“We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
because of the sword of the wilderness.”
(Ps. 92:10, ACV)
The writing of last week’s instalment of the teaching of Day 1651-1653 coincided with the anniversary of a very special day in my life: becoming born again on 17 September 1977. In the course of that teaching one of the matters that we discussed was that the God of eternity works with precise detail, in and with our chronos time. I asked that you take special note of this idea.
During the course of writing these teachings I have often experienced that God’s hand is in the specific themes that we tackle at specific times. Ecc. 9:1 says we should remember that “the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God”. Indeed, this is the case. From the testimonies of many people it is absolutely clear that the right portion of Manna falls on the right spot, with impeccable timing.
In the teaching of Day 1024-1030 we gave an overview of the nature of the manna that God presented as food to the Israelites in the desert. We explained a few elements that are worth reviewing now. The manna in the wilderness can clearly be read as a typology of the Bride’s rhema words. It is then of great importance that in Num. 11:8 the Manna is described as follows: “its taste was like the taste of pastry prepared with oil”. The manna thus had the taste of anointing!
A mystery surrounding the manna is explained in the Jewish rabbis’ Midrash Rabbah (p. 303), in a portion relating to the Biblical book of Exodus, where it comments on Ps. 145:16. They point out that God granted to each of his chosen ones the unique desire or craving: “Manna tasted whatever you wanted it to be in your mouth, whatever you were hungry for … Manna was the only ingredient you needed for a feast with a great variety of flavourful dishes.” (Michael Esses: Jesus in Exodus, p. 95).
The rabbis use Deut. 2:7 to further illustrate this: “For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hand. He knows your trudging through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.” Nothing, or no thing, is translated here from the Hebrew word dabar, which means word! In the granting of spiritual manna – typologically their rhema words in God’s poem – God provided in all the needs of the Israelites, for forty years in the wilderness, and all of this was made possible by being nourished by one another’s identities in Christ! It is truly as Jesus makes clear in Matt. 4:4: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every [rhema] word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
If you were in your position of righteousness (in New Testament terms: “in your position in Christ”) and you find yourself in a desert where there is nothing to eat except sweet, buttery cakes, and you were actually feeling like leg of lamb and roasted potatoes, then that is what the manna in your mouth tasted like! If you were feeling like butternut soup, or fish and chips, then that is exactly what you tasted! You lacked nothing. “Taste and see that the Lord is good …” (Ps. 34:8a).
The typological implication of this for the Bride is of great worth. Therefore, it is not strange that the only three instances where the word anointing appears specifically in the New Testament, in 1Joh. 2:20 & 27, it is used in the sense of “everything” being provided.
Our previous teaching concluded with the exciting question from Song of Songs that is repeatedly asked: “Who is this coming out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the merchant’s fragrant powders?” (Song of Songs 3:6). We then promised that we will use this mystical verse to get to exemplary rhema-identities that are used by Him as wondrous signs, to thus grant a better explanation of how God “is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men” (Ps. 66:5). This also explains God’s immense joy in the children of man (Prov. 8:31).
This question that is asked again and again in Song of Songs, is paradigmatically related to the question we got to in Isa. 63:1: “Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this One who is glorious in His apparel, traveling in the greatness of His strength? — ‘I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.’”
In the original Hebrew, Edom (‘ĕdôm/’ĕdôm), means red (BDB), and is the direct meaning of the name Esau. According to Gen. 25:25 Esau received this name because of his physical countenance: “And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they called his name Esau.” Please note that Strong also translates the word garment in this verse as both “vine” and “glory”! The vine (as for instance presented in John 15) is the symbol of the Christ. Now it is clear why Isa. 63:1 presents the Saviour Jesus in symbolic terms as wearing “garments stained crimson” (ISV), thus a mantle or garment of red hair (= glory – 1Cor. 11:5-15), and it is emphasized: “This One who is glorious in His apparel.”
We should not forget that Adam also means red! The writing style in Hebrew entails not including vowels, thus the nuance of meaning is carried through these vowels, but it is the consonants that form the core meaning:
A D A M
E D O M
The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible defines Adam with a few interesting words/concepts, most of them unexpected, and with an explicit sense of the corporate or collective:
- “A walled, fenced or fortified place for storing up the gathered crop or people …”
- “To gather together and confine for protection: … fence, defense, gather, grape gatherer, fortify …”
- “Gold: What is stored away and protected.”
