We shall read again the two passages around which much of our meditation has centred at this time, and then we shall add to them a third fragment.
First is in the first letter of Peter, chapter one, verse three:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope
By the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
Unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven.
Living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The letter to the Colossians, chapter one and verse twenty-seven:
God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ; Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Now this fragment, from a very considerable setting in the sixth chapter of the Gospel by John, verse thirty-three:
The bread of God is He which cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world.
Just the small phrase: the bread of God. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Is it possible that you have been impressed, as I have, with the fact that throughout the Bible, from beginning to end, feeding has such a large place? Some will have discovered that with great pleasure. Others of us have found out, so pleasantly surprised, that it is so. But there it is.
It seems that the first thought of God for man, after having created him, was his food. Everything for food is there. And from that point, the whole matter of eating and drinking develops tremendously.
All the great religious convocations in Israel were mainly characterized by this feasting element. They were feasts of the Lord. Everything in relation to the Lord, and in the Lord’s relationship to men in the Old Testament, seems to be centred around this matter of eating and drinking. And there is not a little in the Gospels about it—some of the parables, the parables of feasts.
But we can be quite sure of this: inasmuch as this was so largely by the institution and prescription of the Lord, His thought never ended with merely physical, temporal gratification of natural desire and appetite. We can be quite sure that in all that there is a spiritual thought and an eternal thought.
It looks very much as though John 6 brings it right in, in fullness. It is so very largely a long chapter on the bread of life: Christ, the bread of life; feeding; drinking, as He said, His blood and eating His flesh.
Bread, as we quite well know, is a term everywhere synonymous with the staple food of life. In some countries it is not what we call bread, but to everybody, whatever the form is, it is this or that—it is the very basis of existence.
And it is not a great distance from the symbol, the temporal, to the spiritual. The very subsistence of life, the very basis of life, is Christ in you. That is the deepest meaning of the Lord’s Table. The eating and the drinking is symbolic of this one thing: Christ in you—Christ becoming your very inmost basis of existence.
That is the principle.
Now, as in so many other things, Israel is a great illustration of this great truth for the spiritual life. Their history had three aspects, every one of which was based upon food.
The very beginning was the Passover meal, the eating of the Passover. Their sojourn in the wilderness, or their journeys through the wilderness, were based upon the manna. And when they came into the land, it says, “When they had eaten of the old corn of the land, the manna ceased.” The new phase, but still this governing factor: bread, food.
Those three phases of Israel’s life are, in figure, the three phases of every Christian’s life: the life of the church, the life of any company of believers.
There is that which answers to, or is typical of, the Passover. The very foundation of our being the Lord’s people is in the partaking of it. We know that it was foundational to their national history.
It was in the eating of the Passover, on that night ever to be remembered, that their deliverance from the power of this world, their deliverance from the old bondage to its tyranny, their deliverance from all the defeat and frustration of that old life realm, and their indulgence to become the Lord’s people in covenant by Him in blood—all that was centred in the eating of the Passover.
Their salvation rested upon their eating of the Passover. That night bondage was broken and death destroyed—or nullified—for them. Judgment escaped, and they were constituted the nation of God, the Lord’s people, His own possession, by eating the Passover lamb.
That became an institution throughout all their generations. Passover was an annual event, as we know, meaning that it governed all their years and all their generations. It stands to this day in Israel, and always in relation to what happened at the beginning: a feeding.
You may think that that is simple and elementary. Dear friends, it does make a difference to us what we eat. It makes a lot of difference what we eat.
What are you feeding on? It will show itself in your face.
If you are feeding upon yourself—your miserable, wretched self, that self that is not redeemed and cannot be redeemed, that sinful self which He never takes up or repairs—you are feeding on yourself. Well, no wonder you are miserable. It is poor fare, is it not?
When you go to prayer first thing in the morning—I take it that you do—what are you doing? All the time telling the Lord what a wretched thing you are, what a miserable thing you are, what a failure you are. You cannot give the Lord any new information about that. He knows far more about that than you could ever tell Him.
No wonder you begin the day in defeat, feeding on food that is not convenient. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Feed upon the very elements and constituents of redemption and salvation: Christ crucified. That is the way to start any day.
And many other things that you might be feeding on—not only in the morning, but through the day and through all the week: some grievance, some trouble that you are nursing, something that you are feeding on. That is your daily food.
You do not get very far in the Christian life until the foundational provision of God is your daily meal. I say, it does make a difference what we feed on.
