FEEDING ON CHRIST

J. A. Brown

Leviticus 2: 4–10; Psalm 22: 1–8, 12–26; Hebrews 2: 11, 12

One of the things that young people hear the brothers talking about in the readings is feeding on Christ. I suppose you have all heard that expression. I would like, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to speak about the Lord Jesus in a way which might attract the attention and the affections of every one of us in the room this afternoon, so that something would be left behind. That is what feeding does, and not just in your memory but in your soul, and in my soul too because I need this as much as anyone, if not more so. I would like to speak of the Lord Jesus as He is presented to us in the symbol or type of the oblation in Leviticus 2, and then speak a little about how He suffered and why He suffered, and what is in view in that suffering. Of course the answer is in what we had in the reading, it is praise that is in view.

We have been reading several books recently in our own locality which have all come together in a most interesting and helpful way. We were looking at the Lord Jesus in Matthew, and in John’s gospel as He is seen as the glorious Son of God. Then in Leviticus we have been reading about the sacrifices. What a wonderful experience it is to know the help of the Spirit in these meetings that we have. We go along to them, whether in large numbers or small, and we always get something from the heart of God. So it is not just another reading in John’s gospel, not just another type in Leviticus which is difficult to understand, but something for our souls. I would like to speak to you in such a way that by the Holy Spirit you would get something for your soul. I need something for mine too, because we are all here as before God, and we need to feed on this blessed Man who we spoke about in the reading, who could lift His heart to the Father rejoicing and saying, “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent”, Matthew 11: 25. What we were speaking about in the reading and what we are going to be engaged with now make absolutely no sense at all to the natural mind. But there is, by the work of God in the heart of the believer, something that responds to it. I trust, even in the reading of these scriptures, there will be something that our hearts can respond to in this meeting. It is not just that we remember what was said, but something that gets into our affections and changes us, because this is the time of gathering, this is the time of feeding, this is the time of growing. We will not grow in eternity; we will have Him before us, we will see His blessed face but things will be as it were fixed then. There will be no development in eternity. This is the time of development, this is the time of feeding, this is the time to be engaged with the glories of Christ in such a way that He is formed in us. That is what feeding on Jesus means, I trust that down to the very youngest here who loves the Lord Jesus will engage with what is being said, in such a way that something will be left in your heart for the praise of God eternally.

So we see the Lord Jesus in all the perfection of His humanity represented by the oblation.

The oblation was a simple offering; it was a portion of flour and it could be brought in various ways. It could be baked in the oven, it could be cooked in a pan, it could be cooked in a cauldron, but it always involved oil and it always involved fine flour, the best. It was a type of Jesus. I trust that the Lord Jesus is interesting and attractive to everyone here. The blessedness of His humanity is a never-ending source of food, an inexhaustible resource for the heart of the believer who loves Him. Here we see in symbol and type the humanity of Jesus in its perfection. There was nothing else but fine flour mingled with oil and with frankincense on it. It is brought as a food offering. That is what oblation means, as footnote ‘ f’’ tells us. It was for the priests to eat. Very little of it was actually burnt on the altar; there was a handful taken with all the frankincense on it, and that was offered up on the altar as the other sacrifices were, but nearly all of the oblation was eaten by the priest and by his sons.

As believers in the Lord Jesus we are priests and we are capacitated by the Holy Spirit to feed on the humanity of Jesus. That is what we can do with the help of the Holy Spirit as we read a scripture like this. Jesus was perfect in His humanity; He came in as a perfect baby and He grew up as a perfect boy in perfect obedience. The Lord Jesus was not only sinless; it was impossible for Him to sin. Some believers think that He could have sinned but that He chose not to sin. That is wrong. The Lord Jesus was sinless intrinsically. You could take this offering of fine flour and spread it out, say, on a large flat table and there would be nothing else there. The perfection of the humanity of Jesus is wonderful, and it was here for the pleasure of God. But by the grace of God we can appreciate it and feed on it. We can make it part of our own spiritual constitution, and that is my exercise in reading this passage. O that we might be interested in these things. So the oblation is taken and it is offered up, burnt on the altar, “an offering by fire to Jehovah of a sweet odour”.

