We shall read again the two passages around
which much of our meditation has circled 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 27.
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 33.
For 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, glory.
It is 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 perhaps are not so pleasantly
surprised that it is so.
But there it is, seems that the first
thought of God for man after having created
him was his food, everything for food is
the word.
And on 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.
And everything in relation to the Lord and
in the Lord's relationship to man in the
old testament seemed to be centered around this
matter of eating and drinking.
And there's not a little in the gospels
about it.
Some of the parables, parables of feasts.
But we can be quite sure of this,
that in as much as so largely by
the instigation, instruction, prescription of the Lord, his
thought never ended with the merely physical, temporal,
the gratification of natural desire and appetite.
We can be quite sure that back of
all that, there is a spiritual thought and
an eternal thought.
And it looks very much as though John
6 brings it right in, in fullness.
For it's 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.
Now bread, as we quite well know, is
a town.
It's a town which everywhere is synonymous with
the stable food of life.
Some countries it is not what we call
bread.
Bread.
But to everybody, whatever the form is, it
is this or that, it is bread.
That is, it is the very basis of
existence.
And is not a great distance from the
symbol and 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 inward basis of existence.
That's the principle.
Now as in so many other things, Israel
is a great illustration of this great truth.
For Israel's life and 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 based upon the
manna.
And when they came into the land, it
says, and when they had eaten of the
old corn of the land, the manna ceased.
A new phase, but still this governing factor
of bread, of food.
And 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 Passover.
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.
Their emergence to become the Lord's people in
covenant by him in blood.
All that was centered in the eating of
the Passover.
Their salvation rested upon their eating of the
Passover.
That night bondage was broken and death destroyed
for them 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.
And 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 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.
My 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 and God never intended to redeem
it.
That sinful self which he never patches up
or repairs.
You are feeding on yourself.
Well no wonder you're miserable.
It's poor fare isn't it?
When you go to prayer first thing in
the morning and I take it that you
do, what do you feed on?
All the time telling the Lord what a
wretched thing you are, what a failure you
are.
You can't give the Lord any new information
about that.
He knows far, far more about that than
you could ever tell him.
No wonder you begin the day in defeat.
You're feeding on food that is not convenient.
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.
Feeding upon the very elements and constituents of
the redemption of salvation.
Christ crucified.
That's the way to start any day.
There are many other things that you might
be feeding on, not only in the morning
but through the day and through all the
week.
On some grievance, some offense, some trouble that
you're nursing, something you're feeding on it.
Is that your daily food?
You do not get very far in the
Christian life until the foundation provision of God
is your daily meal.
Like that.
I say it does make a difference what
we feed on.
Well there is the first phase you see.
It's a mighty phase but it was basic
to everything else, basic to everything else.
An 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 bonding.
Oh let us feed on it more.
If we did we'd be far more triumphant
people if we would feed on that first
aspect of God's provision.
Look at Israel in Egypt.
What's 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.
What a picture.
And we don't have to look back to
Israel in Egypt to see the picture.
Come nearer.
We know how true in the spiritual life
that state is 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 they had 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
to change everything.
Like that.
The second phase they're in the wilderness.
Redemption has been effected.
They are out as the Lord's own people.
But now this phase has its own particular
and peculiar features and characteristics.
They're at school, under discipline, deep.
Learning the deep and drastic lessons of a
walk of faith with God.
Very hard school for it is a life
of faith indeed.
There's nothing for sight in a wilderness that
you can find any hope in.
Nothing there that will grow of itself or
that you by any effort of yours could
make to grow.
You're cast upon God for everything.
You've 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.
Learning this one thing that God can meet
the situation.
God is sufficient for this.
He is the only recourse.
But he is the recourse.
The manna signified that when they first saw
the manna they said what is it?
That's 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've never seen anything like this before.
Never known of anything like this.
There's nothing within the whole compass of our
natural knowledge that explains this.
It's a mystery.
It's something quite strange.
It's something from outside of this world.
That was the manna.
The sustenance of the Lord's people in all
that which corresponds to the 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 faith.
To undermine confidence.
To shake us.
And to destroy us.
How we've gone on it's a mystery.
