The table of the bread of the presence (also called the showbread table) in the Holy Place in the tabernacle is a very sweet and satisfying place to be, because there’s always food there – permanently! In this item of the furnishings of the tabernacle we see how God in Christ wants to be enjoyed by His people as food in a particular way.
We need to see how crucial it is for us to enjoy God in Christ as food. In the tabernacle as God’s house you could liken the table with the bread of the presence as God’s dining table where His people feast with God and God feasts with His people. This table is 1 cubit x 2 cubits x 1.5 cubits high, and on it there are twelve loaves of bread (fresh, every morning) in two rows of six, with frankincense spread over them.
In our crystallization study of Exodus we want to not merely see what are the types and their significance but how they apply to our spiritual experience, and more particularly, what are the experiences of Christ that we need for the building up of the church.
God ordained that the bread of the presence would be set before Him every day as a perpetual statute: He wants us to eat Christ as the bread of life not only once in a while but all the time, forever!
Actually, this has been God’s desire from the very beginning when He created man: He put man in front of the tree of life so that man may take God in as life. At the end of the Bible, similarly, we see the tree of life both as a reward to those who was their robes to have the right to take the tree of life, and as the eternal life supply of the city of New Jerusalem.
It is vitally important for us as believers in Christ to eat Christ every day, taking Him into us as life, so that we may live because of Him and build up the church as the Body of Christ.
We All need to Learn to Feed on Christ, to Take Him In, and to Enjoy Him as our Food
Our need today as God’s people is to learn to feed on Christ, to take Him in, and to enjoy Him as our spiritual food. The Lord Jesus testified that man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God: we live daily by the word of God, by Christ as life embodied in His word to be our supply (Matt. 4:4).
Jeremiah found God’s words and ate them, and they became the gladness and rejoicing of his heart; daily, we need to come to God in His word not merely to get knowledge but to eat Christ, the One who is embodied in His word (Jer. 15:16). If we eat Christ in His word, if we feed on the Lord daily, we will live because of Him, just as He lived because of the Father as He fed on Him (John 6:57).
The matter of eating Christ is something crucial and central in God’s economy; it is not merely something elementary for the new believers, and we can never graduate from eating. Eating Jesus is the way to grow in life and build up the church as the Body of Christ; eating Jesus is our destiny, and eating Jesus is the Lord’s recovery!
Whenever we stop eating Christ, we enter into degradation, and whenever we compromise in the matter of eating, many other things come in. Our eating Christ needs to go deeper: we need to cal on the Lord, pray-read His word, and take Christ in as food day by day!
We should not merely read the Bible or spiritual books formally or legalistically, but we should eat the Lord, realizing that we cannot live without eating Christ and feeding on Him! This is our lifeline, and this is what the Lord’s recovery is about! Again and again we need to be reminded that we cannot live without eating Christ; this is our need both individually and corporately.
Eating Jesus causes us to become God’s testimony, and if there’s no eating Christ, there’s no testimony. As we consider the matter of eating, we could say that there are three main things:
- We need to receive something organic from outside of us into us; this is the process of eating.
- The food we eat needs to be digested and assimilated into our being; merely taking organic food into us doesn’t mean much unless the foodstuff is digested and assimilated to become the very fibers of our being.
- In order to eat, we particularly have to use our mouth; we can’t eat with our mouth shut.
Spiritually, this is the same: in order for us to eat, we need to see that Christ is the bread of life, the living bread, the food that comes from the heaven to give life to us; this food needs to come into us through the exercise of our spirit, and Christ needs to be digested and assimilated into our being.
We need to open our mouth, exercise our spirit, call on the name of the Lord, and pray-read His word. We may think that we “pray silently”, but to really eat Christ and take Him in, we need to exercise our spirit! We need to take the word of God in the Bible and pray-read it, mixing it with our prayer and our calling on the Lord, until it is being digested and assimilated into our being to become our very fiber.
Lord Jesus, we want to learn to eat You, take You in, and enjoy You as our spiritual food day by day. Lord, save us from not eating Jesus as our food. Teach us to eat You in Your word. We want to not merely read the Bible but call on Your name and exercise our spirit to pray-read Your word so that the divine life would be dispensed into us and we would become Your testimony! Lord Jesus, we love You! We open to You! We exercise our spirit to call on Your name and take in Your word by means of all prayer and petition so that we may feed on You as our spiritual food!
God’s Economy is that we Eat Christ and be Constituted with Him to Become His Expression
Eating Jesus is connected to God’s economy: actually, God’s economy is that we eat Christ and be constituted with Him in order to become His corporate expression (see 1 Tim. 1:4). God’s economy is an economy of eating Christ to receive Him into us; He wants to dispense Himself into us and impart what He is into us, and the process for doing this is EATING.
