20 His Meat
XX HIS MEAT
Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with His journey sat thus on the well. For His disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat. And upon this came His disciples and prayed Him, saying: Master, eat. But He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. My meat is to do the will of Him ’that sent Me, and to finish His work. These words of their Master at once threw the disciples, and they throw us, into another world of things altogether than our everyday world of hungering and thirsting, and eating and drinking. His Father’s will, and His Father’s work, had taken such possession of our Lord during those two or three hours at the well that He had clean forgotten all about His former hunger. And He only makes this use of His former hunger, and of the food now spread out before Him, to point out a great spiritual lesson to His disciples and to us. Bring the word to the water, and you thereby make a sacrament, said St. Augustine. And when our Lord brought that word of His about His Father’s will and His Father’s work to that meat which the disciples had brought from the city, that meat that moment became to Him, and to them, so much sacramental meat. That moment that meat became a means of grace and truth to all who heard and understood His wonderful words that day. Till every day during the rest of their time with Him in this world His disciples must have remembered their Master’s words which He spake at the well: "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." At the same time, that at the well was by no means the first occasion on which our Lord had fallen back on the familiar figure of food, in order to set the true source of His spiritual strength before His disciples. He had already met the tempter in the wilderness with these words out of Moses: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." As much as to say--Bread is necessary to every man’s life, but bread is not man’s only necessity. Man is made up of body, and soul, and spirit. And, what bread is to a man’s body, God Himself is to that man’s soul. Job also said a fine thing in this matter. "I have esteemed the words of Thy mouth," he said, "more than my necessary food." In saying that, Job admitted that his daily food was necessary to him. But he protested at the same time that the words of God’s mouth had to him a high and a sovereign necessity. "But then as to the words of God’s mouth to us," says Luther, "the words of God’s mouth are not so many merely grammatical vocals. The words of the mouth of God are true, and actual, and essential things. The sun and the moon; the heavens and the earth; Peter and Paul; you and I, are all so many words of God." And, in the same way, the name of the Lord is not a mere grammatical vocal. The true name of the Lord is so many divine attributes, and every attribute in its full operation. The true name of the Lord is made up of these divine vocals, so to call them --"Merciful, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and in truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin." Now, it was in giving to His disciples, and to all men, these words of His Father; it was in manifesting these names of His Father that the Son of God found His meat and His drink. Till every returning day brought His Father’s will in these matters to our Lord for His daily bread. And thus it was that His midday meal that day was this conversation of His with the woman who had come out of the city to draw water.
Now we are very happy in having some of the crumbs that fell from our Lord’s table that day gathered up into the evangelist’s bread-basket, which now stands open before us. If then you would like to taste some of your Lord’s meat that day at the well, just read, with a spiritual mind, the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel. Just pass your spiritual mind into your Savior’s spiritual mind as He talked these spiritual things with that woman, and you will understand at once what He meant when He said to His disciples that .He had meat to eat that they knew not of. For that hour’s conversation at the well had so completely recruited and refreshed and even regaled our Lord, that He had clean forgotten that He had ever been hungry, or athirst, or aweary. He had had such a banquet, as of marrow and fatness, while His disciples were gone to the city, that He turned away, almost as with loathing, from the meat they now came and spread out before Him. So does the full soul loathe even the honeycomb. And as He began in the wilderness and at the well so He continued all His days on earth. His mission from His Father; His offices towards us; His life of holy obedience; and His death of atonement for our sin; these things completely absorbed, and absolutely possessed our Lord, till He was able to finish His work with such scriptures as these for His daily bread: "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. My heart and my flesh faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."
God is the treasure of my soul, The source of lasting joy; A joy which want shall not impair, Nor death itself destroy.
