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Can you smell the sweet aroma of humble pie? Like me, perhaps you may need to indulge in a generous slice?
God’s people annually experience the Feast of Atonement with a full 24 hour period of fasting from any food or fluids. So how can fasting be thought of as feasting? Ordinarily we think of feasting as indulging abundantly in pleasant tasting foods with wine or beverages that we may particularly enjoy like we do at the Feast of Tabernacles. Can we feast when we fast? Yes we most certainly can! During the fast on Atonement we draw closer to our Creator by feasting on His Word. We empty ourselves out physically but we gain spiritually in consuming sustenance that nourishes our hearts and minds. God’s Word, the Holy Bible, is so rich in goodness, it truly is our daily bread.
God refers to the Day of Atonement as a feast day along with the weekly Sabbath and all the other annual high holy days by saying in Leviticus 23:1-2 “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel [this includes us], and say to them: ‘The feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are my feasts’”. This is written to preface the remainder of chapter 23 where God goes into specific detail regarding each of His feasts so that we can be aware of what is to be done and what is NOT to be done. Heartfelt obedience is the key.
God clearly defines for us His expectations and we indulge with spiritual feasting while fasting on Atonement in order to humble ourselves in a deeply repentant attitude, drawing close to God, and to enable at-one-ment — to be at one with Him through this very sacred time as everything else ceases — no servile work of any description — only solemn rest in order to be able to deepen our relationship. We know what this day symbolises — the binding and removal of Satan. The devil will be exposed to the whole world for the confusion and deception he has caused. In Leviticus 23:32 we are told to celebrate this day. Even though we are afflicting our souls at the same time as celebrating the overcoming of the relentless interference and attacks from our enemy, we are strengthened in the LORD with humble and quiet confidence of our enemy’s impending destruction rather than his attempts at our destruction.
Each year the attacks seem to be more frequent with increasing intensity aimed at the targets on our backs, because we have the Truth. They seem to be especially vicious when we are tired, stressed, or weakened through illness. Dirty tactics, cowardly tactics actually. Those who aim at the back are sneaky and underhanded, taking the easy option rather than openly facing us. But then again we are talking about the serpent, the snake who mixes truth with error to confuse those whom he is trying to kill. He couldn't care less how he devours us as long as he kills us off as quickly as possible. Having our enemy out of the picture so that we can focus on building righteous pathways rather than indulging in a diet of disobedience will be truly an amazing experience which we will get used to quite rapidly, I expect. It is somewhat hard to imagine that there will be a time when the devil will be exposed and removed as he is so active and relentless, filled with insane frenzy at destroying God’s people, but removed he will certainly be as God’s Word is truth and stands supreme. We can count on it and pray for that time in earnest expectation with humble thankfulness and gratitude.
Humility is the opposite of Pride
As God’s elect, the first fruits, we know that we are reconciled to God now but the remainder of the world, the vast majority, will have this time in the future when they will be able to celebrate the Day of Atonement in order to become reconciled to the loving God who created them. Finally we shall all be humbled. The apostle Paul wrote for us in Philippians 2:5, 8: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus...and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross”. Notice that in order to become fully obedient we must first have a humble attitude. We emulate Christ, our older brother in order to be truly Christ-like. James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5-6 tells us that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time”. Psalm 25:9 advises that “The humble He guides in justice, and the humble He teaches His way” while Psalm 147:6 says that “The LORD lifts up the humble”.
The book of Zephaniah is rich in prophecy regarding The Great Day of the LORD, the call to repentance of His people urging all the meek of the earth to earnestly seek humility and righteousness, His subsequent judgement on the nations, ending with the faithful remnant who sing and shout with joy from the depths of their hearts for God’s faithfulness. God will rejoice over us with gladness, quiet us in His love, and rejoice over us with singing (Zephaniah 3:17). How we look forward to that time eagerly while presently sighing and crying for all the abominations that are committed under the rule of Satan (Ezekiel 9:4).
This Feast of Atonement God showed me many things I need to humble myself about in order to prepare for His soon coming Kingdom. At the time I wondered if I truly even know myself but then was made to realise that humanistically we just tend to want to see certain things about ourselves that maybe we are able to cope with and we save the harder, less pleasant things for later. God encourages us because of His great love and mercy, if we do humble ourselves in a sincere, repentant attitude. Let us dig deeper and pray like King David did when he implored God to show him his hidden faults in Psalm 19:12, and follow with Psalm 51 which is referred to as David’s Prayer of Repentance. Reading through both of these Psalms we can gain much from the experiences of David and his wisdom.