Message 35
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Scripture Reading: Exo. 16:4-5, 13-15, 31; Num. 11:6-9
If we would understand the Bible, we need heavenly enlightenment and vision. This is especially true if we are to see the spiritual significance of the various matters in the book of Exodus. In the foregoing messages we have seen that Exodus is a book of pictures. However, if we have no light and no vision as we read this book, we shall not be able to grasp the meaning of all these pictures.
Many Christians know that during the years of wandering in the wilderness, the children of Israel ate manna. But not many of them know in a thorough and adequate way the significance of the manna in Exodus 16. They may be familiar with the story in Exodus, and they may even know that manna is a type of Christ as food to us. But they do not have a full realization of the importance of eating as recorded in this chapter.
The concept of eating is a basic and underlying concept in the Bible. As we review the importance of eating in the Scriptures, we need to remember the principle of first mention. According to this principle, the first mention of a matter in the Bible governs its meaning throughout the Scriptures. After God created man, He gave him a command and a warning about eating: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). Eating is a basic concept in the divine Word because it concerns man’s relationship to God. Therefore, after describing the creation of man, the Bible speaks of man’s living, which is related to eating.
In Genesis 1:26 we see that man was created in God’s image and after His likeness. The words “image” and “likeness” indicate that man is to be God’s expression. However, image and likeness are both somewhat outward. They do not necessarily involve inward content. For this reason, Genesis 2 shows the importance of man’s eating. This chapter reveals that God’s intention for man was that man would eat of the tree of life. Outwardly man possessed God’s image and likeness. But inwardly man needed to take the fruit of the tree of life into him as his content. The tree of life no doubt is a symbol of God as life to man. According to His eternal plan, God created man in His image and after His likeness so that man might express Him. Then God placed the man He had created in front of the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) with the intention that man take God into him to be his very life. This is the first reference to eating in the Scriptures.
At the end of the Bible, in Revelation 22, we once again see the tree of life. Verse 2 says that on either side of the river which flows from the throne of God and the Lamb there is the tree of life. Verse 14 goes on to say that those who wash their robes have right to the tree of life. Verse 19 refers to our share in the tree of life. These references in Revelation 22 all indicate that in eternity and for eternity God’s redeemed people will be eating of this tree. Furthermore, Revelation 2:7 says that those who overcome will eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
After man’s fall, God came in to redeem His people. The Passover is a complete picture of God’s redemption and of God’s intention and purpose in redemption. According to the picture in Exodus 12, the concept of eating is basic and central in redemption also. At the time of the Passover, the blood of the lamb was put on the “two side posts and on the upper doorpost of the houses” wherein the lamb was eaten (Exo. 12:7). Then the people ate the flesh of the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (v. 8).
Furthermore, the main point in Exodus 16 is the eating of manna. This chapter does not deal with behavior, conduct, or self-improvement; it deals with eating. In John 6 the Lord Jesus clearly said that He was the real manna, sent from heaven by God the Father to be food for God’s chosen people. Therefore, it is vital for us to learn how to eat Him. In verse 32 the Lord Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Moses has not given you the bread out of heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread out of heaven.” Then the Lord went on to say that the one who eats Him will live because of Him (v. 57). Manna is also mentioned in Revelation 2:17, where we are told that the Lord will “give of the hidden manna” to the one who overcomes. These verses help us to see that in the Bible the concept of eating is basic and central.
We all realize that in order to live properly we need to eat properly. If we take in poison, for example, we shall surely die. I once read an article which said that a person’s diet can affect his temper. According to this article, a child’s temper in particular is affected by his diet. This illustrates the importance of the proper spiritual eating. Surely if we partake of Christ as the real manna, we shall find it difficult to lose our temper. As we have pointed out in a foregoing message, this heavenly food causes our lusts to be restricted. It also deals with our selfish ambition. On the one hand, the heavenly manna nourishes us and heals us; on the other hand, it eliminates the negative things in us. Because eating is such a crucial matter, the regulating of man’s diet is another basic concept in the Bible.
