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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 3

II. Why do we eat?

A. To grow unto salvation

1 Peter 2:2–3 As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation, If you have tasted that the Lord is good.

1 Corinthians 3:7b … God who causes the growth.

2 Peter 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and unto the day of eternity. Amen.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

GROWING UNTO SALVATION
BY DRINKING THE MILK OF THE WORD

First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.” For our physical growth we need to drink milk. Likewise, for our spiritual growth we need to drink the divine milk from the Word. Every morning we need to drink a cup of milk from the Word. If you will do this, you will see the blessing. You will be healthy and will be a tree of life growing. This tree will bear fruit, and all the fruit will nourish…your neighbors…or your classmates in your school. You will become the tree of life to all the people in your community. Today America needs this. America needs Christ to grow in the neighborhoods, in the schools, in the offices, and among the families and the in-laws.

We should not merely attend the church meetings; we need to grow so that we may be a tree of life to nourish today’s communities in America.…Peter says that if we drink the milk of the word, we will grow unto salvation. We should not think that we are fully saved and have no need of any further salvation. Such a concept is wrong. We still need to be saved every day, even every minute, from our temper, from our sorrows, and from our anxiety. We need to be saved from many things. I am a quick person. It is easy for me to lose my temper. When I was young, my temper was a trouble to me. But later on I learned that I can be saved, and I have been saved through the drinking of the milk of the word. Drinking the milk of the word causes us to grow unto salvation from our anger, our temper, our anxiety, our worry, our fear, and our trembling. Every day we need a daily salvation. We need today’s salvation in our daily walk.

(The Organic Union in God’s Relationship with Man, Chapter 4, pp. 55-56)

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The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 2

I. The Bible is our food, (continued)

C. You are what you eat

Matt. 12:34b–35 For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man, out of his good treasure, brings forth good things, and the evil man, out of his evil treasure, brings forth evil things.

Phil. 2:15–16 That you may be blameless and guileless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine as luminaries in the world, Holding forth the word of life, so that I may have a boast in the day of Christ that I did not run in vain nor labor in vain.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

How I look to the Lord that you would enjoy Christ every day! Daily you need to enjoy Him as your manna to satisfy and strengthen you. There is a proverb that says, “You are what you eat.” Consider the house of Israel. They ate manna day after day. After eating manna for quite a long time, they eventually became the composition of manna. If we eat Christ day by day, we shall become Christ, for we become what we eat. If we enjoy Christ, eat Christ, drink Christ, and take Christ into us, Christ will become our constituent. Christ will be wrought into every part of our being—into our mind, emotion, and will. When we all become Christ, we shall be one in Christ and one with Christ. Then we shall be built together to be the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God on earth…

…Daily we need to eat and drink Christ, enjoying Him as the manna and the living water. As we enjoy Him in this way, we shall become Him. Our thinking will be His thinking.…Because Christ has transformed us, He will be all and in all (Col. 3:11). If you enjoy Christ as your manna day by day, you will come to look like Him. If we all have the appearance of Christ, then when we come together, we all shall be Christ….Every day we need to apply Christ to our situation and take Him to meet every need in our daily living. The more we do this, the more we shall be constituted with Christ and become Christ…

(The Kernel of the Bible, Chapter 2, pp. 22-23)

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Note: Here is the entire outline and daily portions for Week 3 in PDF format if you’d like to have it or print it for your reference.

Week 3 – Outline and Daily Portions

The Precious Word of God, Message Three
The Bible—God’s Feeding
Day 1

I. The Bible is our food

A. We eat the word of God to live

Matt. 4:4 But He answered and said, It is written, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on  every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.”

B. By eating the word of God we are constituted with God

Ezekiel 3:1–3 Then He said to me, Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and He gave me that scroll to eat. And He said to me, Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your inward parts with this scroll that I am giving you. And I ate it, and it was like honey in my mouth in its sweetness.

