FAMISHED FOR THE WORD
In
our speaking of hunger, we have seen a relationship between physical and
spiritual hunger that is not often recognized by most people of the world. As a
physical life cannot be sustained without physical food, neither can a
spiritual life be sustained without spiritual food.
God
has given us physical hunger so that we can learn that life itself depends upon
him. It is not difficult to see that we need the physical food from his
creation to sustain us in body. We become aware of that every day, usually
around breakfast time.
From
this observation, we should learn that even in our souls and in our spirits, we
need his life-giving spiritual food.
Receiving spiritual food is not simply a one-time event when we are saved, but just
like our physical food, but we need it continually—even every day. As with our
experience in our physical life, our spiritual life may have come alive when we
are born again, but it needs to be sustained to remain healthy.
The Physical and
the Spiritual
Ours
is a world culture that is centered on the physical. Watch any TV show, look at
any of the advertisements, pick up any magazine, walk down to the mailbox and
get your mail, look at the billboards as you are driving—in every single aspect
of our life in the world, we see the emphasis on our physical well-being.
Health
clubs, diet programs, food supplements to promote health, natural food alternatives;
all are sold to us as the keys to caring for our bodies. Clinics and hospitals
are available to care for our infirmities. These are all important. We need to
care for our bodies.
But
what about the care for our souls? What about the care for our spirits? God has
been trying to teach us all throughout history that the daily food for our soul
is not only just as important as the food for our bodies, but that it is more important.
This
fact was the central lesson and actually the entire reason that God sent the
earlier Israelites wandering in the wilderness for forty years. He was teaching
them that life depends upon more than mere physical food, but as Moses told
them, it depends upon “every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Others
writers of the Bible also referred to this lesson of the wilderness. Jesus mentioned
it often in his teachings about spiritual food. He spoke of it with a crowd of
Jews who had come to him looking for something to eat:
Truly,
truly, I tell you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your
fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. This is the bread that
comes down from heaven, so that anyone may eat of it and not die.
I
am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
he will live forever. (John 6:47-51 BSB).
Nourishment and
Life
It
is all about life—not just physical life, but especially about spiritual life.
No matter how we nourish and care for this present physical life, even in the
best of circumstances, it lasts but a moment in time. Our spiritual life
however has the potential to live for all time.
Which
would you say is more important?
For
the people who had come to Jesus looking for food, Jesus told them plainly: “Do
not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life”
(John 6:27).
Nourishing
our bodies is easy for us to understand, but how are we to nourish our souls?
I
have previously quoted some individuals of ancient days who spoke of this
nourishment that they sought:
The
man Job said, “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary
food” (Job 23:12 BSB).
The
Simon Peter knew that to abandon the words of the Lord would be to abandon the
only source of spiritual food that we have.
“Lord,
to whom would we go?” he said to Jesus. “You have the words of eternal life. We
believe and know that You are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69 BSB).
A Craving for
the Word
Peter
later wrote to new believers, “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk,
so that by it you may grow up in your salvation” (1 Peter 2.2 BSB).
We
are infants when it comes to understanding spiritual nutrition, so it is best
to begin here—as newborn babies. We must yearn for the word of God as a newborn
craves the milk of his or her mother.
This
comparison may seem extreme to you. All of us have at least been in the
presence of a newborn baby when he or she is hungry. There is nothing anyone
can do to calm that little one except the mom giving her baby life-giving milk.
The baby cares nothing about taking a walk, or being bounced up and down in
your arms, or in other ways being distracted from his or her hunger. The infant
cannot be distracted. The little one needs food!
For
the sincere believer, especially a new believer, this food is the true Word of
God. To someone new to the faith and sincere in their desire to grow, they seem
to want to devour the Word!
Growing and
Maturing
Certainly
a Christian must also mature. Babies do not continue to consume only milk. If
they did so, they would never develop and grow. In the same way, we as believers
in Christ must begin to take on some of the more difficult to understand truths
of the Bible. We must grow and mature in our faith.
The
Apostle Paul had more trouble with the church in the city of Corinth than
perhaps any other church with which he had been involved. There were people in
that church living in overt sexual sin, others with obvious problems of gluttony,
others with alcohol, church members who treated one another in deplorable
ways…the list could continue. And almost the worst part was that rather than
being ashamed of their lifestyles, they were actually proud of their broadminded
social practices (1 Corinthians 5:2). All in all, they were a troublesome lot.
Although
the problems were many, all of these were merely symptomatic of the root cause.
That problem was that since their spiritual infancy, the people had not grown
in the Lord. They hadn’t grown because they refused to let go of their
lifestyles and habits with which they existed before they were born again. They
wanted the Lord in their lives perhaps, but by observing their immoral
lifestyles, it seemed that they wanted the world more.