Do you know what brought about the fall of man? Man fell by eating improperly. In the same principle, we are saved and healed by eating in a proper way. Man fell by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but he is saved and recovered by eating of the tree of life.
Manna is a type of Christ (John 6:31-35, 48-51, 57-58). As the real manna, Christ was sent by God the Father (v. 32) for God’s chosen people to live by Christ (v. 57). Although we may readily acknowledge that manna is a type of Christ, we should not regard this in a natural way or superficial way. As we consider the account of the sending of manna in Exodus 16, it is important for us to see the relationship between our eating and our living. We must eat in order to live. This is another basic principle in the Bible. Therefore, in John 6:57 the Lord Jesus said, “He who eats Me shall also live because of Me.” Without eating, it is not possible for us to live.
Now we must go on to see that the way we live depends on what we eat. If you eat a great deal of fish, you will be constituted of the element of fish, for you will absorb the life and nature of fish. Certainly you will not be constituted of fish if your diet includes only chicken or beef, but no fish. The kind of life we have depends on the kind of food we eat.
According to the picture in the book of Exodus, the children of Israel were destined to have a heavenly living. However, when they came out of Egypt, they brought Egyptian food with them. During the first few weeks of their travels, they ate this Egyptian food. But when the supply of Egyptian food was exhausted, the people were troubled and began to murmur and complain. Although the shortage of food was a problem to the people, it was a cause of joy to God, for it gave Him an excellent opportunity to change the living of His people. God’s intention was to change their living from an Egyptian living to a heavenly living. God did not want merely to adjust, change, or regulate the people outwardly. He wanted to change them organically by changing their diet. When the children of Israel were in Egypt, they had many different things to eat, all elements of the Egyptian diet. However, God wanted to change their diet from many items to just one item, and that item was the manna which came from heaven.
In Genesis 2 God’s intention was that the tree of life become man’s unique diet. Revelation 22 indicates that the tree of life will be our unique diet in eternity. Although this tree will bring forth twelve kinds of fruit, there will nonetheless be just one tree in the New Jerusalem, not many trees. In today’s Christianity, on the contrary, there are thousands of trees; that is, there are thousands of sources of food. But in God’s economy there is one tree — the tree of life. This tree was in the garden, and it will be in the New Jerusalem.
In Exodus 16 and John 6 the tree of life appears by the name of manna. If you read the Bible carefully and with understanding, you will see that manna and the tree of life are interchangeable. The manna is the tree of life, and the tree of life is the manna. This means that the manna in Exodus 16 was the tree of life in Genesis 2, and that the manna in John 6 will be the tree of life in Revelation 22. Manna and the tree of life are different terms to describe one thing. God does not have two kinds of food for His chosen people. Because there is one God, there is also just one kind of food. Christ is both our manna and our tree of life for eternity. We have one God, one Christ, and one Spirit. We also have one food, one diet.
The people in the world, however, live by many different kinds of foods. In the previous message we pointed out that worldly people may live on such things as education, sports, and amusements. Just as there are supermarkets for physical groceries, there are also psychological and religious supermarkets for psychological and religious groceries. Because the people in the world feed on so many things other than Christ, we may rightly regard them as today’s Egyptians. Before we were saved, we were in Egypt enjoying the Egyptian diet with all the other unsaved people. But we have been saved and have made our exodus out of Egypt. Now God intends to change our diet. However, we may still desire to sit by the fleshpots in Egypt, to feed on cucumbers, melons, onions, leeks, and garlic, or to enjoy fish from the Nile. Therefore, we face the problem of having more than one element in our diet. We also have the problem of living on many things other than Christ. For example, although I encourage the young people to get a good education, I must remind them not to live on education. Education should not become our diet.