What perfection was there for the heart of God in the humanity of Jesus. Mr. Darby writes so beautifully of these offerings; about the oblation and its perfection and evenness, the evenness of the humanity of Jesus. He writes most interestingly in his ‘Synopsis of the Books of the Bible’ on this chapter about other men who were greatly used by Jesus. All had some characteristic that marked them out. He says that in Peter there was ardent affection which predominated and characterised him; in Paul there was energy and zeal. But then he writes of Jesus; that in Jesus there was none of this unevenness and the only thing that essentially characterised Him more than the other blessed aspects of His humanity was His meekness. That is what the oblation speaks of, the lowliness and meekness of the humanity of Jesus. And then Mr. Darby wrote of God that the hand that struck the chord found all in tune. He described how, in the Lord Jesus, every element, every faculty in His humanity responded to the impulse which the divine will gave to it, and then ceased in a tranquillity in which self had no place. Such was Christ in human nature.

I have quoted Mr. Darby’s ministry because it has affected me, and I would like to interest you, dear young sister and young brother. Some of you may not have read Mr. Darby’s ministry yet, and maybe when you have opened a page you think it is complicated and really difficult. Well I would like to give you some advice. Go to Volume 1 of the Synopsis and read what Mr. Darby says about these offerings. The language he uses is most attractive. It is almost sublime the way in which that spiritual man writes of Jesus, in type as the offerings, it is almost as though Mr. Darby’s heart is pouring out and speaking to the reader’s heart in his writing. I am not saying that all of Mr. Darby’s writings are as straightforward as that, but go to the Synopsis in these early chapters in Leviticus and feed on Jesus. Make Mr. Darby’s impressions yours, and not just so that you can quote things that he wrote. Feed on it, absorb it, make it part of your love for Jesus. O what a wonderful, blessed, perfect Man He is!

So Jesus came into this world in all that lowliness and meekness and holiness. He came to His own. He came to the Jews, and what did they think of Him? “He came to his own, and his own received him not”, John 1: 11. We are speaking about a divine Person, a blessed Man whom we know and love; I trust that everyone here does know and trust Him. He came to His own people as their Messiah, and what did they think of Him? Nothing. It was not just that they undervalued what was there, but they did not value it at all; they had no perception of the One who was there. Their minds were totally shut to the attractiveness of Jesus, His glory, His blessedness to the Father; the Jews rejected Him. That is why I have read in Psalm 22, which shows the contrast between the blessedness of the humanity of Jesus and the reaction that He actually got from those to whom He had come.

Of course He came into this world, as Paul says, “to save sinners, of whom I am the first” (1 Timothy 1: 15), but He came first of all to His own people, the Jews, who were labouring under the Roman yoke and were looking for the Messiah to save them. What did they do with Him? Consider in Luke 4 His very first contact with them in His public service in Nazareth, the place where He was brought up. He went into the synagogue “according to his custom”.

Clearly He had been there before, and they gave Him the roll of the book and He read in it these wonderful words from Isaiah. Then what happens? A little while later they were taking Him up to the brow of the hill, and they would have thrown Him down the precipice. This blessed One of whom I have been speaking in all His perfection and attractiveness, His own people—those who knew Him from a child in Nazareth would have thrown Him over the cliff to get rid of Him. That is what His own people thought of Jesus. Does that affect you? It should do. It affects me. It should affect every lover of Christ, that those to whom He came had no time for Him.

