Living Stream Ministry Podcast ::
When Moses was leading the children of Israel through the wilderness, what they would have to eat became a major concern. To sustain and nourish them, God provided a mysterious food called manna. These small round wafers appeared on the ground every morning. And this was their sole diet for 40 years.
1600 years later God brings manna back to His people in the book of Revelation. But this rather than being out in the open as it was in Exodus is hidden in a golden pot within the ark in the holy of holies. What is this hidden manna?
Please don’t miss this classic presentation from the book of Exodus on our Life-study of the Bible with Witness Lee.
Rev 2:17…”He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give of the hidden manna, and to him I will give a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knows except him who receives it.” So the promise in Rev 2:17 to the overcoming believers is that they would enjoy Christ as the hidden manna. In the Old Testament, what the children of Israel were charged to do was to take a portion of that manna…put it in a golden pot…and put that golden pot within the ark in the holy of holies…which is the very center of the entire tabernacle. So that is the hidden manna.
What is the significance of this hidden manna? We’ve seen on previous programs in John 6 that Christ Himself is the very bread who came down out of heaven for us to feed on. In other words, Christ is our spiritual food that we need to enjoy day by day. But when we talk about the hidden manna, we’re talking about enjoying Christ as our spiritual food to bring us into the closest, most intimate, hidden, secret contact with Him. This is our enjoyment of Christ as the hidden manna.
So we need to take the way…day by day…to go into the holy of holies through prayer to enter into our spirit where Christ as the Spirit lives and to enjoy Him as our spiritual food and assimilate Him into our whole being. So that we can enjoy Him in the closest, most intimate, deepest, hidden and even secret way as the hidden manna for His purpose.
This is a great miracle! What a miracle that centuries and centuries ago the children of Israel enjoyed manna sent by God from heaven…in a physical sense. But today, we can enjoy Christ as our manna…as our spiritual food…even as our hidden manna. What a great miracle this is…and what a mystery this is. When that bread came down from heaven, the children of Israel said “What is this? What is it?” And actually that’s the meaning of the Hebrew word “manna.” Manna means “what is it?” Well that’s what Christ is. Who is Christ? Christ is “What is this?”
Christ is a mystery. He’s inexplicable to the people who don’t know Him…the nations. And when we enjoy Him, we become “What is this?” People look at us and they say…”I can’t figure that person out. He’s got the same pressures as me…the same kind of problems. Even I know he’s passing through some suffering right now. But there’s a joy with him; there’s a peace about him. There’s something about him that makes him different. What is this?”
Why do we become like that? We become a testimony…a mysterious testimony of Christ to the people around us by enjoying Christ as manna. By enjoying Christ as…”What is this?” And we become a testimony of the marvelous, wonderful, beautiful, mysterious Christ in this universe.
In John 6:35, the Lord told us “I am the bread of life. I am that bread that came down out of heaven.” We need to realize Christ is the reality of that manna, and in verse 57 He said “He who eats me shall live because of me.” That means we need to eat Christ day by day. And He was not talking about something in the physical realm. Because in 6:63 He said “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
So the way to eat Christ as our spiritual food is to enjoy Him in His words. His words that He speaks to us…they are spirit and they are life. It comes back to this. We christians need to be in the word every day. We need to eat Christ as our spiritual food by eating His word every day. We need to begin the day by having a spiritual breakfast. Some men of God in the past…they had a saying, “No Bible, no breakfast.” This means we need to have our spiritual breakfast before we have our physical breakfast. I would encourage all of you…consecrate yourself to give that first time in the morning to the Lord where you read the word with prayer, in prayer and in a spirit of prayer so that you can enjoy Him as your spiritual food. And as…during the day…you keep your heart turned to the Lord, you will become a mysterious wonderful testimony of Christ to all the people around you, and you will become a factor in their salvation.
