THE NEED FOR SPIRITUAL FOOD

R. Taylor

Ruth 2: 1–9, 14–17, 21–23; Daniel 1: 8, 9, 16, 17; 2: 17–19; 6: 10; 9: 3–5, 21–23

I have read these passages, dear brethren, to speak about the need for food and the need for appropriating it. We often speak about the need of feeding on Christ, but the fact is that there is more food available than there is the desire for it. It is very obvious as you go on through our experience that there is all the food you want in a spiritual sense; the need is for a desire for it. It is sometimes raised, How do you feed on Christ? Well, a hungry man will tell you that. There are two basic things that I see that lead to feeding on Christ; the one is a longing after it and the other affection for Christ. How did the young man in Luke 15 get the best robe, do you think? The first thing was that the things he was doing did not satisfy him as he thought they would. He had great aspirations, he saw a country there where there was all that would appeal to his natural senses, but it says, “he began to be in want”; he hungered and then he began to think of his father’s house where there was abundance of bread. That is why I say there is the need for these two basic things, hunger and affection to lead you into green pastures and by still waters, and to satisfy every spiritual longing. There is a great need for the right kind of food. Paul in the shipwreck says, “Wherefore I exhort you to partake of food, for this has to do with your safety”, Acts 27: 34. It is necessary for our safety and in carrying through the testimony at its true level that we have right food. Peter says that God has plentifully supplied it. I would like to stir up an appetite for it in my own heart, as well as in others, for there is a present need for it.

Elijah, that great servant of God, began to get discouraged. That is something that is well known to many

of us. Like Asaph in Psalm 73, you look around and begin to get discouraged. Other people prospered, but he was seeking to be faithful and he was suffering. That was how Elijah felt and he fell asleep. An angel wakened him with a cake of bread just by his head. It says, “he ate and drank, and lay down again”, 1 Kings 19: 6. That is like some of us after the last three-day meetings. Maybe God aroused us and we said they were good meetings, but we went to sleep again. That is what happened with Elijah, he lay down again. We have all known these things, a good meeting. How much have we talked about it since? How much progress has there been? What has vitally entered into our hearts from all the expenditure and service in the labour of love, and the service of divine grace toward us? Do we go to sleep? Well, the Lord is very gracious. He wakened him up again and Elijah arose. It says, “he arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb”.

God has been speaking to us again in His grace. Where there has been lethargy, where there has been carelessness, some indifference to the pipings of grace. He would touch us again and say, here again is this cake already made. He did not even need to heat it, it was all there ready to nourish his affections and he went in the strength of that food to Horeb. God brought him back to see that there was still something there in spite of all the breakdown. God said, I have My own reserves and resources. I have thousands who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

O my friend, God is seeing things through in His own arrangements, and He would waken us up that we may have the appetite, that we may have the exercise, to appropriate what He has provided to see us through.

I have read of these two persons, Ruth, a young woman, and Daniel, a comparatively young man. The scripture goes into a good deal of detail about their histories. Ruth had a desire and longing for something that would satisfy her. You

may say it did not look very good; she was brought up in Moab, and Moab speaks of a man’s social arrangements. Moab was the place that was very pleasing to the flesh. Ruth was brought up in it but it did not satisfy her. Is there an unsatisfied heart in this room? someone who would like to know a happier Christian life? someone who would like to know more of what it is to be in the joy of what we were speaking of this afternoon, “elect according to the foreknowledge of God”, 1 Peter 1: 2? God would seek to encourage you in your exercise as He did Ruth. At every step she proved encouragement as she committed herself. She turned her back on Moab. She said, I have tasted these things and they have not helped me; her husband had died. She had a sister-in-law who said, Well I will make the best of it; we hear no more about her. But here is a young woman who says, I am going to make this step forward in faith. It was not very encouraging but she made one step. She had heard that God was visiting His people and giving them bread.

Have you ever heard of that, God visiting His people and giving them bread? Try it at the meeting some night. Just pay attention and you will find that God is visiting His people and giving them bread. You will find that He is giving something there that will nourish your affections. What impressed Ruth was that Boaz the mighty man of wealth noticed her, and that will be true about you if you have an exercise to be satisfied with Christ. The Lord and the Spirit will guide you. What a mighty man he was, he had great affairs to attend to. What problems he must have had from the harvests! But he had all the time in the world for an exercised soul that was wanting some food. So he notices her. Friends, you will be noticed, heaven is alert. The first step that the prodigal made on the road the father saw it, and the father ran and fell upon his neck and covered him with kisses. O the bounteous outflowing of divine grace towards you,

It says Ruth was a Moabitess, she had no right whatsoever. I suppose there would be persons who said, Well you have no right here, look at your history, look what it says in the law about you. But Boaz looked beyond all that. He says, I can meet it. Your sins and your liabilities I will look beyond that for the moment. And he comes and says, “Whose maiden is this?” The reapers say she is a Moabitess who said, Let me go and glean; she was prepared to do anything to get some impression of Christ. Is that the longing you have? prepared to make a move to hear the true Boaz, Christ, speaking to your heart of the counsels and purposes of His love. Well, Boaz noticed her, and he was active. He asked who she was, and the reapers said, “It is the Moabitish maiden”. Then Boaz spoke to Ruth, he saw great potential there.

