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Scripture Reading: John 6:57b, 63; 7:37-39a; Isa. 55:1, 6; 1 Cor. 12:13b; Rev. 2:7, 17b; 3:20; 22:1-2a, 14a, 17
Thus far, we have seen that we are vessels of God and that God as the all-inclusive Spirit is the content to us. The way for us to take Him in is to call upon His name. Now we want to see that calling upon Him is likened in the Bible to drinking and eating. Isaiah 55:1 and 6 show that the way to drink and to eat is to call upon Him.
Isaiah 55:1 says, “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, / And you who have no money; / Come, buy and eat; / Yes, come, buy wine and milk / Without money and without price.” This verse is somewhat complicated because it says that we come to the waters and yet we eat. Do you come to the waters to eat or to drink? Mothers feed their newborn babes with milk. When the little babes are drinking milk, they are also eating. Eating is included in drinking. We come to the waters and buy and eat. Then this verse says that we buy wine and milk. Both wine and milk are liquids, but the nourishment of food is included in them. Thus, to drink wine and milk really means to eat something for nourishment.
Verse 6 says, “Seek Jehovah while He may be found; / Call upon Him while He is near.” This verse advises us to seek the Lord. To seek the Lord means to come to the waters. The Lord is the waters, and the seeking is the coming. To drink and to eat is to call upon His name while He is near. Thus, seeking the Lord equals coming to the waters. Calling upon Him equals drinking and eating. This is the way that we take in the Lord. The spiritual things are often hard to define, but there are the shadows given by the Lord through the material things, the physical things, to illustrate the spiritual things.
We have pointed out that we are vessels to contain the Lord, and the Lord is the content. The vessels need to be filled up with this content. We are filled with the Lord as our content by eating and drinking Him. This is an organic infilling, which causes the growth in life and the transformation in life. When we receive the proper drink and food, something organic gets into us to cause us to grow and be transformed.
To put water into a cup is simply to fill it up. This is not organic. But when we take something into our stomach by eating and drinking, we are not merely being filled up. By digestion, what we eat is assimilated into our being. Thus, after eating we need the digestion and assimilation. By digesting and assimilating what we eat and drink, we absorb all the nourishment into our blood. This nourishment, after getting into our blood, becomes our cells. Then after a certain time all the cells become our organic tissues, our very being.
If I put water into a cup, it is just filled up. There is no digestion, assimilation, growth, or transformation. The water can never become the very element and essence of the cup. It is different with us human beings. How can a turkey be put into a human vessel? The only way is for this person to eat the turkey. Then the turkey becomes this person’s essence and element. Jesus said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:57b). A person is full of energy because of what he has eaten. We live by what we eat. We eat Jesus, so we live by Jesus.
What we eat obviously gets inside of us to become our content. Then it is digested by us. By being digested, the nourishment and the riches of what we eat are assimilated into our system to become our cells. Then the cells grow into our organic tissues to become us. Thus, we are what we eat. A man lives by what he eats, and eventually he is what he eats. If we eat Jesus, eventually we will become Jesus. This is why Paul said, “It is no longer I...but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a), “for to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21a). If you eat turkey all the time, you could say, “For to me, to live is turkey.” You eat turkey, so you live by turkey, and for you to live is turkey. When we eat Jesus, we live by Jesus and we are Jesus. For us to live is Jesus!
We need to eat Jesus by calling on the name of the Lord. But after we eat, we also need a good digestion. We do not want to have indigestion. Indigestion first causes stomach trouble, and then it may cause a stomach ulcer. This could even lead to stomach cancer, issuing in death. Eating without a good digestion will cause trouble. When we eat Christ, we also need to spiritually digest Him in a proper way. If you have a proper digestion, the food you eat can get into every part of your physical being. There is the thoroughfare for the food to get through. Indigestion means that there is no thoroughfare for the food. The food cannot get through, so you will have problems.
Now we need to consider how this applies to us in a spiritual sense. Some dear saints may enjoy calling on the Lord and pray-reading the Word at first. But after a certain time, they lose their taste and appetite for this. This is because after taking in the Lord Jesus, something happened within them. There was indigestion. There was no thoroughfare for the Lord Jesus to get through. After calling on the Lord Jesus and pray-reading His Word, we have to say, “Lord, be merciful to me. Keep my whole being with all my inward parts open to You.”
I am not speaking something doctrinally but something that is very practical to us in our Christian life. After you call on the Lord, I have the full assurance that He gets into you. But the problem is this — after your calling on the name of the Lord, after the Lord gets into you, you probably would not be so open to Him. You may be open to Him in a little part of your being, but most of your being is closed to Him.
The Lord Jesus is real, living, and practical. When you call, “Lord Jesus,” He gets into you and fills you up. While you are calling “Lord Jesus,” this practical and living Jesus will touch your natural being. But many of you would say, “No, Lord. Don’t touch me here. Stay where You are. You are my guest, and You must stay in the living room. Don’t get into my private bedroom. That’s for me, not for You.” This means indigestion. There is no way for the Lord as the spiritual food to get through in you. There is no free course for the food to get into your inward parts, so you have indigestion.