According to God’s economy, we should live on Christ and on Christ alone. Christ should be our unique diet, and we should live by Him. We should not seek to live on any other food. Whatever satisfies, strengthens, and sustains us is our food. The unique food we take for our sustenance, strength, and satisfaction must be Christ. However, many believers do not take Christ as their unique source of satisfaction, strength, and sustenance. Instead, they are trying to be satisfied, sustained, and strengthened by other things. Because God wants us to live on Christ, we should be sustained, strengthened, and satisfied by Christ alone.
We have strongly emphasized the fact that God wants to change our diet. His intention is to cut off the worldly diet and to limit us to a diet of heavenly food, which is Christ. Because terms such as temptation and loving the world have been used in a light way in Christianity, I prefer not to use them in speaking of the divine revelation in Exodus 16. I wish to inquire concerning your diet. On what are you living day by day? What do you take in to satisfy, sustain, and strengthen you? We all must face these questions and answer them. We all should be able to say, “The Lord is the only One who satisfies me. Apart from Him, I have no satisfaction. I am daily strengthened and sustained by Christ. He is the only food on which I rely.”
I can testify that for more than fifty years I have not been satisfied, strengthened, or sustained by anything other than Christ. From the time I was saved at the age of nineteen, Christ has been my satisfying food. I have obtained certain good things, but none of these things has satisfied me even once.
Christ must be our food, satisfaction, strength, and sustenance. This does not mean, however, that we do not need certain things for our human living. We need various good and useful things, including, for example, education. But we should not allow these things to become our food. We may need them and we may have them, but we should not live on them or by them. Our only food is Christ.
The Christ who is our food is the Christ who has become subjective to us. He is the processed God indwelling our spirit as the all-inclusive Spirit. On the one hand, Christ is in heaven as the Lord of all; on the other hand, He is dwelling in our spirit as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. We look to the Lord in the heavens, and we fellowship with the Spirit in our spirit. Praise the Lord that He is within us subjectively! The main purpose for His being so subjective to us is that He may be our food, our life supply. Anything which is to be our food and life supply must be something that can enter into us and then be assimilated by us. It must be taken in and become part of the very tissue and fiber of our being. Christ is subjective to us in precisely this way. In 1 Corinthians 6:17 Paul tells us, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” Whenever we eat a certain food, we join ourselves to that food. For example, when I eat fish for dinner, I join myself to the fish. In the same principle, when we eat Christ as our real food, we are joined to Him and become one spirit with Him. Hence, the Christ who is subjective to us, to whom we are joined and with whom we are one spirit, is our food, our heavenly manna. It is crucial for us to see this.
In giving these messages on the book of Exodus, I am not content merely to carry on a Bible study or to pass on teachings to the saints. My desire is that we shall experience all these matters in a way that is actual and practical. Before giving this message, I prayed to the Lord again and again that we all may see our need to live on Him and by Him. We don’t need teachings, doctrines, and Bible knowledge. We need to take Him as our food and to live by Him. Feeding on Christ and living by Him should not be an occasional practice. Rather, it should be the way we live twenty-four hours a day.
During the past months, most of the confession I have made to the Lord has been related to my shortcoming in the matter of living Him by being one spirit with Him. Every day I have had much to confess to the Lord regarding this. Early in the morning I pray, “Lord, grant me today’s portion of grace that I may live You and practice being one spirit with You. ” For about an hour I may be successful in living in one spirit with the Lord. Then I become conscious of the fact that I am no longer one spirit with Him. Thus, I need to confess, ask for the Lord’s forgiveness, and come back to Him. To be one spirit with the Lord is like breathing: it does not happen once for all, but takes place moment by moment.
In my early days I found it difficult to overcome certain besetting sins. Now, by the Lord’s mercy and grace, I am no longer troubled by those sins. What I find difficult today is learning to be continually one spirit with the Lord. This is a very hard lesson to learn. If I myself do not practice being one spirit with the Lord, then my ministry concerning this matter has no reality. Living Christ and living by Christ should not be mere doctrine; it must be our practical daily living. I myself must learn to live this way. In my experience I have discovered that being one spirit with the Lord requires great sensitivity. The besetting sins are coarse and crude, but living in one spirit with the Lord is very delicate and fine.