But that's manna.
It is that marvelous though so mysterious unspeakable
inexplicable ministry of Christ where we can do
nothing about it at all.
It's like this.
They couldn't do anything.
What could they do to get food in
the wilderness?
They could do nothing.
There's no use of ploughing and sowing in
a desert.
Nowhere to go for anything.
What could they do?
Could do nothing and yet all this is
on them of demand.
Demand and they can 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's just the truth isn't it about so
much of the Christian life.
You can't do anything about it.
How we look round search and explore for
some way of being able to solve the
problem we shut up to it.
Nay we're shut up to God.
And we've come through a thousand experiences like
that.
When there was no way and no record,
no solution, no answer and nothing that we
could do.
The mystery of Christ in you, the hope.
We've come on.
You could have no more hopeless situation than
a desert.
Have you ever seen a desert?
I've passed over that very same desert many
times.
My word it brings it home to you.
People should be in that for 40 years
and survive.
No water, no food.
What is the hope in such a situation?
Christ in you the bread of God.
The bread of God.
Not of man.
Now of course a very great deal of
all this was while necessary training and discipline
a very great deal of it was due
to themselves.
Due to themselves.
Their own fault shall we say.
And we're all going to be perfectly candid
and frank about this.
A great deal of our trouble is our
own fault.
But thank God.
Though it was so much their own fault.
He didn't say it's your own fault I
leave you to it.
He gave them manna out of heaven.
See the Lord from his side didn't intend
that.
When they were leaving Egypt he told them
to take victorials.
And their kneading troughs.
What's the good of a kneading trough in
a desert?
This that it was only from the divine
standpoint an 11 days journey to the land.
But it extended to 40 years due to
their fault.
The Lord did not intend it to be
like that.
But you know there's so much in our
lives the Lord never intended.
But what I'm coming down on all the
time is this.
Oh yes let that be true.
Fully true.
And how many of us today have to
say oh when I had my time over
again with the knowledge that I have today
I wouldn't do that.
I would do other.
I see where I made the mistake.
Where I involved myself in difficulty.
Where I made confusion and a mess of
things.
But the Lord never abandoned us as he
never abandoned them.
Thank God he gave them manna out of
heaven.
He still sustained them with this mysterious sustenance
that they knew not of.
They could not explain.
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 pass into the land eventually or the
next generation.
They pass into the land.
As I have said in Joshua 5 it
says and when they had eaten of the
old corn of the land the manna ceased.
Now I want you to note this before
you go that far.
These other two phases are not left behind
as something done forever.
The Passover was maintained all the time year
by year.
You've always dear friends right to the very
end of your history with God got to
reckon on and stand into 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 in
Israel.
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 aspects and phases nevertheless right
at the center in the ark there's this
pot of manna a testimony to how God
can furnish a table in the wilderness.
Great thing to have that in the background
of your life.
If you hadn't you couldn't go through this
next phase.
For when you come to the third phase
in their life and history it's the phase
of tremendous responsibility.
Up to that time it has all been
what the Lord has done for them.
Now it's going to be what the Lord
will do through them.
They're involved now not in the kindergarten or
childhood education period.
They're now in the maturity responsibility phase.
There's warfare, continuous desperate warfare on.
It's another phase.
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's the value of it now?
You're up against it now.
It is not the matter of your salvation
now.
It's a matter of your testimony before principalities
and powers.
Your testimony before the world nations.
Now it's something tremendous that's on hand.
Firstly the warfare with the adverse, the 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 you can dig brass.
There's some hard work to be done to
exploit the resources that you've come into.
To make good the values of the inheritance.
We've, we've 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's a change in the food
situation.
Now you've got to be very careful that
you mark 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 and were obedient to what the Lord
said about it, that 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.
But it's a change of faith.
It's a change of faith.
Then it was faith appropriating, receiving, taking, getting.
Now it's the works of faith.
It's faith working.
You've 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 pander to them, spoil
them.
They have a wonderful time.
They don't even have to ask, and they
get it.
Isn't it like that?
Yes, it's just as we call it simple
childlike faith.
And the Lord responds to that at the
beginning.
