God Needs Food (part one)
Many Christians have it in their heart to glorify God, sing praises to Him, and to exalt Him to the highest. All that is good and noble, but God might express His opinion of these noble acts differently. He might say that He is hungry for food and that we need to feed him. That sounds like nonsense to many but as we allow the scriptures to speak to us, we will see that God loves our prayers, and our dedication to Him, but He is still hungry. Not bringing God His portion of food that is due Him is one of the ways in which we are robbing Him and depriving ourselves of His many blessings.
Numbers 28:2, “Command the children of Israel, and say unto them,’ My offering and My bread for My sacrifices made by fire, for a sweet savour unto Me, shall ye observe to offer unto Me in their due season’.
We see that food is necessary for human consumption but as far as God is concerned, we think that He doesn’t need food and He is self sufficient. After all, God is God and what can men possible give Him?
It is rightly said that the Old Testament gives us the pictures and the New Testament is the fulfillment and reality of those pictures.
We see in the Old Testament how God’s dwelling was first in a tent. Moses as well as the people, would bring a portion of the food they had prepared to God at the tent door which was sometimes called the Tent of Meeting. God had no garden, no livestock, He would just rely on His people to provide food for Him. This is a picture, a type, of what what was required of the people during their wandering in the wilderness.
Genesis chapter one reads that God created man, male and female on the sixth day. God created the seventh day Sabbath for Himself as His rest and for those who He had created on the sixth day. The seventh day was God’s first feast, eating and resting with His children. A feast is for eating and merrymaking. God was satisfied and so were His children. If there was a difficulty between them, we don’t read about it.
All this occurred before sin entered in the Garden of Eden. One of God’s important traits is that He will not accept anything of man without it first being tried and tested. Consider Joseph’s imprisonment in Egypt and Abraham sacrifice of Isaac. Such was the case for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were both tried and tested, showing us that without taking of the Tree of Life, God’s life, all mankind will fail as they did. After the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden, there was a promise of a seed which will usher in a new beginning to correct the usurping of Satan in the Garden.
Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise His heel”.
The promised Seed is mentioned by Moses in Deuteronomy 18:15 which says how God would raise up a prophet like him. We see the continuation of the same promise Seed mentioned in the Book of Isaiah 7:14. And the Book of Zechariah which speaks of a coming King who is just and is our salvation, Zechariah 9:9.
The narrative continues as we read about the fulfillment of these events with the birth of the woman’s Seed in the New Testament, and His name is called Jesus, Matthew 1:21, Luke 2:21. This Seed was holy unto God because He became the Son of Man, through Adam, Matthew 1:1-18, as well as the Son of God, Matthew 16:16.
Jesus, a Tried and Tested Stone
Genesis chapter 49:24, is a prophesy of Jacob concerning his son Joseph. This prophesy gives us a connection between Joseph and Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and the Stone of Israel.
Genesis 49:24, “But His bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel).
Joseph had a long testing lasting about thirteen years, and scriptures says that Christ will need to be tried and tested also.
Isaiah 28:16, Therefore thus saieth the Lord God, “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste (be ashamed).
Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, became the reality of which we read about in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 1 who became the sacrifice and the fulfillment accepted by God in the Book of John, 20:17.
John 6:51, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is MY Flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”.
Promise of the Children of Israel Entering a Good Land
Deuteronomy 8:7-10 describes this good land, but beginning in verse 11, we are given a warning not to forget the Lord thy God.
Deuteronomy 8:11, “Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God in not keeping His commandments, and His judgments, and His statutes, which I command thee this day.” 12, “Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;” 13, “And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied;” 14, Then thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”
What is This Good Land and How Can We Possess it?
To understand the good land, and why it became good, we need to go back to what God said to Adam in Genesis 3:17. Because of his disobedience, the land was placed under a curse. We need to remember that we are created from the earth, therefore all people are under a curse.
The journey to the promised land started with Abram.
Genesis 12:1, Now the Lord had said unto Abram, “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.”
The promise of a land in Genesis is good but we see in Genesis that the 50th chapter ends with Abraham’s grandson Jacob/Israel of Abram/Abraham, having died in Egypt and was buried in the land of Canaan. Is the promise to Abram finished? What happened to the promised seed we read about in Genesis 3:15?
The promise given in Genesis 3:15 is not dependent upon men but upon the Lord God who had given it; for we see in the Book of the Exodus, a great people and they are called the children of Israel, Jacob’s progeny, Exodus 1:1. However, they are called God’s people in Exodus 3:7. It is in this portion of the Bible we read of God’s deliverance from Egypt through the killing and the eating of a lamb. This was in type, Jesus Christ.
John 1:29, The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, ‘Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”
We see here that Jesus as the Lamb in type, becomes the reality.
Exodus 17:6, “Behold, I will stand before thee upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shall smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.”
What is the meaning of this? To get the meaning we need the writings of the Apostle Paul.
1st Corinthians 10:4, “and did all eat of the same spiritual meat: and did all drink of the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”
The reality of the pictures in the Old Testament is that Jesus as the Lamb became the Christ, God’s anointed, was crucified, smitten, and became their drink. He is our food and drink today. How about the Land that was promised to Abraham? The Apostle Paul completes the picture.
Colossians 2:6, “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.”
Walking in Him is the same as walking in and upon a land.
Verse 7, “Rooted and built up in Him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”
A person can only be rooted in soil. Christ became not only our food and drink but also the promised land given to Abraham and His progeny. When the children of Israel reached their destination and entered into the promised land, the manna from heaven stopped, Joshua 5:12. The manna stopped because the children of Israel were now required to work in their new land. Because Jesus Christ became the only sacrifice accepted by God, He qualified to remove the curse placed upon the land we read about in Genesis 3:17. As long as we are in Christ, He has removed the curse place upon us by His redemption. It is in this new land that God told the people not to forget Him or His food. Only Christ can be our rich supply which would increase and be accepted by God. When the people had a harvest or an increase, they were required to offer to God the top portion. This first tenth belonged to God. This was His food.
Leviticus 27:30, “And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: it is holy unto the Lord.”
The only one who was accepted by God after testing, was Christ. He is our food and drink today as well as our new land. If we do not give God the top portion, we are robbing Him, see Malachi 3:8-12.
How do we know when we have given God His tithe or portion? When we are satisfied, then we know that God is satisfied. It is the same function as when we have someone over for dinner. We prepare the meal, we eat as well as they eat, and everyone is satisfied.
We read in Revelation 19:13 that His name is called The Word of God. Jesus Christ was accepted as a sin offering by God for the entire world. Therefore, only Christ, The Word of God will be accepted by Him. Christ is our food and drink, and we offer to God Christ as His food and drink. when we are satisfied, we know that God is satisfied. We need to heed God’s warning in Deuteronomy 8:11 by not forgetting God’s tithe as our offering to him. If we would forget, we would not only be robbing God, but we would be robbing ourselves as well of His many blessings.