,
 

 
And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty
years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in
thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled
thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest
not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth
not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
the LORD doth man live (Deuteronomy 8:2-3).
 
The book of Deuteronomy is a rehearsal by Moses of the 40 years Israel spent in
the schools of the Lord in the wilderness as he bid them farewell. Deuteronomy
is Moses’ farewell sermon.
 
We see this in Deuteronomy 1:3: “And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in
the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spake unto the
children of Israel, according unto all that the LORD had given him in
commandment unto them.”
 
In his farewell, Moses took them back to remember the 40 years the Lord led them
through this wilderness journey.
 
After Moses had preached his farewell sermon to Israel, he went up to the top of
Mount Pisgah, where the Lord showed him the promised land, but did not allow him
to enter it because he had not sanctified the Lord at the waters of Meribah.
There Moses said, Must we fetch you water out of this rock, instead of saying
that the Lord would fetch them water.
 
So now we see in Deuteronomy 34:5-6: “So Moses the servant of the LORD died
there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. And he buried him
in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethpeor: but no man knoweth of
his sepulchre unto this day.”
 
We have spoken about how the people were to remember how the Lord humbled them,
and proved them to know what was in their heart, “whether thou wouldest keep his
commandments, or no.” See the emphasis on what they were to remember.
 
Right after Moses had cautioned them to remember God’s purpose in these
humiliating lessons, “that he might make thee know that man doth not live by
bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth
man live,” then He cautioned them to remember as we see in Deuteronomy 8:5-6:
“Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so
the LORD thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of
the LORD thy

God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.”
 
Moses draws to their remembrance that the Lord for these 40 years had treated
them as a father treats his child. When they had transgressed He sent His
chastening hand, and the Lord told them by the mouth of Moses, Do not forget
this. Notice the emphasis: because the Lord deals with you as a man chastens his
son, so the Lord chastens you, therefore you shall keep His commandments and
fear Him.
 
I heard a man say one time, Well, the Lord is just chastening me. He showed me I
had not done anything wrong, but that He was just chastening me.

 
Now, I have eight children, and I have never lined them all up and used a whip
on them just because they are children. The only time I have ever chastened a
child was when that child offended against my will, because that child had
disobeyed.
 
When we start walking away from the Lord and disobeying Him, He sends His
chastening hand. I was in the Army, and they taught us that they had 10
different forms of punishment the company commander could issue. The first was
to be reproved. The first rebuke the Lord gives us is that He withdraws His love
and allows us to go into a state of confusion. Anytime you and I have a set of
circumstances, and we feel that the Lord has withdrawn Himself and allowed us to
come into confusion, the first thing we should ask is, Lord, what have I done?
What is it between me and you? Why am I now in a state of confusion? This is the
first form of discipline.
 
In the way of God’s gracious leadings there is another form of discipline found
in our text that is important to understand,  “And he humbled thee, and suffered
thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna.”
 
What we are admonished to remember is that these gracious leadings were to bring
about His desired effect, that is, that “he might make thee know that man doth
not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
the LORD doth man live.”
 
If you discipline a child, the effect you are looking for is that rebellion is
broken and that the child comes under the supervision of the father. This is
what the Lord uses discipline for. The Lord will never discipline us beyond the
point of an unconditional surrender. I want to read to you Hebrews 12:11: “Now
no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless
afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are
exercised thereby.”
 
I think it is so beautiful when we understand that the Lord has a positive
purpose in His discipline, and that He only disciplines for a given point.

 
When I have chastened my little child, the desired effect is that the child
comes to me and puts his arms around my neck and says, Daddy, I love you. The
rebellion is broken.

 
The desired effect the Lord has in His chastening is the peaceable fruit of
righteousness. This is an unconditional surrender in the way of our rebellion,
that we come under the Lord’s authority, the authority of His Word, that we now
have a holy reverence for the will of God.
 
