Chapter 5:10-12
At Gilgal, within the land, Israel encamped, and there they kept the Passover. God had set them free from the service of sin in Egypt, the land of their bondage, free from the trials of the wilderness, and free from their own selfish wills.
There they ate of the lamb roast with fire, and on the day after the Passover, they ate of the old corn of the land, and unleavened cakes and parched corn. How delightful this all must have been after those long weary wilderness journeyings.
Every day for forty years the manna had not ceased to fall around their tents; but now we read that after they had tasted the old corn of the land, the manna ceased to come any more. They ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year, but it was in Gilgal they tasted it first.
They kept the Passover in remembrance of the night they left Egypt. When they ate the lamb in Egypt, it was the beginning of their journey. They ate it in haste because they were going to fly from the power of Pharaoh. But when they ate the Passover on the other side of the Jordan, they had come to the end of their journey, and they could look back in peace and remember all that God had done for them.
He had in His mercy brought forth His people whom He had redeemed, and He had guided them in His strength to His holy habitation. He had brought them into the promised land and there they kept the Passover again, for it was a night to be much remembered.
When we are at home with the Lord in the glory, we shall never forget the cross. But there we shall have the Lord Jesus Himself — the One who is God’s Lamb, who is also the manna, the Bread which came down from heaven, and also the old corn of the land; for all these are figures to teach us the different ways in which Jesus is known and enjoyed by His heavenly people.
The manna came down to where they were and lay all around them in the wilderness, but the corn only grew in Canaan, and they must be in the land to get it. When we speak of feeding upon Jesus as the manna, we mean that we enjoy Him as the humbled Man down here when He took the form of a servant and became obedient unto death. Every word He spoke down here and everything He did was like the small coriander seed which the children of Israel gathered. And the Holy Spirit loves to gather and admire, and to delight in the ways and manners of this heavenly Man, and to feed upon Him in our hearts.
But when we speak of feeding upon Him as the old corn of the land, we mean that we are enjoying Him as the risen Man who is gone up to glory. The same Jesus still, but risen from the dead and set down at God’s right hand in heaven. All power is His, and all the glory is His, and we who believe are one with Him where He is.
ML-05/29/1977