«　WEEK 5　DAY 1　»

　　Josh. 5:12 And the manna ceased on that day, when they ate of the produce of the land…

　　John 6:51 I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread which I will give is My flesh, given for the life of the world.

　　57…He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.

　　The ceasing of the manna when the people began to eat the produce of the land indicates that the produce of the land was the continuation of the manna. The manna eaten by Israel in their wandering in the wilderness…typifies Christ as the heavenly food given directly by God to His chosen people, which requires no labor on the part of the eaters. The rich produce of the promised land given by God to Israel in their fighting in Canaan (Deut. 8:7-10) typifies Christ as the consummated life supply (the life-giving Spirit—Gal. 3:14) given to the believers, which requires them to labor on Him. (Josh. 5:12, footnote 1)

　　When we enjoy Christ, He makes us His possession. This is something organic. If we take Christ, possess Christ, and enjoy Christ as our all-inclusive good land, the land will become our supply….The main thing that the land affords us is food….Then we eat the food that is produced by our labor on the land, and as a result we become organic.

　　Anything that we take into us as food transforms us organically. When the Israelites were in Egypt, they ate Egyptian food, and this food caused them to have an Egyptian constitution. Eventually, God brought them out of Egypt and into the wilderness, where they remained for forty years. Every day while they were in the wilderness they ate something heavenly—manna. The manna constituted them into a heavenly people. Eventually, the manna ceased…(Joshua 5:12)…. From that time onward,…they began to be constituted with the produce of the good land. Thus, the children of Israel were constituted in three ways: first, in Egypt with Egyptian food; second, in the wilderness with manna; and third, in Canaan with the produce of the land. In each case they were constituted not by teachings or regulations but by what they ate.

　　As believers in Christ today, we also are constituted according to what we eat. If we want to be a heavenly people, we need to eat Christ as our heavenly manna. If we want to be overcomers, we need to labor on Christ as our good land. To labor on Christ means to gain Christ as our enjoyment…. Through our labor something will be produced, and that produce will become our food, our supply. As we eat Christ as this food and enjoy Him, we will be constituted with Him, being made the same as Christ in life and nature. This is what Paul meant when he said, “For to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21).

　　This enjoyment of Christ will transform us metabolically and cause us to become Christ’s treasure, His possession. Paul speaks of this in Ephesians 1. In this chapter we first have God’s choosing and predestinating, and then we have Christ’s redeeming. Through the redemption of Christ, we enter into Christ as a particular kind of element, and this element becomes our enjoyment that constitutes us into God’s inheritance.

　　First, God comes into us to be our inheritance. When we enjoy Christ, He constitutes us to be God’s inheritance. On the one hand, we have Christ as our good land, as our possession. On the other hand, the enjoyment of this possession constitutes us with Christ, and we thereby become God’s inheritance. We need to take the all-inclusive Christ as our good land and labor on Him to gain some produce, which will be our organic, transforming food. As we eat this food, we will grow and gradually mature in the divine life. We will be constituted with Christ organically, transformed by Christ as a new element. Then in an organic way we will become God’s inheritance, His treasure and possession. (Life-study of Joshua, pp. 35-37)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Joshua, msgs. 5-6, 12-13