It is good to be with you. We want to fellowship on something that actually is very simple and very precious—something the Lord impresses upon my heart more and more as we fellowship together as saints.
I sense that there is a great desire, even among the younger generation of adults gathering with us in Manhattan, to get together and fellowship and worship. Yet, though we have many songs with tremendous words and a great desire, there seems to be something lacking.
So I have been thinking about this matter of fellowship and how precious it really is. I was drawn, among other things, to Leviticus 23. Basically, I want to share from that chapter in these times we have together.
Before we consider verses in Leviticus 23, let us go back to Exodus and pick up a few fragments here and there, to give us a little background for an introduction tonight.
In Exodus 19, the Lord reveals His heart to Moses and tells him to communicate it to the children of Israel: the Lord’s heart to fellowship and to dwell among His people.
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians,
and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto Myself.
Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant,
then ye shall be Mine own possession from among all peoples: for all the earth is Mine:
and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.
These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.Exodus 19:4-6
Then, in the next chapter, we see the response of the people:
And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings,
and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking:
and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off.
And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear;
but let not God speak with us, lest we die.Exodus 20:18-19
In Exodus 25, the Lord speaks of the mercy seat:
And thou shalt put the mercy-seat above upon the ark;
and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.
And there I will meet with thee,
and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat,
from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony,
of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.Exodus 25:21-22
Now let us turn to Leviticus 23. I am sure you are all familiar with this chapter. It is the chapter that, in a very condensed way, speaks of the seven great feasts of Israel. But let us begin at the beginning.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,
The set feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations,
even these are My set feasts.Six days shall work be done:
but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation;
ye shall do no manner of work:
it is a sabbath unto the Lord in all your dwellings.These are the set feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations,
which ye shall proclaim in their appointed season.Leviticus 23:1-4
Then He begins with Passover and continues right on. One last verse, in Hebrews 4:
He again defineth a certain day, To-day,
saying in David so long a time afterward
(even as hath been said before),
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.For if Joshua had given them rest,
He would not have spoken afterward of another day.
There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God.Hebrews 4:7-9
Our Father, we come to You and thank You so much for the foundation of Your precious Word, which teaches us regarding Your heart and Your great salvation. It teaches us the way of approach and the way of fellowship.
Thank You, Lord, that throughout Your precious Word we can see the Lord Jesus revealed. We ask that even tonight, by Your Spirit, You would reveal Your heart to Your people. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I moved into New York City in 2002. Actually, my wife and I intended to move into Flushing, in Queens, where I had been ministering more and more frequently. But after the great tragedy in Manhattan in 2001, my heart was tugged in that direction.
Julie and I began looking for places in Queens, although we ended up in Manhattan, fellowshipping with saints both in Queens and in Manhattan.
When we settled in Manhattan, I remember the first day after we moved into our apartment. The Lord spoke something in my heart that made me weep for quite a while. I cannot, of course, express the depth of what I felt, but I felt the Lord say, “Gather My children unto Me.”
It was as if I saw a picture of thousands of born-again children of God in New York City—lost without a shepherd, without a foundation, struggling, being overtaken by the enemy and the world and all such things. My heart began to break for this desire of the Lord.
We have been gathering for several years there in Manhattan. We keep trying to go out into the parks and preach the gospel, and praise God, people get saved every once in a while. There was a girl saved a week before last in our meeting.
It appears that the Lord is taking this matter seriously. We keep finding people finding their way into our little apartment where we meet—sheep who have been wandering around. Somehow they hear about this place, and they come and show up.
We try to fellowship with them. We worship simply, break bread, share testimony, and speak the Word. But I am so aware of how much more the Lord wants to gather His children than His children want to be gathered.
It seems as if, because we are so independent today, we try to live as independently as possible and still keep a Christian walk. We do not yet understand the fullness of a life that is gathered together.
My thoughts were drawn to this phrase: holy convocations. Notice that in Leviticus 23, “holy convocations” is mentioned eight times. There are seven feasts, but I want to speak in an introductory way about the one occasion not specifically called a feast: the Sabbath.
