Address—C. Hendricks
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Our soul is dried away. There is nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes. Now we know that the manna speaks of Christ. Humbled.
Christ come down. He was that manna which came down from heaven.
To give life to the world.
And here they they remembered the the food of Egypt.
The beginning.
Of the warnings that we have in that 10th chapter that we've been looking at in our readings.
Starts with this murmuring.
This lusting.
Uh, who shall give us fleshly like to apply that of course spiritually.
The man is Speaking of Christ.
There's three instances. Of the five, there are three of them that all refer directly to Christ in type.
The two of the manna.
And one of the the food of the land.
That's the last one.
Here we have.
The complaint? Our soul is dried away. There is nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes.
It says in that 10th chapter of First Corinthians it says.
These things were our examples to the intent we should not lust.
After evil things.
As they also lusted.
When we desire the food of Egypt.
The fish.
That swam in the river.
Nile.
The leeks, the onions, the melon, the garlic.
All that springs from the ground.
All that is of this scene.
The fish swimming in that that river which made Egypt an apartment type of the world and its independency of God, never looking up, never raising the eyes to heaven for their water, but always looking to that river that flowed down the center of the land.
That overflowed its banks in a very predictable time of the year. It was very consistent.
Clockwork.
They knew exactly when that would happen.
There was no dependency.
Egypt is an apartment picture of the world in its independence, the world in its own resources, the world in its ability to to look to all that it can count on down here that that is very, very predictable and repeatable as the overflowing of the Nile was.
And then the fruit that grew in the ground.
The fish that swam in that river.
Of independency self-sufficiency.
That.
Was Egypt.
Picture of the world, The House of *******.
The place where we once all were.
In our sins.
In our going on without thinking of God.
And to desire that food, as Israel did here, to remember it and to lust after it, was evil.
What are we feeding on?
Young people, it's a real burden in my heart this afternoon. What are you feeding on?
What are you looking at? What are you reading?
What is the staple of food that you take in for your soul?
As a book written in the natural realm, it says we are what we eat. That's true spiritually.
We are what we eat.
And when the manna becomes a light thing.
They complained our soul is dried away. Is your soul dried away?
Do you desire the things of this world to feed your soul?
We sang Jesus thou art enough, the mind and heart to fill. We heard yesterday in the address about the filling of the hands, the meaning of the word consecration.
And applying it to our hearts being filled with Christ.
Is your heart if your heart is filled with Christ?
If you've found it to be so.
Jesus, thou art enough. Coming back from Salem, when I was visiting Gresham, we stopped by and we visited Albert Shaker.
A man completely, totally, absolutely dependent upon others to feed him, to care for him, to bathe him.
Every.
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Need that he has is administered to him by others.
It can do nothing for himself. He's totally dependent. What a picture.
Of the Christian.
Unable to.
To get along without the help of another.
He's one that can prove.
The reality of that line that we were singing Jesus, thou art enough. The mind and heart to fill.
Brother Oscar Frazee was telling me a little about some of the scriptures that Albert knows by heart.
One of them was John 14. So I said I'm going to read you a chapter that I'm going to read you some verses from a chapter that you know, Albert.
And I started to read him from John 14 in my father's house and many mansions were not. So I would have told you I go to prepare a place for you and so on.
And his eyes brightened and I stopped after the third verse.
And he said in his very hard to understand for me.
English, he said. Read more Read more.
And I understood him. Read more.
And I did.
I went through the whole chapter.
It was a chapter he had learned because it had been read to him over and over and over again.
It made it his own and there were other portions.
He has proven.
As few of us, if any, have proven.
The reality of that truth? Jesus, thou art enough.
Is he? Yes, he is.
Jesus, thou art enough the mind and heart to fill.
Fill the heart with that blessed one.
But here we have the opposite. Our soul is dried away. There's nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes.
The manna.
They didn't like it in the form in which God gave it, so they they added man's manufacturing process to it.
It says in verse.
8 The people went about and gathered it and grounded in mills.
And beat it in a mortar and baked it in pans and made cakes of it.
The taste of it was as a taste of fresh oil.
It changed its taste. It changed its form.
They added their own works to it.
The manna.
Something we can't live without.
You can't go on yesterday's manna.
We need it every day, a fresh.
The food from heaven, Christ come down.
What feeds this soul is a humbled Christ.
