God supplied His people Israel with manna every day during their journey through the wilderness; every morning the manna descended from heavens, and the children of Israel had to gather enough for one day. How wonderful it was to eat heavenly food day by day!
Furthermore, God commanded His people to take an omerful of manna (the same quantity they would gather for their daily supply) and place it in the golden pot in the ark of the covenant before the tablets of the law, so that it would be as a memorial for the generations to come how God fed His people in the wilderness.
The open manna was for everyone to gather and enjoy day by day, but this “hidden manna” was before God’s testimony inside the golden pot, inside the ark, inside the Holy of Holies, inside the tabernacle. This shows that the focal point of the entire tabernacle was the hidden manna.
In our experience of Christ, what we enjoy of Him as our daily supply becomes digested and assimilated into us to be the “hidden manna”, the Christ constituted into our being as a testimony for generations to come and for eternity.
Wow, Hallelujah! Christ is daily available for us to enjoy, eat, and experience, and as we give Him the ground in our being to spread in us and work Himself into us, He is constituted into our being to become the “hidden manna”, a memorial between us and the Lord for eternity.
Also, the Christ we enjoy, digest, and assimilate is for the building up of the church as the house of God. Hallelujah, whatever we eat of Christ will be an eternal memorial in two aspects: the aspect of the enjoyment of Christ as our reconstituting element and the aspect of Christ as the supply to make us God’s dwelling place in the universe!
For eternity we will remember how we enjoyed Christ, fed on Him, taken Him as our daily supply, and experienced Him for Him to be constituted into our being for the building up of the church. Oh, may we be the overcomers who pay the price today to gain Christ as the open manna so that He would be constituted into our being to be the hidden manna, a continual memorial between us and the Lord forever!
Enjoy Christ as the Manna and He will become the Hidden Manna to Constitute us as Overcomers
Morning by morning the manna was lying out in the open on the ground in a public way for the children of Israel to gather and eat; the hidden manna, however, was within the golden pot which was within the ark of the covenant, which in turn was within the Holy of Holies, which was within the tabernacle.
The hidden manna is very significant, since it is promised to the overcoming ones by the Lord in Rev. 2:17. In our Christian life and experience, the open manna is the Christ who is available to us but we haven’t yet eaten, whereas the hidden manna refers to the Christ which we have eaten, digested, and assimilated.
When we take Christ in as the manna and give Him the thoroughfare in our being, He is being digested and assimilated into us and becomes the hidden manna in us; this hidden manna is the focal point of our Christian life and the focal point of God’s building.
Because the hidden manna was in the center of the tabernacle, of the Holy of Holies, and of the ark, the hidden manna was the focal point of the experience of the children of Israel in the wilderness and the focal point of God’s building. The focal point of God’s building today is the Christ which we eat, digest, and assimilate. The Christ we daily eat, digest, and assimilate is what makes us and constitutes us into God’s building.
The Christ we enjoy, eat, and digest is the One who changes our inward constitution to the heavenly and divine constitution so that we may become intrinsically a part of God’s building as His corporate expression in the universe. This makes us overcomers, those who overcome any hindrance and frustration to eating the Lord.
The enemy’s lie is that it’s too difficult to be an overcomer, but the Lord’s word is clear: if we eat Christ as the manna daily, He becomes in us the hidden manna reconstituting our being with God Himself, and this hidden manna produces us as God’s overcomers today.
It is simple to be an overcomer – and at the same time it is quite hard. All we have to do is eat nothing else but Christ as our daily manna, so that He may reconstitute our inward being with Himself and become the hidden manna, the Christ we have enjoyed, eaten, digested, and assimilated, and this One in us will produce us as His overcomers!
Lord Jesus, make us Your overcomers, those who eat Christ as the open manna until they are filled with Christ and reconstituted with Christ for God’s building. Lord, we choose to be those who eat You as our daily supply so that You may become our constitution, the very fiber of our being, until You become the hidden manna which produces us as God’s overcomers. We refuse to believe the enemy’s lie that we can’t be overcomers, and we choose to overcome anything by eating Jesus as our daily manna, our daily food supply!
The Christ we Eat, Digest, and Assimilate will be an Eternal Memorial!
