, politician, and power broker in South Africa. One evening he sat on a train with Bramwell Booth. Booth could see how depressed Rhodes was and asked him, “Are you a happy man?”

Rhodes responded, “Happy? No!”

Booth then told the influential world figure there was only one place to find real happiness: “That is at the feet of the crucified Savior, because it is only there we can be freed from our sins.” Rhodes responded, pointing toward where Booth’s father, General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was sitting: “I would give all I possess to believe what that old man in the next carriage believes!”^a

He saw in a Christ-follower the happiness he lacked.

Unfortunately, laughter, fun, happiness, and partying are rarely associated with the Bible and Christ-followers today . . . but they should be!

The Bible’s many references to singing, dancing, celebrations, feasts, and festivities depict not only worship but delight and pleasure.

Part of what blinds us to God’s emphasis on happiness is our knowledge that pagans worshiped pleasure deities and their celebrations centered on drunkenness and immorality. For many of us, celebrating suffers from guilt by association.

The logic goes like this:

• Since immorality is bad, sex is bad.
• Since drunkenness is bad, alcohol is bad.
• Since laziness is bad, rest is bad.
• Since greed is bad, money is bad.

We might as well say that since gluttony is bad, food is bad; and since drowning is bad, water is bad. Because sin often happens at parties, some conclude that parties must be sinful. (Of course, sin happens at work and church, too, but people seldom conclude work and church are sinful.)

Proverbs 15:15 says, “The cheerful of heart has a continual feast.” A feast is the ultimate picture of happiness—and the Sabbath meant there was at least one feast per week. In addition, there were a number of weeklong festivals that involved eating together daily.

Words describing eating, meals, and food appear more than a thousand times in Scripture, with the English translation “feast” occurring an additional 187 times. Feasting is profoundly relational, marked by conversation, storytelling, and laughter. Biblical feasts were spiritual gatherings that drew attention to God, his greatness, and his redemptive purposes.

Of course, God forbids drunkenness and gluttony (two things that ultimately make us not only unholy but unhappy), but the partying described in Scripture reveals the happiness of the God who invented feasts and festivals, and who commands and encourages singing, dancing, eating, and drinking.

In times of celebration, the people of Israel publicly indulged in the good gifts God had blessed them with. Those gifts included food, wine, music, dance, and fun—all with the understanding that God is the source of everything good and that the enjoyment of his blessings is a happy privilege.

Festivals such as the Feast of Tabernacles included sacrifices for sin (see Leviticus 23:37-41). Sorrow over sin and its redemptive price was real but momentary. Once the sacrifices were complete, the festival became all about being happy in God and one another.

Feasts that recognized repentance, forgiveness, and redemption included more joy than any party pagans could host, because the participants’ delight was God centered, deeper, and reality based. “Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!” (Psalm 32:1, NRSV). In light of such good news, who wouldn’t want to celebrate?

The church father Chrysostom (347–407) said, “All life is a festival since the Son of God has redeemed you from death.”^b

Historically, God’s people always celebrated more than the surrounding nations, never less! Why shouldn’t we do the same, since the gospel gives us even more reason to celebrate? Jesus repeatedly mentioned to his disciples that after we’re resurrected, we’ll eat together, enjoying the company of familiar biblical figures. He said, “Many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11). This must have delighted his listeners.

By building multiple festivities into Israel’s calendar, God integrated joy into the lives of his people. These feast days served to link happiness with holiness—two concepts that have become tragically separated from each other in not only the world’s thinking but also the church’s.

In today’s worship settings, “fellowship” has been scaled back dramatically. It may involve moderate laughter, but rarely does it reflect the great happiness described in the Bible. Indeed, the difference between the grand feast of the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament and the symbolic wafers and grape juice offered by most modern churches at Communion is the difference between a great celebration on the one hand and a minimalist ritual on the other.

Spurgeon said this about the most sacred rituals of the church, particularly Communion: “Gospel ordinances are choice enjoyments, enjoined upon us by the loving rule of Him whom we call Master and Lord. We accept them with joy and delight. . . . The Lord’s own Supper is a joyful festival, a feast.”^c

Wouldn’t it be great if children growing up in Christian homes looked forward to additional God-centered holidays—ones they could invite their unbelieving friends to join? Wouldn’t it be fitting if church was known as the place that celebrates more than the world, rather than less? Worship, camaraderie, and unity would be hallmarks of such events. But one of the greatest payoffs would be reestablishing followers of Jesus as people of profound happiness who are quick to celebrate the greatness, goodness, love, grace, and happiness of our God.

God’s people ought to say, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry today to celebrate the time when we’ll eat, drink, and be merry in a world without suffering and without end!”

Were we to do more of this kind of celebrating, and do it better, surely fewer of our children, and generations to come, would fall for what may be the enemy’s deadliest lie—that the gospel of Jesus doesn’t offer happiness and that people must go elsewhere to find it.

Jesus, life with you is a party! We might eagerly go to a party to meet a famous person, but you are the greatest and most famous being in the universe. And you promise you are with us always, and you even live in us! Each meal we eat is an opportunity to dine with you. Life without you would not be worth living. Life with you is worth celebrating now and forever!