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Scripture Reading: Exo. 12:2-11; 13:4; 16:13b-15, 31, 35; Num. 11:7-8; Josh. 5:10-12
Genesis is a book of creation, and Exodus is a book of redemption. We have seen in the first two chapters of Genesis that from the very beginning God’s intention was that man would partake of the tree of life. The tree of life signifies God Himself as life to us in the form of food. The more that we eat of Him, enjoy Him, partake of Him as our life, the more He will be assimilated into us to be one with us in the way of mingling. In Genesis 3 it is recorded that man fell. The evil one came into the man that God created for His purpose, so man was corrupted, ruined. There is a real problem with man, so there is the need of deliverance. This is why the book of Exodus is needed.
From Genesis 3 to Exodus 12 is a long period with a long history. In this long period of time, the fall of man is recorded. This fall started from Adam and went on to the children of Israel. The end of Genesis shows us where man was. Genesis 50:26 tells us that man ended up “in a coffin in Egypt.” This was the place where man fell. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and then God created man in His own image. God placed this man in front of the tree of life with the intention that man would partake of this tree. But man fell and fell and fell until he ended up “in a coffin in Egypt.” The first verse of Genesis says, “In the beginning God created...,” and the last verse says that man was now “in a coffin in Egypt.” Because man was now in a coffin in Egypt, he needed redemption, deliverance. This is why the book of Exodus is needed.
The first part of Exodus tells us that man was in slavery working for Satan. Pharaoh, who typifies God’s enemy Satan, forced the children of Israel to build two storage cities for him (1:11). This work was a work of death, a dead work. In God’s eyes the children of Israel were working in a coffin in Egypt, so they needed deliverance. Exodus 12 tells us how God came in to deliver His people from the bondage of His enemy. In Exodus 12 God did not present the children of Israel with the tree of life but with a lamb. The tree of life was changed to the lamb because man had become fallen.
In the book of Exodus God came in to recover man, who had been put into a coffin in Egypt. Before we got saved, we also were in a coffin in Egypt. The Lord came to us when we were in such a situation, and He presented Himself to us as the Lamb of God. Since man fell, the tree of life was not in itself adequate to deliver man. To solve the problem of the fall of man, both life and redemption are needed. Redemption recovers the fallen people, and life keeps the original purpose of God. We all need to say, “Hallelujah for the Lamb,” because the Lamb fulfills the purpose of redemption and the purpose of life. The Lamb affords us both blood and meat. The blood of the Lamb is for redemption (vv. 7, 13), and the meat of the Lamb is for life (vv. 4, 8-11). God did not give up His original purpose, but because of man’s fall, something else had been added. Life is not adequate, and there is now the need of redemption, so the tree of life became the Lamb.
Both the Lamb and the tree are in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John tells us that in the beginning was the Word (1:1a), the Word was God (v. 1b), the Word became flesh (v. 14), and this Word become flesh, this God-man, is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (v. 29). John 15 unveils the vine tree, which is the tree of life that supplies life. The Lamb is Christ for redemption, and the tree is Christ for life.
The Lord told Moses and Aaron that they had to make the month of their redemption the beginning of months, the first of the months of the year to them (Exo. 12:2). This month in which they came out of Egypt was the month of Abib (13:4). Originally, this month was the seventh month, but the Lord made it to be the first month of the year, the beginning of all the months. In the beginning God created, but what God had created was put into a coffin in Egypt. Thus, there was the need of another beginning. The beginning in Genesis 1 was buried in a coffin, but in Exodus 12 God made another beginning. The first beginning is in Genesis 1, and that beginning was for creation. The second beginning is in Exodus 12, and this beginning was for redemption. The first beginning was for creation with the purpose of life. The second beginning was for redemption with the same purpose of life. God has the same purpose with two beginnings. We all need to realize that we have had two beginnings. When we received the Lord, we had another beginning.
