Meat Indeed and Drink Indeed
“»OE MX FLESH 19 MEAT IKBEED, AND MT BLOOD IS DRtNK INDEED.” —
John vi. 05.
TiiK crowd liacl followed Jesus for the loaves and fishes. He gently upbraids them for being guided by so carnal an appetite, and impelled by so coarse a motive to follow him. Then he tells them that there is a spiritual meat which is far better — a spiritual drink far richer than those aliments which nourish the body and gratify the animal tastes. After which, speaking of himself spiritually, he says — “My flesh is riaeat indeed” — real meat, such as supports the soul; and “My blood is drink indeed” — real drink, the best, the truest beverage, such as invigorates the spirit for immortality.
W/u/, you may ask, at the outset, does our Lord speak of Jiis flesh and blood, as separated? I tried to explain that a few evenings ago when we gathered around this table. There must be in the Lord’s Supper bread and wine; but bread separated from the wine, as our Lord speaks of his flesh as separate from his blood, and this was to in<licate that it is as a dying Saviour that he is most precious to us. The blood separated from the flesh indicates death. It is to the death of Jesus that the believer first turns his eye, and it is A-hcn considering the living, reigning Christ as havmg once been slain that our richest comfort comes to us. Sc-, it is not an unnecessary multiplication of words, or a vain repetition ol the same idea, when our Lord says to ust-” My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.” He thereby denotes himself as the dying Christ.
I. Taking the words as they stand, our first point will be that THE FLESH OF Christ is meat indeed — spikitual
WEAT.
The likeness is empJiatic j it is “meat indeed.’’^ It is like meat because nieat or food, sustains the body. The body cculd not be kept in vigor ordinarily, or without a miracle, except by the use of food. We pine, we languish, we sicken, we die without bread. So the soul without Jesus, supposing it to be alive, must soon sicken, pine, be famished, and decay. You, O believer, with all your strength, would be weak as water at this moment if Jesus were not now your present support. All your past experience would go for nothing if you had not now a present Christ to stay your hopes upon. It would be only a matter of time with you; you would ere long sink into the corruption of an open apostasy. Like a man shut up in a dungeon and deprived of food, who drags out for a few days a most painful existence, and, at the last, expires, and becomes carrion, so must it be with you. Unless Jesus Christ be your daily meat you will go back to the carnal elements of the world, and beconie corrupt and depraved as others are. Christ is the only true sustenance of the quickened soul. But, mark you, let a man eat what meat he may, it does not always so sustain him but that he is sometimes weak and stretched upon the bed of languishing; and it cannot so sustain him but that ere long he must be carried to his grave: but if your souls learn to feed on Jesus, they shall enjoy the blessed immunity promised to the inhabitants of Zion; they shall not say,” I am pick;” they shall never die; they shall feed on immortal l)rcad such as angels eat. You shall be cari-icd up to the Beats of the immortals to dwell forever with the Christ upon whom you have fed, coming to him first to appease your hua- •?vx, -and believing on him continuously to sustain your 1;’”q.
Meat not only provides sustentation, but it assists growth. The child cannot develop into a man if he be denied his daily food; he must certainly die in infancy or in childhood if he is without the nutriment which is requisite to the building up of his bodily frame. Now, brethren and sisters, we are babes in grace many of us. We have been brought t.> Jesus’ feet, and as such, we are of those who make up hia kingdom; but we want to grow into spiritual manhood. We are not content with little faith, and dim hope, and a f;puik of love. We want to l)ecome perfectly developed men, strong in the fulness of spiritual energy, and this can only be by Christ. Only can you groAV as you increase in the knowledge of him, and in subjection to the influences of his indwelling Spirit. As food makes our bodies grow, so Christ is food to our souls, he is “meat indeed,” for he makes us grow after a Divine sort. Let a man feed upon what other meat he may, he shall not come unto perfection, but let him feed on Jesus and he shall; through the grace of God in Christ Jesus he shall yet come to the fulness of the stature of a, man in Christ. Up yonder they are all men in Christ. Before the throne they are all perfect and altogether complete, and this liecause they have fed upon this snci-ed meat which makes them grow until they have come unto the perfect image of him they fed upon.
