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In Egypt, the wilderness, and the good land, the people of Israel experienced three stages of eating:
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In Egypt the people of Israel ate the passover lamb—12:3, 8-9:
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Just as the roasted flesh of the passover lamb was to be eaten for life supply, so we need to eat Christ for our life supply—vv. 8-10; John 6:53, 55-57:
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To solve the problem of the fall of man and to accomplish God’s original intention, both life and redemption are needed.
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God’s judicial redemption through the blood of Christ is the procedure to reach God’s goal of dispensing Christ as life into us for our organic salvation—Rom. 5:10.
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The children of Israel were to eat the passover lamb with its head, legs, and inward parts—Exo. 12:9:
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The head signifies wisdom, the legs signify activity and move, and the inward parts signify the inward parts of Christ’s being, including His mind, emotion, will, and heart with all their functions.
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Eating the passover lamb with the head, legs, and inward parts signifies taking Christ in His entirety with His wisdom, His activity and move, and His inward parts—John 6:57; 1 Cor. 1:24; Rev. 14:4b; Phil. 1:8.
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In the wilderness the people of Israel ate manna—Exo. 16:14-16, 31; Num. 11:7:
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By giving His people manna to eat, God indicated that His intention was to change their constitution by changing their diet—Exo. 16:14-15:
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In name the children of Israel were not Egyptian, but in nature and in constitution they did not differ from the Egyptians in the least—v. 3.
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The Egyptian diet denotes all the things we desire to feed on in order to find satisfaction—Num. 11:4-6.
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God wanted His redeemed people to forget the Egyptian diet and to partake of heavenly food—Deut. 8:3:
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The more manna we eat, the more we correspond to God, are identified with Him, and live and walk according to what He is.
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What helps us most in our daily living with the Lord is eating Christ as the heavenly food; by eating Christ, we become Christ; that is, Christ becomes our constituent—John 6:56-58.
Morning Nourishment
Exo. 12:3 …Each man shall take a lamb according to his fathers’ house, a lamb for a household.9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but roasted with fire—its head with its legs and with its inward parts.
1 Cor. 5:7 …Our Passover, Christ, also has been sacrificed.
In their experience of God’s salvation Israel passed through three stages in their eating. In the first stage they ate the passover lamb in Egypt (Exo. 12), which strengthened them to walk out of Egypt and to be separated from the Egyptian world. (Josh. 5:12, footnote 1)
The head [of the passover lamb] signifies wisdom, the legs signify activity and move, and the inward parts signify the inward parts of Christ’s being, including His mind, emotion, will, and heart with all their functions. Eating the passover lamb with the head, legs, and inward parts signifies taking Christ in His entirety, in His wisdom, activities, move, and inward parts (John 6:57; 1 Cor. 1:24; Rev. 14:4b; Phil. 1:8). (Exo. 12:9, footnote 2)
Today’s Reading
In the second stage they ate the manna in the wilderness (Exo. 16), which reconstituted them with a heavenly element to be a heavenly people. In the third stage they ate the rich produce in the good land, which constituted them further to be an overcoming people…. By their eating in the first two stages the believers are energized to leave the world and are constituted with Christ as the heavenly element. To reach the goal of God’s economy, all Christ’s believers need to progress until they enter into the highest stage of eating Christ as the rich produce of the good land, the all-inclusive Spirit, that they may overcome the spiritual enemies, be built up to be God’s dwelling place, and establish God’s kingdom on earth. (Josh. 5:12, footnote 1)[The] manna (Exo. 16:15, 31), [is] a type of Christ as the unique, heavenly food for God’s people (John 6:31-35). By giving them manna to eat, God indicated that His intention was to change the nature of His people, to change their very constitution, for the accomplishing of His purpose. Because the children of Israel were still constituted with the Egyptian element and were thus the same as the Egyptians, they were not qualified to build up the tabernacle as God’s habitation on earth. For forty years God gave the children of Israel nothing to eat but manna (Exo. 16:35; Num. 11:6). This shows that God’s intention in His salvation is to work Himself into the believers in Christ and to change their constitution by feeding them with Christ as their unique heavenly food, thereby reconstituting them with Christ in order to qualify them to build up the church as God’s dwelling place. In fact, after being reconstituted with Christ, the believers themselves become the dwelling place of God. (Exo. 16:4, footnote 1)
The Lord Jesus is the real manna. In John 6 He indicates that we should seek Him and eat Him. However, not many Christians realize the need for a change of diet. All those who have been regenerated need to change their diet. This is the reason that Exodus 16 is even more crucial than Exodus 12. In chapter 12 we see a people who have been redeemed, but we do not see a people who have been reconstituted. At the time of chapter 14, God’s people had come out of Egypt, but Egypt had not come out of them. According to their constitution, they were still Egyptians. Thus, God’s intention was to change their constitution by changing their diet. By the time the children of Israel had built the tabernacle, their diet had been changed. Their constitution had probably begun to change also. When they were building the tabernacle, they did not eat Egyptian food. Instead, their diet consisted of manna. (Life-study of Exodus, pp. 410-411)
Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 42; Life-study of Colossians, msg. 6; CWWL, 1978, vol. 2, “Life Messages, Volume 1,” chs. 12, 27-28