So as Jesus went on through that pathway of suffering love, doing good, appealing to the Jews, teaching in the temple, healing persons, they accused Him even of blasphemy when He forgave persons their sins. The Jews, His own to whom He came, rejected Him, they resented Him. O the awfulness of the human heart. The heart after nature cannot accept Jesus. It rejects Him, it has no time for Him. You see the epitome of that rejection in Pilate’s judgment hall. It was the Jews who took Him there. The band that went into Gethsemane was sent by the Jews, and they took Jesus into that judgment hall, and there the chief priests and those who were the leaders of the Jews charged Him in that mockery of a trial with false charges. As someone said after one of our readings recently in John’s gospel, Pilate was completely out of his depth. And yet he gave in to the cries of the Jews, “Crucify him”. In the parable the Lord speaks of them as saying, “We will not that this man should reign over us”, Luke 19: 14. That is what the Jews made of this blessed holy perfect Man whom we love so much, they rejected Him. O how the Lord felt that! He knew what their rejection of Him would mean for the Jewish nation. The nation was to be cast out because of their rejection of Him. The Lord Jesus felt that keenly; that was part of His sufferings, that His very own people to whom He had come, His nation, rejected Him.

They would be set aside by God because of that, and Jesus felt that keenly. Although in God’s grace the rejection was deferred to the stoning of Stephen, there was a finality when they rejected Christ, their own Messiah. O how He felt that in His spirit!

And, I believe, He felt even more keenly the rejection of one whom He had chosen to be His disciple, Judas. That band which came from the Jews was led by one whom He had chosen, one of the twelve, one of those who had been with Him for over three years. Psalm 55 speaks of His feelings, He could say prophetically, “For it is not an enemy that hath reproached me—then could I have borne it; neither is it he that hateth me that hath magnified himself against me—then would I have hidden myself from him; But it was thou, a man mine equal, mine intimate, my familiar friend ... We who held sweet intercourse together”, Psalm 55: 12–14. O how Jesus felt the pain of betrayal. These sufferings of Jesus were not His atoning sufferings—He suffered for us in atonement on the cross, and I will speak about that in a moment—but His sufferings as a Man show the perfection of what He was, and what He felt in the blessedness of His humanity.

As well as the rejection of the Jews, He was rejected by men generally. Even in Galilee where He healed the man who had the legion of demons they did not want Him to stay. They begged Him to go away out of their coasts. Jesus did not fit into this world and He felt that.

He had come to this world to save and to bring men to God, and Jesus felt their rejection.

Again it came to its climax in the behaviour of the Roman soldiers in Pilate’s judgment hall when they casually scourged Him. It says, “Then Pilate therefore took Jesus and scourged him”, John 19: 1. What did he do that for? There was nothing there in Jesus that deserved the awful brutality of the Roman scourging. O dear brethren that we might be moved by these sufferings.

But then even more keenly than that, the Lord Jesus had suffered in a place called Gethsemane as He anticipated what was to befall Him the following day. Luke says that His sweat became as great drops of blood falling down upon the earth (Luke 22: 44). He had gone from the upper room where He had spoken to His disciples of remembering Him; they had sung a hymn together and gone out to the mount of Olives and into that place. There He went a stone’s throw from them; they could still take account of Him. The sufferings of Jesus at the hands of men would be like the oblation baked in the pan. There was something there that could be taken account of; we can take account of it and be affected by it. Then in Gethsemane there was what was even more intense, and it has been suggested that it would be like the cauldron, the heat and the fire applied, as Jesus knelt there in prayer and said, “My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; but not as I will, but as thou wilt”, Matthew 26: 39. He did not have another will, His will was to do the Father’s will, in all His perfection as seen in the oblation. Whatever the test was, whatever the trial, the evenness, the perfection of the oblation, was seen at every turn. o blessed be His name. May our hearts be freshly attracted to Him as we see in Jesus in every circumstance and in every suffering, the perfection of what the oblation speaks of.

Now, why are we given all of that detail? In the New Testament and in the types why are we told all about these sufferings? These were not the atoning sufferings, these were not the sufferings that saved you from your sins. We are told about these sufferings because the sufferings He endured on the cross, forsaken of God, were infinitely worse than anything that I have been trying to speak about. And so Psalm 22 begins with the very words of the Lord Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Can you answer that question? Is there anyone here who cannot answer that in the depth of your own heart? I know why He was forsaken there; in these three hours of darkness, He bore my sins in His body on the cross. O that you might make it personal. I want to appeal to you because it is important that you understand why Jesus suffered on the cross. These sufferings were like the baking of the oblation in the oven; they could not be taken account of by the eye of man.