The Christ come down into this world, right to where we were, right to all our needs.
Going through every circumstance of our life, He was here blessed 1 He was here amongst us, a man amongst men. He felt everything that you and I feel. Felt it perfectly. Felt it without the taint of sin, felt it without that evil nature which has the propensity to sin. Felt it as perfect man only can feel it.
Who felt the awfulness of sin, the awfulness of evil? He groaned. He sighed.
He felt it, the Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief.
Yes, in all their affliction he was afflicted. He was down here, beloved, down here, where you and I are passing through the heavenly stranger on earth, and God says I want you to feed upon him.
We get the man everywhere as we read the four Gospels, lying everywhere. We get some of it in the Epistles. Philippians 2 is the manna. He who is in the form of God? Thought it not robbery, thought it not something to be grasped and held on to tenaciously, but He emptied himself, and became and took upon him the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man, the likeness of men. He humbled Himself, and so on the manna.
And then in the 3rd chapter we have Christ in glory.
The old corn of the land.
The mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting.
Lust is unbridled desire, and the children of Israel wept. Who shall give us flesh to eat?
They wanted the flesh.
They wanted the food of Egypt.
And if that's what you're feeding on?
You won't find your delight in the manner.
But the manna is all that God has for us.
To to nourish us down here in this scene, in the old corn of the land, of course.
Well, let's go on. I want to touch some of these other portions. We said something on this.
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The men are.
Then it says in verse 7 of chapter 10 First Corinthians, neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them.
As it is written.
The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play and turned to me, with me to Exodus 32.
For that.
Exodus 32 will read from verse one.
And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount.
The people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up makest gods which shall go before us. For As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we what not, what is become of him? And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.
Notice the source.
From which this golden calf that was about to be made comes.
Comes from.
The family ties.
Comes from the wives, the sons and the daughters of the Israelites that had these golden earrings, which were part of the idolatrous practices and worship of the nations round about them.
And all the people break off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron, and he received them at their hand.
And fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf. And they said, These be thy gods, O Israel.
Which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt?
And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it.
And Aaron made proclamation and said tomorrow is a feast to the Lord. You ever notice that?
In this idolatry, the first 3 commandments were broken.
Before Moses ever came down from the mount.
While he was up in the mount receiving the 10 commandments on the 2 tables of stone from the Lord, The first 3 commandments. The first one is, Thou shalt have no other gods but me. The second is, Thou shalt not make any graven image, if anything in heaven or earth, and bow down to it. And the third one is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
They broke all three. They made another God, they made a graven image, and they said tomorrow is the feast of Jehovah. They gave the name of the true God to that idolatrous, blasphemous feast. Christendom has done that.
It's attached the name of Christ.
To heathen feasts.
Which really stem from idolatry.
And it's put a Christian veneer over that.
And called it a name which has the name of Christ in it.
Christendom has done that very thing.
So the warning that we shouldn't be idolaters comes very clear to us and very close to us, doesn't it, as Christians? Because idolatry has come into the Christian circle just as it came into the religious camp of Israel.
They rose up early on the Morrow and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and they rose up to play. There's always connected with idolatry, which is the abandonment of the knowledge of the true God.
For many gods, idolatry, there's always immorality. It follows upon it, It goes with it.
First there's the abandonment of the recognition of the true God, there's the dishonouring of the true God, and then there's the dishonoring of their own bodies between themselves.
When one commits.
The sin of idolatry and when one commits the sin of fornication, the 1 is a dishonor to God and the other is a dishonor to your own body.
According to scripture.
There's a moral order, I think, in the development here.
The first is they were dissatisfied with the food that God had provided for them in the wilderness.
And they lusted.
After the food of Egypt, they remembered.
You know, you may have been saved a short time or you may have been saved some time, and some of the habits that you've developed before you were saved. When you got saved, you became a new creature in Christ and those things were turned away from you, turned to God, from idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for his Son from heaven.
And we had idols, everyone of us, before we were saved.
And there's a danger of it even after we're saved. And so we have the issuance of the many warnings in Scripture. Flee from idolatry. If it wasn't possible for a Christian to have an idol, there wouldn't be that warning.
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After the apostle John has outlined the beauties of the person of Christ, is that eternal life that was with the Father and was manifested to us?
He says the last word. He says little children guard yourselves from idols.
Idols. Anything that displaces Christ.
