Weekly Pursuit – Week 1 of April
Verse:
Exo. 16:35 “And the children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to inhabitable land; they ate the manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.”
Excerpts:
Over a period of forty years, God gave the children of Israel nothing to eat except manna…. From John 6 we… know that this heavenly manna is a type of Christ. Christ came from God to be our diet. We need to eat Him, drink Him, and breathe Him.
Manna produces a metabolic change in which the Egyptian element is replaced by the heavenly element. Such a heavenly metabolism causes God’s people to be transformed. In name, the children of Israel were not Egyptians. But in nature and in composition they did not differ from the Egyptians in the least. By giving the people manna God seemed to be saying, “I have rescued you from Egypt positionally, but you have not yet been changed dispositionally. Now I shall change your constitution by changing your diet from an Egyptian diet to a heavenly diet. In this way I shall change your nature and your being, and I shall constitute you into a peculiar people. Because I want you to be heavenly, I shall not feed you with anything which has its source in the earth. Day by day, I shall send heavenly food, food from My dwelling place in heaven. This food will change your constitution.” May we all see that God’s intention in His salvation is to work Himself into us and to change our constitution by feeding us with heavenly food.
The heavenly diet fulfills God’s purpose. Those who built the tabernacle were not Egyptians. They were those with a heavenly constitution. It was at least four months after the children of Israel left Egypt that they began to build the tabernacle. During these months, their diet had been changed and their constitution was at least in the process of changing and of being replaced with the element of manna. By feeding on manna, God’s people eventually became manna. As those constituted of manna, they could build the tabernacle as God’s dwelling place. This picture shows that only those who have been reconstituted with Christ are qualified to build up the church as God’s dwelling place today. (Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 33-34)