CHRIST AS FOOD

CHRIST AS FOOD

Joshua 5: 10 - 12; Exodus 12: 8 - 11; Exodus 16: 14, 15; John 6: 51 - 63; John 14: 18 - 20

I have the desire, dear brethren, to speak of Christ as available to us as food, first as the passover, secondly as the manna, then as the living bread come down from heaven, and finally as the old corn of the land. There are other aspects in which Christ is presented to be fed upon, but these four are of great importance and follow in consecutive order; and it will help I believe, if we can gain some impression of Christ on these distinctive lines. I need not say that it is important that we should cultivate the habit of appropriating spiritual food. No one of us who was in anything but the poorest of health would contemplate for a moment going on for long without food, and yet there may be a danger with some of us of neglecting spiritual food; whereas the habit of feeding is just as essential to spiritual life as it is to natural life.

Food is presented in the spiritual sphere attractively in that Christ in different aspects is the food of His people. There may be certain aspects also in which the saints themselves may be food, for David when fleeing from Saul fed on the shewbread taken from before the Lord; the shew-bread I think referring to the saints as they appear before God in their unity and order. David fed upon it. You can understand how at a time when some of God’s people were acting in a way that was unworthy of them as His people in persecuting God’s anointed, it was important that David should be sustained in his spirit by feeding upon God’s thoughts regarding His people, and not allowing himself to be occupied with their waywardness. But in a general sense it is Christ who is presented as the food of the saints.

When one speaks of feeding upon Christ or upon spiritual food whatever it is, the idea is that we allow our minds to dwell upon it, and our minds become the inlet to the affections, for the spiritual affections are fed with that with which the mind engages itself.

Well now, the first thing that comes before us in the scriptures we have read is the passover, and I would say at the outset that the passover is an idea which goes right through. It is not exactly an elementary idea; it is rather a fundamental one. That is, the passover was celebrated in Egypt, it was celebrated in the wilderness, it was celebrated in the land, but manna was only partaken of in the wilderness; at least, it was wilderness food. The passover is something that applies to us in whatever position we are found. It was that which became strength to God’s people to move out of Egypt. It was that which they had to celebrate in the wilderness, and it was that which they had to celebrate constantly in the land. Hence you will see that it is a basic idea that applies to us in whatever position we are regarded.

I think it is important, beloved brethren, to lay hold of that, for the passover represents I need not say, Christ as the One who endured in an unmitigated way the judgment of God against sin. As feeding upon it, it becomes the lever in our affections by which we ourselves are maintained in the same judgment of sin as God has expressed in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. When once that is seen, you will understand how basic it is, because in whatever position we are looked at it is essential as God’s people that we should be maintained in the judgment of sin. Any amount of privilege will not avail us if we go on in the allowance of that which God has judged in the cross of Christ. The fact that we are sons, the fact that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ, whatever blessing and privilege may be attached to us as in the mind of God for us, it does not avail us anything if we go on with that which God has judged. The passover must be kept in every position in which we may be regarded.

All the scriptures read refer to eating. I did not read the scripture that refers to the putting of the blood on the lintel, because that act did not need to be repeated. Indeed, the passover strictly speaking did not need to be repeated, but the moral import of the passover needs to be renewed and maintained, and that is seen in the feast of unleavened bread. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians in regard to the state of things that existed there, says, “Christ our passover has been sacrificed,” 1 Corinthians 5: 7. The words “for us” are not there really. The point is not exactly what has been done for us, but that Christ our passover has been sacrificed. That has been done and therefore the only thing remaining to be done is for the feast of unleavened bread to be celebrated.

Now the feast of unleavened bread is the moral answer in us to the passover as setting out the way that Christ has borne the judgment of God against sin. So when the passover was instituted they were told to “Eat none of it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roast with fire”; that was the important thing; “roast with fire.” The fire speaks of the direct action of judgment in an unmitigated way, and that is seen when we contemplate the cross, for there the Lord felt the terrible character of divine judgment against sin, expressing His feelings in those words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In expressing His feelings thus, He did not ask for any mitigation of the judgment but rather He testified to the rightness of it for He says, “And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amidst the praises of Israel,” Psalm 22: 3. The judgment of God against sin is intended to be apprehended by us as we engage our minds with it, as feeding upon Christ in that way.