Here in Leviticus 23, the Sabbath is the first holy convocation:
Six days shall work be done:
but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation;
ye shall do no manner of work:
it is a sabbath unto the Lord in all your dwellings.Leviticus 23:3
That may seem strange, because this is not a feast in which everybody gathers together. It is not, in that larger sense, what we normally think of as a holy convocation. Yet the Lord says, “This is the first holy convocation.”
There are eight holy convocations, and only in Leviticus 23 is this term used. The first one mentioned is not really what we call a feast, nor is it really a holy convocation in the larger gathering sense. But, in fact, it is the basis of all the feasting.
To me, this is a picture of fellowship with the Lord, which we will be considering in these times. If we do not understand, and if we have not entered into, the Sabbath rest, then all the rest we talk about in terms of fellowship is shallow.
The Lord says, “I am calling My people together,” and the first thing He says is, “Now, in your family, I want a holy convocation every seventh day.”
The Lord is sharing His heart concerning how He wants to meet with and bless His people. Down through the history of man, the Lord revealed Himself to Abraham, Moses, Enoch, and even Adam. He desired to walk in the cool of the day, to fellowship, and to talk. This has been God’s desire down through the centuries.
When the Lord, by His great mercy and saving power, delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness, intending to move them into the promised land, He revealed His heart on a much higher level.
“You have seen what I have done for you. I delivered you, and I have a purpose in delivering you. I bore you up on eagles’ wings and brought you unto Myself. I want you to be My special people—a holy nation, a royal priesthood, keepers of My covenant.”
Then the Lord came down on the mountain and gave the Ten Commandments. But the people saw the thunder and lightning and said, in effect, “Moses, would you talk to God and just tell us what He is saying?”
The reality of face-to-face fellowship with God was too much for the children of Israel to bear. They asked Moses, as it were, to intercede.
So the Lord revealed the tabernacle. He said, “Build this tabernacle so that we can have fellowship together. I will speak to you, Moses, from between the cherubim on the mercy seat.”
The people were learning that God wanted fellowship, but there had to be a certain way.
At the end of Exodus, the tabernacle is completed, and the glory of God comes down and fills it. What a wonderful moment. Now God is at home in His tabernacle, sitting upon the mercy seat. And that is where Leviticus begins.
We call the book Leviticus, a word relating to the Levites. But the Jews call it by the first Hebrew word in the book: Vayikra—“And He called.”
The phrase “the Lord spake unto Moses” occurs thirty-one times in this book. The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. Now that there was a line of communication, the Lord began to speak.
First, He spoke about the sacrifices. Then He spoke about the priesthood and various other matters, until He came to Leviticus 23.
God wanted to speak. He needed a tent in order to speak; He needed to tabernacle among His people. Of course, we can see how much this speaks about the Lord Jesus. If raw God were speaking to us, we could not take it. So the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. Now the Lord speaks to us through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Most Christians do not take Sabbath keeping very seriously anymore. It is almost a joke. All the stores are open. Your BlackBerry is still working. Life goes on twenty-four-seven.
I usually go into Manhattan across the Williamsburg Bridge. Williamsburg is a section of Brooklyn where there are many Orthodox Jews. Sometimes I am driving across the bridge just at sunset, and something strikes you as rather funny and beautiful at the same time.
Just before sunset, you see a whole group of Orthodox Jews running from Manhattan across the bridge in their full garb, their beards flying in the wind, mothers with babies—trying to get home before the Sabbath begins. They are serious about it, you know what I mean?
I remember my first time in India. I went to a Sunday service that started around 9:30 and ended at 4:30. That was only the Sunday service. They stopped to eat and have tea, and then they had a gospel meeting. That is a day of being with the Lord—a whole day of meeting. This is keeping the Sabbath, according to some.
The Orthodox Jews forsake their businesses. Near where I lived was a huge photo store, run by Orthodox Jews. On Friday afternoon, around 3:30 or 4:00, depending on the time of year, they would shut it down. Within ten minutes it was empty. It was one of the largest photographic businesses in New York City, and it was never open on Saturday.
When they go home on Friday night to have their Sabbath, they put on nice clothes, light candles, say prayers, and have a wonderful meal together. They sit around, talk, and share about life itself—not merely what happened that day. They leave all that behind.
They do not turn on the television. They do not check their BlackBerrys or iPhones. They do not check the radio or answer the phone. They just spend time.
