Manna

I'd like you to turn first of all with me to John chapter 6, John chapter 6 and we'll read from verse number 7. John chapter 6 and verse number 7. Philip answered him, two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may take a little. One of his disciples Andrew Simon Peter's brother saith unto him, there's a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many? And Jesus said, make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down and number about five thousand.

And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down. And likewise of the fishes as much as they would. Now I'd like you to turn back the Old Testament to the book of Exodus chapter 12 please.

Verse number 5, Exodus 12 and verse 5. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month. And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.

And they shall take of the blood and strike it on the two side posts, and on this upper door post of the houses wherein they shall eat it. They shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and on leavened bread with bitter herbs shall they eat it. Chapter 16 of Exodus please.

Verse number 14, Exodus 16 and 14. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing as small as the whore frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, it is manna, for they wist not what it was.

And Moses said unto them, this is the bread which the Lord hath given you. Verse 31, and the house of Israel called the name thereof manna. It was like coriander seed white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

Verse 33 says, and Moses said unto Aaron, take a pot, put an omer of full, an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the Lord to be kept for your generations. As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the testimony to be kept. Now turn again to the book of Leviticus and chapter 2. Verse number 1. And when any will offer a meat offering or a meal offering unto the Lord, his offering shall be a fine flour, and he shall pour oil upon it and put frankincense thereon.

Verse 8 says, and thou shall bring the meal offering that is made of these things unto the Lord, and when it is presented unto the priest, he shall bring it unto the altar. And the priest shall take from the meal offering a memorial thereof, and shall burn it upon the altar. It is an offering made by fire of a Lord.

Now Leviticus 6 please. And verse 25. Speak unto Aaron to his son, saying, This is the law of the sin offering.

In the place where the burnt offering is killed shall the sin offering be killed before the Lord. It is most holy. The that offereth it for sin shall eat it, and the holy place shall it be eaten in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation.

Now final reading in Leviticus chapter 7. Just for sake of time, verse 33. He among the sons of Aaron that offereth the blood of the peace offerings and the fat shall have the right shoulder for his part. For the way breast and the heave shoulder have I taken of the children of Israel from off the sacrifice of their peace offerings, and have given them unto Aaron the priest, and unto his sons by a statute forever from among the children of Israel.

Now we know that God will bless the reading of his precious word. You probably have noticed from the that we have read together, I'm going to speak about food. And I think that will follow after what we heard this morning.

You will notice from my shape that I'm fairly well qualified to speak about food, but really it's not the temporal food or physical food that we're going to look at, but we're going to look at the food that God has provided. We're never going to grow unless we have food. I was reading lately at home about those that could only be fed with milk and not with meat.

They couldn't be fed with solid food because they hadn't made progress in the things of God. And I've often heard our brethren, and I won't say anything wrong with what they say, but often we encourage young people to get out with the gospel. Now there's always lots of room to get out with the gospel, but I would suggest to you that first of all we need to exhort and to encourage young people to get into the Word of God.

That's the important thing. Learn from the Word. What we preach, we want to preach that which is correct.

And it's not just a matter of going out. I have talked to young persons and even offered them literature, and they say, we don't like to read commentaries. We like to read topics and things like that.

Well, that's okay. I read topics as well as commentaries, but how are we ever going to learn if we don't get out to the conference meetings, and we get to the Bible readings, and at home we study the Word of God? Now that's all I'm going to say for an introduction. What we're going to speak about is food for the world, and then we're going to speak about food for the weak, and then food for the wilderness, and then we have food for worshipers.

And those things, of course, should help us all. Food for the world. Wonderful the compassion that the Lord Jesus had for the crowds that thronged around him.

This is a miracle, one of them, well, the one that's taught in each gospel. A little bit of a difference. I know from the Gospel of John, he said that there was much grass in the place.

And you think of the compassion of the Lord in a wilderness, but he takes them to a place where there's much grass. He says, make the men sit down. And you know in the Gospel of the Servant, the Gospel of Mark, he adds something else to it.