This first month of the year was called Abib. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance tells us that this word means a young ear of grain or green ears of corn. The ears of corn that are young, green, and tender point to a new beginning. Young’s Analytical Concordance tells us that Abib refers to something sprouting and budding. This is the start of life. When some people ask me what the date of my birth is, I would like to tell them that my birthday is Abib. Abib was our beginning. This beginning is not the beginning of creation but the beginning of a new life. Something is sprouting, budding, with the green, young, and tender ears of corn. This signifies new life and also indicates something further than the tree of life. This new life is something budding, something that sprouts, something that produces green, tender, young ears, and something that is growing. We have to learn how to understand the Bible by looking at the pictures in the Old Testament. A picture is better than a thousand words. This second beginning is the beginning of life, and this life is a budding, sprouting life.
The children of Israel were in a coffin in Egypt. Even if they were brought out of Egypt and put into Canaan, they were still dead, without life. They needed to be brought out of the coffin, out of Egypt, and they needed life put into them. The life is signified by the meat of the lamb.
Exodus 12 tells us that the Lord told the children of Israel to prepare the lamb according to each man’s eating (v. 4). If a person could eat more, he would have to prepare more of the lamb. This means that the lamb is prepared not according to redemption but according to the life capacity. This is because the lamb is not merely for redemption but more importantly for life. Do you need a bigger portion or a smaller portion of the lamb? You may think that you are so sinful and that your sins are greater than others so you need a bigger Christ. This is a human concept but not the divine concept. The divine concept is that we have to prepare the lamb according to our eating. Christ is allotted to us according to the eating capacity, the life capacity.
Our intention is not to lower down the value of the Lord’s redemption, but many Christians stress redemption and forget the matter of life. I heard a number of messages on the passover when I was young. The blood of the Lamb that redeems us and causes God to pass over us was always stressed. This is good and true, but we need to realize that the blood is not the goal. The blood is the procedure to reach the goal. The goal is life. The goal is that we may have the Lamb get into us, that we may have the Lamb within us as our life.
Because we are sinful in the eyes of God, we need the blood. The children of Israel were fallen and sinful like the Egyptians. On the night of the passover, God came to the earth to judge the sinful people. Without the covering of the blood, the children of Israel would be smitten by God in the same way that the Egyptians would. But God gave them the way for Him to pass over them. They needed the covering of the blood, so they killed the lamb according to God’s instructions. They took the blood of the lamb and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of their houses (v. 7). Then their houses were sprinkled with the redeeming blood, and they were eating the meat of the lamb within their houses. This means that they were under the covering of the blood. Then God came to judge Egypt and smote everyone who was not under the covering of the blood of the lamb. But God passed over the children of Israel who were under this covering. When the Egyptians were being smitten by God, the children of Israel were enjoying the meat of the lamb under the covering of the blood. Thus, the blood is for the meat; that is, redemption is for life.
Related to the eating of the meat of the lamb, there were a few things that needed to be taken care of. The Lord told the children of Israel that they should not eat the meat when it was raw or boiled. The lamb had to be roasted with fire (v. 9). To be raw indicates no passing through of sufferings, and to be boiled means to suffer something merely under the human hand. The modernists say that Christ’s death was only a martyrdom. To them Christ merely suffered the persecution from man. This is what it means for the lamb to be boiled. But to be roasted with fire means to suffer under God’s burning judgment. Fire represents God’s holy anger. For the lamb to be roasted means that Christ had to be judged by God. Christ suffered not just under the hand of man as a kind of persecution, but under the hand of God as divine punishment, divine judgment. This is the roasting under the divine fire. Christ is not a raw lamb or a lamb boiled with water. Our Lamb, our Christ, is a Lamb roasted under the divine fire. We take this Christ.
When I was young, I was always taught that we had to take Christ as our example. Because Christ loves people, we have to imitate Him to love people. Because Christ was nice and humble while He was on this earth, we were taught that we had to be the same way. To imitate Christ in this way is impossible. The best way to follow the Lord is to get Him into us by eating Him. We need to be one with the Lamb by eating the Lamb. Then we will be constituted with the Lamb. God did not tell the children of Israel to slay one lamb for the blood and then to have another lamb that they needed to learn to follow. God told them to slay one lamb, put the blood on the house, and under the covering of this blood eat this slain, roasted lamb. In this way the lamb would be one with the children of Israel, would be in them, and would be their constituent. The thought here is very deep. The Christian life is not a matter of imitating Christ, of following Christ in an outward way. But it is a matter of our eating Christ, receiving Christ into us, and assimilating all that He is into our being.