Well, there is the first phase, you see: the Passover. It was basic to everything else, and the eating of that which represented and symbolized the completeness and perfection of our redemption in Christ Jesus—the finished work, the mighty deliverance from the power of the enemy and of the world, and of our spiritual bondage.
Oh, let us feed on it more. If we did, we would be far more triumphant people, if we would feed on that first aspect of God’s provision.
Look at Israel in Egypt. What is the picture? An oppressed and a depressed people, in shame, in disappointment—yes, in everything that was not glorious, but the opposite to what is glorious.
We do not have to look back to Israel in Egypt to see the picture. Come nearer. We know how true that state is in the spiritual life without Christ.
But from that despair—and God saw to it that they did reach the point of utter despair—from that despair, and that shame, and that reproach, and that everything so contrary to glory, the hope of glory sprang when they fed on the Lamb, when they took Him inside. Christ in you, the hope of glory, right at the beginning, changes everything.
The second phase: they are in the wilderness. Redemption has been effected. They are out and the Lord’s own people. But now this phase has its own particular and peculiar features and characteristics.
They are at school, under discipline, learning the deep and drastic lessons of a walk of faith with God. A very hard school.
Oh, it is a life of faith indeed. Nothing for sight in a wilderness that you can find any hope in. Nothing there that will grow itself, or that you, by any effort of yours, could make grow. You are cast upon God for everything.
You have got to learn, right from the beginning all the way along, that God and God alone is your resource. God is your resource, with every element against you, with every difficulty around you, with everything that speaks of desolation on the outside and hopelessness.
By daily lessons of testing and trial, learn this one thing: God can meet the situation. God is sufficient for this. He is the only recourse that we have.
The manna signifies that when they first saw the manna, they said, “What is it?” That is a poor translation of the original language, which can hardly be translated. If we were to try to put it into a phrase, it would be difficult to do so, but something like this: “This is a mystery. What is it? We have never seen anything like this before, ever known of anything like this.”
There is nothing within the whole compass of our natural knowledge that explains this. It is a mystery. It is something quite strange. It is something from outside of this world.
That was the manna: the sustenance of the Lord’s people in all that which corresponds to wilderness discipline and chastening and training and trial. I say, the sustenance through it all is a mystery.
How you and I have gone on through the years, with everything calculated to destroy things, to undermine confidence, to shake us, and to destroy us—how we have gone on, it is a mystery.
But that manna, it is that marvellous, though so mysterious, unsearchable, inexplicable ministry of Christ, where we can do nothing about it at all. It is like that. They could not do anything. What could they do to get food in the wilderness?
They could do nothing. No use ploughing and sowing; nowhere to go for anything. What could they do? They could do nothing. And yet all this was on them: demand, demand; and they could do nothing about it.
What can we do today? What can we do in this situation, which is a part of our spiritual education and training to know the Lord, to prove the Lord? What can we do? We can do nothing.
That is just the truth, is it not, about so much of the Christian life? You cannot do anything about it. How we look round, search and explore some way of being able to solve the problem! We are shut up to God.
And we have come through a thousand experiences like this. There was no way, no resource, no solution, no answer, and nothing that we could do. The mystery of Christ in you, the hope—we have come on.
You could have no more hopeless situation than a desert. Have you ever seen a desert? I have passed over that very same desert many times. My word, it brings it home to you: people should be in that for forty years and survive. No water. No food. The mystery.
What is the hope in such a situation? Christ in you, the bread of God—the bread of God, not man.
Of course, a very great deal of all this necessary training and discipline was due to themselves, due to themselves, their own fault, shall we say. We are all going to be perfectly candid and frank about this: a great deal of our trouble is our own fault.
Thank God, though so much of it was their own fault, He did not say, “It is your own fault; I will leave you to it.” He gave the manna out of heaven.
See, the Lord, from His side, did not intend that. When they were leaving Egypt, He told them to take their kneading troughs. What is the good of a kneading trough in the desert? This: that it was only, from the divine standpoint, an eleven days’ journey to the land. But it extended to forty years due to their fault.
The Lord did not intend it to be like that. But, you know, there is so much in our lives the Lord never intended. Yet what I am coming down on all the time is this: oh yes, let that be true, fully true.
How many of us today have to say, “If I had my time over again, with the knowledge that I have today, I would not do that. I would not do that. I would do otherwise. I see where I made the mistake, where I involved myself in difficulty. I made confusion and a mess of things.”