And I think it's interesting to see that he said that there was green grass in the place, and there you have the servant, and he's taking care of the comfort of those that are thronging around in the desert. And you know the problem, of course, wasn't a problem to the Lord, but the problem to the disciples was they had nothing to give to the multitudes. You know the multitudes were, they were starving, and they were interested in hearing some of the things that the Lord Jesus would say.

And the Lord wasn't going to send them away hungry. And he set them down, men sat down, and sat down in numbers of fifty. Where's the food going to come from? There's a lad here which is five barley loaves and two small fishes, but what are they among so many? I've heard people say it was a boy's lunch, so it was a pretty good lunch.

Anyhow, I'm not sure what it was, but I know this, the Lord could multiply that which was little. And he could give to the disciples, and they could give to the world. Now do I need to tell you or impress upon us today that the world is a place where they're starving? And maybe you would think of yourself in your unsaved days.

I know. I tried the world, sad to say, in many aspects. I'm ashamed of the things that I got into, but I'm glad there was a day when I found out I'm starving.

There's nothing in the world to satisfy my soul. And I'll tell you something, I haven't changed my mind even now. It's still the same.

There's nothing in the world that's going to satisfy the longings of the heart. We often quote about Mary that went to the tomb, and she saw a man. Well, first of all, she saw an angel, but there was no angel that could satisfy the longings of her heart.

She saw a man, and when she supposed that he was a gardener, he couldn't, no man could satisfy the longings of her heart. There's only one, and that was the Lord himself, isn't it? Psalm 73 says, Whom have I in heaven but thee? And who is there upon the earth that I desire that is like unto thee? There's one who had compassion, not going to let the starving world go away. I wonder, are we reaching out to the starving world? Have we got something to offer? Can they see that we are satisfied with the food that God has given us? That we're satisfied with the Lord Jesus? And you know, I'm sure if they could really see how much we're enjoying the things of God, they would want to have some of this thing.

And I wanted some food that would satisfy, and thank God for the compassion of the Savior. Even though many of us had rejected him for many years, yet he was able to draw near to us, and he was able to feed us with the bread that came from heaven. He said, I am the true bread that came down from heaven.

Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead, but I am the true genuine bread that cometh down from heaven. And he said, whoever eats of this bread shall never... When we come to the book of Exodus, we have the first Passover. Well, really the only Passover, the others were commemorations of it.

But here we have the Passover, and I thought of these people that were weak. What would make them weak? Well, they were slaves, and they were building with bricks, and so on. I'm not going to go into all the details, but I just want to get this across.

They needed something to strengthen them up. What was it? Well, when we preach the gospel, the question we like to ask is, are you sheltered under the blood? And thank God for everyone who can say, amen, I'm sheltered under the blood. But I want to ask you another question that's just as important.

Are you feeding on the lamb? Wasn't enough just to be sheltered under the blood? These people are weak, and they're going on a journey, and they need to be built up. And God said, you take this roast lamb, and think of it, not sodden at all with water, but roast with fire. It speaks of the extreme sufferings of the Lord Jesus that were necessary to get them out, to get them out from the land of Egypt, from the land of slavery.

And now he said, that's not all. You've got to get this lamb, you have to feed upon it. He said, you feed upon the head, and the legs, and the pertinence.

That just means the inward parts, they're off. Are you feeding on the head of the lamb? You say, what does that mean? I don't know if you'd get much out of the head of a regular lamb, but I know as far as typical aspect, I link this in my mind, you know, with what we have in Philippians. Have this mind in you, which also was in Christ Jesus.

Feeding on the head means I'm going to think as he thought, and I'm going to try and figure out what he wants me to do, and not be full of strife or vain glory, but be like our blessed Lord himself, feeding on the head. Have we been feeding on the head? If we do, we're going to have the mind of Christ. It's spoken of in 1st Corinthians 2, isn't it? And we're going to, I want to think as he thought.