Now, I do not want to suggest that we all become Orthodox Jews. But I will say this: those Christians who spend all day Sunday serving the Lord, or Orthodox Jews who spend their Sabbath resting and enjoying family, are among the happiest, healthiest, and wealthiest people in the world.
The Jews enjoy the Sabbath with relish. They say to one another, “Delight in the Sabbath.” They greet each other, “Shalom, Shabbat.” It is a time of bigness, family, and rest. It is a time when rest is looked upon as a holy event.
Nobody feels guilty. They do not even confess sins on the Sabbath. No guilt—just rest.
I wish Christians had the record of Orthodox Jews as far as families staying together. They know what it is to be a family. Hey, they spend time together.
I am not recommending these things in some legalistic way. But when families do not even spend time together, are they even families? When the television has to be on, or there has to be some din of noise in the background, there is something wrong—something basically wrong.
The Sabbath is more than merely resting. But there is something for us to learn. If you still have children at home, what a wonderful thing to cut off everything and just sit around and talk a little bit. It can only be healthy, do you not think?
There is a deeper meaning to the Sabbath than resting one day out of the week. The clue is in Genesis 2, where we find the first mention of the Lord making something holy. What He makes holy is the Sabbath.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made;
and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it;
because that in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.Genesis 2:1-3
That tells us there is something more to Sabbath than merely ceasing from work. When God sanctifies something, He sanctifies it with purpose. To sanctify is to cut off, to separate.
Why does He separate a people? Why does He make a mountain holy? In Exodus 19, the Lord put a boundary around Mount Sinai. No person and no animal could go up. He separated it as His mountain.
Why? In order to come down and possess it, to reveal Himself in it.
He separated the tabernacle so He could come down and possess it. He chose a people and separated them so He could come down. Jerusalem became the city of God. Nehemiah had a great burden to restore the walls of the city so that God could possess it and make it holy.
What is God possessing with regard to the seventh day? When He makes the Sabbath holy, we see something beneath the matter of rest. There is a cessation of our own work, and that gives God the possibility of coming into something. But He also sanctifies something in order to possess it for Himself.
And beyond that is life. It is an issue of life.
There is something very sacred to God, though it may seem very common to us. It is called life. We seldom realize how precious life is.
It is as if God says, “You are working for six days, and perhaps you are losing sight of this.” Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish philosopher, said, “For six days you work in space. The seventh day, you make time holy.”
For six days, you may think time is your enemy. But on the seventh day, you realize time is the most important part of your life, and possessions are secondary. Then you can return to your necessary work with a further realization of how holy time is, how holy your life is, and how holy life itself is.
God sees the whole creation and says, “This is good.” He surrounds it, as it were, and says, “Now, on the Sabbath day, appreciate this.”
It is not merely a matter of sitting still. It is a recognition that there is value to life itself apart from things. It is not that God was in the trees or the animals; it is that God is the Creator of life, and life is to be valued because it comes from God.
Throughout the Scriptures, God takes care to circumscribe life in order to protect it. After Adam and Eve disobeyed in the Garden of Eden, cherubim were set there to guard the way to the tree of life. That was the central thing in the garden, and it had to be guarded.
When you bring that into our own lives, there is something very precious that the Lord is trying to guard. It has to do with this whole matter of keeping the Sabbath.
Whether it is the walls surrounding Jerusalem and preserving the holiness of the temple, or the believer kept by the precious blood of Jesus, life is at the center. The Lord is telling us through this holy convocation, “I want you to gather and realize the sacredness of life.”
Life is not a profane thing, not just a common twenty-four-seven thing. Surely, as Christians, we should know this. This is not merely the passing of days and the doing of things. If we live on that scale, we are like the world in every way.
As soon as we come into the New Testament, this matter of Sabbath takes on a more wonderful and spiritual level of understanding. The Orthodox Jews have something over us: they respect chai—life. Life is very important to them. For us, life is often no big deal. But it should be, right?
The Lord Jesus tabernacled among us and spoke about the Sabbath. He said:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.Matthew 11:28
Jesus comes and says, “I will give you rest within. I will give you rest through forgiveness of sins. I will give you rest from guilt. I will give you rest from all your anxiety.”
Rest now carries the whole meaning of salvation. Rest is salvation. We enter into rest when we are saved. The Old Testament analogy is that we have entered the promised land.
