This week in our morning revival we come to Leviticus 11 where we want to see two main items, The Significance of Eating and the Defeat of Death. More exactly, we want to see what is the significance of eating Jesus and how should we cooperate with the Lord so that He may defeat and eliminate death.
God spoke extensively both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament concerning our eating. In the garden of Eden God didn’t give man any other commandment except regarding his eating, that he would not eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil but eat the tree of life.
Now in Leviticus 11 Jehovah gave specific commandments regarding His people’s diet, their eating.
But what is the significance of eating, and what does it mean to eat the Lord Jesus? We may have heard that we need to eat Jesus, we may sing songs that encourage us to eat the Lord, and we may encourage one another to eat Jesus, but what is the significance of eating Jesus?
We need to come to the Lord like a little child, being emptied from our previous knowledge to receive something fresh and new from Him regarding the matter of eating Jesus.
No matter how long we have been a believer, no matter how long ago we came into the church life, and even no matter how long we have been serving the Lord, we need to seek the Lord in a fresh way so that He would grant us to know what it is to eat Jesus, and that we would actually eat Jesus every day
. If we have an open heart and an exercised spirit, being quiet before the Lord that He may speak to us, He will show us the intrinsic significance of eating Jesus, and we will be those who eat Him every day.
Knowing the Significance of Eating Jesus and Practicing to Eat Jesus and be Supplied by Him
In order for us to know the real meaning of eating in Leviticus 11 we need to know the significance of eating.
To eat is to contact things outside of us that could affect us, it is to take things into us that will affect us organically. Eating is not just contacting something but also receiving something into us, into our being.
For example, Jeremiah found God’s word and ate them, and they became the joy and rejoicing of His heart (Jer. 15:16).
Something happened within our being when we eat something. Our body knows that we have eaten something, our mouth knows the taste, and we have the feeling of satisfaction.
Once a thing is received into us, that thing can be digested inside to become our constituent that is, our very being, our constitution. In other words, we are what we eat, that is, we are a constitution of the food that we eat and digest (see John 6:53-57).
What we eat becomes our constitution. What we taste, masticate, ingest, digest, and assimilate becomes our very being. This is why we need to know the intrinsic significance of eating Jesus and be those who practice eating the Lord every day to be supplied by Him.
To eat the Lord is first to receive Him into us as our life; from God’s point of view, this is the first thing He wants us to do.
We shouldn’t do things for Him first; we first need to stop even the thought of doing things for the Lord and simply receive the divine element into our being. Then, eating the Lord is coming to Him and believing into Him.
We need to come to the Son and we will not hunger; when we come to the Lord, we contact Him. We may read the Bible, pray over God’s word, have a time with the Lord in the morning, sing, and pray, yet we may do all these without contacting the Lord.
Doing all these things toward the Lord yet without contacting Him is hypocrisy. We need to contact the Lord and come to Him; we may have our Bible, our portion of reading, or our song book, but we don’t eat the Lord unless we come to Him as a living person, and unless we believe into Him.
Coming to the Lord and believing into Him brings us into oneness with Him who is the bread of life, and we receive Him into us. As seen in John 5:39-40, we need to not just search the Scriptures but come to the Lord Jesus!
We shouldn’t go through a routine or follow a method in our time with the Lord, but simply come to the Lord as we read His word. It is the Spirit who gives life; the words that the Lord speaks to us are spirit and are life (John 6:63).
To eat the Lord Jesus is to come to the word and contact Him as the Spirit in the word, and then receive words that are spirit and life.
Our whole being is focused on the Lord, we don’t have music running in the background or headphones, and we’re not double-minded in any way; we simply come to the Lord as living person.
He is the bread of God who came down from heaven to give life to the world; He’s the living bread, and for us to eat Him, we need to see that He passed through death and entered into resurrection.
He said that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood we have no share with Him; this implies His death and resurrection.
To eat Jesus means to receive the crucified and resurrected Christ through His word by exercising our spirit to receive the life-giving Spirit as our life supply. When this happens, we sense that something takes place in our spirit; unless our mind is utterly occupied and distracted, we will know in our spirit that we ate the Lord.
However, in light of this, did we eat Jesus today? How many days this year did we actually eat Jesus? We may have morning revival, we may pray over some verses, we may read the ministry, but do we actually come to the Lord Himself?
Do we touch Him as a Person through His word, realizing He’s the life-giving Spirit?