Today’s Christianity has many teachings, but we do not need these doctrinal teachings. We need to eat the Lord and enjoy the Lord. Suppose I invited you to a dinner, and instead of allowing you to eat and enjoy the food, I taught you about the food. This would be terrible. We do not need the teaching; we need the real nourishment. We need the riches of Christ to get into our being. We can get the riches of Christ into our being simply by calling on Him — “O Lord Jesus.” But after calling on Him, the Lord works and moves within us to touch us in our inward being.
After calling on the Lord, a young brother may eventually have some sense within him that he needs to deal with the way he cuts his hair. If he is slow to respond to this sense, this means that he is not allowing the Lord Jesus to get through. Thus, you have to be on the alert. After calling on the Lord Jesus, if you have any sense within you, any feeling within you, that means the Lord Jesus is moving, and that means the digestion within you is going on. You have to go along with this inner sense. If you go along with this sense, you will be joyful and have a better, bigger, deeper, and higher appetite for Christ. This is because a good digestion brings in a better appetite. If you argue with the inner sense, this will result in indigestion. Then you will not be so eager to pray-read the Word, and calling on the name of the Lord will not be so sweet to you.
But when you respond to and go along with the inner sense, your appetite for the Lord Jesus comes back, and your spiritual digestion becomes proper. Then the riches of the Lord Jesus become your cells, and these cells grow into your organic tissues. This causes you to grow in the divine life and makes you strong in the Lord. It is easy for you to stand and not easy for you to backslide, because you are growing in the Lord. It is hard for the grown-up ones to fall down. This is because they have a good digestion to assimilate all the nourishment from the spiritual food that they eat.
By eating we have digesting, by digesting we have the assimilation, and by this assimilation we get the practical nourishment of the riches of Jesus into our being. All the riches of Christ eventually will grow into our organic tissues. Then we become Christ. It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. To me, to live is Christ. The Christian life is not a matter of imitating Jesus. We should not try to learn to be humble the way that Jesus was. This is like trying to teach a monkey to imitate a man. The monkey might be able to do this for a while, but eventually it will go back to being what it is. The Lord’s way is not the way of teaching us to imitate Him. The Lord’s way is the way of life, and the way of life is to eat.
Some of the American brothers became big not by being taught but by being fed. It was by their eating that they grew up into big men. No doubt, in another sense, we all need some education, but the basic thing is the growth, and this growth depends absolutely upon eating. Eating is to take some nourishment into you for digestion and assimilation. By this you will get the nourishment into your cells, and this nourishment even will become your organic tissues, your very being.
Christianity has given you the wrong impression that you need doctrinal teaching. We all have to say, “We don’t need the doctrinal teaching. We need the nourishment.” We need Jesus, not in an objective way but in a very subjective way. We need Jesus to get into us. We need to assimilate Jesus so that He can become our cells and our organic tissues to become our very essence and element. Then we can say, “To me, to live is Christ.” Then the content and the container become one. Jesus, after getting into us, becomes us. When you say, “To me, to live is Christ,” the Lord Jesus would say, “To Me, to live is you.” You may say that you are Jesus, but He would say that He is you. Then who is who? Eventually, the content becomes the container. We all have to see this. All the religious veils have to be removed. We need a clear sky.
From Genesis 2 to Revelation 22, through the whole Bible, you have such a line of eating and drinking. The tree of life and the river of water are seen in Genesis 2 (vv. 9-10). Then Jesus came and said that He is the bread of life which we must eat (John 6:35, 57). He also said that He is the living water which we must drink (4:14; 7:37-39). Even in the Epistles, Paul said “I fed you...” (1 Cor. 3:2 — ASV). He also said that we were all given to drink one Spirit (12:13). We were given to drink, not to think. We all were given not to think one theology but to drink one Spirit. Then at the end of the Bible, we see the river of water of life and the tree of life (Rev. 22:1-2). The last promise given by the Lord is, “Blessed are those who wash their robes that they may have right to the tree of life” (v. 14a). The last call given by the Lord is to come and take the water of life freely (v. 17). Our destiny for eternity will be to eat and drink Jesus. Today we should give ourselves to eat and drink Him.
But we also need to be on the alert. After calling on the Lord, after eating and drinking Him, we have to say, “Lord, be merciful to me. Cause every part of my being to be open to You. Have the thoroughfare within my whole being.” Then we will have a good digestion for a good assimilation, and we will enjoy and absorb all the nourishment of the riches of Christ. Then Christ will become our very being. We are the living containers, and He is the life-giving Spirit. Eventually, the life-giving Spirit as the content will be our element and our essence. We will be one with Him, and He will be one with us in an organic way.
