Hallelujah for the all-inclusive Christ as our allotted portion of the good land! This good land is a land of wheat and of barley – here we enjoy and experience the crucified and resurrected Christ freely and at any time!
The good land in Deut. 8:7-10 is the most neglected yet the most all-inclusive type of Christ for our experience, for it typifies the all-inclusive, extensive Christ to be enjoyed and experienced by us to live a life for God’s purpose.
Just as the people of Israel in the Old Testament lived in the land, labored in the land, enjoyed the land, had their whole living and being in the land, built the house of God in the land, and were formed into God’s kingdom in the land, so we today are in the all-inclusive Christ!
As believers in Christ we need to enter into the full enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land; we need to live in Christ, labor on Christ, built God’s house in Christ, and become the kingdom of God in Christ.
Christ is a land flowing with milk and honey; in this land we eat food without scarcity, and this land is very rich. Each one of us as believers in Christ were allotted a portion of the all-inclusive Christ, just as each one of the people of Israel were allotted a portion of the good land for their inheritance.
Our portion today is not a physical land but a spiritual land, a rich and all-inclusive Person – Jesus Christ as the life-giving Spirit! When we turn to our spirit in situation after situation, we experience Him.
The unsearchable riches of Christ in different aspects are available for us to enjoy as the bountiful supply of the Spirit in our spirit.
As we enjoy the riches of Christ, we are built up together with the other believers in the Body of Christ, and we become the house of God and the kingdom of God for His expression and representation.
There’s a fight and a struggle, however, for us to enter into the full possession and enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ as the reality of the good land.
Daily we need to fight to spend time with the Lord in His word with the exercise of our spirit and a turned heart, so that we may enjoy Him, feed on Him, be filled with Him, be constituted with Him, and live Him.
Praise the Lord, as we enjoy Christ as the reality of the good land with all His riches, God’s eyes are upon us continually, and He causes us to enjoy God’s presence, making us the object of His care!
The Father cares for Christ, so when we enjoy this all-inclusive One, the Father shepherds us, cares for us, and arranges all things for us to have more enjoyment of Christ in His presence! Praise the Lord!
Experiencing Christ as Barley – the Resurrected Christ – and Feeding others with the Christ we Experience
The good land is a land of barley (Deut. 8:8); barley is a type of the resurrected Christ.
Barley always ripens first in the good land; when the harvest time came, the firstfruits of the harvest had to be offered to the Lord (see Lev. 23:10), and the firstfruits were clearly of barley.
As Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:20, the firstfruits of the harvest typify Christ as the firstfruits of resurrection. As the wheat, Christ is limited and restricted, but as the barley, He is unlimited and in resurrection.
As the firstfruits, Christ has become the bread of life; hence, barley loaves signify Christ in resurrection as food to us.
In John 6:48 we see the story of feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish, Five signifies responsibility, and the loaves were of barley, signifying the resurrected Christ.
If they were of wheat, they had a limitation, but as barley loaves, there could be a multiplication, an increase, an overflow, enough to feed five thousand.
The resurrected Christ is able to bear responsibility (John 6:9), and as we feed on Christ as the barley loaves, we become a loaf of barley to feed others with the Christ whom we have experienced (see Judges 7:13-14).
First we experience Christ as the wheat, which restricts us and limits us, but then we experience Him as the barley, which is the resurrected and multiplying Christ.
In Matt. 14:16 the Lord Jesus was with the crowds, and He had compassion on them for they were hungry; yet the others didn’t have anything to eat, so the Lord told His disciples, You give them something to eat.
As we experience Christ as barley, the resurrected Christ, we clearly see the need around us – people are hungry, and there is not enough food to meet the need. And the Lord tells us that we should feed those around us.
Many times we feel like this in the church life; we may be in the prophesying meeting, and the Lord in our spirit tells us to give others something to eat, but we may think we don’t have enough food for ourselves – how can we also fed others.
But if we just open our mouth, since we have experiencing and enjoying Christ as the wheat and the barley, we can speak something to supply others.
The key to prophesying is preparation; to prepare doesn’t merely mean that we need to read the Bible, the morning revival, and the footnotes in the Recovery Version Bible so that we may be filled with the truth.
To prepare to feed others we need to eat Christ as the wheat and the barley in the good land!
As we have a morning revival time with the Lord, we need to feed on Him; we need to not just read the Bible and the ministry but feed on Him and eat Him.
Then, we will have something to feed others also, and what remains will be even more than what we had originally. This is the experience Christ as barley.