When I was young, I wondered why the Lord charged us to watch and pray (Matt. 26:41). I wondered what need there was for me to watch. Now I am learning that we need to watch lest we inwardly lose contact with the Lord. We need to be watchful lest we turn off our spiritual switch and become separated from Christ in our experience. In order to be cut off from Christ, we need not do something coarse, such as lose our temper. We can be cut off from Him simply by looking at our husband or wife in a way that is unkind. We need to turn to the Lord, confess, and receive His forgiveness. We even need to ask Him to cleanse our eyes. The reason we have an unkind expression on our face is that we are not at that instant one spirit with the Lord.
Every morning we should ask the Lord to give us the grace to be one spirit with Him for that day. Then we need to exercise to be one spirit with Him in a practical way throughout the day. If we try to practice this, we shall realize that time after time we are no longer one with Him. Our experience may be somewhat like a lamp that, because of some electrical problem, switches off and on unpredictably. I once had such a lamp in my study, and I found it very troublesome. One moment the light was on; the next moment it was off. It would switch off and on all day long. We are often this way in our experience with the Lord. All those who want to live Christ by being one spirit with Him will be troubled by such on-and-off experiences.
As you are getting ready for bed at night, ask the Lord to prepare you to practice being one spirit with Him the next day. If we endeavor to live in oneness with the Lord, we shall discover that taking Christ as our food has been for us largely a matter of doctrine. It is not yet much of a reality in our daily life.
Many Christians know that manna is a type of Christ. But simply to know this as a doctrine does not mean anything. God’s intention is for us to live on Christ all day long. He does not want us to live on anything other than Christ. We need certain things for our living, but they should not become food to us. Christ is our unique diet, and we should live by Him and on Him alone. May our eyes be opened to see this crucial matter.
The heavenly manna is to be the unique food for God’s people. The children of Israel could even say, “There is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our eyes” (Num. 11:6b).
In relation to Christ as the unique food for God’s people, I wish to say a word about the uniqueness of the ministry. Some Christians claim that there are many different ministries. In Christianity today, as we have already pointed out, there are hundreds of sources; there are also hundreds of so-called ministries. However, in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, there is just one ministry. The twelve Apostles all shared in the same ministry. In a message entitled “The Ministry in the New Testament Economy” (see Truth Messages, Message Four), we considered the truth regarding the ministry in the New Testament economy. We pointed out in that message that in the eyes of the Lord, there is just one ministry in the New Testament age. The twelve Apostles did not have different ministries. Rather, they all shared in the unique New Testament ministry. Speaking of Judas, Peter said that he “was numbered among us, and was allotted his portion of this ministry” (Acts 1:17). This proves that the twelve Apostles were all in “this ministry.” This indicates that there is one unique ministry in the New Testament. Therefore, when the Apostles prayed about a replacement for Judas, they asked the Lord to show them whom He had chosen to “take the place of this ministry” (Acts 1:25).
The apostle Paul also had a part in this ministry. In 2 Corinthians 4:1 he spoke of “having this ministry, as we have received mercy.” He did not say, “I have this ministry,” nor, “We have these ministries.” Furthermore, in 1 Timothy 1:12 Paul said, “I give thanks to Him who empowers me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He has counted me faithful, appointing me to the ministry.” In this verse Paul does not say, “He appointed me to my ministry”; he says that the Lord appointed him to the unique New Testament ministry.
The apostles had one ministry because they ministered the same kind of food. We all know that in the New Testament there are four Gospels. We cannot deny that there are differences among the Gospels. Matthew wrote from the angle of the kingship; Mark, from the angle of service; Luke, from the angle of redemption through the proper humanity; and John, from the angle of life through Christ’s deity. Nevertheless, the Gospels present one Person. The writers of the four Gospels all minister the same Christ. This indicates that although the Gospel writers differ in emphasis, they are one in their ministry. Each of the Gospels is a biography of the same wonderful Person. In today’s Christian world, however, there are many different ministries. These ministries have been a cause of division. Instead of one tree with one diet, there are hundreds of trees producing many different kinds of food.