Well, it says they were to eat it with bitter herbs, “its head with its legs, and with its inwards.” It is to make it more appealing to our hearts, for the head would refer to the personal dignity of the One concerned. The legs would refer to the immaculate purity and beauty of His walk, and the inwards would speak of those inward perfections which were so delightful to God when laid bare. Yet everything came under the action of the fire, and we are to have that in our minds in order that we may obtain a right impression of what lawlessness and self-will are in the sight of God. I fear we tend to have a very weak sense sometimes of what sin is. We judge the more flagrant things but we often have a very light apprehension of what pleasing ourselves is in the sight of God. It is really the working of the will of the creature in opposition to the will of the Creator, and that is why it is to be dealt with so unsparingly. The great thought is, that we, as God’s redeemed people, might be delivered from every kind of lawlessness. This is presented to us as the food that lies at the basis of our spiritual prosperity; the passover was to be eaten thus, with bitter herbs.

It also says, that they were to eat it with their loins girded and their shoes on their feet, and it was to be eaten in haste. It is an urgent matter and there is to be no dilatoriness about us. Then it says that none was to be left till the morning, another important thing. It was indeed the beginning of months to God’s people. Months in Scripture very often refer to the succession of exercises by which the desired end is reached. So it was to be continually perpetuated as a feast to Jehovah, in the form of the feast of unleavened bread. It was to be partaken of for the complete period of seven days. Paul, in giving it application to the Corinthian says, “our passover Christ has been sacrificed; so that let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” We are not to be characterised by anything that marked us in our unconverted days. Unleavened bread is clearly a moral condition of soul in God’s people that answers to our having appropriated the lamb roast with fire. One would emphasise the importance of this basic matter which applies to us in every position in which we may be. We may be just coming out of Egypt for the first time; for Egypt represents the world, not merely in its grossest form, nor yet in its religious form, but here simply as the scene where man is moving in self will. John in his first epistle says, “love not the world, nor the things in the world,” as though it is possible to be delivered from the world as a system and yet to bring the things of the world into the circle of light in which we move.

I would pass on now to the thought of the manna. It has an important place as food for God’s people. In contrast to the passover which applies to us in every position in which we may be viewed, the manna is distinctly food for the wilderness only; that is to say, it is food especially provided to help the people of God in their responsible pathway here. How gracious of God to provide us with food to support us in every position we may be in, according to His will! We need manna if we are to fill out the responsible pathway. Many of us have to go to business, and sisters have their household duties to perform, and the Christian children have to go to school. All these are different positions in which according to God’s will we are set here in responsibility; and what we find, as desiring to fill these positions to His pleasure, is that there is nothing in the world around us that will support us in them. The whole principle of the world around us is that man lives to himself and does his own will whereas we read that “even Christ pleased not himself,” Romans 15: 3.

So the manna was provided as food for the wilderness and there was no other food provided. At the outset, for one day, God gave them quails; and then at a later period He gave them quails because they lusted after flesh. “Not one day shall ye eat, nor two days, ... but for a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils, and it become loathsome unto you; because that ye have despised Jehovah,” Numbers 11: 19, 20. They lusted after flesh and they got it. “For he that sows to his own flesh, shall reap corruption from the flesh, but he that sows to the Spirit, from the Spirit shall reap eternal life,” Galatians 6: 8. In grace God gave them quails for one day. It was never intended that they should live on quails, but just that they should see that God could do anything. Just by a word He brought up quails to feed the host of Israel. There is no limit to God’s resources and power, and if it were His will to make everything easy for us in this life. He could quite easily do so, but that is not His way. He has in mind to humble us in order, as it says in Deuteronomy, “to do thee good at thy latter end.”

God intends that every one of us should be marked by the great moral features of dependence upon Him, which is after all, man’s greatest and truest glory. Men think it is great to be independent, but He who is God over all, as having become Man says, “I was cast upon thee from the womb,” Psalm 22: 10. That was how the Lord viewed the matter. It was His glory, as having become Man, to be dependent on God, and it is man’s true glory to be maintained in the position of dependence that is rightly his as God’s creature; and along with that is the great principle of obedience. Dependence is something that flesh regards as irksome, and obedience is something that flesh greatly dislikes; but dependence and obedience have been rendered morally glorious by our Lord Jesus Christ who, though God over all, blessed for ever, as having become Man did not desire a reputation but “taking a bondman’s form ... and having been found in figure as a man, humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of the cross”; Philippians 2: 7. The manner of His death was one in which obedience was tested to the full, and it says, “Wherefore,” that is, because of the moral excellency of it; “Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and granted him a name, that which is above every name.”

