God’s demand of Pharaoh is seen in 5:1. Speaking on behalf of the Lord, Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” The feast is in contrast with slavery, with rigorous labor. Jehovah was telling Pharaoh to release His people from slavery so that they could hold a feast unto Him. The words “unto me” in this verse indicate that when God’s people are feasting, He is happy. Their feasting is unto Him. It seems that Jehovah was telling Pharaoh, “I am not happy to see My people under slavery in Egypt. Let them go so that they may feast to make Me happy. I like to see My people feasting and rejoicing. I am glad when they do nothing but eat and rejoice. That is a feast unto Me.”
This feasting unto the Lord is dispensational worship; that is, it is worshipping God according to what has been dispensed into us. As we eat, drink, praise, sing, and rejoice in the presence of God, we hold a feast unto Him. As we shall see, such a feast is also a sacrifice unto the Lord. To sacrifice is to worship. Dispensational worship is worship in which God is dispensed into us for our enjoyment so that we may feast in His presence with Him and unto Him. This is the worship God desires. This is not only revealed in the New Testament, but also implied in the Old Testament.
We may consider the feast here a festival, a holiday, or a holy day, a time for God’s people to rest with God and to enjoy God’s provision with God. Three times a year God ordained special periods of feasting for the Israelites. The three main festivals were the Passover, including the feast of unleavened bread; the feast of weeks (Pentecost); and the feast of tabernacles. At those times the people were not allowed to do any work; anyone who worked on those festival days would be cut off from God’s people (Lev. 23:30). This feasting pleased the Lord because it was worship to Him. According to the human concept, people should always be working; but according to the divine concept, God’s people should put aside their working for the times of festivals to rest from their busyness and to feast with God in worship to Him.
To hold a feast unto the Lord is to worship Him. According to the natural concept, to worship is to bow down, to kneel down, to prostrate ourselves before God. But according to God, real worship is our enjoyment of God as our provision and then our rest in what we enjoy of Him. As John 4 discloses, the worship the Father seeks is the drinking of the living water. The more we drink of His Son as the Spirit, the more worship God the Father receives. Real worship is to drink of God’s provision, which is God Himself prepared for our enjoyment.
The feast spoken of in 5:1 was to be held in the wilderness. The wilderness here has a positive meaning. It was the first destination God wanted His people to reach. On the day I was saved, I was immediately brought by God into the wilderness. The wilderness stands in contrast to Egypt. In Egypt, which was filled with the culture of the world, there were the treasure cities. God wanted to rescue His people from the treasure cities and from human culture and to bring them into a place of separation in the wilderness. Before we were saved, we were in one of the cities on the bank of the Nile. But, in God’s salvation, we have been brought out of such cities into the desert, where there is no human culture and no worldly building.
In verse 3 Moses and Aaron told Pharaoh, “Let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness.” It is significant that this verse speaks of three days, not of two, four, or any other number. In the Bible the number three, especially three days, signifies resurrection. The Lord Jesus was resurrected on the third day. After the three days’ journey, the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, in which the Egyptian forces were buried. After passing through the sea, God’s people were in resurrection. They had passed through death on the night of the Passover, and they were buried in the Red Sea. Therefore, after a journey of three days’ duration, God’s chosen and rescued people were in resurrection.
Some may wonder how the children of Israel could have been buried both in the Red Sea and in the Jordan River. This is not hard to understand if we view it in the light of our Christian experience. On the day we were saved, we were saved into the death of Christ. Since that time, we have been subject to the effectiveness of Christ’s death. This means that in our experience we are crucified and buried again and again. I cannot tell you how many times I have undergone this crucifixion and burial. This indicates that our initial, basic Christian experience is the same in nature as our more advanced experience. Whatever we experience in the maturity of our spiritual life will be the same in principle as our experience in the beginning, on the very day of our salvation. When we were saved, we were placed into the death of Christ, we were buried, and we were resurrected. We cannot exhaust the experience of this death, burial, and resurrection. I experienced all this on the day I was saved, although at the time I had no knowledge of it. After I came out of the gospel meeting in which I was saved, I had the sense as I walked on the street that I was in the wilderness. To be in the wilderness is to be on the other side of the Red Sea in resurrection. To be in such a position is to be a Hebrew, a resurrected and transformed river-crosser. This is the normal experience of salvation. Everyone who has been saved in a normal way has taken a three days’ journey into the wilderness and has experienced death, burial, and resurrection.