In
trying to help them, Paul threw up his hands in despair:
Brothers,
I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—as infants in Christ. I
gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for solid food. In
fact, you are still not ready, for you are still worldly. For since there is
jealousy and dissension among you, are you not worldly? Are you not walking in
the way of man? (1 Corinthians 3:1-3 BSB)
The
writer of the book of Hebrews faced much the same difficulty as did Paul. He
was attempting to teach his readers about the suffering and the high priesthood
of Jesus. Some of this teaching involved a priest of the Old Testament named Melchizedek,
a mysterious character of the Bible who was, as it says “without father or
mother or genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life” (Hebrews 7:5).
However,
like Paul, the writer of Hebrews knew that to continue his teaching would be
useless. The people simply were not ready to hear. In apparent frustration the
writer continues:
We
have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain, because you are dull of
hearing. Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to
reteach you the basic principles of God’s word. You need milk, not solid food!
For
everyone who lives on milk is still an infant, inexperienced in the message of
righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have
trained their senses to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:11-14 BSB)
Feasting on the
Word
Maturity
must occur. But it must begin by devouring the milk of the Word—learning and
understanding the basics of the life of grace and faith through Jesus.
Call
the thought of devouring the Word poetic language or call it a metaphor, the
image of eating the Word of God is found several places in the Bible.
“Your
words were found, and I ate them,” the prophet Jeremiah said to the Lord. “Your
words became a delight to me” (Jeremiah 15:16 BSB).
So
enthusiastic was the writer of Psalm 119 about the word of God that he mentions
God’s word in every one of the one hundred and seventy-six verses of the chapter.
He uses various terms to describe word of the Lord, names like “your precepts,”
“your commandments” and “testimonies,” but every verse contains a reference to
the word of God.
For
instance, he wrote this: “How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter
than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103 NAS)
My Own Hunger
This
is also my own testimony. When I first began to follow Jesus, I could not get
enough of reading the Bible. I needed
to know what it said! I devoured every page! I carried my little New Testament
always in my pocket, and when I had some brief minutes to myself, I read a bit.
Then, when I had to go about my work, I thought about what I had read.
As
I read God’s words with sincerity, I understood much of what it said, but there
were many other things that I did not understand at all. In fact, I will say
that as I first was reading, I found myself asking more questions than I did
finding answers to my questions.
But
that did not matter to me. Like Simon Peter, I knew that I had found the source
of life. Where else would I go?
This
turning point in my life came to me when I was living in India. This was in the
early 1970’s, which some of you also may have lived through. I did not go to
India as a means of seeking truth, as many were doing in those years. It was a
decade when very many people in the west had grown tired and disillusioned with
the Christian church and its failure to address the questions of their souls.
I
was one of those. The church to me had become as something dead—I saw in it all
tradition and rubrics, but no real answers. Many Americans and other
westerners, having become tired of all of this, began to turn to the east to
look for answers. India and the Indian religions was one of the many places
where they looked.
This
is the time when I also went to India, but my purpose was not the same. I
frankly was not interested in religion of any kind at that point of my life. My purpose is
a story unto itself, and I do not have time to relate that bit of personal
history right now, but allow me to say that my purpose centered not upon
myself, but on others. As idealistic as it may sound, in my young and still
teen-aged mind, I wanted to do something to help the people of the world. I had
joined the Peace Corps and went to India as an agriculturist.
However,
while living in India, my hunger for spiritual truth also once again became
kindled. A fire for the quest for truth began to burn within me. I lived in the
Punjab, the area of the Sikh religion. That is spelled s-i-k-h, but it is
pronounced something like s-e-e-k, which is ironic, because that is what I
began to do.
I
lived near to a Sikh temple and was awoken every morning by big loudspeakers
mounted on the temple roof and I think were pointed directly to my roof veranda
where I usually slept outside. Every morning—“Bole So Nihal...Sat Sri Akal!”
It
was the Sikh call to prayer. If I hadn’t already been awakened by the squawking
of the peacocks who had been perched on my railing all night, I was jolted
awake by the loudspeakers.
I
would sometimes go to the Sikh holy men – the gurusikhs, and ask them some questions. When I asked them about
some of what I saw as inconsistencies in their beliefs, they usually got
defensive. I was not being accusatory or trying to be contrary, but perhaps it
seemed that way to them. But in truth, I simply wondered about these things.
It
was the same when I spoke to western young people traveling through India in
search of eastern religions. I was usually met with a wall of defense.
