All believers are priests to God, and it is our responsibility as priests to both set up and enjoy the bread of the presence before God. As priests to God and members of the Body of Christ, we need to be built up together with the saints, and in this built-up situation in the church life we will enjoy a very sweet and nourishing portion of Christ as the bread of the presence.
Christ is the living bread (He is living and He makes us living), He is the bread of life (His nature is life and He gives us life), and He is the bread that came down out of heaven for us to eat and live forever (He came as God becoming man to be our food, and if we eat Him we have eternal life); furthermore, Christ is the bread of the presence – He is the face of God to be our bread for our nourishment and supply.
As God incarnated to be a man, Christ has two natures: He has the human nature (the basic element for Him to be our feast) and the divine nature (the expression of God); when we eat Christ in God’s presence together with the saints, our fellow priests, we are inwardly supplied with His humanity and we outwardly express His divinity.
When the Lord gains among us a built up situation, a situation in which the saints are built up in spirit in an actual and practical way, He becomes a rich table with fresh bread of God’s presence for us to enjoy, partake of, be supplied with, and feed on.
And as we eat the Lord, we are being inwardly transformed into His image, and outwardly we express Him; if we still express ourselves after we eat the Lord, this means we didn’t genuinely eat Him or we didn’t allow Him to be digested and assimilated into our being.
May the Lord enlighten us to see what He is to us for God’s building, and how much we need to enjoy Him, eat Him, and feast on Him for the building up of the church, which is His Body, His building, His habitation.
Feasting on Christ in His Humanity (acacia wood) to Express Him in His Divinity (gold)
The table of the bread of the presence in the Holy Place in the tabernacle was made of acacia wood overlaid with gold (Exo. 25:23-24); the wood typifies Christ’s humanity, and the gold His divinity. Acacia wood signifies that Christ’s humanity is the basic element for Him to be our feast.
If we are to eat God, we cannot eat Him without Him becoming a man, since He is holy, righteous, and in glory, and for Him to be eaten by us He has to be processed, that is, He has to have humanity. Christ’s humanity is uplifted, fine, and balanced, and when we eat Him we are nourished with Him in His humanity.
If you read the Gospels with the exercise of your spirit you will feed on Christ’s humanity, and whenever the Lord speaks to us through His word, His humanity feeds us. In order for God to be edible He had to become a man, for His humanity is the basic element for Christ to be our feast.
The fact that the table was overlaid with gold signifies the expression of God: within Him, Christ’s humanity is the basic element for our enjoyment, and upon Him is His divinity as the expression of God. Eating Jesus with His fine, balanced, and uplifted humanity causes us to express God in His divinity; inwardly we have the Lord’s humanity to support us, and outwardly the others see God being expressed through us.
If we enjoy Christ, we will express God; as we enjoy the Lord Jesus as the supply with which to serve God, the outcome will be Christ being expressed through us. A test of whether or not we are genuinely eating Christ is that there is a corresponding expression of Christ; we eat Christ personally and inwardly, and what we express is His divinity as gold.
Hallelujah, the more we enjoy Christ as the basic element of our feast, the more we live because of Christ and we express God (John 6:57)! We live because of the food we eat, and we express what we eat; if we eat Christ, we express Christ and we live because of Christ.
When we eat Christ in His humanity and with His divinity, there’s an inward metabolic process going on: we are gradually being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18), that is, we become God’s expression!
However, if we still express ourselves after we eat the Lord for a while, our eating is not that solid. We need to eat the Lord, digest Him, and let Him be assimilated into us, so that we may have His humanity and express Him in His divinity.
Lord Jesus, thank You for becoming a man in order to become our food, our supply. We love to eat You in Your humanity, the basic element of our feast, so that You may be expressed through us! Hallelujah, our God is edible: He became a man, lived a perfect human life, died, and was resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit and be our daily supply! Lord, we want to genuinely eat Your humanity and feed on Your divinity so that You may be our life supply, You may live in us, and we may express You!
Eating Christ as the Bread of God’s Presence, God’s Face, for us to Serve God as Priests
The bread on the table in the Holy Place is called “the bread of the presence”, literally, this is “the face-bread”, the bread of God’s face (see Exo. 25:30). This is very significant. This bread is not just the bread of life or the living bread but the bread of the presence: this bread was spread on the table before the Lord always.
Eating this bread is not just a matter of satisfying our hunger but being in God’s presence as a comfort, a cheer to us, the priests, for us to serve God. We are eating Christ as the bread of God’s presence before God, in His presence.
“The bread on the table is called the bread of the Presence because the table was set before God, that is, in God’s presence, not far from the Ark. Whereas manna was gathered by all the people in the wilderness outside the court of the tabernacle, the bread of God’s presence was enjoyed only by the priests in the presence of God in the Holy Place within the tabernacle (Exo. 40:22-23; Heb. 9:2; Lev. 24:9). Manna typifies Christ as the life supply of God’s people for their living (see footnote 1 on Exo. 16:19); the bread on the table typifies Christ as the life supply of God’s priests, enabling them not only to live but also to serve God. This bread indicates that God’s people should no longer live by themselves but by Christ as their life and life supply (John 6:57).