So that when something comes up in my life, I'm going to say, what would the Lord think about this? Unfortunately, many of us just go on our own way, and it's so easy to forget, and we need to be reminded of these things, myself included, and not just forget that we're under direction from the head, and we take our orders from the head, from the Lord who is in heaven. So I ask myself, Bill, are you feeding on the head? What about the legs? Well, of course, it's so that I would walk as he walked. Peter, wasn't it, he said, the Lord has left us an example that we should follow in his steps.

That's the gospel of John, the gospel of the shepherd, and it's the idea of the shepherd going before the sheep. The shepherd, thought of the shepherd, runs right through the gospel, and right to the very end, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Are we following in his steps? Peter said he has left us an example that we should follow in his steps, and Paul said, I tell you, even weeping of some who are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose God is their belly, whose glory and the shame, who mind earthly things.

They're walking the wrong way. They're walking to please themselves. The walk, you know, of course, is the manner of life.

Am I living my life to please myself, or am I living my life to please the Lord? What about the inward parts of the sacrifice? Paul said to the saints at Philippi, he said, I long after you all in the tender bowels of the tender mercies of Jesus Christ. When he looked at God's people, he said, I love them the way the Lord loves them. Why, that would be a good thing for us, wouldn't it? That would strengthen us, would be a try to be a help to one another.

If we really love one another, it doesn't mean we're going to gloss over things that are wrong. That's not true love. True love would be trying to put them right and doing it in a nice way, so you don't cut someone's head off and then expect them to be able to listen.

No. God wants to wean us away from the world. Egypt, you know, is a picture of the world.

All its sin and all its slavery. He said, I want to bring you out, and we're going to feed on this one, the one who gave himself for us, who suffered and bled and died, that we might become his own, to bring us out from the world, to wean us away from the world and the things of the world, and that's the world in every aspect. Now, what about the wilderness? Well, they were brought out of the world, but they were brought into the wilderness.

You say, well, what does that mean? Well, I'll just say a few words about the manna. God said, I'm going to rain manna. The people were discouraged, and you know, they looked toward the wilderness, and what did they see? I'm trusting your memory.

They saw the glory of the Lord. They didn't see the difficulties that lay ahead. Sometimes we can be like that, can't we? And we think what's going to happen or what could happen and going to get this and we're going to be worse and all that.

Well, you know, they saw the glory of the Lord. They saw it in the cloud, in the Shekinah cloud, God's presence with them. Beloved, God's presence is with us in the wilderness journey, whether as individuals like the two on the way to Emmaus or when he appeared in the room with the others all gathered around like a local assembly.

The Lord is with us. We sometimes forget that. I remember old Mr. Archie Stewart, Uncle Archie, and he said, some places you go, he said, you could almost say they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him.

Well, it might have been humorous in a way. There was a lot of truth to it. I think we forget that the Lord is in the midst and we don't behave accordingly.

Well, they saw the glory. I think maybe they saw the glory too when they saw the manna, the moral glory of the Lord. What is the manna? Without going into a lot of words, manna speaks of Christ in humiliation, a small round thing.

The round would speak of the fact that he's the eternal Son of God. Small would be his humility and we read about those things and the sweetness that was associated with it and the purity, a beautiful picture of the Lord Jesus Christ in humiliation. How are we going to get through this wilderness world? We're going to be feeding on the Lord Jesus in this aspect of his life and his humility.

What is humility? Well, I know one thing. When the Lord was in the wilderness in the New Testament, a wilderness that never should have been there because if they had been obedient to God, it was a land flowing with milk and honey. But it was a wilderness and when the Lord Jesus was tested in the wilderness, what did he say? It is written.

It is written or it stands written. The Word of God isn't going to change. Well, God's in the, his work is changing us, bringing us more into conformity to his Son.

It's not changing the Word of God. The Lord said, I'm not going to do one thing if I do not have a word from the Lord to do it. Not amazing.

Not amazing with the Lord. It would be amazing if it were us. So going through this wilderness world, the manner is what would keep you and I humble.

Thinking and looking at the humility of Christ and to put it maybe in a few words. You remember he said, not my will but thine be done. That's what true humility really would be.

Not trying to take a lower place or not trying to press somebody about how humble we are. That's not true humility. The Lord Jesus wasn't acting humble.

