125. Eat and Rejoice
Deuteronomy 12:7 And there ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed thee.…But thou must eat them before the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose,…and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God in all that thou puttest thine hands unto.
“There” in this context means in Jerusalem at the Temple, the one place where the Lord God chose to make His name dwell. When you worship you shall do it there where God chose to be present among His people. And by implication do not worship anywhere else; for you would be mixing up your worship of the one true God and Lord with false gods and idol demons. Those other places should be demolished.
The promise is that, in that place in the right way, you will eat in the Lord’s presence and you will rejoice in everything you do. You will enjoy a close relationship and intimate fellowship with the living God, and your life will be exceeding joyful and abundantly blessed.
Now that is quite a promise, and it does most surely apply to NT believers, even though they no longer worship in one given place of God’s choosing. “The days have come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” The “place” will be wherever two or three gather together in Jesus’ name.
They will have fellowship with the Lord as they listen to the Gospel of Christ and gather at the Lord’s Table to eat and drink the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. Then they leave that “place” of worship and go about their regular day-to-day business (“all that ye put your hands unto”) rejoicing with glad and joyful hearts.
You will eat and you will rejoice. “Eating” signifies believing the love of God for the sake of Jesus Christ and enjoying an intimate fellowship with God wherever we are. God promises you will be in His Presence all the time and everywhere. “Rejoice” signifies a happy life, no matter what is happening to you, because Jesus is with you always. “Doing all that you put your hand to” simply means living life according to your various callings, duties, privileges and loves. It means avoiding evil places, shunning bad company, and thinking and doing sinful things. Your calling would be husband, father, son, daughter, neighbor, friend, worker, boss, and whatever your positions and relationships in life. You will do it all joyfully in the name of the Lord.