The Subject of the Bible Being Eating and Drinking God
The sixty-six books of the Bible focus on this one subject. This is the unique subject. If the Bible speaks of love, it is a love that is lived out through our eating of God. If the Bible speaks of patience, it is a patience that is lived out through our receiving of God. If the Bible speaks of holiness, it is a holiness that is manifested through our digestion of God. If the Bible speaks of zeal, it is a zeal that comes from the fire that burns within us through our breathing of the fiery God. The things of God that are recorded in the Bible are only God Himself.
This is the story of the Bible. Genesis begins with God becoming man’s food. In the Psalms the psalmist says, “Taste and see that Jehovah is good” (34:8). Tasting involves eating and drinking. Psalm 36:8 says that we can be saturated with the fatness of His house. The fatness of His house is simply God Himself. Without God the house has nothing. God Himself is the fatness of the house. Hence, to enjoy the fatness of the house is to enjoy God Himself. This verse also says that we can drink of the river of His pleasures. This water is God Himself. The fatness and the water are for eating and drinking. This continues the thought in Genesis 2. Psalm 36:9 says that with God is the fountain of life and that in His light we see light. These descriptions and expressions are found in the Old Testament. However, these are not merely descriptions; they are the genuine experiences of the psalmists.
In the New Testament the Lord Jesus came. He said that He is the bread of life that comes down out of heaven. He came to give man life. In other words, He said that He is the tree of life in Genesis 2. He is able to dispense life into us in the form of food. He wants to be our food so that we may have life. Those who contact Him will not hunger, and those who believe into Him will not thirst. One day the Lord Jesus declared that if anyone thirsts, he should come to Him and drink, and that those who believe into Him will have rivers of living water flowing out of them. The Bible explicitly points out that this refers to the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him would receive (John 7:37-39). The Spirit is the realization of God. God became flesh, died, resurrected, and became the Spirit. The Spirit is the very God who was incarnated and raised from the dead. The Spirit is also the God who enters into man. The God who became flesh, died, resurrected, and entered into man is the Spirit. When such a Spirit enters man, He becomes rivers of living water in man to satisfy his thirst and to flow out of him. Here the Lord Jesus is again speaking of eating and drinking. This is the thought in Genesis 2. Before He died, He established the Lord’s supper in which He took bread and blessed it and said to His disciples, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And He took a cup and gave thanks, and He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you” (Matt. 26:26-27). This is eating and drinking; it is the thought in Genesis 2. When He came to the disciples on the evening of His resurrection, He breathed into them and in a sense said, “Receive the holy breath” (John 20:22). By this breath the Holy Spirit entered the disciples. This is a kind of eating and drinking of the Lord Himself. In the book of Revelation God says that He would be the hidden manna to the overcoming saints who love Him. From the beginning to the end of the Bible God’s thought is to make Himself available as food and drink. He wants man to eat and drink Him. At the end of Revelation the entire divine record concludes. The Bible begins with the tree of life and a flowing river, and it concludes with the tree of life and the river of water of life. From the throne within the city, that is, from God Himself, the river of water of life flows. On both sides of the river is the tree of life, bearing fruits for man’s enjoyment. The Bible begins with the tree of life and concludes with the tree of life. In the beginning God reveals Himself to man as food for eating and drinking, and in the end He presents this same picture.
The line that runs through the entire Bible, from beginning to end, is God becoming food to man. He wants man to eat Him, drink Him, and enjoy Him. He wants to be life to man. Once we know this, we can understand that the relationship between God and man is not a matter of worship or service or a matter of doing some work for Him. These are secondary and ancillary. The crux of the issue is that we must eat God, drink Him, absorb Him, and enjoy Him.