In Proverbs 8:13, we read: “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil.”
 
When the Lord allows us to hunger, this is one form of discipline He uses to
correct us and get our attitudes straightened out. He gives us an attitude
adjustment.
 
What we are admonished to remember in these gracious leadings is that the Lord
is bringing about His desired effect and that is that we do not live by bread
only but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. We are to
stand in awe and have holy reverence for every word of God, that we start to
live by the Word of God.
 
Until the Lord suffered the prodigal son to hunger, he could feed on the things
of the flesh, the things of this world. Let us see how the Lord disciplined the
prodigal son. We read in Luke 15:12-13: “And the younger of them said to his
father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided
unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all
together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his
substance with riotous living.”

 
How did the Lord chasten him “as a man chasteneth his son,” to wean him from his
appetite for the things of the flesh? The Lord did not allow him to go out and
destroy himself. How did the Lord bring him back?
 
We read in Luke 15:14: “And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine
in that land; and he began to be in want.” The Lord gave him to see the
emptiness of the things of the flesh, the emptiness of the things of this life.
He took those things away from him.
 
This parable teaches us that when the Lord suffered him to hunger, his memory
was jarred. The admonition is to remember, so we tend to forget, and we start
running away from the Lord, and we start filling our belly with the husks of the
swine. Now the Lord jars our memory by putting His finger on us.
 
We read in Luke 15:17: “And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired
servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with
hunger!”
 
The Lord took away the tinsel of everything of this life, and He gave him to see
the emptiness of it. This jarred his memory as to what he had left behind. He
started to remember his father’s house, and he came to himself.
 
Repentance is not a mystic thing that happens in the way of some experience.
Repentance is a change of attitude. We come to ourselves and begin to understand
what fools we have been, and we get an attitude adjustment. Now we sit down and
make a carefully planned repentance.
 
The prodigal son made a plan. He said, I will go to my father and ask if I can
become one of his servants. He had to carefully plan his repentance.
 
Repentance is what causes the angels in heaven to rejoice. We come to ourselves;
we have this attitude adjustment; we change our minds; and we stop chasing the
things of this life. We begin to realize that in our Father’s house there is
bread enough.
 
It was through these gracious leadings of the Lord that the prodigal son began
to desire to enter into his father’s service. He had been serving his father
reluctantly. The Lord has no pleasure in you and me serving Him out of
compulsion. If I were to stand here and preach enough hell and damnation to
scare you to the gate of heaven, the Lord would not let you in. Do you know why?
It would be because you would be selfishly trying to get in to escape the
consequences of sin. Your purpose would not be to enter His service.
 
I want you to see what happened to the prodigal son. When the Lord emptied him
and caused him to hunger, he started hungering for the love of his father. He
started having a desire to serve his father, and that is what the Lord wants.
The Lord wants you and me to serve Him.
 
I want you to see this in Malachi 3:18: “Then shall ye return, and discern
between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that
serveth him not.” When my dear old mother was lying on her deathbed, it caused
her face to shine like a star in the sky when I read this verse to her.

 
It is that entering into the service of God where we discern between the
righteous and the wicked. The Lord wants us to serve Him from a motive of love.
He wants us to serve Him because we love Him and because it is our pleasure to
be in His presence, not because we desire only to escape the consequences of
sin.
 
I want you to see what the Lord is teaching us in the way of repentance in Luke
15:18-19: “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I
have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called
thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” He was not even asking his
father for the privilege of serving him any more as a son. He wanted to serve
him as a hired servant. This is the form of repentance that causes the angels in
heaven to rejoice over one sinner who repents. It is when the heart is renewed,
and it becomes our desire to serve the Lord from the heart, with a motive of
love.
 
When we consider the multitude of influences Israel had to face in the
wilderness, we will begin to understand why we can only live “by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD.”
 