Eating Jesus is not “our invention” but the Lord’s word: again and again the Lord said that we need to eat Him, eat His words, eat His flesh, and eat His blood – He is the living bread, the bread of life, the food coming down out of heaven for man to eat and live forever (see John 6:33, 35, 51, 57; 17:22).
God’s economy is not a matter of us doing many outward things for God but of Christ coming into us inwardly; for this, we need to take Christ in by eating Him (Eph. 3:17; John 6:57).
Sadly to say, most things in Christianity today are mainly outward: doing great works for God, helping the people, big services in big buildings, professional singing in the church, sermons, etc; the Lord wants to recover us from anything outward to our inward eating of Christ. He wants to make His home deep down in our heart.
Whatever we do as a Christian or as the church should not be some formality to meet outward requirements but should be according to and as the result of the inward dispensing and constitution going on in our being. Whatever we do should come out of our eating the Lord, otherwise it is a performance, a show, something superficial. The Lord’s recovery must reach the depths of our being!
The Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the eating of Jesus for the building up of the church. This is not only for this age but also for eternity. “O Lord Jesus! Open our eyes that we all may see Your purpose today, Your recovery today, and the goal of Your recovery today.” We need to eat Jesus to grow, to be transformed, and to be built together. Then we will have the building of the church. By this way the Lord is going to fulfill His prophecy regarding the building up of the church. This prophecy is fulfilled by eating Jesus. (Witness Lee, The Greatest Prophecy in the Bible and Its Fulfillment)
As we eat Christ, digest Christ, and assimilate Christ, we are constituted with Him, being made the same as He is in life, nature, and expression, for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ (see Matt. 4:4; 16:18; Eph. 4:16).
We become what we eat: if we eat worldly things, we are filled with the world and we love the world, but if we eat Christ, we become the same as He is as He becomes us. Whatever we take into us constitutes us after it is being digested and assimilated into us.
The Lord Jesus said that He will build His church: how does He build His church? It is not with the “carpenter skills” that He learned from Joseph, neither is it with wood, stones, and nails; Christ builds His church by building Himself into us through our eating Christ and enjoying Him as our food.
We cannot go on a day without eating the Lord; every day we need to eat Him. The Lord must get through in this matter of eating the Lord, and we need to realize that the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of the eating of Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
If we stop eating, the Lord stops growing in us, and the recovery stops. There has to be a reviving in our being concerning eating the Lord – this is not something we graduate from, but this is something that increases as we grow in life!
Lord Jesus, forgive us for being so outward and superficial, and for doing things merely according to the letter of the Bible….Lord, we want to allow You to make Your home deep down in our heart by our eating You in a thorough way. Oh Lord Jesus, we take You in by eating You in Your word for the building up of the church. Amen, Lord, build up Your church through all the saints eating Jesus and enjoying Christ as the spiritual food! Hallelujah, eating Jesus is the way!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, brother James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1972, vol. 3, “The Greatest Prophecy in the Bible and Its Fulfillment,” pp. 486-487, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (3), week 3 (week 27), The Table of the Bread of the Presence.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Eating is man’s destiny / And the Lord’s recovery; / This defeats the enemy— / Overcome! / Come enjoy the tree of life, / Leave the doctrines, leave the strife! / Overcome by eating Christ— / Overcome! (Hymns #1273)
# Let’s enjoy Christ to reach the goal, / Partake of Him to beat the foe, / All His vast riches we extol, / Yes, we are freed from every woe! / We may not know a lot of things, / But we are kept from Satan’s stings / By eating Christ, and Christ alone! (Song on Eating the Lord)
# We must eat Jesus till God can / Have the fulfillment of His plan— / One man expressed for all to see, / One church in each locality. (Hymns #1146)
About aGodMan
God not only desires that man be His vessel to contain Him (Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7) but also wants man to eat, digest, and assimilate Him (John 6:57). When we eat, digest, and assimilate physical food, we are energized and strengthened. The food that we eat is dispensed into our blood, and through the blood into every part of our body. Eventually, the food that we have eaten becomes the fiber, tissue, and cells of our being. In the same way, God’s eternal plan is to dispense Himself into us so that He becomes every fiber of our inward being. He wants to be digested and assimilated by us so that He can become the constituent of our inward being. (Witness Lee, The Divine Dispensing for the Divine Economy, p. 9)
Amen, eating, drinking Him?
Amen Lord!
Praise the Lord