We are intended not simply to accept these things as statements of fact, but to contemplate them, that the One marked pre-eminently and perfectly by obedience has been given a Name above every name. We are to be impressed with the fact that God regards obedience with the greatest pleasure. It is in His sight of great moral worth. These two features of dependence and obedience in manhood are two great things which God would develop in us by means of feeding upon the manna, and He orders the circumstances of our wilderness path with a view to furthering this great end. He fed the people with manna and humbled them that He “might do them good at their latter end.” If God brings upon us any circumstances which we find to be humbling, it is all with a view to doing us good at our latter end.

One great feature of the manna was that it was to be gathered daily. There was never enough for more than one day except on the sixth day of the week when God gave them enough to carry them over the sabbath, in order that they might know what rest was, but the principle was that there was just enough for one day, no more. That is a thing that God would have us learn in our responsible path, that a great feature of a Christian’s life is to be here governed by the will of God and renewed in it day by day. It makes life so simple if we take things up on that principle. It means, that we are not looking a long way ahead and wondering how we are going to get on. We only have to look after today. I commend that to you. It is a simple thing to say, but I think a helpful thing to bear in mind, that all we have to be concerned about is today, and therefore let us watch what we have to do today. When saints get turned aside it has not all happened in a moment. It is always the result of departure from the Lord; of allowing something to come in that brings in distance; and there was a moment when it began, and if there has been watchfulness on that day, the day it began, it never would have begun. If we are watchful today, all will be well. When tomorrow comes then it is today, but all we need is to go on one day at a time; and that is the principle in the manna.

The manna was given fresh from heaven every day. When the dew was gone there lay on the face of the wilderness a small round thing. How touching! In how small a way God came in in the Person of Jesus. He who created all things by His word, and upholds them by the word of His power, came into human circumstances as a Babe; into such humble circumstances as being in a place like Nazareth, and then in a carpenter’s shop. Think of the grace of this, that He should thus come in order that He might become to millions of His saints, who would afterwards tread the wilderness path, food to sustain them there. When the writer of the Hebrews speaks about what was to be seen in the holy of holies he says, “and the ark of the covenant, covered round in every part with gold, in which were the golden pot that had the manna.” There is no mention of a golden pot in Exodus. We would never have known it was a golden pot if it had not been for the writer of the Hebrews. He had been into the holy of holies to contemplate it and he says, “the golden pot that had the manna,” as if he was impressed with the glory of it, that the Creator of the earth should come down and fill out each day the conditions of human life, in order that in so doing He might become the food of His saints right through the wilderness path.

So that, dear brethren, is the importance of our learning to appropriate the manna. It was a small round thing, and therefore it fits into any circumstances. Whatever circumstances God orders for us can all be accepted from His hand on the principle of obedience. It makes everything so simple. Six days of feeding on manna brings us to a seventh day of rest, because the more the principle of manna is accepted, the more we find rest to our souls. However testing conditions may be, you are in the will of God and will have His support. I need not enlarge on that, save that I believe to feed on the manna morally develops what we speak of as shittim wood, an order of man that can stand up in the wilderness in the testimony of God.

Now we come to a further food which is not referred to in the passages we read in Joshua; the reason being that in the type the people of God were either in the wilderness on the one hand, or in the land on the other. When they left the wilderness they were in the land, but in the actual experience of God’s people things are not quite so definite as that. We have to be in the wilderness in certain circumstances, and then in others we may pass over to that which answers to the land. Now there is a food which will enable us to pass over and we get it brought forward in the sixth of John’s gospel, for the living bread come down from heaven is not manna. The food in the sixth of John is not food for the wilderness. That is quite clear, for the Lord says “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.” So that however valuable in its place, as relating to wilderness exercises, the manna is, it is not that which is spoken of in the sixth of John.

I believe the food in the sixth of John is that by means of which we accustom ourselves to find our life in spiritual things; that is, it has in view that we should enjoy eternal life. We are to find our life in that which death cannot touch. It is important to note, beloved brethren, that even the best of natural relationships held under the hand of God in thankfulness and purity - not spoiled as they are in the world - even these are subject to death. The happier we are in natural affections, the more keenly death is felt when it invades them. But there is an order of life and interest which may be known while we are still in this world which death cannot touch; and it is the enjoyment of these things that Scripture speaks of as eternal life in John’s writings. Paul presents eternal life from the future aspect, whereas John presents it as something to be enjoyed at the present time, and this is what is typically spoken of as the land. It is the thoughts of God which His love has purposed for those whom He has taken up, standing in relation to Christ where He is, but enjoyed now in the power of the Holy Spirit; so that we pass over in our affections from the natural order of things to the spiritual order of things.