Becomes an idol. And as our brother brought out in the readings, covetousness is idolatry.
And so we have here.
The departure from the true God.
And then they, the people, sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. And that's, that's the suggestion of immorality.
And that's the very next thing in 1St Corinthians 10 that's mentioned.
Verse 8.
Neither let us commit fornication as some of them committed and fell in one day.
3 and 20,000.
Now that's taken from numbers 25, and let's turn to that.
But before we.
Read that in numbers 25.
I want to point out that in numbers 2223 and 24.
We have a most interesting history.
Says in verse 2 of Numbers 22, Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites, and Moab was so afraid of the people because they were many. And Moab was distressed because of the children of Israel. And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, Now shall this company lick up all that are round about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field.
And Balak the son of Zippor, was king of the Moabites at that time, and he sent messengers therefore unto Balaam.
The son of Beor to Pithor, which is by the river of the land of the children of the people to call him saying.
Behold, there is a people come out of Egypt. Behold, they cover the face of the earth, and they abide over against me. Come now, I pray thee, curse me, this people. So Balak.
The the king of.
Moab he hires.
Balaam this.
Hireling prophet, this false prophet, a wicked man.
To curse Israel.
And God came in.
And he spoke to Balaam very solemnly at night in a dream.
And he told him you say exactly what I tell you to say.
Now he wasn't used to this. He had gone and he had gone and used divination before.
And I just want to refer to some of the wonderful utterances.
That Balaam gives in the 23rd chapter, verse 9.
He says in verse 8, How shall I curse whom God?
Hath not cursed.
Or how shall I defy whom the Lord hath not defied?
For from the top of the rocks I see him, from the hills I behold him. Lo, the people shall dwell alone.
And shall not be reckoned among the nations. This is the first.
Grand truth of Balaam's prophecy that the people of God, the Israelites, would dwell along.
They were to be a separated people.
The truth of sanctification. They were set apart to God for a holy purpose.
The people shall dwell alone. They shall not be reckoned among the nations. What answers to that in the New Testament?
We have it in John 15 and in John 17. The Lord Jesus says they are not of the world. Even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
So we're a separated people. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own. But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
If they hate you, know that they hated me before they hated you.
And now have they seen and hated both me and my father?
They hated him, they hated the Father, they hated us because we're not of it.
We belong to another scene, We belong to heaven. A heavenly people called out of this world to be a people for his name, glorious calling. So here it was from Israel. The same principle. They were an earthly people, but they were not to be reckoned among the nations. They were a separated people.
And then it says in verse 21 of chapter 23, he hath not be held iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel. The Lord is God is with him, and the shout of a king is among him. God doesn't see a spot in us, not iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel. He sees us from the top of the rocks, dwelling alone, separate from all the evil and the contamination of the world round about us.
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A separated people. A sanctified people.
People are holy people, a justified people. He doesn't behold iniquity in us. He didn't behold it in Jacob.
What a portion there is thine.
What a portion.
Belongs to us. We've had that before us, some of our portion.
What has brought us into?
Were we guilty?
We have the forgiveness of our sins were we under the sentence of condemnation. We're justified from all things from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses.
Were we dead in trespasses and sins yet now had He quickened us?
Given us life.
Where we as to our nature, fallen and polluted and defiled and unclean.
He's given us a new nature.
A new life.
As unclean, He's washed us.
Who cleansed us?
Were we under the power of the Prince, of the power of the air, Satan himself? Now we have the power of the Holy Spirit, who indwells us, given to us in shed abroad in our hearts, sheds abroad in our heart the love of God.
Where we lost.
Unable to find our way.
He saved us.
He found us. He sought us.
Picked us up.
Where we at enmity with God is reconciled as to Himself.
By Jesus Christ and given to us the ministry of reconciliation.
You could go on and on and on.
What a portion. There's thine, what a portion we have.
One with the man in the glory, united to Christ on high.
But then I'm not going to go over too much because of the lack of time. All of Balaam's prophecies.
Just those first two.
But in the 25th chapter of Numbers, after he had totally failed to pronounce the curse that he was hired to pronounce against Israel because God didn't allow him to do it.
He does succeed.
In bringing down the judgment of God of faith.
By breaking down their separation, his first prophecy said, I see him from the top of the rocks. The people shall dwell alone. They shall not be reckoned among the nations. And the power of Israel's testimony.
Was connected with that separation.