He was humble. And if he in all his greatness could come in to this world and be typified in this manner, surely it wouldn't be too difficult for you and I just to take that the place that God has given us and be dependent on God in our lives day by day. Now what about the worshipers? I'm speaking about the priests now, you know.

And there were certain offerings that they could partake of. I'm not sure if I've gone through every one. I just use my little brain.

They tell me use your use your brain. It's the little things that count, they tell me. But anyhow, I just thought of these.

You maybe can think of a lot more. But I thought first of all of the meal offering. What is the meal offering? You know, it's the Lord Jesus Christ and his life.

A life that brought glory and honor to God. And as far as a burnt offering and peace offering concerned, it was associated with those offerings, was offered with them in death. But the offering itself is the life of the Lord Jesus.

What about the fine flower? Are there any rough ages in your life and mine? Likely there are. Most of us are characterized by one thing or another. The Lord wasn't really characterized by one thing or another.

It's often been said he had no strong points because he had no weak points. A perfect balanced life. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be like that? And you know, it talks about it being mingled with oil.

That would be the incarnation. And that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And then you have it anointed with oil.

And you know, that would speak of the Lord being anointed, the Spirit of God descending upon him like a dove after his baptism. And the heavens opened and the voice said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. That would be the Father well pleased with the meal offering.

The life of the Lord Jesus when it was lived more or less, not all together, but more or less in obscurity. But he brought the light to the Father. And I thought, is there any of that evenness in my life? Am I being led by the Holy Spirit? Could the heavens be opened to me? And the voice of the Father say, this is my beloved Son.

And I'm including the sisters as well. What do you suppose he would say? In whom I am well pleased. Be wonderful of that would be true of each one of us.

No, leaven, our brother reminded us that leaven, really it always speaks of sin. No taint of sin in the Lord Jesus. And then no honey.

Usually we look at that as natural sweetness. Why we can be so sweet to one another at times and maybe we're not always that way. But you know, there's no natural sweetness.

Just what a beautiful, wonderful person the Lord really is. Wouldn't you like to be like him? How can you be like him? Well, you see, the priests fed on some of that. Some was offered to the Father.

The Father appreciated the beauties in his Son. Do I appreciate them? Is that what I'm going in for? Or is there something else that occupies my mind? Well, there can't be anything better than being occupied with Christ. The finest of the wheat.

And I think that's one reason why we have conferences to draw us closer to our blessed Lord. What about the sin offering? Maybe you never thought much about that, but you know, we often speak of the sin offering that was burned outside the camp. But here's a sin offering we read off in Leviticus chapter 6. And this sin offering was put on the altar and the priest had a portion of it.

And he could eat part of the sin offering. You say, that doesn't sound too good. Well, in the meal offering, we see perfection.

In this aspect of the sin offering, we see identification. Here's a man, a priest that identifies himself with the sins of the people. And I don't need to try and remind you of all the many Old Testament worthies that prayed to God like Daniel and Nehemiah and Moses.

And they didn't say, Lord, they have sinned. Sometimes we can point a finger at they. Personally, I don't like preachers that always talk about you and they.

It's better we, isn't it? They identified themselves with the sins of the people. We have sinned and we need to repent, even though they maybe weren't involved in the same way, to identify with the sins of the people. You know, we have nothing to brag about.

As far as God's assemblies are concerned, we're weak and we're frail. But thank God if we have a heart for the assembly, to be a help and to identify ourselves with God's people and not try to be above them and looking down and saying what they're doing and they should be. Of course, we all maybe think we're the seed that brought forth a hundred and they all should be like me.

They all should be like you. That's not the case. Some are 30 and some are 60.

And we can't make them something that they're not. And if we do change them, it's through the Word of God. But then I read in chapter 7 about the peace offering.

And what do we have there? Well, the peace offering speaks of communion. And I read about the priest burning the fat on the altar. And then, verse 32 of chapter 7, And the right shoulder shall you give on to the priest for a heave offering of the sacrifices of your peace offering.