They had Moses to lead them, and Korah, Dathan and Abiram to mislead them. They
had Caleb and Joshua to encourage them, and the unfaithful to discourage them.
When the 12 went to spy out the land, Caleb and Joshua came back with a good
report. They said, We are well able to go, but the other 10 discouraged them.
They had Aaron, the Lord’s high priest, to sacrifice to the Lord for them, who
also sacrificed unto the golden calf. Satan was there to try to influence them
to walk contrary to the will of God.
 
Now you see why we have to come to the point where we have only one thing upon
which to fix our eyes, and that is every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
the Lord. Our pastor can bring us the unadulterated Word of God, and that same
man can also preach us half a truth, and it makes a lie. We have to be able to
go to the Word of God and sort it out for ourselves. Our eyes must be fixed on
Christ, not on the pastor. The Lord has these influences there for that very
purpose, that we are not living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
the pastor, but we are living by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
the Lord.
 
We have so many things that would influence us away from the Word of God, and
that is why we are admonished to “search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye
have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39).

 
Christ has to be the center. Why did John the Baptist say, “I am the voice of
one crying in the wilderness” (John 1:23). What was John teaching us here? Are
you this prophet? No. Are you that prophet? No. Then who are you? He was saying,
Do not fix your eye on me. Do not look at me as though I am something. All I am
is a voice, nothing to be seen, nothing to be admired. All I am is a voice that
you hear. That is where the pastor fits. He is only a voice, because we are not
to worship the pastor. We are not to have our eyes fixed on what the pastor
believes or what he says, but we are to ask, What does the Word of God say? The
Lord is so jealous of His Word.
 
As we learn to recognize the influences we are exposed to in this waste-howling
wilderness, our appetites go through a thorough adjustment. We start feeding on
different things. One time we had our faith in a pastor from the West Coast to
such an extent we thought if he died the world would end. Maybe then we would
have to look to the Lord.
 
We have those influences. We have those weaknesses, and those are ours by
nature, and the Lord allows this to happen. He causes us to hunger. He weans us
from all these things so we get to the point where we can only feed upon that
heavenly manna. He takes such a man away so our hunger is no longer satisfied
with a person, but our hunger can only be satisfied with the Word of God.
 
The children of Israel were accustomed to Egyptian food, that is, the onions,
garlic and the flesh, but the Lord led them in the wilderness, where all of
these were removed.
 
We read in Exodus 16:3: “And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God
we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the
flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth
into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” 

 
The Lord suffered them to hunger, because all they had left to eat was this
manna. They could no longer feed on the husks. In the circumstances the Lord
leads us through, He will bring us to where we can no longer feed on these
things. The Lord put them on a fast as it were that they may have a keener
appetite for spiritual

food.
 
If they had eaten meat, onions and garlic together with manna, which are
incompatible, it would have nauseated them. They would throw up. The Lord put
them on a fast and purged their systems of onions, garlic and meat so their
bodies were able to accept manna.
 
The Lord Jesus tells us in Matthew 7 that we cannot serve two masters. We cannot
serve God and the world. He causes us to hunger because we are not going to feed
on the best of two worlds. He is going to take us out of the one to feed on the
other.
 
We read in Proverbs 27:7: “The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the
hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” The Lord causes us to hunger after
spiritual things by weaning us from the world.
 
Have you ever eaten yourself full in a fine restaurant, and on your way out you
see another table decked just the same. It does not make you crave their food.
You are full. However, if you came out of the field after you have been working
all day, and you are hungry, thirsty and tired, you can eat a piece of bread and
drink a glass of water and consider it a feast. It revives you.

 
The humbling experiences of Israel are written for our instruction. They are
typical of the ways in which the Lord leads His people through this life.
 
The first blessing mentioned is that He humbled them to make them fit in
character to inherit eternal life. I want you to see what the Lord’s purpose is
for the humbling process through which He leads us. It is to make us fit for
eternal life. I want you to see this in Colossians 1:10-12: “That ye might walk
worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and
increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to
his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Giving
thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light.”
 