But the Lord never abandoned us. He never abandoned them. Thank God, He gave the manna out of heaven. He still sustained them with this mysterious sustenance that they knew not of. They could not explain it, but there it was.
Second phase: they did have to learn very much, and learn in a hard school. But the Lord provided the sustenance for that phase.
Third phase: they passed into the land eventually—or the next generation did. They passed into the land, as I have said. Joshua 5 says, “When they had eaten of the old corn of the land, the manna ceased.”
Now I want you to note this before we go any farther. These other two phases are not left behind as something done forever. The Passover was maintained all the time, year by year.
You have always, dear friends, right to the very end of your history with God, got to reckon on and stand in all the values of that Passover. That is not something just done and left. You and I will, right to the end, have to stand upon the infinite virtue of the body and blood of Christ. So the Passover is an ordinance forever.
And even though they left the wilderness and the manna behind, they took a pot of it over with them in the ark. It is there still as a testimony, right at the heart of their life. In its changing states and phases, nevertheless, right at the centre in the ark, there is this pot of manna—a testimony to how God can furnish a table in the wilderness.
It is a great thing to have that in the background of your life. If you had not, you could not go through this next phase.
But when you come to the third phase in their life and history, it is a phase of tremendous responsibility. Up to that time, it has all been what the Lord has done for them. Now it is going to be what the Lord will do through them.
That involves now, not the kindergarten or childhood education period. They are now in the maturity-and-responsibility phase. There is warfare—continuous, desperate warfare—on another plane.
Now all that has been by way of provision, instruction, teaching, and education has got to be put to the test in practical ways. What is the value of it now? You are up against it now.
It is not a matter of your salvation now; it is a matter of your testimony before principalities and powers, your testimony before the world and nations. Now something tremendous is on hand: firstly, the warfare with the adverse, antagonistic forces; then the taking possession of the inheritance.
The mighty wealth—and then the turning of that inheritance, that which you have come into, turning it and exploiting it, making it serve divine purpose. “Out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” There is some hard work to be done to exploit the resources that you come into, to make good the values of the inheritance.
We have graduated now from being the irresponsible people of the wilderness to being the responsible people in fellowship with God in His great purpose.
For this there is a change in the food situation. Now you have got to be very careful that you make the real point of the change.
Before, it was always the appropriation of faith. They went out every morning to appropriate by faith God’s provision for the day. And while they observed the laws of that provision, being obedient to how the Lord said it was to be—day by day, and none left over for tomorrow—while they were obedient, faith made good God’s provision.
It is not a change from faith to something else when you get into the third phase. It is a change of faith.
Then it was faith appropriating, receiving, taking. Now it is faith working. You have learned something about faith by the Lord’s wonderful goodness to you.
Have you noticed how, in the Christian life, so often—not invariably, because it seems sometimes the Lord hastens things by shortening the time and making it very intense for some young Christians—but have you not noticed that very often young Christians are treated like children and given so much of the Lord at the beginning? It seems to be made so easy for them.
He almost seems to tend to them, spoil them. They have a wonderful time. They are going to ask, and they get it. Is it like that? Yes, it is just what we call simple, childlike faith, and the Lord responds to that in the beginning.
But there comes a point where that pretty well changes—not from faith. But there you have got to fight the fight of faith. You are in the land. There is a battle on, a tremendous battle. It is a fight now.
It is not just that simple thing that it was. We must preserve that simple appropriating faith where our salvation is concerned—our continuous salvation. Take that, take that simply by faith. But we are in something more as we go on, very bold and tremendous: this conflict with the evil powers and forces.
Now, something that we have got to do about all these resources that are ours in Christ. We just do not find that they are coming to us. We are put through exercise—yes, exercise. We have to do some real spiritual work now, to turn to good that which is our inheritance. Do you follow?
If you do not understand the teaching, you know it in experience. It is that changed aspect of faith because of a changed position.
It is not now just salvation. And I do not mean by that that salvation is a little thing—you know what I mean. Not just our acceptance, so that we are made children of God, but that we are in a mighty, mighty thing in this universe.
We are out of Romans; we are into Ephesians. We are in a mighty, mighty thing in this universe. We are in the mighty things, the deep things, the deep things of God.
And in these things, we only come into our resources by some very, very hard work. Shall I put that another way? By really being put to it.
Now, are we going to know the power of His resurrection? My word, to know that, we have got to know something very deeply of the power of death.