The Lord sees great potential in what He can do with an exercised heart. She was prepared to turn her back on the social element in Moab. It was a dangerous place, plenty of everything, plenty of money, but no satisfaction for a heart longing after Christ.

So here Boaz is, in type the Lord Jesus Himself, saying her name, Ruth. Have you ever heard the Lord Jesus call you by name? It is very fine to think of how personal your link is with Jesus. It is not through the brethren or your parents, it is through your own heart and soul with Jesus. As quoted in that beloved brother’s poem, ‘A time alone with Jesus, the Man that died for me’. Ruth was about to prove that, but there he is, the man who is prepared to lay down his life for her, speaking to her and giving her counsel. It is a very fine touch about Jesus, He is a Counsellor. Here He is, in type, speaking to Ruth, and he says, “Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go not to glean in another field, neither go from here”. Satan is very active to deflect you, there are other fields he will tell you, there are other ways, there are other faiths. Is Jesus the only Saviour? Yes! Peter says, “neither is there another name under heaven which is given among men by which we must be saved”, Acts 4: 12. He bought the field, he has shown his rights to all that is in it. and here is one young soul who is in it and he addresses her by name, “Go not to glean in another field”.

O my friend, do not be deflected. May the appeal of His grace claim your heart tonight. Satan will say, Do you have to be so committed? Well there is no other Boaz. If she had gone to another field it would not have been Boaz’s field. She would have found it hard graft, but how easy things are made as she is submissive to Boaz as she stays in that field till mealtime.

She went to glean, quite hard work. Go to the reading some night and you will find one of these mealtimes. Boaz says at mealtime, “Come hither and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar. And she sat beside the reapers; and he reached her parched corn”. She never expected that. You will get far more than you expect. The Lord will satisfy your desires. Boaz reached her parched corn; where did that come from? It came from His own storehouse.

There is a touch of the Holy Spirit in that I think. He will take of the things of Christ and show them unto us. If you come into this environment and follow the instructions of Boaz you will find there is a great wealth. There is something reserved specially for her. It says, “he shall guide you into all the truth”, John 16: 13. He did not only show it to her, but she ate.

I can see her growing in appreciation of Boaz as eating of that parched corn. She had never tasted it before, there will be much more than that for her to taste and for you to taste, of the things prepared for those that love God (1 Corinthians 2: 9). As the Lord sees your genuine exercises you will find a great storehouse. God says to the people later in Malachi, Bring the whole tithe into the treasure-house, and I will open the windows of heaven (Malachi 3: 10).

That means, as you sacrifice and are committed, God will open to you the windows of heaven so that you cannot contain the blessing. There is Ruth, her heart being opened, he reached her parched corn, and he told the reapers to let handfuls drop out on purpose. Have you ever known that in

a meeting, a handful to be dropped on purpose, just for you? You may say, Nobody knows my exercises. Maybe you have been discouraged by the reproach of the testimony. I think that handful on purpose is just to encourage us in the reproach. That was something she never expected; could she exhaust it? Where did it come from, that parched corn and these handfuls? You will find that the Lord is facilitating you in your exercise, making it easier and easier.

She gleaned and beat out what she had gleaned. She was not going to sleep like Elijah, she had a fresh touch now and was going to make the most of it. We used to be told when we were younger, that there was a need for roasting what you took in hunting. What the old brothers were graciously saying was, do not only go to the meeting, but go to your closet with your impressions and speak to God about them. It is a good thing, dear brethren (I can commend it), to write down your impressions of a meeting, to write down what you gleaned at that meeting. That is something like threshing out that parched corn, that handful on purpose that was dropped for you; you write it down. You will get more help from it that way I can assure you. She beat out what she had gleaned “and it was about an ephah of barley”.

She now had come to see something of Christ risen, the firstborn from among the dead. All else lay in death, all under the penalty and burden of sin, but now her heart is drawn to a risen and glorious Man, the Firstborn from among the dead, a glorious Saviour. Friend, do you know Him like that? Well, that comes from the beating out, and through these exercises that she passed through. She came into the city to her mother-in-law. Think of Naomi’s joy too.