Those who oppose the Lord’s recovery sometimes say that the local churches listen only to one person, Witness Lee, and do not receive the ministry of anyone else. It is not true to say that the churches listen only to me. However, I will strongly declare that all the churches have just one ministry. We in the Lord’s recovery today have the unique ministry. This is the same today as it was at the beginning of the recovery. Furthermore, this ministry is the same throughout the world. In the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australasia, the ministry is one and the same. Although there is one ministry in the Lord’s recovery, there are hundreds, even thousands, of speakers. But all these speakers are speaking the same thing, although they may speak it from different angles. Praise the Lord for the ministry in His recovery! We are all eating from one tree, the tree of life. We do not have any other source.
In the Lord’s recovery we cannot accept any ministry that is not part of theministry. To accept other kinds of ministry would be to take in some food that is different from the heavenly manna. We thank the Lord that from the very beginning He showed us what is the ministry of Christ, the ministry of life. We have one tree of life, one manna. Throughout the years I have been in this country, I have given thousands of messages. But all these messages have conveyed one food, one diet: Christ as the unique food for God’s people.
If the Lord were to allow me, I could give message after message concerning doctrine. But the Lord does not permit me to speak on such things. When I was giving the life-study messages on Revelation and Matthew, the Lord preserved me from being distracted from the tree of life to knowledge of prophecy. Sometimes, however, I am asked questions related to Bible prophecy, for example, regarding the sixty-two weeks in Daniel 9. Such a question can be a temptation. As I have opened my mouth to answer a question such as this, I have been reminded that my commission is to minister Christ as the unique food. We do not have another tree called the tree of doctrine or the tree of prophecy.
In the Lord’s recovery we care for the wheat, not for the chaff. Although there may be thousands of grains of wheat, all the grains produce wheat, not some other kind of crop. In the same principle, the Bible produces only Christ as our unique food. For this reason, we do not accept those ministries that impart other kinds of food.
According to the Bible, God has one ministry. This ministry is the ministry of Christ, the ministry of life. All those who share in this unique ministry speak with the same tone and have the same goal. I am thankful that during the years the Lord’s recovery has been in this country our tone and goal have been one. The reason for this oneness is that our ministry is one and the life we are ministering to the saints is also one.
I have been burdened to emphasize the importance of the unique ministry in the Bible and in the Lord’s recovery today because some criticize us for not receiving other ministries. They find fault with the fact that the ministry in the Lord’s recovery is one. This criticism concerning the ministry is subtle, like the speaking of the serpent in Genesis 3. I hope that this word will inoculate us against the poison of the subtle one. Whenever someone speaks critically of the unique ministry in the Lord’s recovery, we should reply that we have one ministry because in the Bible there is just one tree of life. Since we have one God, one Christ, and one Spirit with one tree of life, we also have one ministry. Praise the Lord that in His recovery there is only one ministry! Because the ministry is unique, there are no divisions among us. However, if there were two ministries, there would be division. If there were twenty ministries, there would be twenty divisions. We thank the Lord that we are preserved in oneness because we have one ministry.
We need to be clear, however, that to have one ministry does not mean that there is just one speaker for all the churches. There are more than three hundred fifty local churches on earth today. How could any person be the only one to speak in all these churches? As we have pointed out, both in the Far East and in the West, there are many speakers speaking the same thing for the same goal.
Because manna was the unique food for God’s people, they were not permitted to have any choice of food according to their own tastes. In the matter of eating, people like to eat food that suits their personal tastes. For example, in Hong Kong there are many Chinese restaurants which specialize in different kinds of cooking. For our physical food we can choose from a wide selection of Chinese restaurants as well as from many different styles of Western cooking. But in the New Jerusalem there will be just one kind of food and one diet. According to the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22, the river of water of life flows out from the throne of God and the Lamb, and along the river grows the tree of life. It is also this way in the Lord’s recovery, where we have Christ as our unique diet.
