«　WEEK 4　DAY 2　»

　　Jer. 15:16 Your words were found and I ate them, and Your word became to me the gladness and joy of my heart, for I am called by Your name, O Jehovah, God of hosts.

　　John 6:57-58 As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven…; he who eats this bread shall live forever.

　　[Jeremiah 15:16] indicates that the word of God is good for us to enjoy. God’s word makes our heart joyful. What is crucial here is the revelation that God’s word is the divine supply as food to nourish us. Every kind of food has a nourishing element. God’s word, the divine supply, surely contains the element of nourishment. This nourishment is related to the divine dispensing, to God’s dispensing Himself into us. Through the word as our food, God is dispensing His riches into our inner being to nourish us that we may be constituted with His element. (Life-study of Jeremiah, p. 116)

　　The divine concept concerning the Word of God is that the word from the Lord is food for us to feed on for our nourishment. Matthew 4:4 says, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.” The divine concept concerning God’s Word is that it is food by which we are not only taught but also nourished. Jeremiah 15:16 says, “Your words were found and I ate them.” Jeremiah took the word as food to eat. First Corinthians 3:1-2a says, “I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshy, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food.” The apostle Paul’s concept concerning the Word was that the Word was either milk or solid food. Milk or solid food is something for us to feed on in order to be nourished. Hebrews 5:12-14 says, “When because of the time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you what the rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God are and have become those who have need of milk and not of solid food. For everyone who partakes of milk is inexperienced in the word of righteousness, for he is an infant; but solid food is for the full-grown, who because of practice have their faculties exercised for discriminating between both good and evil.” The Word is nourishment as milk for the young ones and as solid food for the mature ones. First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.” All these passages confirm that we need our concept renewed concerning the Word of God. The natural concept concerning the Word is that it is a certain kind of teaching or doctrine, but the divine concept is that the Word of God is food to nourish our spirit. (CWWL, 1965, vol. 2, “The Tree of Life,” pp. 175-176)

　　In John 6 the Lord Jesus says that He is the heavenly bread for us to eat (vv. 32, 53-54, 56-58). In the same chapter the Lord twice says, “I am the bread of life” (vv. 35, 48). The bread of life is the life supply in the form of food, like the tree of life (Gen. 2:9), which is also the life supply “good for food.” The food we eat eventually is mingled with our being. If the food taken in by us does not mingle with us, we must have poor digestion. The food that we eat and digest is assimilated into our being. The food becomes our tissue, bone, flesh, and skin. This means that the food eaten, digested, and assimilated by us actually becomes us. This surely is a matter of mingling. Therefore, it would certainly be incorrect to say that the food we eat is not mingled with us. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 4)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1978, vol. 2, “Life Messages, Volume 1,” chs. 10, 26, 29-30; CWWL, 1989, vol. 3, “The Experience and Growth in Life,” ch. 1; CWWL, 1989, vol. 1, “The Practical and Organic Building Up of the Church,” ch. 5