Every time we gather before the Lord’s table, we should be in a state of rest. It is all by grace. We did nothing to deserve this, but here we are, resting before the Lord. He has done it all.
We come and worship. We should not strain in our worship. Our worship should come from within and truly express thanksgiving to God. It should be a time of rest, not a time of anxious churchianity.
For many churches, Sunday is such a tense time—trying to build up the troops, the numbers, the money, the projects, the preaching, whatever. It should be a time of great rest. We gather together, right?
In Hebrews, we see that rest has to go deeper. The writer uses the example of David, who prophesied years ago concerning this rest. David said:
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.Hebrews 4:7
David understood that there was still a rest remaining. He was speaking of a rest within the rest.
By David’s time, they had entered Canaan, the original meaning of “rest.” They had taken Jerusalem, the city of God. Under David’s kingship, they had rest from their enemies. They brought the ark to Jerusalem, and worship was in the midst of the city. Yet David said that there still remained a rest.
The writer to the Hebrews uses this because many Christians are in the rest but are not resting. The Hebrew Christians were saved, so they were in the rest. But they were not experiencing the rest of coming into the Holy of Holies.
They were fearful. They stayed outside. They were not coming boldly to the throne of grace and mercy.
There is a further rest—a Sabbath rest for the people of God. The High Priest has opened the way so that we can rest within the rest.
You are in the rest. Are you resting in the rest?
There is much restlessness among Christians. Resting in the rest has to do with ceasing from our own works, as He did from His. It also has to do with diligently entering into that rest.
When we were born again, the Lord came into our life and, if I may put it this way, established His Holy of Holies there. In us, we have His life.
What do we value most in our Christian life? Is it the life of Christ within? Do we protect that life? Do we keep the Sabbath?
Do we know? Do we exercise? Do we worship? Do we commune? Is there a beginning that starts from the very core of His life in us?
It is out of that life that we come into rest. But this is what the enemy causes us to lose sight of. We get involved in every kind of external, soulish, and real problem—this and that—until our lives are scurrying around in the most restless way.
Many Christians seldom truly touch that rest. I know that if we took a hand count of those who honestly have a daily devotion, most of you would say you have one. But do most of you enter into rest in that daily devotion?
I am afraid there is more than one of us whose devotional life is in the car on the way to work. He turns on a radio show, puts in a tape, sings a song or two, listens to a message, and gets a whole bunch of secondhand devotions—Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening, something from Chambers—and by the time he gets to work, he says, “Praise God, I had my devotion.”
Well, okay. That was kind of a quick one, do you not think?
Do you even remember the verses? Maybe you did not have time to read the Bible, but you put on the MP3 and heard Genesis 14 through 16. Do not ask what it said, because you were busy thinking at the time.
Read all you can, listen to all the sermons you can, and get all the secondhand devotions you can. But there is something at the core that enables us to rest. If we do not have it, where is the Sabbath?
Our very first holy convocation begins with this: “I want to meet with you.” That is where it starts.
We can talk later about meetings, feasts, fellowships, and gospel attempts. But what about the starting point? “I want to meet with you. Will you make provision?”
It is going to take some time, is it not? There has got to be a time. It does not have to be a set place, although that probably would not hurt either.
Otherwise, what is the difference between us and the Hebrew Christians who neglected their great salvation, allowed an evil heart of unbelief to draw them away from the living God, and lacked confidence to enter into the Holy of Holies?
Does that not sound like many Christians today? We are in the rest, but are we resting in the rest?
There is something at the center that is very vital, something we should really lay hold of: His life is within us.
I like the New American Standard rendering of James 4:5: “The Spirit of God is very jealous for our spirit.” Are we jealous for our spirit? He is very jealous for your spirit. Are you jealous for your spirit?
Or do we ignore that side of us and deal only with more soulish things? This kind of jealousy is a good place to start—keeping the Sabbath, having our arms around the Lord in our life.
Here is the reality of the Sabbath, according to David: we live in today.
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.Hebrews 4:7
There is rest in that, if we obey. Today, if you hear His voice, obey. It is a very simple thing. It is the beginning of our day. It is the holy center of what the Lord wants to do today.
Today, if you hear My voice, enter into My rest.