In the first scripture we read from John, the Lord says, “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.” He first of all presents the idea of bread as food which will be sustaining in its effect, and He Himself is the food. We are to get that clearly before us. He came down from heaven as the manna, but now He is presenting Himself as another kind of food also to be appropriated. When He comes to the thought of our appropriating Him as the living bread, He changes the figure and refers to His flesh as meat and His blood as drink. In most scriptures where the Lord’s flesh is referred to, it has in view His having deliberately come into flesh and blood condition in order by death to terminate that condition and open up for us a new order of life beyond death. I think it nearly always has that in mind. I will not say invariably, for the fifth of Hebrews speaks of “the days of his flesh,” but mostly where His flesh or His having come in flesh, is referred to, it has in view that He deliberately took up flesh and blood condition in order to terminate it in His death. That being so, are we going to continue to try and find our satisfaction in an order of life which He has terminated? At the end of the chapter the Lord speaks of the Spirit’s power to quicken. We cannot understand these things nor get the gain of them save by the Spirit. The Lord is presenting His flesh and His blood as something to be fed upon by us; that is, we are to feed our minds and affections on the fact that He has died. Not now that we might be justified and forgiven, but in order that He might have the right to introduce us by the Spirit into a new order of life set out in Himself risen from among the dead.

So He says, “He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has life eternal, and I will raise him up at the last day: for my flesh is truly food and my blood is truly drink.” There may be an allusion in that both to the love of Christ as having come in flesh and to the love of God; for the blood often speaks of the love of God. The blood refers to the pleasure that God had in the life of Jesus here, so we read of the precious blood of Christ. And the blood was poured out in order that we might be brought into a new order of life in Christ beyond death. Thus we can understand that when the Lord says, “For my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed,” He is reminding us of His own personal love, and indeed of Himself, and also of the love of God which entered into the matter. The circle of the saints where the Spirit of God is, is the sphere of eternal life, but eternal life in itself is in God’s Son. Then the Lord says, “and I will raise him up at the last day.” That is to say, it is on this principle that we go right through, not like those whose carcases fell in the wilderness, but as those who went through like Caleb.

In closing, I would refer briefly to the old corn of the land, for that was food which they fed upon as having come into the land, and it was intended to support them in that position. I read those two verses in John 14 because I think they convey somewhat of the idea. The old corn of the land refers, as may be seen from the fifth chapter of Joshua, to the previous harvest (see Mr. Darby’s note); that is, it was there before they arrived at the land. They found it there when they got there; it belonged to the land. And that is exactly what the Lord presents to us in John 14. He is alluding to the fact that He is going on before. At the beginning of the same chapter he says, “Ye believe on God, believe also on me.” He is really speaking anticipatively, speaking in view of His taking His place in the presence of the Father. It is there that He wants us to believe on Him. He would have our affections engaged with Himself in the new position which He has opened up by entering there for us. And in order to make things real He tells them He will send the Holy Spirit. He is speaking of course to all the saints, and He speaks of the gain that the presence of the Comforter would be to them. And He says further, “I am coming to you.” Not only would the Comforter be with them, but in addition the Lord says He would come and personally visit them, referring to visitations from time to time. And then He adds, “Yet a little and the world sees me no longer; but ye see me; because I live, ye also shall live.” While the world sees Him no more, we do see Him, for the Spirit engages our hearts with Christ where He is. The Spirit becomes the power to believe on Him where He is and as He is. Because He lives, we live also, for our life is in relation to another scene. We realise that our portion is bound up with Himself. “Because I live ye also shall live.” He has gone on before, but this verse presents Him to us as the old corn of the land, the One who is already there and belongs there, and we as feeding on Him are sustained in relation to our heavenly portion. “In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father.” It refers to the day of the Spirit. Then He says, “ye in me.” That is our position. And finally, “I in you.”

I trust I have said enough, dear brethren, to suggest the wealth that there is for us in appropriating Christ as food. How wonderfully adaptable He is, if I may reverently say so! The feast of unleavened bread is important and basic. Then there is the manna for the wilderness, and wonderful gain there is in it for us. Thirdly, there is the living bread come down from heaven to enable us to pass over in our minds and affections; and lastly, there is the old corn of the land; “because I live ye also shall live.”

May the Lord encourage us to be in life more and more for the pleasure of God, for His name’s sake.