Naomi, discouraged by what has come in, now finds a young soul coming to her with an ephah of barley, speaking of Christ, a risen and glorious Man. What a prospect was opening up.

There she is like those in Luke 24, who got the message, “The Lord is indeed risen and has appeared to Simon” (Luke 24: 34). It says at the end of where I read that “she kept with the maidens of Boaz to glean, until the end of the barley-harvest and of the wheat-harvest”.

She continued. What an encouragement for us to go on in the enjoyment of what Christ is providing. The handfuls on purpose to sustain you, as well as parched corn specially for you.

Stay in that field, do not be drawn away from the food supply. Do not be drawn away to feed on what is historical. Christendom is full of speaking of Christ as He was down here, the barley-harvest is Christ as He is, the gloriously risen Man. And what is the wheat-harvest?

The wheat-harvest is that the believer is brought into the enjoyment of that life. The first-fruit is Christ, He is risen, the great Forerunner, but the wheat-harvest is that the saints are risen too. He is the Firstborn from among the dead, but the wheat harvest is that the saints are of the same order, they are brought into the joy of a risen triumphant life in a glorious Man.

Well, you can see Ruth growing. You can see the food doing her good every day. What substance she was acquiring, and she is becoming more precious to Boaz every day. He began to take more and more notice of her. As the book goes on, it is well known, she begins to have greater affection for Boaz as well. He was maybe just a name to her, she heard about him in Moab because he was a distant relative, but he is not a distant relative now; she is soon to be his wife, how precious she is becoming to Boaz. He said, I will not rest until you are free of every encumbrance to be for me and me alone. How gracious! So she is becoming increasingly precious to him in her movements. He says, Hold out your cloak. If He said that to you tonight, how much would you expect. We used to be told you will get as much of Christ as you want, and there it is, she held out her cloak and she received six measures.

I can well understand Ruth speaking about Boaz to everybody she knew; her heart was full of Christ. There was that cloak full with six measures. I do not know how heavy it was, but it was more than she needed. Nobody knew what

tomorrow would bring. Well there was another measure of barley there for it. There was a full supply in her own cloak as she went to her mother-in-law. O what joy to discouraged brethren Ruth must have been, the whole city was moved about her. Here was a young soul come from a system of darkness now satisfied with these six measures in her cloak. Naomi said, “Who art thou, my daughter? And she told her all that the man had done to her”, Ruth 3: 16. Can you do that, my friend? Can you tell persons, the brethren if you like, how much the Lord has done for you? This is what she is prepared to do; how much He had done for her She is becoming increasingly precious to him. “Go not empty to thy mother-in-law”. You will never leave the divine presence empty. You will be there with all the grace that you need for whatever the exercises may be.

There is not time to speak about it, but at the end of the book it says that not only was she his wife but she had a child. How fruitful these exercises are. It says, “they called him name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David”, Ruth 4: 17. She is in the genealogy in Matthew; in the book of the generations of Jesus Christ, not now the Moabitess, it does not call her that there. It says, “Boaz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David the king”, Matthew 1: 5, 6. There you see things are brought into finality through those exercises of one young soul. Is someone ready to commit themselves afresh to Christ in the full expectation of finding your place in the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, no longer a Moabitess? She is united in unbreakable bonds to the great Saviour, the great Christ, the risen glorious Man in whom God has centred all His promises and all His thoughts.

I would like to speak about Daniel, a young man who was exercised about the things of God.

There he is in captivity; what is he going to do? The easiest thing would be to accommodate himself to the circumstances and make the best of them, but that was not Daniel. He had proved, as

with Ruth, that there was a God in the heavens; that is the great theme of the book of Daniel that there was a God in the heavens who was ruling the earth. The book of Daniel links very much with what we were speaking of earlier, the rising powers of men and the great weakness that marks them, but there is Daniel who knew a God that was in the heavens and ruled over the kingdoms of men. So here he is taken captive and severely tested with the food the world provides, which to a weary heart may look very enticing. There are many proving today, I am sure, that the allurements they thought were cast iron are very, very fragile and very dangerous, but here is a man who was offered something, a great temptation. You may say delicate food would not have done any harm, would it? I will tell you what it would have done; it would have dulled his sensibilities, that is what dabbling with these things do, they dull your sensibilities. You begin to think, Well, things are not so bad, people are not so bad, there is a lot of good abroad, and all these kind of things. That is what partaking of this delicate food does, it dulls your judgment and your sensibilities about sin and sins. That is what it would have done to Daniel, but it says he purposed in his heart.