They're not having illicit intercourse with the world, with the nations round about us.
It says in chapter 25 Israel abode in Shittim.
And the people began to commit ******** with the daughters of Moab.
And they called the people under the sacrifices of their gods. Again, we have idolatry.
And the people did eat and bow down to their gods.
They had fellowship with their gods, with idolatry, and Israel joined himself unto Baal Peor.
And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from, from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye everyone, his men that were joined.
Unto baal peor.
Behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought unto the brethren of Midianitish woman in the sight of Moses, in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the door of the Tabernacle of the congregation. And when Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw it, he rose up from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand, and he went after the man of Israel into the tent.
And thrust both of them through the man of Israel and the woman through her belly.
So the plague was stayed from the children.
Of Israel. So there was judgment executed against that wickedness. Now turn with me quickly to Revelation chapter 3, chapter 2. Excuse me, chapter 2.
Verse 12 To the Angel of the church in Pergamos write these things, saith He which hath the sharp sword with two edges. I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan seed his. Here in the history, the prophetic history of the church at Pergamus, the church was dwelling in the world where Satan's throne is. And thou holdest fast my name, and is not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Oedipus was my faithful martyr.
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Who was slain among you? Where Satan dwelleth?
They were dwelling in the world. They had given up their separation, though there still was a measure of faithfulness which the Lord commands. But notice what he says in verse 14. I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them, that hold the doctrine of Balaam.
We don't read about the doctrine of Balaam in Numbers.
We read about how he was hired to curse Israel, but failed in it and only pronounced blessing. But here we read about the doctrine of Balaam. After he had failed in that, he got together with Balak and he counseled him. He counseled him and he he taught him something. He taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And to commit fornication.
Notice the order. It's the same order we have.
In 1St Corinthians 10, idolatry followed by immorality. 2 Things going together, God being displaced in the soul and as soon as we displace the true God then all morals.
It's up to you, the individual, to set his own moral standards. There is no such thing as absolute morality once there's no God.
And if there's many gods, they're at conflict one with another, so there is no absolute any longer. If you enter into idolatry, you have abandoned.
An absolute standard.
For right and wrong.
And so immediately, immorality follows upon this.
And that's what happened.
That's what happened at Pergamos.
Balak was taught of Balaam, a wicked man.
A doctrine, he says, well, I couldn't curse them for you, but here's how you can get God to judge them, bring them into judgment, marry with them.
Have intercourse with them.
And the daughters of Moab.
The children of Israel began to commit ******** with the daughters of Moab.
That's what happened in the history of the church. The church has been worldly. The church in the world have been united.
The church in the days of Pergamus, the church became worldly and the world became churchy. Spend that way ever since.
But notice in Thyatira there's an advance upon this in verse 20, chapter 2. This is to Thyatira, he says, notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman, Jezebel. It's no longer the doctrine of Balaam, it's no longer the teaching of the man. When you have the man, it's the energy of it's the energy that brings a doctrine in. When you have the woman. It's the settled state that results from the teaching.
Now you have the woman, Jezebel.
That wicked woman which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce My servants, to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. Notice the order is reversed. Fornication is first here, because at the time of Jezebel, at the time of Thyatira, the world and the Church were really one, so totally one, that the intercourse between the Church and the world.
Was practiced all the time.
No separation any longer.
Sardis was a recovery, partially.
But not separation from the world. You don't get that in Sardis.
The reformers still sought protection against the tyranny of Rome by going to the earthly governors, the earthly emperors.
There was still a false principle of illicit intercourse with the world.
But in Philadelphia, you have the true testimony restored.
And we're living.
160 so years after the recovery.
What a responsibility we have.
You can't go back to the days of Sardis. Impossible.
You can't go to the other side of Philadelphia. You can't go back. There'll never be another. There'll never be another Sardis. That is, the days that Sardis speak of are gone.
Because the recovery of truth has been made, you can never go back to the time before the truth was recovered. And so the guilt of Laodicea, which follows upon Philadelphia.
Is far greater.
Far greater.
Than anything that preceded it.
Because all the light has been brought out.
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Truth of the assembly, Separation from the world, True Nazarite ship.
We have it.
In Philadelphia.
Now let's quickly look at the other two portions. First Corinthians 10.
The next one says.
Verse 9 Let us neither, let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted were destroyed of serpents. That's Numbers 21.