The children of Israel also had to eat the lamb with unleavened bread with bitter herbs (v. 8). The bread with the herbs signifies that the passover was composed not only of the animal life but also of the vegetable life, the plant life. The tree of life was the plant life, but the lamb is the animal life. The lamb is first for redemption, but after redemption is accomplished and experienced, the lamb becomes the tree of life to give us life.
In John 6 the Lord Jesus told us that He is the bread of life (v. 35). He also told us that His blood is drinkable and that His flesh is eatable (v. 55). In John 6:51 the Lord said that the bread which He will give is His flesh. In John 6 the bread of wheat is also the bread of blood and meat. Christ was the Lamb slain for us, and with the Lamb there is the blood and the meat. Christ also is life to us, so He is the bread of life, the tree of life, the plant life. In John 1 is the Lamb, and in John 15 is the tree of life. Between these two chapters is the bread of life in chapter 6 with blood and meat. On the one hand, Christ is the redeeming life, the animal life, but on the other hand, Christ is the generating life, the plant life. He is the lamb, the animal life, for redeeming and the tree, the plant life, for generating. Thus, there are the matters of redemption and life.
The bread is of the vegetable life and is only for feeding; the flesh is of the animal life and is not only for feeding but also for redeeming. Before the fall of man, the Lord was the tree of life (Gen. 2:9), only for feeding man. After man fell into sin, the Lord became the Lamb (John 1:29), not only for feeding man but also for redeeming man (Exo. 12:4, 7-8, 12-13).
Exodus 12 also tells us that the children of Israel ate the lamb with their loins girded, with their sandals on their feet, and with their staff in their hand (v. 11). They did not eat the lamb in a sloppy or a slow way. They ate the lamb in haste. I believe that all of them stood while they ate. Their loins were girded, their sandals were on their feet, and they had a staff in their hand. Suppose they had the blood covering them without the meat for them to eat. God may have given them the commandment to gird their loins, put their sandals on their feet, take their staff, and be in haste to get out of Egypt. If this had been the case, they would have still been hungry. Although they would have had the blood covering them, they would have still been empty within. Without eating, they would not have had the energy to leave Egypt in haste. This picture shows us that the eating of the lamb was for moving. Life is for us to move. They were eating the lamb in a moving way. While they were eating, they were getting ready to get out of Egypt. When we take our meals, we usually sit down and relax. But during the passover, the children of Israel ate in haste because eating was for them to move. This is a new beginning, not of creation but the beginning of redemption for life.
The record of the history of God’s people refers again and again to the matter of eating. After the children of Israel came out of Egypt, the matter of eating was of central importance in the wilderness. They began to eat manna.
The word manna in Hebrew means “What is it?” or “What is this?” On the morning when the children of Israel first saw this small, round, white thing on the ground, they did not know what it was. Thus, they asked one another, “What is this?” “What is this?” is the meaning of the word manna. We may know what corn and wheat are, but what is this? To the people of the world Christ is manna; that is, He is “what is this?” The professors may know physics, mathematics, history, and geography, but when it comes to Christ, they would ask, “What is this?” Christ is the real manna, the real “what is this?” Christ is the heavenly food on this earth. On this earth there is nothing like manna. Manna, the heavenly Christ as our heavenly food, is a mystery.
The manna had the taste of honey and of fresh oil (16:31; Num. 11:8). When we eat the manna, we enjoy the honey and the oil. Oil in the Bible signifies the Spirit. In this manna is the taste of the Spirit and the taste of honey. Honey is the mingling of two lives, the animal life and the vegetable life. The honeybees which produce honey receive the supply from flowers, from the vegetable life. As our manna, Christ has this element of the mingling of the animal life, the redeeming life, with the vegetable life, the generating life. This mingling is our sweet nourishment.