Are we going to come back to our theme? Are we going to know the wonder of the hope, the hope which is Christ in us, the hope of glory? We will taste something of despair to discover it. We will be plunged sometimes.
Oh yes, you say that is terrible. But listen. Listen to your favourite apostle: “We despaired even of life.” Paul? Paul? You say, “You despair?” “Yes, I understand, and I have written it down that I despaired. We had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”
If you are going to know that kind of raising, you have got to know something of that kind of experience.
But, you see, Paul was not just there circling round his own personal salvation. His context is, “I fill up that which is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the church.” I do not mean that that is the context in his writings, but that is the spiritual context.
His sufferings, his deep experiences, his being put to it, to tremendous spiritual exercise of faith, are not just personal. They are related; they are connected with the church and the church’s destiny.
When you get over into the land, things cease to be merely personal. It is the responsibility of the whole purpose and people of God.
Christ in you is the hope of glory even there.
It is very true—whatever is true, and it is very true, about our salvation by appropriating Christ, and about our sustenance in the Christian life through the years by simply feeding upon Him, taking Him from day to day as our life, as our strength—that is true about that.
It is equally true—I could almost say more true—in this battle realm, where it is not because of our responsibility at all, not our fault, not because of what we have done or not done; nothing to do with our merely human weakness and faultiness and error and wrong.
We are involved in something objective, a tremendous thing. This battle rages, and there is no explanation for many of the situations into which we are brought, many of the ordeals. There is no explanation in the realm of our own faultiness or our sinfulness.
It is not because of something that we have done or not done that this situation arises. It arises altogether apart from us, and we are thrust into it, become a part of it—something immense, far beyond the individual and personal. It is related to the Lord’s people everywhere in this world.
But here, I was saying, is the marvel—the marvel of that provision of the Lord: Christ in you, the hope of glory, even in that.
In that, when all the forces of evil are let loose, and all the fire of the enemy is released; when we are in this great battle of the ages in the heavenlies, Christ in you is the hope of glory.
See, that is the point upon which Paul finishes in the very letter which brings this third phase of Christian life so fully into view:
Glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever.
Glory in the church. How? Glory in the church: Christ in you, the hope of glory; Christ in the church. His presence makes everything possible for an issue of glory.
Well, what have we said? We have simply pointed out, with all these words and in these illustrative ways, how God has made Christ the basis, the foundation, of eternal glory, and that by Christ being within.
Oh, take Him. Appropriate Him day by day. Stand on Him as the basis of your salvation, not on yourself. Do not feed on yourself. Do not feed on yourself, on your failure, on what you are.
If you do, you know, you know you are feeding upon ashes. God has made ashes of us all on the great altar. Do not feed on ashes. Feed on Christ, the living Christ.
Under discipline, trial, training, and chastening and education, learning the lessons of faith, feed on Christ. Take Him. Take Him in every time you face trial.
And in the great battle in which we find ourselves from a certain point in the Christian life, thank God, it is not left to us—not left to us to get through.
I did drop a word just now which might be helpful if I were to come back to it. I said in some cases it does seem that the Lord is saving a lot of time by pressing into a short period the intensity of this training and trial.
You see some young Christians having the trial of mature Christians, having the discipline, the hard schooling, that we would think should only come to those who have a lot of experience. But there it is. Maybe you are one of those.
The Lord is shortening the time to get you matured quickly for some purpose, that you will be able to take responsibility early. Why wait until you have had years and years of Christian life before you are able to take serious responsibility in the battle and in the corporate life of the Lord’s people?
It is not necessary. But there are a great many people, you know, unfortunately and tragically, a vast number of Christians today, who will not face or contemplate any difficulty. They are going to have a good time. They are going to turn Christian life and Christianity into a continuous picnic, a continuous holiday, making it all a matter of pleasure.
Well, they are green if ever they get into the battle. And, well, they are scattered if ever they should have to face something of the third stage of the Christian life.
It is not the Lord’s unkindness to put any young Christian into a hard school. It is that He might trust them with large responsibilities, and do it early.
It is a grand thing to see a young Christian—an old Christian. You know what I mean: one who really now can stand up to things and does not have to be nursed like a baby; one who can share the responsibilities in the house of God, and has not all the time got to be chased after and looked after and cuddled.
No, but to be such, it is always this way: it is a difficult school, a difficult school.
But the point is that on every phase and in every experience, Christ is the bread of God—the bread of God. Christ in you, the hope of glory.