We'll just quickly look at that.
It says in verse 4 they journeyed from Mount Hore by the way of the Red Sea to compass the land of Edom.
And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.
The people speak against God and against Moses knows what they say.
Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water.
And our soul loatheth this light bread.
The manna.
And so God sent the fiery serpents among them, and they bit the people.
And they learned a lesson.
The serpent was made of brass and placed upon a pole, and everyone that looked upon that serpent of brass lived.
That's the remedy.
For despising.
The manna.
We have to see the end of the first man, the end of the flesh, and the end of all that we are by nature.
Serpent of brass, He was made sin on the cross.
He not only dealt with our sins, He not only dealt with what we've done, but He's dealt with what we are.
By nature.
The serpent of brass.
Again, there's the despising of the manna.
That was the first one that was mentioned.
And then this one and then the last one it says.
Verse 9 of chapter 10 of First Corinthians neither let us.
Excuse me, verse 10 Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured and were destroyed.
Of the Destroyer, and that's found in numbers 14.
And let's just quickly look at that. The time has run out.
But there's a nice progression here.
In the 13th chapter we have the spies sent into the land and they bring back the grapes of Eshcol.
The grapes of Eshcol tell the story.
Of the fruit of the land.
The fruit of Canaan.
What's in the land now?
The land speaks of the heavenly places. The death and resurrection of Christ has brought us into a new position.
It's not the manna any longer feeding the Israelites as they went through the wilderness, but now it's.
It's the food of the land that is before them. And in the 14th chapter it says all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night. You see, ten of the spies had given this report. Verse 33 of chapter 13. We saw the giants, the sons of Enoch, which came of the giants, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
And they were much discouraged.
And all the children of Israel, verse 2 now murmured against Moses and against Aaron, And the whole congregation said unto them, with God, that we had died in the land of Egypt. Would God we had died in this wilderness.
And they say, let us make us a captain and return to Egypt.
Well, judgment falls upon them. Plague breaks out.
The 10 die that bring us false report. They despise the fruit of the land.
Speaks of Christ in glory.
What a portion is ours.
If you despise it, if I despise it, whether it be the manna, Christ come down and humble down here, or Christ gone up in glory, if we say that's not sufficient, and we get occupied with the power of the enemy, we do not realize why that man is in the glory. He's far above all principalities and powers, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. God hath put all things under his feet.
Made him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth All in all. He is the great conqueror there, and all things serve his might. He is in control of everything, the enemy. The enemy cannot touch us if it's not his.
If he's not allowed to, and our portion is there where he is altogether outside of this scene, the death and resurrection of Christ and our association with Him there has carried us into a scene where the enemy cannot come.
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Cannot defile it, cannot touch it. Our portion is sure and certain what a portion there is thine.
Jesus, thou art enough the mind and heart to fill. Whether we feed on him as the humbled Christ or are animated to run after Him as the glorified Christ in heaven, we have all that is needed.
In these two figures, Philippians 2 and three present him come down humbled and gone up glorified.
To form us.
Is he enough?
Is our portion enough? Samson in the 14th chapter.
He went to Timnath and he went down to Timnath and Timnath means portion.
And he says he saw a woman there, a Philistine woman.
And he says to his mother, to his father, Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well.
There are things down here.
In Timnath, another portion, they say to him, Samson, why don't you marry one of your own? Are they not enough? Why are you forsaking your own portion and going to another portion, young people?
Here in the assembly, you're in the place where Christ has placed his name, where the truth of God is ministered and upheld and acted on. We admit it. Those of us who are a little older, we admit it with great feebleness, and we have failed. And we would be the first ones to confess this to you. We have failed to, to carry out what's been entrusted to us. Don't abandon it. Don't seek another portion. Don't go elsewhere.
God can't have another center. There is no.
No other truth of gathering than the ground of the one body. There's no other name to which we can gather than Christ. Don't, Don't go elsewhere.
Stay where your portion is. Stay where the Word of God places you.
And you'll have rest for your soul. That's what I want to bring across to everyone of our hearts today.
We have it traced out very briefly there in 1St Corinthians 10.
Is Christ enough? That's the question. We had our brother bring it before us yesterday. Is your heart filled with Him? If he's, if he's everything to you, he's everything to me. We'll be kept. We'll be kept where the Lord would have us to be.
Until he calls us home.
Let's pray.