Exodus also tells us that the manna was fine and round (16:14). The fineness or smallness of manna means that it was ready and available to be taken in by God’s people. The food taken in by us must be small enough to eat. Anything that is fine, such as fine flour, fine sugar, or fine salt, is ready and available for us to use. The roundness of manna signifies that Christ is eternal, perfect, and full, without beginning or ending. Christ is eternal food with an eternal nature for eternal nourishment without limitation. This eternal food without beginning and without ending is the eternal life.
Furthermore, Exodus 16:31 indicates that manna was white. It was clean and pure, without any kind of mixture. Christ as our life and our life supply is so pure, so white. The manna was also like frost (v. 14). Frost is something between dew and snow. Both dew and frost are refreshing. But although dew refreshes, it does not kill germs. Frost, however, does kill germs. The life of Christ is so refreshing, so cooling, and it kills the negative things within us.
The manna also came with the dew in the morning according to Exodus 16:13-14. The dew not only refreshes but also waters. The life, which is Christ, is a watering life. The dew is softer than rain and not as cold as frost.
In Numbers 11:7 we are told that the appearance of manna was like the appearance of bdellium. This means that Christ as our daily life supply is so transparent. Furthermore, the meaning of transformation is implied here. The more we enjoy Christ as our heavenly food, the more we will become transparent and transformed into material for God’s building.
The manna was eaten as bread (Exo. 16:15), as cakes (Num. 11:8), and as wafers (Exo. 16:31). As our manna, Christ has different aspects and nourishes us in different ways. When we eat Him as our manna, sometimes He tastes like bread, and at other times He tastes like cake or a wafer, which is thin and easy to eat and digest.
Finally, as the manna, Christ is not legal. Numbers 11:8 says, “The people went about and gathered it and ground it between two millstones or beat it in a mortar; then they boiled it in pots and made cakes of it.” Christ can be ground, beaten in a mortar, or boiled in pots. If you experience Christ in a certain way, you may make that a legal way. But Christ is not legal. He can be taken and experienced by us in many ways.
We have to realize that manna is the continuation of the passover lamb. The passover lamb was the beginning of the children of Israel’s eating, and manna became the continuation of that eating for forty years. Every morning for forty years, wherever they went and wherever they were, manna was there for the children of Israel to eat. This was a real miracle. The fact that we can eat Christ day by day is a miracle. Day by day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, we eat only one thing — Christ Himself as our heavenly manna.
With the matter of eating, there is no oldness involved. When the children of Israel ate the lamb, they were to let nothing of it remain (Exo. 12:10). When they ate the manna in the wilderness, the same manna was fresh every day. A person could never eat old manna. The children of Israel, however, did not have the faith. They tried to save the manna and went against what Moses told them. The manna that they tried to save “bred worms and stank” (16:20). We cannot store the manna, so we need to eat Christ in a fresh way day by day every morning. Some people buy groceries once a week and store these groceries in their refrigerator, but it is not possible to store manna in this way. Day by day the same heavenly food comes from the heavens in a new and fresh way. We have to keep up to date with the Lord. We always have to eat today’s manna.
Finally, the children of Israel went into the good land to enjoy the produce of the land. The lamb, the manna, and the produce of the land are types of Christ. Christ is our Lamb, our manna, and our land. As the land Christ is rich to the fullest extent. This land is “a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees with oil and of honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity; you will not lack anything in it” (Deut. 8:8-9). All this produce of the good land is Christ Himself for our enjoyment. Joshua 5:10-12 says, “The children of Israel camped in Gilgal; and they held the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho. And on the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased on that day, when they ate of the produce of the land; and there was no longer manna for the children of Israel, but they ate of the yield of the land of Canaan that year.” In this short portion of the Word, Joshua puts these three items together. He mentions the passover lamb, the manna, and the produce of the land. These items are Christ as food to us for life. Thank the Lord for the lamb, the manna, and the land with all its rich produce.