But
even with these experiences, those years of my life was actually a very nice
time. It was a unique period of my life. It was a time when I had very many
conversations with many different people from various parts of the world concerning
different belief systems. It was a time when I learned a lot about my own
beliefs. Through all of these experiences, I was eventually drawn to the
Bible—the book of truth.
When
I returned home to America, I enrolled in a Bible college and began to devour
the Bible. I began to learn what it contained, and I began to ask questions.
When I saw something that to me looked like an inconsistency, I sometimes was also
met with a wall of defense from older Christians, but not always. Some
understood that without questioning things that one does not understand or that
just seem wrong, one never grows in understanding.
In
any discipline of knowledge in life, to the beginner, the more difficult
concepts at first do not make sense. As an example, it is only when one grows in the
discipline of mathematics that the concepts of advanced algebra and calculus
begin to be understandable. If the learner simply refuses to progress in his or
her education, they will be left ignorant of what these more advanced concepts
teach.
Many
of the people of Jesus’ day, when they listened to some of his more difficult
to understand teachings, said, “This is a difficult teaching. Who can accept
it?”
But
Simon Peter said, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal
life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69 BSB).
This
also was the point where I was in my life. A difficult teaching would not drive
me away, because I realized that to do so would drive me from the very source
of the knowledge of eternal life.
It
did not mean that I stopped asking questions, or that even now that I have
stopped asking. Additionally, it does not mean that I no longer see any
inconsistencies in the Bible. There are still many things for which I have no
clear understanding and which to me still even seem a bit wrong.
But
it is all different now. I have come to know Jesus, and I know that he is the
source of all truth. My hunger for truth is as active as it ever was, and as I
feast upon the word of God, much of what I once saw as inconsistencies have
become resolved to me. And many others I can see will be resolved once I am
able to have the perspective of the eternal (please see the post: Two Rivers Become One from 14 April, 2019).
And
I press on. As the Apostle Paul said, “I press on to the goal” (Philippians
3:14). That goal is God’s calling me home and giving me his perspectives. My
appetite for spiritual food remains ravenous, and I daily feast on God’s
provision.
The Upward Call
Some
of my most-loved words of Scripture were written by King David in the Psalms.
He wrote, “One thing I ask from the LORD and this only do I seek: that I may
dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of
the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).
Did
you notice that word inquire? It is
asking questions about things that we do not understand. It is feasting upon
the answers that God gives us. It is having our hunger for truth and knowledge
satisfied.
This
is my goal. It is this that I seek.
Paul
called it his “upward call” (Philippians 3:14). It is also a call consistently
upon me. This present life has actually come to mean relatively little for me,
for I know that the life that is true and complete still awaits me.
Nevertheless,
as long as God has me breathing the air of this life, I will continue to serve
him and I will never stop asking questions and seeking the answers in his word.
No one or no thing will ever deter me from living in service to God. This life
is part of me now and I cannot be separated from it.
This
upward call and a new life is waiting for you as well—if you so choose. Begin
your feast. Begin to inquire in God’s temple. Become one who seeks (that is
spelled, s-e-e-k). Soften your heart, awaken your hunger, feed upon the Word of
God.
If you would like to help the children of the Log Church Orphanage of Kisii, Kenya, you may make your check out to "The Log Church" and write "Orphans" on the memo line.
Send it to:
The Log Church
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The Log Church
PO Box 68
Tripoli, Wisconsin 54564
Every nickel given in this way will be used for only aid for the orphans. It will be used for purchasing food, clothing, schooling, and other necessities of living. Nothing is held back or diverted for any other purpose
you seem to be having great joy in the Lord.
ReplyDeleteGen. 49:22 . How does one get to be like Joseph?
- because of the hand of the Mighty One v. 24
- because of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel v. 24
- because of your father's God who helps you, v. 25
- because of the Almighty, who blesses you...v. 25 Amen & amen 🎶
Your meditation has me thinking alot about how all through the Bible there is teaching and then testing. The truth is always tempered with troubles. Joseph is a great example of T & T, Teaching & Testing: (Truth & Trials) Corrie ten Boom; Darleen Rose; Elizebeth Elliott...etc. I enjoy in my study time using a Bible tool titled “Figures of speech used in the Bible.” E.W. Bullinger and have been looking at The WORD and the words. (The Living and the written Word.)
O.k. back to joseph.
They hurt his feet with shackles; his neck was put in an iron collar. Psalm 105:18 Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him. Psalm 105:19
O.k. How about Jer. 15:16
Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by Thy name, O Lord God of hosts.
The joy that Jeremiah mentions is preceded by verse 15. O Lord, Thou knowest: remember me, and visit me, and revenge me of my persecutors; take me not away in Thy longsuffering: know that for Thy sake I have suffered rebuke…..wow ! Joy yes, persecutors and rebukes necessary.