But there comes a point at which it
changes.
Not from faith, but where you have got
to fight the fight of faith.
You're in the land.
There's a battle on.
Tremendous battle.
It's the fight now of faith.
Faith 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 simply by faith.
But we're in something more as we go
on.
We're involved in tremendous things.
This conflict with the evil powers, forces.
There's now something that we've got to do
about all these resources that are ours in
Christ.
We just do not find that they're coming
to us.
We are put through exercise.
Through, yes, exercise.
We have to do some real spade work
now to turn to good that which is
our inheritance.
Do you follow?
If you don't understand the teaching, you know
it in experience.
It's like that.
It is that changed aspect of faith because
of a changed position.
It is not now just salvation.
I don't mean by that that salvation is
a little thing.
Do you know what I mean?
Not just our acceptance and that we are
made children of God.
Not that.
We are in a mighty, mighty thing in
this universe.
We're out of Romans.
We're into Ephesians.
We are in a mighty, mighty thing in
this universe.
We're out of Romans.
We're into Ephesians.
We're in the mighty things.
The deep things.
The deep things of God.
In these things we only turn our resources
to account 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've 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'll taste something of despair to discover it.
We'll be plunged sometimes.
Oh yes, you say that.
That's terrible.
But listen.
Listen to your favorite apostle.
We despaired even of life.
Paul, you say you despaired.
Yes, I despaired.
And I've written it down that I despaired.
We had the sentence that it was death.
That we should not trust in ourselves but
in God who raised us from the dead.
If you're going to know that kind of
raising, you've got to know something of that
kind of experience.
But you see, Paul was not just there
circling around his own personal salvation.
His context is, I fill out that which
is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for
his body's sake, which is the church.
I don't mean that that's the context in
his writings.
I mean that that's the spiritual context.
His sufferings, his deep places, his being put
to it to tremendous spiritual exercise of faith
is not just personal.
It's related.
It's connected with the church and the church's
destiny.
But when you get over into the land,
things cease to be merely personal.
It's the responsibility of the whole purpose and
people of God that Christ in you is
the hope of glory even there.
It's 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.
Whatever is true about that, it is equally
true.
I could almost say more true in this
realm, where it's not because of our responsibility
at all.
It's not our fault.
It's 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.
No, this battle rages, and there's no explanation
for many of the situations into which we
are brought, many of the ordeals.
There's no explanation in the realm of our
own faultiness, 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.
It's something immense, far beyond the individual, the
personal.
It's related to the Lord's people everywhere in
this world.
But here I was saying 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, when 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's the point upon which Paul finishes
in that very letter which brings this third
phase of Christian life so fully into view,
glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus
unto all ages and therefore forever and ever.
Why 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.
Don't feed on yourself.
Don't feed on yourself, on your failure, on
what you are.
If you do, you know, you know you're
feeding upon ashes.
God has made ashes of us all in
the great altar.
Don't 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 of
faith trial.
And in the great battle in which we
are, 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 like
that.
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 can 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're one of those.
The Lord is shortening the time to get
you matured quickly for some purpose.
You'll be able to take responsibility early, early.
Why wait till you've had years and years
of Christian life before you're able to take
serious responsibility in the battle and in the
corporate life of the Lord's people?
It's 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're going to have a good time.
They're going to turn the Christian life and
Christianity into a continuous picnic, a continuous holiday,
making it all a matter of pleasure, pleasure.
Well, they'll break if ever they get into
the battle.
Well, they'll be scattered if ever they should
have to face something of the third stage
of the Christian life.
It's not the Lord's unkindness to put any
young Christian into a hard school.
It's that he might trust them with large
responsibilities and do it early.
It's a grand thing to see a young
Christian, a young Christian, an old Christian.
You know what I mean?
One who really now can stand up to
things and doesn't have to be nursed like
a babe.
One who can shoulder responsibilities in the house
of God and does not all the time
got to be chased after and looked up
and coddled.
No, but to be such, be such.
It's always this way.
It's a difficult school, a difficult school, but
the point is that for every phase and
aspect, Christ is the bread of God, the
bread of God.
Christ in you, the hope.