During these three hours of darkness, darkness which covered the whole land from the sixth until the ninth hour, Jesus suffered there. He was made sin, the very article of it, and He suffered there for my sins, He was there for me. I trust that you can say that, dear friend, He went there for me, He was forsaken for me. We have been thinking of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, but we cannot understand fully what He bore there on the cross. We cannot enter into how much worse than anything else He had suffered it was for Him to be forsaken by His Father. This was the only time when He spoke to God that He did not say ‘Father’. Even in Gethsemane He could say ‘Father’. As He bore in His spirit and saw with perfect clarity what was about to befall Him, still He says, “My Father, if it be possible”, Matthew 26: 39.

But now for the time that communion is broken and Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That cry arises from the cross in the darkness. It was for you and it was for me. I trust you know that for yourself.

These verses go on; most of them speak of the way in which men reviled Him. Even as He hung upon the cross His own people used these words, “let him rescue him; let him deliver him, because he delighteth in him!” The Jews who were there at the cross said words like that; they said, “He trusted upon God; let him save him now if he will have him”, Matthew 27: 43. How the Lord felt that, hanging there on that cross listening to what the chief priests were saying about Him, insulting Him in that way. O how Jesus suffered, “the just for the unjust”, my Substitute. Why? “that he might bring us to God”, 1 Peter 3: 18. These things give us an insight into the heart of God. Let us feed upon the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, there is no food like it. I believe, dear brethren, that it would give depth and tone to our praises. Praise is not just a light-hearted bubbling up of something, although spontaneity is right. The praise that arises to God is from hearts that have been affected by the way that love took Jesus in His suffering pathway, and then to the cross where He was forsaken by God.

So that is seen in verse 21, “Yea, from the horns of the buffaloes hast thou answered me”.

There Jesus was in type on the altar, held down by the horns of the altar, and then as having suffered He can say on the cross, “It is finished”. Of course His work included His death, the shedding of His precious blood and His going into the grave, but nevertheless He could say, “It is finished”, and prophetically “Yea, from the horns of the buffaloes hast thou answered me. I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee”. My simple impression is that the praising company which is with Jesus in verse 22 is made up of those who have been brought into some appreciation of His sufferings in the part of the psalm that we have been going over. I trust that that makes sense to you, that suffering leads to praise. There are no short cuts in Christianity. The sufferings and death of Jesus are the basis for everything that is for God, in the blessed humanity of Jesus of which Mr. Darby writes so eloquently. The Holy

Spirit would open up these scriptures to the heart of every believer who is interested. I trust there is not a believer here who is not interested in what I am speaking about. I hope that you will go and get Synopsis Volume 1 off the bookshelf some time within the next few days and read it for yourself and that you will think about what we have had today. I tell you it will make an impression.

The Lord Jesus is seen in this psalm as in the midst of a praising company, saying, “I will declare thy name”. That is the Father’s name. As we remarked in the reading, we praise in response to the revelation of the Father. I trust there is no one here who is left out of this. I trust there is no one here who cannot answer the question, “why hast thou forsaken me?” You cannot praise God in your sins. I trust that every one here has had some feeling of responsiveness as we have been speaking about the sufferings of Jesus, and that you are able to say, Yes, I know that He did that for me, He shed His blood for me, He hung there on the cross for me. O that every one here might be able to say that He suffered as my Substitute to atone for my sins, and also to take on the whole question of sin and resolve it for ever to the glory of God; blessed be His name!

