THE BELIEVER’S FOOD AND DRINK
John 6:48-51,54-58; Jeremiah 17:7,8
Two things which impressed me in the hymn (Hymn 269) which we sang were the references to the Lord feeding us with living bread, and His guiding our path by flowing waters. These two simple thoughts come before us in the passages which I have read. The Lord Jesus in John 6 says, “I am the bread of life”. The Lord said, “I am” many times in John’s gospel: “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25), “I am the door” (John 10:9) and “I am the way” (John 14:6). These statements of the Lord are often accompanied by the words, “Verily, verily”. These two words mean that what was said is true, it is of the truth, it is sure and certain. We can hold on to these words, and take what the Lord says as being fully believable, what we can have full confidence in.
What we need as passing through the wilderness, as we sang in our hymn, are resources, and what sustains life is food, it is bread. The Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “I am the bread of life”. He goes back to the fathers of the people of Israel who ate the manna in the wilderness and died. That was historical truth. The manna was food for the wilderness; it came down onto the surface of the ground each morning, and each householder had to go out and gather what was sufficient for the day. In principle, the resources that we have are the same. The Lord Jesus is available, but it requires that we partake of Him. The children of Israel grew tired of the manna, it became distasteful to them. They tried to alter the taste of it, to make its flavour different, but there is no change in the Lord Jesus. He is the bread of life, and He is what we need to feed upon in order that we may have life. “I am the living bread which has come down out of heaven: if any one shall have eaten of this bread he shall live for ever; but the bread withal which I shall give is my flesh”.
What a wonderful resource there is in contemplation, in eating the flesh of the Lord Jesus. You might say, How distasteful would that be? But it would be something that would be very delightful to our taste, because in that body of flesh, He fulfilled the will of God, and as we understand and believe and partake of that kind of food, then we have life. It is the only way to live, because there is no life in this world. It is all death around us, and what we have to pursue is the eating of this food. The Lord says, “I say unto you, Unless ye shall have eaten the flesh of the Son of man, and drunk his blood, ye have no life in yourselves”. We need to partake of this kind of food. Jesus says of him that eats it that “I will raise him up at the last day”. There is not only present life, but there is that life which goes through into the eternal day. We see in Thessalonians (1 Thess.4:16,17) that what will go through is a new order of life, but it is truly dependent on eating and drinking the flesh and the blood of the Lord Jesus.
The passage in Jeremiah shows that there is another resource which we have, and that is confidence in Jehovah. “Blessed …” – that means prospered and given divine approbation – “Blessed is the man that confideth in Jehovah, and whose confidence Jehovah is”. We cannot put confidence in man, because his “breath is in his nostrils” (Isa.2:22), and he will pass away, but we have One in whom we can put our confidence. If we do, we will find that we become like this tree planted by waters. That living stream is the Holy Spirit. This tree has roots; its roots spread out by the stream, “and he shall not see when heat cometh, but his leaf shall be green; and in the year of drought he shall not be careful, neither shall he cease to yield fruit”. This is the line of life, it is the line of what will continue, it is the line of freshness, what is green, and it has this deep resource, with roots that make contact with the stream. That is like being in contact with the Holy Spirit. And “he shall not be careful” – the Lord said to His disciples (Luke 12:22) that they were not to be careful about material things because, as Peter says, God “cares about you”, 1 Pet.5:7. It does not mean that you will be lazy, or anything like that. It simply means that confidence in the Lord Jesus is the source that we can rely on.
The result is, “neither shall he cease to yield fruit”. The outcome that we would desire is that we might all be fruitful, that we might be here bearing fruit as a result of eating and drinking, and walking in the blessing of Jehovah. Fruit to God is what the Father looks for, it is what the Lord desires, and may we be providing it, for His name’s sake.
Word in a meeting for ministry, Grangemouth
10 March 2020
Archie D Melville