The bread of the Presence was the most holy of Jehovah’s offerings by fire (Lev. 24:7, 9). It signifies the surplus of the believers’ enjoyment of Christ that is offered to God to be His food for His satisfaction. God caused certain loaves of this offering to be spared, brought into the Holy Place, and arranged and displayed on the table to be food for the serving priests.” (Exo. 25:30, footnote 1, Recovery Version Bible)
God’s presence must be the criterion in every matter in our Christian life: in everything, God’s presence should be the primary criterion, and not right or wrong, good or bad. Being a Christian is not a matter of not sinning or not loving the world but having the Lord’s presence day by day by seeing His face.
Our Christian life should not be focused on dealing with sin or not loving the world but caring for the Lord’s presence. Losing the Lord’s presence should be something that all believers in Christ should fear more than anything else. If we have God’s presence, everything is alright, but if we don’t have the Lord manifested to us, we are in darkness.
We want the Lord’s presence to go with us; if we have His presence, the world is behind us, sins are beneath our feet, and we feast on Christ as the bread of the presence. As we eat this bread, we are satisfied, supplied, and encouraged to go on with the Lord and to serve Him in spirit.
Christ is the bread of God’s presence: He is our food, and eating Him makes us dependent on Him; we cannot live without the Lord, we cannot serve without Him, and we need His presence in everything we do. By eating Christ as the bread of God’s presence we take Him as our life and life supply for us to serve God (John 6:33, 35, 57).
The bread of the presence, the face-bread, means that God’s presence – His very face – is our life supply as serving priests to God (see 2 Cor. 2:10; 4:6-7; 3:18). When we speak with someone we want to see his face; the face shows us whether he is happy with us, and the eyes are a window into his soul and heart.
As believers of Christ we need to be daily in the index of Christ’s eyes, looking into His face, making sure that the Lord is pleased with what we say and do. The glory of God shines in the face of Jesus Christ, and Christ’s face is in our spirit as the treasure in our earthen vessel.
We need to behold His face, do everything in the index of Christ’s eyes, and eat the Lord as the bread of God’s presence, the face-bread, for us to be supplied, cheered, and encouraged to go forward with the Lord and to serve God.
Lord Jesus, Your presence is everything to us. We care for Your smile, Your pleasure, and Your being happy with us in everything we do. Oh Lord, may Your presence go with us, and may You be happy with us as we behold Your face and are infused with You. Keep us eating You, Lord, as the bread of God’s presence. We don’t want to lose Your presence, and we don’t want to miss Your manifestation to us. Lord Jesus, Your shining face in our spirit is our bread, our life supply, our nourishment, and our encouragement for us to go on with the Lord and to serve God as priests!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, brother James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1966, vol. 1, “The Priesthood,” ch. 17, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (3), week 3 (week 27), The Table of the Bread of the Presence.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# How lovely is Thy dwelling-place! / Within Thy courts I long to be; / Thy presence, Lord, my spirit craves, / For this my heart cries out to Thee. (Hymns #851)
# We eat this feast and take God in, / And as we eat we live by Him, / For all the elements within / This feast are God Himself. / Yes, Jesus is our feast! / Yes, Jesus is our feast! / We eat this feast and live by Him, / For Jesus is our feast! (Hymns #1145)
# Nothing’s quite so precious / As Jesus in my spirit. / He takes away the care / And fills me with His peace. / He never leaves me, / E’en as the days grow weary. / His presence goes with me. / My soul delights to hide in His arms. (Song on God’s presence)
About aGodMan
We must confess all our shortcomings item by item, staying at the altar for some time. Then we apply the redeeming blood to cleanse us. If we will do this, we will have the deep inner sense that this redeeming Christ is our enjoyment. We will enjoy Him immediately after confessing and applying the blood.
From applying the blood, we turn to feeding on Christ at the table of the bread of the Presence. There we feed on Christ to enjoy Him and to taste Him. We do not simply eat Him—we assimilate Him. This also takes some time. Five or ten minutes for morning watch is not sufficient. According to our experience, we need at least thirty minutes, and it is better to take an hour, if possible. It is just like eating breakfast. We cannot eat an adequate breakfast in two or three minutes. Even if we eat a hot dog for lunch, we need more than five minutes. We cannot eat a good meal in such a short time. We need a longer time, and the longer the better. We must stay at the table of the bread of the Presence to be nourished and filled so that we might be full of the life supply. (Witness Lee, The Priesthood)
Eat and drink Christ daily. Amen!
The tabernacle was enterable (we can enter into God) but once you enter there is something to eat. We must eat Him daily. Thanks for the reminder.