Again, let me remind you, church activities and indeed, every religious activity for that matter can become an ordinary “feast” when it carries no spiritual experience in your life again. Even prayer as spiritual as it is can become a feast.
When prayer-time is no longer a genuine fellowship with God, but a routine of vain repetition and meaningless words, or even in the name of “speaking in tongues”!
Or worse still, when your prayer time with God instead of bending your self-will and writing eternal characters in your life becomes only an avenue for using God to advance your selfish ambitions … When it is no longer a place of receiving God’s will and the grace to do it, but rather, a routine of “God give me this”, “God do this for me”, “God destroy all those who are standing in the way of my blessing and promotion”. When prayer times – God’s opportunity for breaking the tyranny of self, sin and rottenness of your life – becomes diverted to serving your interest, then you have entered into the realms of ceremonies and feasts! There are yet others who presently attend prayer meetings, family prayer times, or devotions, or even fasting retreats, not because the burden and the desire to pray is present, but rather more out of “saving face”, “a name”, or even their “past reputation” of being once upon a time a spiritual brother or sister. The truth however, alas, is Ichabod! The glory has departed and the heart has backslidden.
To such, Jesus in the book of Revelation says: “thou has a name that thou liveth, but thou art dead”. When you participate in any religious activity just to protect a name or to defend yourself against people thinking that you are no longer fervent – then, spiritual things have become just a feast or ceremony to you as well. You are on the shortest possible path to losing Jesus.
Friends, from the above and other indices too numerous to mention, will you not agree that the things of God are becoming just a ceremony to you? Don’t you now for instance just go to church on Sundays only as a ceremony? Imagine that for weeks, you don’t do any genuine personal study of your Bible, yet on Sundays, you get up and dust your Bible to go for service. Perhaps, you may be going to show off your new dress, your new car, or even to parade your fine looking (and probably spoilt) children! It is certainly not out of a hunger or the desire to see the glory of God.
When you see these parameters in your life, they are pointers unto missing the reality of the Christian life. They are pointers showing that you may already be missing the Lord Jesus Christ out in your life and you do not know it.
Furthermore in verse 42, we read: “And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.” Look at that important phrase “… after the custom of the feasts.” They went there, but it was to meet a custom…a program that had already been set. It was to meet a custom that must be followed…the step-by-step (lifeless constitution, organization, or mere form that has been arranged and must be followed…And anyone could run through this so-called programme without meeting Jesus. So they went “after the custom of the feast” – a routine man-made procedures.
In some Christian circles today, it is a custom to come to church and just dance around and sing without necessarily touching Jesus. It is a custom in several congregations to make noise and to shout “seven big hallelujahs” facing North, East, or West. It is not because there is any real or overflowing joy, or that people genuinely are saved and delivered from sin and reconciled to their Maker, or have become spontaneously filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit which is the genuine outcome of such experiences… But men are programed and manipulated to shout “amen”, “Hallelujahs”, “Glory to God”, while in bitterness, in vengeance, in resentment, in anger, in adultery and every wantonness you can imagine in their private lives.
Which custom of the feast you are now accustomed to such that you hardly notice the absence of Jesus?
Bro Akanni is renowned preacher and overseer of Peace House, Gboko, Benue State.