Meat does not only sustain and cause growth, hut it makes up for the daily waste of he body. Some people forget that every exertion of the body wears it away as truly as the machine spends its fueJ and wastes itself. As even an engine of iron needs repair, BO does this body of ours, and the meat we feed upon goes to repair the daily waste to which bone, and muscle, and nerve, are subjected. Beloved, Jesus Christ in this sense is meat. “He restoreth my soul.’ He makes up for the waste of temptation, for the wear and tear of care, for the fret of trouble, for the fume and flurry of manifold anxieties, for every thing that would waste a man away. My soul once again lenews her Strength, like the eagle, when she sips from the brook that flows from the foot of the cross. Oh! believer, you will soon degenerate, this world of sin will soon make you backslide, and lose tsTery good thing you have, unless you go to Christ continually, and feed on him. But feeding on him the world shall not hurt you; temptations shall not wound you; your trials shall not overwhelm you, for you shall find his flesh to be meat indeed. The best meat that man’s body can receive will not always repair the waste. After a certain period of life the body must decay, and the most nutritious diet cannot prevent the hair, the teeth, the eyes, the legs, the arms, the entire man, from discovering that the hour of prime has past, and that the time of decay has arrived. Bend must the man and lean upon his staff, and eat or drink what he will according to the strictest diet and regimen of the physician, yet still the time of waste has come. They that look out of the windows shall be darkened; the grindei-s shall fail because they are few, and the pillars of the house shall tremble. But, beloved, his flesh is “meat indeed,” and they that feed upon him “shall still bring forth fruit in old age, they shall be fat and flourishing, to show that the Lord is upright.” Their last days shall be their best days, instead of declining they shall gather strength with multiplying years till the moment when heart and flesh shall fiiil, and then shall the strength of their souls and their portion forever be most fully revealed to them.
Moreover, meat is a great remover of pain and disease. Without food of some kind, a man’s inward constitution becomes full of gnawing and anguish. Bitter are the gripings of hunger. Perhaps no pain can be more severe when a man is long exposed to it, than hunger, with the exception of thirst. No doubt want is the root of multitudes of the diseases of the prior. Generous diet often does more for the sick than the best medical prescriptions. It is certainly so with believers in Christ. His flesh is meat indeed in this respect. The pains of conviction, the th robbings of a guilty conscience, all are stayed when a man receives Christ into his inward parts. If a man be spiritually sick with worldliness, with doubt, with pride, with envy, with any thing that is the common sickness of the child of God, let him get but a hearty feast upon the flesh of Jesus, and the disease will fly. Christ puts such vigor into the spiritual system of his Own people when they feed on him, that they eject diseases as strong men cast them ofi” by the force of their constitution. Blessed and happy is he who eats this flesh, for it is in this sense meat indeed.
Once more, meat is used constantly by us /or the develop* merit of strength. The man ill-fed cannot lift the weight that another can who enjoys more generous diet. Lowness of food brings littleness of strength. Now Jesus Christ is le only food that can make his people strong for service. Feed on him and ye shall run and not be weary, ye shall walk and not faint. He is meat indeed; because he gives us a strength that is all but boundless. He, when we feed on him, clothes a mortal man with the might of God. The feeblest Christian in the Church, when he has fed upon Christ, becomes a giant to sufler or to do.
I cannot enlarge upon all these points, though there is enough in any one of them for a discourse, but, dear child of God, seek after Christ, and be not satisfied until daily you are fed and nourished upon him.
The word “indeed’’’’ gives the sentence an air of strong protest. We must take this into consideration. Why doe he say that his flesh is meaf-HndeedP’” It is in oppositior to mere animal and corporeal food, which is meat, but not meat “indeed “You think that bread is solid nutriment. So it is, speaking one way, but what does it support? It supports the body, and the body you say, is substantial. So indeed it is to the eye and to the touch; but what is the body? ‘’All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field; the grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadetb away; surely the people are grass.” This body is
BO little a while here, and so soon dissolved, that I may safely call it but a shadow; and the food that feeds the shadow cannot itself be more than a shade. And what is the sou» within us? Why, that you say is unreal. Truly so, sirs, to smell, to sight, to touch; but not in fact, and in the judgment of truth. The real thing about a man is his inward self, which you cannot see — his secret, impalpable, unseen, immortal self. Time’s tooth does not touch it, nor does the scythe of Death cut it down. The soul is the real man, not the body; and, sirs, the food which feeds the soul is the real food after all, and we know it though the men of the world turn on their heel and say, “Ah! no, the bread and cheese, the flesh and wine, these are real; give us plenty of these.” Sirs, such feed the shadow; but the truth you give your souls to feed upon, that it is which in God’s sight, in the sight of wise men, and in your sight if you have any spiritual discernment, is meat indeed.