That word meet in the original means fit in character. The Lord will make us fit
in character “to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Being
fit in character means that we might walk worthy of the Lord. It has to do with
our walk. It has to do with our attitude.

 
It is so important that we understand what salvation is. Salvation is to be
weaned from the things of this life. We have been made to feed on the Word of
God. We have come to where our walk of life is according to His will. We have
been saved from sin.
 
We are thankful that the Lord has counted us worthy, to suffer shame for the
name of Christ, that He has led us through these circumstances to humble us, to
prove us and to bring us to where we are weaned from everything of the flesh,
and to where we can be made fit in character, “to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light.”
 
Notice from our text that suffering them to hunger was one of the means God used
to humble them. What has more of a humbling effect than to come into want? The
prodigal son left in pride. He left with everything he could wish for. He spent
his money in riotous living, but what was more humbling than to be made hungry,
to have to come to his father and confess he had sinned and to ask to become one
of his hired servants because he had been brought into want. 

 
Notice in the second place the divine feeding. He “suffered thee to hunger, and
fed thee.” What a tremendous, glorious consolation for you and me, not only to
know that the Lord suffers us to hunger, but that He feeds us.

 
To all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the Lord says in Isaiah
55:1-3: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath
no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and
without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your
labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye
that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your
ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an
everlasting covenant with you, even the

sure mercies of David.”
 
Those who hunger after righteousness have this invitation, and this hunger is
one of the most blessed graces the Lord gives you and me.
 
That word and in our text is as a diamond rivet. It cannot be broken nor
altered. He “suffered thee to hunger [after righteousness], and fed thee.” Would
that not be horrible if we were brought to where we hungered, and starved to
death? Look at the consolation there is for those He has caused to hunger. There
is that blessed feeding, that blessed food, that blessed manna.

 
All those bitter things in God’s humbling process become sweet when we learn
what we read in verse 5: “Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a
man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.”
 
Now we learn to see that all these struggles and all these things we have gone
through were the tender love of a father who brought them about to keep us from
destroying ourselves by feeding on the husks of this world. He did this in His
love. It was a blessed thing.
 
What is God’s purpose in all this humbling by chastising? When God leaves us to
ourselves we become as we read in 2 Kings 17:33-34: “They feared the LORD, and
served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away
from

thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the LORD,
neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the
law and commandment which the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he
named Israel.” 

 
This is what we do by nature. If the Lord would leave you and me to ourselves,
we would turn into a lukewarm state. We would fear the Lord. We would go to
church. We would do everything by the numbers, but our hearts would still be
serving our own idols and would go back into the world. It was not until the
Lord allowed you and me to hunger that we stopped feeding on the things of the
flesh.
 
Then the Lord says He will cause them to hunger and then feed them with manna.
He will not throw the pearls before the swine. He will not allow us to have the
precious things of Christ along with the things of the flesh. We cannot serve
two masters.
 
God’s purpose in His chastening is to cause His dear children to walk in
obedience as a matter of principle from a motive of love as we see from
Deuteronomy 8:6: “Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy
God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.”
 
What is the fear of the Lord? It is to hate evil. It is to love His will. It is
to have a holy reverence for God and His will.
 
The central theme of our text is “man doth not live by bread only, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” This is what
it means to live.
 
In Psalm 119, David says, Oh that I might live. What is it to live? It is to
live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. That is what
nourishes the soul. That is what sustains the heavenly appetite that God has
created in the soul by the work of regeneration. When the Lord works
regeneration in the soul, it is that appetite after righteousness.
 
Our text speaks of hunger and its consequences. There was a time when the world
suited us well. That is our nature. The first evidence that God had quickened
the new man in us was that our appetite changed. We were not happy with swine’s
food any more. The soul became conscious of the pollution and the consequences
of sin. The soul becomes aware that sin is grievous, and we learn to see the
sinfulness of sin and its hateful character. We see bitterness and pride and all
these things in our hearts. We become loathsome in our own sight. We can no
longer feed on those things that used to be our chief delight. We begin to
hunger and thirst after righteousness.
 