Our portion may be so small and the need and demand may be so great, but what we have is nothing less than the resurrected Christ, and this One has no limits; rather, He empowers us to do all things in Him as the resurrected One!
In ourselves we are weak, but in Christ we are not weak. In ourselves we have nothing, but in Christ we have everything. We may think we are so poor in ourselves, but we are not poor in the resurrected Christ.
We must learn to apply the resurrected Christ and make use of the Christ we have, and He will meet the need – plus there will be left overs, a surplus of Christ!
Lord Jesus, we want to experience You as the land of barley; we come to You in Your word to enjoy and experience You as the resurrected and unlimited One. Hallelujah, Christ has been resurrected and now He is available for us to enjoy, eat, partake of, be constituted with, and even feed others with! Amen, Lord Jesus, in ourselves we are weak, short, and poor, but in You we are made full, rich, and enabled to feed others with the Christ that we enjoy and experience! Praise You Lord Jesus for being so rich and unlimited for our enjoyment and experience in the church life today!
We Follow the Limited Jesus in the Power of the Resurrected Christ and Feed others with Christ
The good land is first a land of wheat, and second it is a land of barley; in order for us to experience the wheat – the limited Jesus – we need to apply the barley – the unlimited Christ.
We follow the limited Jesus in the power of the resurrected Christ (Heb. 13:12-13).
This matches the thought Paul had in Phil. 3:10 where he said that he wanted to be conformed to the death of Christ by knowing the power of His resurrection.
The Lord Jesus first went to the cross and was limited, restricted, and put to death, and then He entered into resurrection and was resurrected.
With us we first need to experience the power of His resurrection so that we may be conformed to His death.
With Christ, death came first and then resurrection; with you and I, we first receive Christ as the resurrection life, and this resurrection life becomes our power to be conformed to the death of Christ.
So we can see that wheat and barley go together, just as the crucified and resurrected Christ is our experience at the same time.
It doesn’t take much power to get angry, but for us to be patient takes a lot of power – it takes the power that raised Christ from the dead!
This is why we need to experience the power of resurrection in order to be conformed to His death. When we believe into the Lord and apply Him as the resurrected One to our situation, we will find that He is more than sufficient to meet all our needs and even to flow through us to meet others’ needs also.
The crucified and resurrected Christ needs to become our experience and enjoyment today; we need to apply Him to our experience and realize that He is the unlimited, inexhaustible one.
As we enjoy and experience Christ’s resurrection by being in the mingled spirit, we inwardly know Christ both as the barley and as the wheat; by this experience we become a grain of wheat and a loaf of barley.
On one hand we have the inner strengthening and enabling of the resurrected and unlimited Christ, and on the other, we can face all the restricting and limiting situations in Him.
Furthermore, we are food to others; we feed others by what we have experienced.
As Paul said in Phil. 4:13, we are able to do all things in the One who empowers us, for He is the resurrected and unlimited Christ.
Too many times have we complained that we are poor, we are weak, and we can’t do it; we need to turn to the Lord, believe into Him as the resurrected One – the real barley – and experience Him as the unlimited and resurrected One!
If we have Christ, we have the unlimited supply!
Lord Jesus, we come to You in spirit and we apply You as the unlimited Christ to our situation; we want to follow the limited Jesus in the power of the resurrected Christ! Amen, Lord, may we know and experience the resurrected Christ so that we may be able to be conformed to Your death by the power of Your resurrection. Hallelujah, we can do all things in the One who empowers us because this One is the resurrected and unlimited Christ! In ourselves we can’t make it or be it, but in Christ we can do all things, for He is the unlimited One!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1961-1962, vol. 4, “The All-inclusive Christ,” ch. 5, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Deuteronomy, week 3, The Goodness of the Land – Its Food.
- Hymns on this topic:
– See the wheat, the restricted Jesus Christ. / Incarnation was restriction in the flesh. / Limited outwardly, by God’s power set free, / Resurrected as unlimited barley. (Song on, What a Christ We Have)
– Reaping wheat and barley, death and resurrection, / Though the loss sustained our old man often grieves; / But in life abundant, life in resurrection, / Coming to the meeting, bringing in the sheaves. (Hymns #1167)
– Oh, what a breadth! Oh, what a length! / The height, the depth unsearchable! / Christ the Lord is unlimited, / So vast, immense, immeas’rable. / All that He is and all He has / Is now our life unspeakable. (Hymns #500)
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