He among the sons of earth offer the blood of the peace offering, and so on and so on. And then verse 34, And the other parts of the of a sacrifice, you have the the heave shoulder. What would they do with that? A little bit of sanctified imagination, if you'll allow me.

Well, we know they would heave it vertically. That's what thought of heaving it. And I would think as they would heave it, they would look up into the heavens.

And they would see the greatness of God. We're reminded of that a little from the book of Genesis. When we read chapter 1, we're not looking for difficulties, but we're looking for the greatness of God.

The God of creation. Amazing. And the shoulder speaks of strength.

And you know, we can go forth in His strength. He's the God of creation. He's over all.

He's not going to let us at any time. Going to give us strength for this world in which we live. What about the wave breast? Well, I think they would wave that.

In my mind, they would wave it toward the altar. And that would remind them that He's the God of redemption. And the breast speaks of affection.

If the shoulder speaks of strength, the breast speaks of affection. And I tell you, we think of the work of Calvary. And if that doesn't touch our heart, I don't know what would.

I marvel at myself that it doesn't affect me far more than it does. To think of the love of the Lord Jesus on the cross at Calvary, the God of redemption, paid a price for me. I was enjoying the other day.

He knows His sheep by name. Imagine. Sometimes I'd come to a conference.

I wish I knew some of the Christians by name. You have to hedge and you don't know if their wife's passed on or the husband's passed on or you know where they come from. And you can't understand where they are.

And sometimes if you're foolish, you say, well, how do you spell your last name? And then they go S-M-I-T-H or something like that. And you're lost. But I'll tell you something.

The Lord knows your name. He calls His sheep by name. And He brought us out.

Other sheep have I that are not of this fold, them also shall I bring. And there shall be one flock, is the word, and one shepherd. Just think the Lord knows you so much.

Knows so much about you. Knows your very name. Knew your name when you needed salvation.

And the gospel came to you. Others missed it. Some that maybe you thought were more suited to be recipients of salvation than you were.

But God in His mercy knew us all by name. When it comes to the world, have we been weaned out of the world? If you could hear Him audibly saying, John or Mary or whatever, are you going to feed on the things of God? Are you going to learn more of Christ? The world doesn't hold any. It's glitter and tinsels nothing.

What about this wilderness world? There are difficulties. But can we accept them from God? That's what the Lord did. That's what the children of Israel should have done.

They murmured and complained. But God is teaching us. We accept these things and we go on and we know that God is going to bring us safely through.

And then as far as worship is concerned, you know, I don't suppose we could be really great worshipers without getting into the Word of God. Well, we may repeat things that that others say. I did that too, just like the rest.

I remember an old Mr. Hannett. He he said, Why did you say that? I said, everybody says it. Never mind what everybody said.

He growled a little bit. He said, that's not scriptural. There are things that we say that aren't scriptural, but everybody says them.

But may the Lord help us to be exercised and to be feeding on Christ as a priesthood so that there'll be something to offer Christ, whether it's his part of the peace offering or the meal offering, of course, all the frankincense and so on. May the Lord help us to be intelligent in our worship. He just didn't put the big bullock, you know, the burnt offering on the altar.

They divided it in its pieces. They had it all in order. And I think maybe we should do that too.

I know we all fail. But may the Lord exercise our hearts. So I'm going to ask you a question before I sit down.

What are you feeding on? Why it was all Christ when you were saved. What happened? Is it not all the Lord Jesus Christ now that God has saved us to get us away from the world and get us traveling on as pilgrims and strangers in this world until that day when we when we reach home? What a wonderful thing. Do you know what we're going to be doing in heaven? We're not going to be sitting twiddling our thumbs.

I know that. We're going to see Him. We're going to serve Him.

We're going to sing His praise. But I'll tell you one thing, above all, that I'm glad I'll be able to worship then as I can't worship now. Most of us would like to be better gospel preachers.

I would. Most of us would like us to be better at ministry. The word, I would.

You ever thought of being a better worshiper? Maybe that's more important even. So may the Lord help us to feed on the Lord Jesus Christ.