- “Vintage: The gathered crop of grapes.”
Gen. 36:8 makes this link clear: “Esau is Edom.” Edom is thus another name for Esau, and this is also the area where Esau’s descendants, the Edomites, lived (verse 9), “in Mount Seir”. Just as Adam had been formed from the ground (Gen. 2:7: “the dust of the ground” – ‘ădâmâh) and there thus exists between them a bond that cannot be broken, there likewise exists an irrevocable bond between Esau and the land that has been given to him. The way in which the land of Seir is described is exactly the same as how certain translators describe Esau: “hairy or shaggy” (BDB)! According to Webster, shaggy means “rough with long hair”. Although Esau is presented in a very negative light throughout Scripture, as is Adam (1Cor. 15:22), it is striking that in Deut. 33, where Moses blessed the twelve tribes of Israel (earlier: Jacob), he presents the blessings against the statement in verse 2: “And he said: ‘The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned on them from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran, and He came with ten thousands of saints; from His right hand came a fiery law for them.” Paran and the spatial specificity clearly points to the wilderness and desert (The Complete WordStudy Dictionary). Take note of the “ten thousand of saints from His right hand”, who “shone forth”, who manifest in a “fiery law”, and who can only reach this position of authority in the spiritual realm when they move out of the wilderness. Obad. 1:21 clearly articulates that “saviors shall come to Mount Zion, to judge the mountains of Esau”. Then: “the kingdom shall be the Lord’s”.
To interpret this typology, it is important to understand that Esau is the firstborn; after him was born his brother, “and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob” (Gen. 25:26). Jacob thus means heel-grabber, or heel-catcher, or: supplanter (“to overthrow; to undermine” – Webster).
If Esau/first Adam then points to the natural, or the carnal, then Jacob/Israel/Last Adam points to the spiritual. If the natural man with his exposed achilles/blind spot/wound/heel first makes his appearance, then it is only the spiritual man who can cover the achilles/blind spot/wound/heel of the natural man, coming into being through this process! Natural man will always try and oppose this spiritual man, because “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1Cor. 2:14). Remember, later in 1Cor. 15:46 Paul explains: “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.”
The Treasury of Scriptural Knowledge refers to this natural man, Adam or Esau, “the animal man, one who lives in a natural state, and under the influence of his animal passions”. This is for instance why Esau sacrifices his precious first born right for a banal pot of red lentil soup, which he merely refers to as “red stew” (Gen. 25:30). Darby translates it as such: “Feed me, I pray thee, with the red–the red thing there …” Natural man – LIKE THE SNAKE – feeds off of natural passions (Gen. 3:14; Isa. 65:25; Mic. 7:17). The Psalmist describes it in exact metaphoric terms: “For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our body clings to the ground.” (Ps. 44:25). In Phil. 3:18b-19 Paul makes it clear without mincing words: “they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things”.
One couldn’t state it better – their “glory is in their shame”! THEREFORE, it is the wilderness or desert, the place that is defined by its dust, and ground, “that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water” (Deut. 8:15).
We need to learn to serve God in the wilderness (Ex. 7:16), as God determines the “way of the Wilderness of Edom” (2Kings 3:8). Natural man continuously asks, as in Ps. 78:19: “Yes, they spoke against God: they said, “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?” The natural world in which we live, Isa. 14:17 explains, has been made to resemble the wilderness. The prophet Jeremiah (2:6)’s formulation of the believer’s experience of the nature of the desert or wilderness is exactly the question that creeps around in the depths of the hearts of those who are born again: “Where is the Lord, who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and the shadow of death, through a land that no one crossed and where no one dwelt?” Verse 31 makes it clear: God has become a desert for these believers.
BUT: it is possible to find grace in the desert (Jer. 31:2)! Here, and nowhere else, “We get our bread at the risk of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness.” (Lam. 5:9). Manna, bread of the angels/messengers (Ps. 78:25), is brought because of the sword. Selah!
- Selah: Interpret Ps. 78:25
- Read: 1-9
- Memorise: 7:32.
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read the book mentioned in the text.