But then, why else did He suffer? I will tell you another of the things that has impressed me greatly in Mr. Darby’s ministry. He said that we can measure our sins against the extent of the sufferings of Jesus, and that brings depth of repentance. We all fail, we all commit sins. We often remark that it does not put any premium on failure. But nevertheless we do need to be deepened in repentance and to be maintained in repentance. It is often said that we should be repenting all the time. I believe that the contemplation of the sufferings of Jesus, feeding on them, would lead to a depth of repentance in the soul and an awareness of how we are saved. As the hymn puts it,

‘Repentance only, God requires from man,

And faith in Christ, His well-beloved Son’. (Hymn 123)

These two things are needed; belief is absolutely fundamental, faith in Christ, but repentance is needed too. In Peter’s preaching to the Jews in Jerusalem after the Lord was raised, he tells them, “Repent and be baptised”, Acts 2: 38. O that we might, in thinking about why Jesus suffered, be led in depth of repentance to understand more deeply what it cost Him. So you might tell a lie; somebody says, Did you do that? You say, No I never did that, but you had done. That is sin; it is as simple as that. We can get very complicated when we speak about these moral issues, but we all need to understand that even doing something as simple as that is wrong, it is a sin. We need to look at it in the light of what Jesus has suffered to redeem you and me from our sins, and it helps us not to sin. So we deepen in repentance and that helps us to go on faithful to Him.

Contemplating the sufferings of Jesus would also help us to have a judgment of the world that did these things to Him. He suffered at the hand of man, and the world is still like that. If He came again to this world, men would treat Him in exactly the same way as they treated Him then. How would it be any different? It is the spirit of evil in the heart of man that did these things to Jesus, and the response to Him now would be exactly the same. If you really appreciate what Jesus suffered for you, how can you have any part in the world out of which He suffered to secure you? That is another aspect of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. O dear young brother and sister, what do these things mean to you? What does Jesus feel like if a Christian family, perhaps on a Lord’s day evening, gathers round a video machine to watch a film? What does that mean to Jesus? He feels it if a young person, who does love Him and is saved, spends all his or her free time completely engrossed in whatever it might be, computer games or the literature of the world. Jesus suffered to take you out of that. We all have to go through this world, we have to go to school, we have to go to work, and we know what the defilements of the world are. But what a wonderful thing it is to come into the presence of Jesus and know what it is to be cleansed from these defilements. So how can we go on with these things from which Jesus suffered excruciatingly to save us? These are all part of what happens in the believer’s soul when you really feed on the sufferings of Christ. They change you, they change the way you live, they change the way you think and they change the way you praise.

Even as we speak together of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus it should, I believe, have a purifying effect; on me as saying these things to you, but on you too as hearing them and understanding what I am saying. I trust that for everyone in this room, this sanctifying effect is going on. I well remember when some dear Christians were coming to the meetings in Grangemouth a few years ago, and we spoke one evening in our reading about holiness, one of them said, ‘Holiness is like righteousness, it is something God gives to us’. The answer was, ‘No, it is not, the scripture does not say that’. Righteousness is imputed; God imputes His righteousness to believers who put their trust in the Lord Jesus. But holiness is not the same. Holiness is something that is worked out in experience with the Holy Spirit and with the Lord Jesus.

So we read these wonderful words quoted from Psalm 22, “I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. What Jesus has secured as the result of His sufferings is a praising company, a company to whom He has revealed the name of His Father, a company that is the result of His death, the result of His suffering. He can say in John 20 in declaring His Father’s name to His brethren, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”, John 20: 17. Well, the Lord Jesus is singing the praises of His Father now. This is not just for the future, it is happening now. The Lord Jesus is active in praise to the Father, and He is desirous of having us with Him. We praise with Him, “in the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. What a wonderful thing it is that there is a company secured as a result of the suffering and the death of Jesus, and it is a praising company.

Well that is all I have to say, dear brethren. I have spoken about the sufferings of the Lord Jesus and the perfection of His humanity. I trust that what has been said will affect all of us, I feel the need of it for myself. We go through suffering sometimes and it can deflect us. But another blessed aspect of this One who has suffered, is that the Lord Jesus would come right alongside us, whatever we are passing through, and sympathise as no other can sympathise with us, because He has suffered more than anyone else could ever suffer. What a wonderful Lord and Saviour and Head He is, and what a wonderful Leader of the praise to the Father.

May we have these things in our hearts as we gather tomorrow morning so that our praise will be fuller and deeper and sweeter. For His name’s sake.

Address at Kirkcaldy
6 November 2004