iv)  Religious Meals 

Religious meals are foods and drinks served or received primarily for their ritual potency, even where the meals might have had a social setting.  They could be meals like every other meal: rice or bread or meat and drinks, but in this case defined by their specific context and their primary purpose.  A case in point would be the kind of meals against which God warns in our opening text: food dedicated to idols.  In this category would also come certain meals served as part of, or served to mark, an idolatrous festival or rite.

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5. Four Kinds of Meals 

There are four basic kinds of meals, although some meals could fall into more than one category, or might mean a different thing to the eater than the server.   The four basic kinds of meals are:

1. 1. Recreational meals
   2. Nutritional meals
   3. Social meals
   4. Religious meals

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Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. 

Revelation 2:20

1. Why We Eat 

All food does not serve a nutritional purpose, even though it might have nutritional value.  Everything we eat or drink is not because we were hungry or thirsty.  Sometimes it is merely for the fun of the food, or because it is part of a social event, or because there are medicinal properties we wish to derive from the food, or because the eating is part of a religious ritual.  The spirit realm is one of frequent meals and communions, and that realm recognizes and distinguishes meals and meal types.  

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 1. How God Blessed Jacob 

God earnestly promised that He would bless Jacob, but that blessing was not going to come without effort on the part of the promised man (Genesis 28:13-15).  In subsequent years, truly, Jacob got very blessed, and he admitted that the Lord had “dealt graciously” with him (Genesis 33:12), but the gracious blessing came through very hard work, as we may tell from the blessed man’s grieved complaints to his wives and to his boss.  God blessed Jacob, but not while he folded his hands and vigorously ‘claimed the promises.’

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5.  The Parable of the Blind

A professor is often revered as a great scholar, but in truth, a professor is only a celebrated novice.  One is made or called a professor because they have learned so much about a very little matter; because they know more than many others in a very small area.  They remain generally ignorant about larger truths of life.  The professor of ants might know the names of a thousand species of those crawling creatures that have nothing to do with my next breakfast, yet know nothing about camels and clouds.  A professor of American History might be able name all the Pilgrim Fathers and how each died, yet know nothing of the great history of an African village, much less how to fix his faulty phone.  For many of his repairs, he is at the mercy of the roadside mechanic with not half as much learning.  The professor of pediatrics will desperately need the orthopedic surgeon when he breaks a bone, and the unschooled taxi driver to tell him where to find the critical cobbler.  Mighty as Elijah was, he had no answer to Jericho’s lingering problem of common knowledge.  It his servant to fix it, with very little apparent effort (2 Kings 2:19-22).

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6. Case Five: An Angel’s Message to a Praying Girl

About three years ago, a little nine-year old girl who sometimes came with her mother to our Monday prayer meetings for the country, had a rare experience. There had been an election the outcome of which had made many very sad. That night, after the announcement of the electoral results, she and her sisters went to bed weeping that her ‘friend’ – Jonathan – had been dishonestly denied the outcome of the presidential elections. Her mother had also contracted their tears and everyone had cried. That night, she had a rare dream, as she sometimes does. For example, about a year ago, I shared her unique dream about the strange death – and why – of a bloody gubernatorial candidate in a Middle Belt state of Nigeria whose name she had not previously known. She had woken up announcing, to the disquiet of her mother, “The governor of X State is dead! The governor of X State is dead.”

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4. Case Three: Occupied Vacancies

A few months back this year, an Old Testament scripture hit me with a newness that I had never known. I find that scripture an applicable next file to open.  Again, the scripture is a Heavenly announcement about an incumbent earthly king; a Heavenly verdict of which the majority on earth was tragically ignorant, or chose to be vehemently, brutally so, even the man at the centre of the matter (1 Kings 22: 24, 27).   That notice from Heaven came in the discriminated minority voice of a very disliked prophet of God.

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3. Case 2: Thrones in Custody

Sometimes someone is on a throne merely as a custodian, until another person should come for whom the ‘custodian’ had been ‘holding brief.’  One day, God confronted Prophet Samuel with the verdict of Heaven about the king incumbent of his nation, saying, “I have rejected him from reigning over Israel” (1 Samuel 16:1).  Note the finality in the simple present tense: “I have…,” not “I will….”  In spite of that very clear notice of sack, Saul remained ‘in office’ for many more years, continuing to enjoy the respected title of “the LORD’S anointed” (1 Samuel 24:10; 26:9, 11, 16, 23), and doing such ‘right’ and ‘righteous’ things as chasing witches in the name of the God that had already declared his throne vacant, of which he probably remained willingly unaware (1 Samuel 28:9).

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