We need to exercise our spirit over the Word of God and learn to eat the Lord day by day, receiving the crucified and resurrected Christ through His word and being supplied by Him as the life-giving Spirit. This is the intrinsic significance of eating Jesus.
Whenever we read the Bible we need to come to the Lord.
Lord Jesus, we can’t live without You. We come to You in to eat You Your word. To whom shall we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life, and we are hungry for You! We exercise our spirit to receive the crucified and resurrected Christ through His word so that we may be supplied by Christ as the life-giving Spirit! Thank You Lord, You are the life-giving Spirit in our spirit, and we can contact You right now to receive Your supply. Teach us to eat You. Disciple us to eat the Lord every day so that we may be constituted with Him!
Taking in the Lord to Digest and Assimilate Him so that He may Become our Life
To eat is to contact something and take it into us to be digested in our being, becoming part of our being. We all are a constitution of the food that we eat and digest; what we eat and digest eventually becomes us, our constitution.
For us to live a holy life as required by our holy God, we need to be careful in our contact with people, for our contact with certain kinds of people can cause us to be reconstituted and thus make us another kind of person.
We need to be those who daily take in the Lord to digest and assimilate Him so that He may become life to us; this is signified by eating the loaf on the table at the Lord’s table. The loaf is there on the table not just for display but for us all to eat.
The Lord took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, Take; this is My body (see Mark 14:22). Eating the bread of the Lord’s table indicates that the Lord comes into us as our life supply, He is digested, and He becomes part of our being, our very constitution (see 1 Cor. 10:17).
There’s one loaf on the table; we all are many, but as we eat this one loaf, we become one – we become one loaf, the Body of Christ.
There’s not only an organic union between us and the food that we eat, digest, and assimilate; we are also mingled with the food that we assimilate into us.
The food we eat becomes us, and we become the food that we eat. If we eat Christ and He is digested and assimilated into our being, Christ becomes the very fiber and cells of our being, and we become the same as He is, expressing Him.
We need to eat Him in such a way that He as a man would be our all. We need to masticate Jesus, eat Jesus, and assimilate Jesus, and then we will bring Him as our real meal offering to the meetings of the church. Amen!
If we look at the matter of eating physically we will see a very mysterious matter taking place: eating, drinking, and assimilating food involve not just a mingling of the food with our being, but also a becoming – the food becomes us and we become the food (which has become us).
This is why, after digesting the food, it’s impossible to find where the food is, for it has become part of our being. This is the deep significance of eating the Lord at the Lord’s table, and the significance of eating the Lord Jesus daily.
Eating, digesting, and assimilating food involve an intrinsic mingling of the food with our being; eating, digesting, and assimilating also involve a becoming, for the food that we assimilate becomes our very being (Ezek. 3:1-3; John 6:57, 63).
When others contact us, they should sense the bread of life constituted in us, and this will bring them into a deeper fellowship with the Lord.
Lord Jesus, we want to take You in to digest You and assimilate You so that You may become our very life and person. Thank You Lord for becoming our food; we can eat You in Your word, and You can be our daily supply as the life-giving Spirit. Lord, we want to masticate Jesus, digest Jesus, and become Jesus, bringing Jesus wherever we go by virtue of having Him wrought into our being. Mingle Yourself more with us, Lord, and constitute Yourself into our being. Keep us eating You, Lord, and digesting You until we assimilate You in our being and You become us and we become You!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Mark, msg. 44 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 4, The Significance of Eating and the Defeat of Death.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Thou in the Word art the Spirit and life, / Thus by the Word I may feed upon Thee; / Thou dost as Spirit in my spirit live, / Thus I may drink in the spirit of Thee. / Now to enjoy Thee I come to Thy Word, / On Thee to feed till my hunger is o’er. / Now in my spirit I turn unto Thee, / Of Thee to drink till I’m thirsty no more. (Hymns #811)
# Let us eat Jesus every day, / Eating His flesh in such a way / That in the trials great or small / He as a Man will be our all. / Eat, eat more of Jesus! / Eat, eat more of Jesus! / Why should we undernourished be / When we have His humanity? (Hymns #1146)
# By the death of Thy redemption, / That Thy life Thou may impart, / E’en Thyself to us Thou gavest / That we share in all Thou art. / By the bread and wine partaking, / We Thy death display and prove; / Eating, drinking of Thyself, Lord, / We remember Thee with love. (Hymns #221)
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