That is another great matter, if you are going to get good food, to purpose in your heart.

There will be temptations but that purpose stands, “he would not pollute himself with the king’s delicate food”. It stood him in good stead. Again it was noticed by heaven, he very readily came into the resources that were outside what the powers of men could do. As for these four youths, it says, “God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom”.

That is one thing that Christ has been made to us, “wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption”, 1 Corinthians 1: 30. There is everything you need in Christ. That is what Daniel proved as having purposed in his heart and able to refuse the temptations that Satan would bring up and so he is tested as to his committal, as every committed believer will be. You say you would not pollute yourself, but it will

come up again next week as another temptation, maybe dressed in Christian language almost, because the name of Jesus is being attached to all sorts of things. But Daniel had purposed in his heart, and so when temptation comes he is tested as to how he is going to stand. What does he do? It says he went to his house with his companions. That is another thing, if you wish to prosper, seek good company. If your companions cannot speak to you about Christ they are not helping you. I can tell you it is a stay to your soul to have good companions who are thinking about Christ and the assembly.

So Daniel and his companions, what did they do? They held a prayer meeting about it. It is fine to have someone to share your exercises, to be able to speak together about what came up in the meeting about the truth of reconciliation, and the truth of justification. It is helpful to speak about these things with your companions. Daniel says, What about the threatening? I think his companions would say, Well, our faith and hope is in God. They did not say, We will go and speak with him, we will go and try and make a compromise. No, it says, “that they would desire mercies of the God of the heavens concerning this secret”. A great deal of what Daniel and his companions went on with was in secret. Do not expose your secrets.

Samson did it when temptations arose. If you have a secret in your soul with Christ, hold on to it tenaciously. It is like a hiding-place. That is what David had; he had a hiding-place. Saul was there with great forces of darkness all around. David hid in a cave and in the cave there were recesses, a most interesting thing. If you look at that cave where Saul came, it says David was in the recesses of the cave (1 Samuel 24: 3). He was not just at the mouth of it, but he was in a secret place where Saul could not touch these young men.

Another thing that marked Daniel was that he was a man of constant prayer, which is faith’s outlet. Someone is ever ready to hear you, and Daniel makes much of it, so it says,

“And when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and, his windows being open in his upper chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled on his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime”. There he is on his knees, this was no prayer that he repeated time and again, he meant it. He was very real in his faith; “on his knees three times a day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God”. What a lot he goes through. I would commend the reading of it to you, more than I can say about it, but he comes to realise that there is a God who is ready to hear his supplications. He says, “I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes”. He was not just thinking of himself at the moment, but in chapter 9 he is thinking about the whole course of the testimony and he is urgent about it. Whatever it takes, be urgent in prayer, with fasting and sackcloth. I can never think about Daniel without thinking of the last verses of the book. He was warned about how things were going to continue, as many of us may be, but he is told, “But do thou go thy way until the end; and thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days”, Daniel 12: 13. He is going through to glory.

I would like to speak also about another kind of food available to the overcomer in Revelation. There is something greater than the gleaners would get, something greater than these ears of corn. At Ephesus which had known better days, where the saints were just dropping in their love for Christ, there is an appeal for overcomers and here is what it says,

“To him that overcomes”, that can be you tonight, “I will give to him to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God”, Revelation 2: 7. The best things are open to the overcomer amidst the departure of Ephesus; the tree of life, Christ in His own surroundings, not only that He came out from God to bear my sins and meet my guilt, but He has gone into His own domain. It is like a view that Peter had on the mount of transfiguration, he saw Him with His face shining, he saw Him in His own glory. It was open to a Ruth, to a Daniel, and now to you tonight; it is open to the overcomer as a present portion.

There is another one. He says to the overcomer in Pergamos, where again there is departure, “to him will I give of the hidden manna”, Revelation 2: 17. Mr. Darby says it is God’s treasured store. There was a brother who helped us many years ago, Mr. A. J. Gardiner. I heard him more than once say that he asked the Father to tell him what He found so delightful in Jesus; that is the hidden manna. Think of those days of His flesh, God’s treasured store, ridiculed and maligned on earth, but every step of that holy pathway from the manger to the grave is recorded in heaven. John says that the books could not contain what could be written but there it is all in the hidden manna, all available to the overcomer, the hidden manna, “to him will I give to eat of the hidden manna”. Think of the Father opening up His books to tell you about Jesus. I think He would tell you about His obedience. That is what marked Jesus out from the race, the obedience of that One. What food for an overcomer! May it be to the glory and praise of Christ, for His name’s sake.

Address at Dundee
6 September 2008