It is quite interesting to notice how God said that the hidden manna (an omerful of manna taken and put into the golden pot inside the ark of the covenant) would be a memorial for the generations to come of how God fed His people throughout their journey in the wilderness (see Exo. 16:16, 32).
This means that the Christ we eat, digest, and assimilate today is being preserved as a memorial in the divine nature (signified by the golden pot) in our being within. If we eat Christ every day as the open manna, He is being constituted into our being and preserved in the divine nature in us as a memorial between us and God. This memorial will be a remembrance for eternity of how we ate God, digested God, and had Him assimilated into our being through our many experiences of Christ.
The fact that the Christ we eat is the Christ we preserve indicates that whatever we eat of Christ will become a memorial in the ages to come. Only the Christ we have enjoyed and experienced is worthy of remembrance. What we will remember for eternity is not our sufferings and losses and persecution but the Christ we have enjoyed and were constituted with.
Hallelujah, the Christ we enjoy and experience today becomes our very constitution inwardly and our eternal memorial forever! Nothing of what we are, we have, or we can do is worthy of remembrance; only the Christ we have eaten, enjoyed, and experienced to become our constitution – only He is worthy to be an eternal memorial. What we will remember in eternity will be nothing else but Christ.
We need to eat Christ today so that we may have a rich memorial of Him for eternity! If we are right with the Lord every day and eat Him consistently, we will have much to recall in eternity. Hallelujah, for eternity we will recall the wonderful times we had in the church life eating Christ and enjoying Him with the saints. This is why the church life is nothing else but eating, drinking, and breathing Jesus together with His crazy lovers and loving seekers.
Whatever we enjoy of Christ in the church will become a memorial which will be preserved in the presence of God, even in His very being. What we will recall for eternity is Christ being enjoyed and experienced by us to be our reconstituting element and to build up the church as the Body of Christ. For eternity we will remember how we today enjoyed Christ and how we took Him as our supply to become God’s dwelling place.
Today this Christ as the manna eaten by us is the focal point of our Christian life and the focal point of God’s building (see Heb. 9:3-4; Eph. 4:16; Col. 2:19). Our only focus in our Christian life should be eating Jesus every day. When we meet with other believers, we need to eat Jesus more.
Our whole life should be a life of eating Jesus, experiencing Him, and enjoying Him for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
Lord Jesus, keep us eating You day by day so that You may become our inward constitution and our eternal memorial. Lord, we love to open to You, deal with anything between us and You, and eat You both individually and corporately. Oh Lord Jesus, keep us eating You morning by morning, day by day, and week by week both by ourselves and with the saints. May eating Jesus as the manna be the focal point of our Christian life so that we may be inwardly supplied to build up the church as the Body of Christ and have many eternal memories of eating Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ed Marks’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 38-39, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (1), week 9 / msg 9, The Change of Diet to the Heavenly Christ as the Unique Food for God’s People.
- Hymns on this topic:
# 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)
# Will you be an overcomer? / Testimony bear! / Keep away from false religion, / ”Hidden manna” share. (Hymns # 894)
# Some, these days, would tell us that our Jesus is not food, / That we only need to know about Him and do good, / But we’re glad to tell you brothers, it’s just not that way— / Jesus is the bread of life; we eat Him every day. / We love the church life, eating, / drinking, breathing Jesus. / We love the church life, taking / in God’s Word. / We love to hear those “O Lord, Amen, Hallelujahs!” / We love the church life, feasting / with the Lord. (Song on eating Jesus in the church life)
About aGodMan
Just as the manna in the golden pot was the focal point of God’s dwelling place, so Christ as the manna eaten by us should be the focal point of our being. The tabernacle was God’s dwelling place in the Old Testament, and we are God’s dwelling place today. From the standpoint of experience, we may consider ourselves as identical to the tabernacle, for the tabernacle was God’s building, and we are also His building. The church is God’s tabernacle today. We are corporately identical to the tabernacle because we are part of the church. As part of the church, the focal point of our being should be manna. To describe this manna in a fuller way, we may say that this manna is the Christ we have eaten, digested, and assimilated. Hence, the focal point of God’s building today is the Christ eaten, digested, and assimilated by His people. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Exodus, pp. 447-448)