God caused us to hunger, and fed us with manna, with the will and the Word of
God. Then the soul became conscious of God’s absence and hungered for His
presence. Until the Lord removes those things that fill the aching void in our
hearts, we will be content with the things of this world.
 
When Adam fell, it created an aching void in the heart that nothing but the
image of God could ever replace. We try to fill this void with the things of
this life, but nothing can replace the image of God. It is not until the
presence of God is restored in our hearts that that aching void is ever filled.

 
As this hunger becomes insatiable, we come under the same confusing influences
as the children of Israel came under. Worldly friends want to influence us. They
want to lead us away from the Lord. They would say we need more entertainment.
They can see that our countenance has changed, and they suggest entertainment to
fill the emptiness.

 
The legalist would call upon you to live by the letter of the law, but there is
no satisfaction in that. There is no fulfillment in living by the letter of the
law. We must live by the spirit of the law.
 
As the hunger increased, the soul was weaned from all these. We see in 1 Peter
2:1: “Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and
envies, all evil speakings.”

 
These are the things we feed on by nature. We are to lay these aside. Many
people only feed on the grapevine, and they are always talking, but that has to
be cut off.
 
Verse 2 says: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye
may grow thereby.” You cannot feed on husks and on food. When you fill your
stomach with husks, food will nauseate you, but if you have your stomach filled
with manna, then husks will nauseate you. You cannot feed on both. That is why
He causes us to hunger. He brings us through a fast to make us fit in character
so we can feed on manna.

 
Continuing in verse 3 we read: “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is
gracious.” We have a keener appetite, and we start feeding on things that are
more blessed.

 
We read in verse 4: “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed
of men, but chosen of God, and precious.”

 
We are as dependent upon God to sustain our spiritual life as we are for Him to
quicken us from our spiritual death “in trespasses and sins” as we see in
Ephesians 2:1-2. 

 
In verses 4 to 6 we read: “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love
wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us
together

with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” 

 
We are so dependent on God that He quickened us in the first place, and we are
equally dependent on Him that He sustain our spiritual life. How does He do it?
He causes us to hunger. He makes these things that are abominable to Him
abominable to us. He makes it so we can no longer feed on them. He takes our
hearts out of the world.
 
Many Christians are spiritually low because they do not live “by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD.” They live by feelings, they live by
opinions, they live by so many other things, but the Word of God is not their
authority.

 
The Lord used clay and spittle to open the eyes of the blind, and the pastor is
nothing but clay that has been spit upon. Yet, when we take that and start
polishing it and make it an idol, the Lord will break that idol. Then we will
hate him as badly as we ever loved him. Sometimes it is our own fault, because
we made an idol of him, and now the Lord has removed that idol because we have
become so low that we feared the Lord and served our own idols. We need to
return to where we live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the
Lord.
 
Those who neglect feeding upon the manna of God’s Word are starving their souls.
The new man can only live upon manna, and if we neglect gathering it daily our
souls will become famished. We cannot live by anything else. We must live by
every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord, which is the manna with
which He feeds us. We must daily search the Word for new manna.
 
Our text says “that man doth not live by bread only.” At least two more
substances are needed for bare existence. Those are air and water, spiritually
as well as literally. You can have all the bread in the world and die of thirst.
You can live by a river of the most pure water and die of starvation. You can
have water and bread and die from strangulation. We need air, we need water and
we need bread.
 
How many people want to live off the broken body of Christ? They want to escape
the consequences of sin and have a pardon, and that is their whole religion. You
cannot live on that alone. You need cleansing water. If you do not have
cleansing you have no pardon.
 
