１
At the commencement of the first God-man’s ministry, He was baptized to fulfill all righteousness, recognizing that according to His flesh (His humanity—1:14; Rom. 1:3; 8:3), He was good for nothing but death and burial—Matt. 3:15-17.
２
He trained His disciples to learn from Him (11:29) in the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish; His “looking up to heaven” to bless the five loaves and two fish (14:19) indicates His realizing that the source of blessing was not Him, the sent One, but the Father, the sending One (John 10:30; 5:19, 30; 7:6, 8, 18).
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The Lord did not remain in the issue of the miracle with the crowds but went away from them to be with the Father privately on the mountain in prayer—Matt. 14:22-23; Luke 6:12.
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The Lord lived a life of contacting God (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:28; Heb. 7:25), living in the presence of God without ceasing (Acts 10:38c; John 8:29; 16:32), and of contacting people, ministering God into them to bring them into the jubilee of God’s New Testament economy (Luke 4:18-19; Heb. 8:2; cf. Gen. 14:18; Acts 6:4).
５
He was a man in whom Satan, the ruler of the world, had nothing (no ground, no chance, no hope, no possibility in anything)—John 14:30b, cf. v. 20; 2 Cor. 12:2a; Col. 1:27; 2 Tim. 4:22; John 3:6b; 4:23-24; 1 John 5:4, 18.
E
The only way to live the life of a God-man according to the Lord’s model is to set our entire being on the mingled spirit, walking, living, and having our being according to the mingled spirit—Rom. 8:2, 4, 10, 6, 11, 16; 1 Cor. 6:17; Rom. 10:12; Gal. 5:25; Eph. 6:17-18; 1 Thes. 5:16-20; 1 Tim. 4:6-7; 2 Tim. 1:6-7.
F
“We should all declare that we want to live the life of a God-man. Eventually, the God-men will be the victors, the overcomers, the Zion within Jerusalem. This will bring in a new revival which has never been seen in history, and this will end this age”—Life-study of 1 and 2 Chronicles, p. 28.
Morning Nourishment
Matt. 3:15-16 …For it is fitting for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness….And having been baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him.11:29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart…
As the first God-man, Christ lived on earth in a particular way for the accomplishing of God’s eternal economy, which ultimately consummates in the New Jerusalem. The very center of the four Gospels is Christ. Matthew 1:18 and 20 say that this God-man’s conception was of the Holy Spirit. The God-man was one person but of two sources. The first source is divine, and the second source is human. He was one person of two natures—human and divine.
Before He carried out any part of His ministry, the first thing He did was to be baptized to fulfill the righteousness according to the way of righteousness brought in by John (Matt. 3:15; 21:32)….The Lord Jesus recognized that, according to His flesh (His humanity—John 1:14; Rom. 1:3; 8:3), He was good for nothing but death and burial. Jesus needed to be baptized because He became flesh, and the flesh, in the eyes of God, is good for nothing but death and burial. To bury such a dead person by baptism is the way of righteousness, not the way of the law with its statutes and ordinances. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” pp. 473-475)
Today’s Reading
The Lord told the disciples that they needed to learn from Him, indicating that He was their pattern [Matt. 11:29].Matthew 14:19 says that He took the five loaves and two fish and when He was going to bless them, He looked up to heaven. In other words, He blessed the food by looking up to heaven. Looking up to heaven indicates that He was looking up to His Father in heaven….He was the sent One….The sending One, the Father, should be the source of blessing.
Here is a great lesson for us to learn. Most readers of the Bible would pay attention to the miracle of creating something from nothing performed by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 14. But we need to see the pattern that the Lord set up for us here. We need to remember that He looked up to the Father in heaven and blessed the five loaves and two fish in front of His disciples. After His blessing in this way, He told the disciples what to do. No doubt, what He did was a pattern for the disciples to learn from Him. According to this pattern, we have to realize that we are not the Sender but the ones sent by the Sender. Regardless of how much we can do, we should realize that we still need the blessing from the source, from our Sender, that we can pass on to the benefited ones.
After performing the miracle, the Lord went up to the mountain privately to pray (v. 23; cf. Luke 6:12). The Lord did not remain in the issue of the miracle with the crowds but went away from them to be with the Father privately on the mountain in prayer. If we go to a certain place and have a great success, would we leave right away, or would we remain in this big success to enjoy it? We need to see and follow the pattern of the Lord Jesus. He did not remain in the issue of the great miracle that He performed. Instead, He went up to the mountain privately to pray. The word privately…means He did not let the people know that He was going to pray. Otherwise, they would have followed Him. He went away from them to be with the Father privately in prayer. I like these three phrases: to be with the Father, on the mountain, and in prayer. We should learn from the Lord’s pattern here by exercising to be with Him on the mountain in prayer. His looking up to heaven means that He had no trust in Himself. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” pp. 561, 564)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” chs. 1, 4-6, 8, 10, 13-14, 16