Now, all that is written for our learning. All that is written in order that we may take it and apply it to ourselves. And, far behind our Lord as we are in all these things, at the same time we are not wholly without some little beginnings of the same mind. Even we ourselves sometimes forget to take our food in our love for our work. Was it not Archimedes who was so absorbed in his geometrical problems that his scholars could not get him to eat the dish that stood cold before him? And did not Pericles say in one of his great orations that an Athenian’s best holiday was just that day on which he had done his duty best? And is not a good conscience toward our proper work a continual feast to ourselves? Even as a bad conscience toward our proper work--all the corn and wine in the world will not make up for it. Our proper work not done is starvation and a prison and a rack to us. You yourselves have often been like Archimedes. You have often been so possessed with your work that you had meat to eat of which your idle neighbors round about you knew nothing. Till you felt in such love with your work, and got so much true strength and satisfaction out of your work, that as you toiled on at your work you sang and said:
Blest work! if thou dost bear God’s curse, What must His blessing be! And even in the taking of our necessary food, we completely forget that we are taking it, when we are in agreeable company, and are absorbed in delightful conversation. One of Lord Ardmillan’s daughters used to say of her genial and gentlemanly father that he breakfasted on the newspapers and dined on conversation. All his guests who remain well remember how his Lordship had always meat to eat far other than that which lay spread about on the table. And his well remembered words of wisdom, and truth, and love were more to those who sat beside him than their necessary food. Lord Ardmillan, as we well remember, was like Job himself in the intensity of his love for the words of God’s mouth. The Bible is both meat and drink to all who have learned to read it aright. Even a single book of the Bible will sometimes be a perfect banquet to him who reads it aright; even a single chapter of it; even a single verse of it, sometimes. David could not have had many books of the Bible, and he could not have had the best of its books, but listen to what a feast he made out of what he had. ’Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. How sweet are Thy words to my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! And my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." Now, what do you say to that? You have far more marrow and fatness than David ever had, and what do you say to God and man about it all? Surely you are not silent toward God about it all. But David is not alone in his rapturous delight in his Bible. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah also. "Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and they were unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." And Ezekiel, also: "Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with the roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it, and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness." Now, how is all that with you? How is it between you and your Bible? Can you honestly speak in that way about your Bible? Is God, whose book it is, your witness that neither Job, nor David, nor Jeremiah, nor Ezekiel, nor any other man, can give you warm enough words wherewith to speak about your Bible? In the composition of Holy Scripture holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And in so speaking they have brought such strength and such consolation, such meat and such drink to our hearts, that we name their very names with what is little short of divine honor and love. Till we advertise and tell all men how deep, beyond all counting up, is our debt to David, and to John, and to Paul. Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind? And the poet gives for his answer the names of three ancient and classical authors. Now, do you put the same question to me? Do you ask me who prop my mind in these bad days of mine? You have my answer already. David props my mind, and John, and Paul; especially Paul. In my very worst days I lean on Paul, and he holds me up, and never fails me. The poet’s three boasted props are so many broken reeds to me. I have tried them, all three, in my time, and thry have always failed me. But Paul never fails me, even in my very worst days, and even when worse days there could not be. Or, rather, HE never fails me whose ambassador Paul always is to me. No man living needs such a strong prop as I need. And I can say with a corresponding experience, and assurance, and absoluteness of confidence: Come with me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will show you where I always find rest. And where you also shall find rest unto your souls. Your fathers did feed upon poetry and philosophy and fiction in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. And the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.
Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work. Yes. But, as we are in this world, we cannot make these things our meat. That wearied Man at the well could, but we cannot. No mere man, since the fall of Adam, could make the pure and immediate will and work of God his meat. The very opposite. The man which doeth these things, he shall live by them. But when any mere man, when any sinful man, tries to live by doing the will and the work of God,--"The commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death." But Christ could and did live under the commandment that was ordained to life. And then such was the will and the work of God toward us that His death; that is to say, the flesh and the blood of Christ, are made of God our proper and true meat and drink, as we are sinners. And now we as we are sinners, live by Him. That is to say, in His own words, we live by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Wonderful! is it not? Amazing! is it not? An everlasting study in God, and in Christ, and in sin, and in salvation! is it not? Yes. Here is philosophy, and that not falsely so called. Come all you who seek wisdom and you will find it here. You will find it all in Him who is made of God to you wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountain-head, And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.