This teaches that we will not only hunger, but also thirst after righteousness.
We not only desire to have a pardon for our sins, but we want to be cleansed
from the pollution of our sins. We desire to have sin purged away so we can walk
according to the will of God. This spiritual warfare that God has created in our
hearts is a desire to be free from sin because we see the sinfulness of sin, not
only that we want to escape the consequences, but that we have such a desire to
again be reconciled to God. We know that we can never be reconciled without
being cleansed.
 
The third essential element, air, is the new birth. You and I would perish
eternally if we did not have the work of regeneration, which is the new birth.
We see this in John 3:8: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest
the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so
is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
 
Also, turn with me to Ezekiel 37:8: “And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the
flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no
breath in them.”
 
We need breath. He had the bones and sinews, the two essential elements, but he
needed the third one.

 
We read in verses 9 and 10: “Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind,
prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from
the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I
prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived,
and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”
 
We need that breath of life. We need that work of regeneration of the Holy
Spirit. We need to be born again. We need all three.

 
The Lord is telling us that we cannot live by bread alone. We cannot live by a
preaching of justification only.  We need sanctification. We need the Spirit of
Christ. We read in Romans 8:9: “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he
is none of his.” We need for the Holy Spirit to breathe in us. We need that work
of regeneration, that new birth.
 
There is one more essential element necessary for us to remain healthy, and that
is exercise. If a person has breath, bread and water, he is alive. We see
spiritual life, but to remain healthy this spiritual life needs exercise.
 
As we have learned what it is to eat from angel’s food, we must put what we have
received from the Word into exercise to remain spiritually healthy and to grow
in grace.
 
I want to show you what is one of the most essential elements of the gospel that
I do not hear preached today. I want you to see what it is when we take that
bread, water and life and we put it into exercise that it might live.

 
We read in 2 Peter 1:5-7: “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your
faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to
temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly
kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.”
 
See the second table of the law put into practice here.
 
Continuing in verse 8 we read: “For if these things be in you, and abound, they
make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ.”
 
John 17:3 says, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
 
Continuing in 2 Peter 1:9 we read: “But he that lacketh these things is blind,
and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old
sins.”
 
We are talking about the man who has life. Now we must put that into exercise,
and it is by exercise that we remain healthy, and that we learn to grow.

 
See the connecting word at the start of verse 10: “Wherefore the rather,
brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do
these things, ye shall never fall.”
 
How do we make our calling and election sure? We make our election sure by doing
these things. Is that preaching legalism? No. I am not telling you that you are
going to earn heaven by good works. I am saying that for those who have the work
of regeneration, for those who have life, do you want to be never barren in the
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you want to grow spiritually? Then do
these things.
 
We read in verse 11: “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly
into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
 
Is brotherly love immaterial? No. The great commandment is to love God above
all, with our hearts, souls and minds. Can you tell me you love God and hate
your brother? No. Doing these things is my evidence that I love God.

 
The law of self-denial for the well-being of others is the only means of
maintaining our own well-being. We maintain our own well-being, not by selfishly
seeking our own good, but by seeking the good of others. In so doing, we
maintain our own well-being.
 
Our text says, the Lord “suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna.” We
cannot feed on the things of the flesh and on heavenly manna.
 
When our hearts and minds are taken up with our family, our business, the cares
of this life, we will find our hearts as the prodigal son. We will find
ourselves in want. We will find ourselves barren in the knowledge of the Lord
Jesus Christ. When our hearts are taken up with the things that are spiritual,
so an entrance is ministered to us.
 
There will be an aching void that nothing can fill until the Lord again feeds us
with manna. When we feed on the things of the flesh, we will find our souls
barren.
 
So what is that manna? I read you that in John 6:35: “And Jesus said unto them,
I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that
believeth on me shall never thirst.”
 
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Word. Revelation 19:13 tells us: “And he was
clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.”
 
So, what is manna? Manna is to feed upon the Word. Amen.




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