Read over the outline points and verses above and use these for your prayer to spend time with the Lord in the Word in the morning. After your prayer time, jot down in your notebook one or two things that the Lord touched you with. Afterward, read the following portion, either in your morning time or sometime later in the day. It has also been recorded for you to listen to if you like.

Reading portion:

Reading the Word Being to Receive
the Lord’s Word as Food

Prayer is to breathe in the Lord’s Spirit, and reading is to receive the Lord as the Word. The Lord as the Word is our food. Man does not live by bread alone, because he is not composed of only a body; within man there is also a spirit. The physical body requires physical food, but man’s spirit requires a different type of food. Physical food is not enough to make man live. Hence, the Lord says that man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). All the words that proceed out through the mouth of God are man’s spiritual food. For this reason the prophet Jeremiah says, “Your words were found and I ate them” (Jer. 15:16).

Reading the Word with an Attitude
of Eating and Drinking God

Our attitude should be that the Bible is our food. The Bible is a book of food. When we read the Bible, we should eat this food. Whenever we read the Word, we should have the attitude that we are coming to eat and drink God. If our motive is merely to study truths, analyze teachings, or understand doctrines, we are not eating and drinking God, and the Bible is a book of doctrines and teachings to us. We must have a change in concept to see that the Bible is not a book of God’s teaching or truth; it is God’s food for us.

…If our view changes, and we consider the Bible to be God’s expression and His breathing out, the Bible will be a different book to us. We will realize that since God is food to man, the Bible as His breathed-out word must also be food to man. When we come to the Bible, we must eat and drink God as our food; we must breathe in God Himself and enjoy Him. If we read the Bible this way, it will no longer be a book of teachings, commandments, truths, or doctrines. Instead, it will be God’s embodiment, unveiling, expression, and exhaling. It will also be our rich food. We will receive nourishment, supply, and life from every word.

(How to Enjoy God and How to Practice the Enjoyment of God, Chapter 13, pp. 153-154)

 

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Spend some time this morning to open up to the Lord in prayer regarding what He touched you with during the previous six days. Review your notes and the outline points and verses. Ask the Lord what He would have you share with all the saints. Prepare a prophecy (1-2 minutes long) to share with the saints what you enjoyed this week.

Here is the whole outline for the week, for your reference. And here is a downloadable PDF version.

The Precious Word of God, Message Two
The Bible—God’s Breathing

I. God’s breathing in creation

Genesis 2:7   Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Job 32:8   But there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding.

II. God’s breathing in the new creation

John 20:22   And when He had said this, He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

III. God’s breathing to sustain us

2 Timothy 3:16   All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

IV. God’s breathing brings the element of God into us

John 4:24   God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.

John 6:63   It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

A. Truth—truth replaces the vanity of corruption with the reality of all the divine riches

Ephesians 5:26   That He might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word.

John 13:5   Then He poured water into the basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.

John 17:17   Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.

Titus 3:5   Not out of works in righteousness which we did but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,

Psalm 119:9   With what should a young man keep his way pure? / By guarding it according to Your word.

B. Life—eternal life not only swallows up death but also renders the life supply

1 Peter 1:23   Having been regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.

James 1:18   He brought us forth by the word of truth, purposing that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.

James 1:15   Then the lust, having conceived, gives birth to sin; and the sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Psalm 119:11   In my heart I have treasured up Your word / That I might not sin against You.

Hebrews 4:12   For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

C. Light—the Holy Scripture not only dispels the confusion but also furnishes divine light and revelation

2  Pet. 1:19   And we have the prophetic word made more firm, to which you do well to give heed as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Proverbs 20:27   The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah, / Searching all the innermost parts of the inner being.

Psalm 119:105   Your word is a lamp to my feet / And a light to my path.

Rom. 12:11   Do not be slothful in zeal, but be burning in spirit, serving the Lord.

2Tim. 1:6   For which cause I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

Eph. 5:8   For you were once darkness but are now light in the Lord; walk as children of light.

V. The way to receive God’s breathing by praying and singing

Ephesians 6:17–18   And receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, By means of all prayer and petition.

Colossians 3:16   Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God.