It is meat indeed, in contrast loith the typical meats of the Old Testament. There was the Paschal Supper — surely that was a glorious feast, when after it the people went their way out of Egypt rejoicing. Yes, but ’twas only a deliverance from a common temporal slavery; but they that eat the Paschal Lamb are delivered from the bondage of death and licll, for his flesh is meat indeed. In the wilderness they ate the manna. Yes, but every day it seemed to tell them its own unsubstantial character, from the fact that if they kept it till the next morning it bred worms and stank. But our Lord Jesus Christ is food that never corrupts. Feed on him, lay Ivim up in your hearts, and you shall find no corruption there. In the old tabernacle and the temple there were the loavea of shew-bread, and these were meat for the yriest. Ah! but the sliew-bread was nothing but a type; and to the priest, however devoutly he might receive it, the sLew-bread, in itself, was no food for his real self, but only for his corporeal frame. And I may say the same of the bread which AVe have upon the table here to-night at communion; there is nothing in it; it is a mere emblem and a sign. But Christ’s flesh la meat indeed. “NATien I have sometimes seen this text put over the table commonly used for what is called the “Sacrament “I have trembled lest people should be led into the grievous and unnatural error of transubstantiation. When our Lord said, “My flesh is meat indeed,” he could not mean that bread on the table, for the Lord’s Supper was not then instituted. In this particular text, at any rate, there can be no allusion of nuy- kind to what is called “the Mass” by some, or by others styled “the Sacrament,” because the Lord’s Supper was not brought forward by our Lord until within a few hours of his death, and he is now speaking months before that time. Beloved, the bread is bread, and nothing but bread, and so far as it points you, like a sign-post, to the real flesh of Christ, so far so good. If you stop there, I can only say of it that this bread is meat, but the flesh of Christ is meat indeed.
When our Lord says, “My flesh is meat indeed’’ he clearly distinguishes it from every other kind of soid-meat. There are many sorts of soul-meat. Some men feed their souls on their own doings. “Oh!” say they, “we have prayed; we have fasted; we have given to the poor; we have been upright; we have been righteous;” and their soul feeds on that, though it is all mnd. But if they trusted Christ it would be meat indeed. Some feed on ceremonies. They have been baptized, christened, confirmed, and I know not what besides. Fine confectionery this, but it is all wind. Christ received into the soul, and trusted in for salvation, is meat indeed. Some have grown up upon false doctrines, ox upon true ones exaggerated, and these bring them to a very fine development of self-conceit and bigotry, but they make no solid food for the mind. But, oh! beloved, when a man can say, “My hope is in the Crucified alone; I look to him every day; my meditations are on him; my reading is much about him; my prayers are all sent to heaven through him; my praises are for him; he is my soul’s joy, comfort, strength, and help,” then he has the meat indeed; he wul be a strong aian, a holy man, a happy man, a heavenly man, and by and by he shall be caught up to dwell where Jesus is, on whom he has fed.
I hope I have made this clear. It is thinking upon Jesus, trusting in Jesus, that is the eating, Jesus himself being the {ood. Those who trust in him and rest in him have the best of soul-meat. They have meat indeed.
IT. Christ’s blood is drink indeed.
Like drink to the body,t]ie blood of Jesus, that is to say, tt e merits of his atoning sacrifice, sustahis. The body is not to be built up without some liquid; the system needs it. The soul is not to be sustained without considering and resting on the substitutionary suffering of Jesus. That Jesus died in my stead and suffered for my sin stimulates my hope, my comfort, my joy; in a word, my whole soul, just as di’ink invigorates the physical system.
Drink refreshes the body. The traveller is faint; it is a hot, burning day. That cool brook — how different the man looks when he laves his face in it, and drinks a sweet, cooling draught; and so the blood of Jesus refreshes the man who trusts in it. If I trust that Jesus was punished for me, and I am clear that Jesus died for me, how my soul seems to have gained a new life, how it revives. Though he were dead, yet should he live who could believe in this. Though desj)air held a man in a fainting-fit so that he could not stir hand or foot, yet if this precious doctrine of a Saviour dying for him were believed by him, his heart and his spirit must revive at once.
Drink also cleanses the body. I do not mean washing, but that the reception of the water into the system flushes all the various departments of the frame, and no doubt the liquid always has upon the human body a healthy influence unless it be taken, whatever it may be, intemperately. It is, to a great extent, made life-fluid of the system. Now, whenever you get Jesus Christ into the sOul, he purifies the spiritual veins right if the blood be wrong! He removes all impurities from the spiritual system; and the more really you come to rest upon a bleeding Christ, the more sure you are to get ‘i-1 ‘)f your reigning and besetting sins, for we overcome hem through the blood of the Lamb. Christ’s blood is tbuairiuk indeed.
