The most pleasant thing is meeting. Do you want to get rid of your anxiety? Come to the meeting. There is no anxiety in the meeting. If you still keep your anxiety, you are not in the meeting. You are in your anxiety. Don’t think that I have no troubles. I have a lot of troubles, but when I come to the meeting I can say, Hallelujah! I am happy; I am pleasant.
Even regardless of how tired I am, whenever I come to a meeting I feel fine. There is no tiredness. I am so strengthened by the meeting. I am enriched, I am healed, I am uplifted by the meeting! Why? The joy of the Lord is your strength. And this strengthening joy is also a healing. The medical doctors would tell you that one of the best medicines is joy. If you could be joyful all the day long you wouldn’t be sick so much. The most pleasant time is the meeting time.
According to typology the church is a people meeting. Without the meeting life, there is no church life. You may have the church in terminology, but you don’t have the church in living reality. The living reality of the church is the meeting life. Hallelujah! We are churching! We are not only meeting, we are churching.
Now we come to a very crucial point: for what do we meet? In the first message we pointed out that we meet to exhibit Christ in His victory, and in the second message we pointed out that we meet to do the will of God and fulfill His purpose. But in this message I would like to fellowship with you that we meet to satisfy God with Christ. Dear saints, you all have to realize that this is a big subject. To satisfy God is not a small thing. And to satisfy God with Christ is not a small thing. Both points are too great.
If you read Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy you could realize that in the whole universe there is a divine hunger. God is hungry. When I studied the Pentateuch again with the saints in Taiwan about twenty-three years ago I was so impressed with this word. Leviticus 3:11 and 16 speak of “the food of the offering made by fire unto the Lord.” Certain offerings were food to God. You are not the only one who needs food; God also needs food. You are hungry, and your hunger is a sign of God’s hunger. When you are hungry it should remind you that God is hungry.
In the Gospel of John, the incarnated God one day came to a sinful woman asking for a drink. He was thirsty. He came to a thirsty sinner, the Samaritan woman, asking for a drink. Eventually that woman was satisfied, and the incarnated God also was satisfied. Why? Because the sinner got the Savior, and the Savior got the sinner. So both were satisfied. God is hungry. God needs something to eat. This thought is deeply revealed in the Pentateuch. In these four books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy you can find out that some of the offerings God required to be offered to Him by His people were for His food.
For many years I read the Bible but I didn’t understand the real meaning of the burnt offering. The burnt offering was the first of all the offerings. What was it for? For redemption? For peace making? No, the burnt offering was for God’s satisfaction. You have to realize that the entire burnt offering was food to God (Lev. 3:11, 16). The burnt offering could only be enjoyed by God as His food when it became two things: when it became the sweet savor in the air, and when it became ashes on the ground. When the burnt offering became a sweet savor in the air and a heap of ashes on the ground, it was food to God. The burnt offering is altogether for God’s satisfaction.
The entire burnt offering was burnt by one kind of burning. With the sin offering there were two kinds of burnings—the sweet burning of the inside, of the inwards and the fat, and the judging burning of the outside, of the flesh, the skin, and the dung. But with the burnt offering there was only one kind of burning, the burning of the incense. This is the sweet burning, that causes something to ascend up to God. That is the sweet smell, the sweet savor, that goes to God for God’s enjoyment. If you know the Bible you could see that whenever the burnt offering was being burnt on the altar, God was enjoying, and He was satisfied. It was a pleasant eating to Him. That was His breakfast and His dinner. The burnt offering had to be offered to God in the morning and in the evening. So at least God eats twice a day: breakfast and dinner. When is the time for you to offer your morning burnt offering? It is at morning watch time. In the morning you have to offer something to God. When is the time for you to offer your evening burnt offering? When is God’s dinner time? It is the evening meeting.