I am only introducing these holy convocations. We will speak about the feasts at other times. But let us consider Isaiah 58, a famous passage concerning the Sabbath.
If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath,
from doing thy pleasure on My holy day;
and call the sabbath a delight,
and the holy of the Lord honorable;
and shalt honor it, not doing thine own ways,
nor finding thine own pleasure,
nor speaking thine own words:then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord;
and I will make thee to ride upon the high places of the earth;
and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father:
for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.Isaiah 58:13-14
The Sabbath is made for blessing. Immediately, we see that there has to be a turning away from some things: our own ways, our own pleasure, and our own words.
Then we delight in the Lord. That is the key to delighting in the Sabbath. Delighting in the Lord is delighting in the Sabbath.
The Orthodox Jews have come down to a place that, I think, is far from the original intention of the Sabbath. They say that to delight in the Sabbath, they read the Word all day long. They read it and read it and read it.
That is the best they know. They want to show the Lord how much they delight in Him, so they read the Word.
If we want to delight in the Sabbath, it certainly involves meditating on the Word and letting the Word speak to us. But we have a higher way. There is already a life within us. We do not have to whip something up.
Here is an excellent testimony: we delight in the Sabbath.
That is the echo in David’s heart when the Lord said, “Seek My face,” and David’s heart answered, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”
Delight thyself also in the Lord;
and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.Psalm 37:4
There is your Sabbath. He is right inside. Let us take very seriously this life of Christ in us. We profane this life by merely doing our own thing right over the top of the life that is there.
How will we be evaluated in the end? I believe that when we come before judgment, basically it will be: How much of Christ is in you and in me?
We have an opportunity now to allow that life to speak to us. Today, if you hear My voice—are we hearing this rhema today, His voice from within? Is He leading us? That is rest.
In this world you will have tribulation. You cannot live in this world and not grow tired and weary. It is a tough way to go. But there is that place of rest.
Just like the Jews running across the bridge at sunset to get home to their Sabbath delight—with Mom and Dad, the children, a meal, and the Lord—there is rest: holy rest, justified rest, the gift of rest.
Life. L’chaim. Life.
Delight yourself in the Lord. Delight yourself in the Sabbath. Turn away from stuff. Maybe it means turning off the BlackBerry or the iPhone. We have to get away from this kind of thing—watching television while we eat all our meals and everything.
We really want to learn how to live. If we want to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, it is not merely early to bed and early to rise. It is those who know the Sabbath.
Perhaps that is one reason the Jews are so smart: they have time to think. Who has time to think anymore? We are too busy absorbing things from a computer to think.
Here we are, at the first holy convocation of this particular conference. What I am suggesting is this: let us find that center in the Lord and in His life, and treasure it.
Then, in the feasts, we will find that the Lord wants that life to be shared with one another. We will see all those various wonderful pictures of the Lord Jesus in His feasts.
But we begin with Shabbat. The word is, Shalom, Shabbat. Let us enter into the peace of the Sabbath in Christ.
How wonderful, Lord, to know that You want to talk to us from between the wings of the cherubim; that You want us to enter into the holy place and receive instruction from You.
How wonderful that David’s prophecy is still true today: “Today, if you will hear My voice.” O Lord, we say that we want to hear.
Help us find that place beyond space, in holy time, in life that is precious—filled with zoe, filled with Your presence. Help us keep the Sabbath.
We are Sabbath breakers, Lord. We live in the rest, but we are not resting in the rest. We are restless in the rest.
O Lord, we do not want to be those who come short of the grace of God because we are restless in the rest. Grant that, in this day of shaking and trial, we could be those who have found the Sabbath and delight in the Sabbath.
Give us that overcoming strength to desire You more than all else, and in desiring You, to find that precious rest that enables us to go forward in this day.
Bless us in the Sabbath, Lord—Your great intention to bless the Sabbath and sanctify it. O, recover it among us, Lord, in our lives.
Strain away from us all that is full of self, full of the world, and full of peripheral things. Lord, we want to be focused again on the tree of life that You have given us within.
We want that garden surrounded by a holy life that protects the life within. Teach us how to walk in such a way, Lord. We realize that we are talking about holy ground here, and yet You have shown the way through Jesus Christ.
Help us now to learn how to live in the rest, resting in the rest. In Jesus’ name, amen.