Drink also cheers the man. How many a faint heart has been cheered when the cooling draught has been brought; be fainting one has opened her eyes, and smiled. And, oh! how the thoughts of a dying Christ revive the fainting soul, and make the spirit sing that once was ready to moan and cry: “I am forgotten; I am forsaken; I am lost.”
Notice the word “indeed’’ for it occurs again: “My blood is drink indeed,” 17i opposition to all carnal drink for as I said about the food, that it is but a shadow to support a shadow, so it is with the drink — it is but a shade to sup. port a shade. Christ’s blood supports the spirit, therefore it is drink indeed.
How superior to all typical drinTxS! There was the water which flowed from the rock when it was smitten; there were the various drinks with the meat-offerings, but Jesus Christ is the fulness of which these were but the shado-ws.
Christ says, “My blood is drink indeed,” as though utterly ignoring all other soul-drink. Some men drink until they are drenched with earthly pleasure. Others drink until they are inflated with their own self-righteousness. The devil has his cups, and he knows how to fill them to the brim, and make them sparkle and fascinate the eye. But let men’s Bouls drink of these draughts till they come to the dregs, they shall never be satisfied, and in the world to come their misery shall be greater if they have had any satisfaction here. Bu oh! if your soul can get to the precious blood of Christ and rest there, and you can rejoice that Jesus died for you, you may drink, but you shall never be inebriated; you may drink, but you shall never know satiety; you may drink, and you shall possess a satisfaction which nothing can destnty, which neither time nor habit can cause to pall on your palate, and of which eternity shall be but a blessed prolongation. Drink, thirsty soul, drink at the fountain of the Saviour’s blood, and thou shalt thirst no more, but cry, “I have enough; I have found in Jesus’ atoning blood all that my soul can want.”
m. Put these two things together. It appears, according to the text, that our Lord Jesus Christ is both meat
AND DRINK TOGETHER.
So, I would have you notice the suitability of Jesus Christ to 7na)i’s wciJits. Man wants meat and drink. Jesus is what man wants. You need pardon: you have it in Christ. You want life, eternal life: you have it in Christ. You want peace, comfort, happiness: you have all in Christ. No key ever htted a lock so well as Christ fits a sinner. You are empty: Christ is full. You cannot have a want that he cannot supply. As Giles Fletcher pithily says: —
“Christ is a path, if any be misled;
He is a robe, if any naked be;
If any cbance to hunger, he is bread.
If any be a bondman, he is free;
If any be but weak, how strong is he I
To dead men life lie is, to sick men, health;
To blind men, sight; and to the needy, wealth;
A pleasure without loss, a treasure without stealth.”
There never was, and there never will be, a repenting Boul that was beyond the saving power of Jesus. What a suitable Saviour he is to me! That I can say, for if Jesu3 Christ had been sent into this world for me only, he could not have suited me better than he does; and if he ha<l been sent for you only, poor trembling sinner, he could not have fitted you better than he will Why, when I think of Jesus he seems to be all mine, and I ara sure I cannot afford to do without a bit of him. I want him altogether, and bo just exactly fills my soul up to the brim; and you shall each find it is so to yourself. He will be your meat and your drink, and if you get him you will say: —
“All my capacious powers can wish,
In thee doth richly meet;
Nor to my eyes is light so dear,
Nor friendship half so sweet.”
If Jesus Christ be thus meat and drink together, what fuhiess there is in him! He is not only one out of two good things, but he is both. A man mth meat would die, let him have as much as he pleased of it, if there were nothing to drink; a man with drink would die, if there were nothing solid for him to eat. Jesus does not give us part of salvation, but he gives us all of it. You shall find in Jesus Christ every thing that will be wanted between hell and heaven. All the way, from the bars of Tophet to the pearly gates of paradise every want of every pilgrim is met in him. Ten thousand times ten thousand as his people are, yet all of them receive all that they want from him, for “it hath pleased the Father thai in him should all fulness dwell.” “xlll fulness” — mark the word. “Fulness” is a wide word, but “all” fulness is wider, and all fulness dwells in him, — that is, it. is remaining in him, always fulness and always remaining all fulness; that is the greatest word of all. He is both meat and drink; he is all that we want.
Consider, too, that if Christ be both meat and drink, what need we have of him! because there is no need in the world, I suppose, that is greater than the need of meat and drink. You hear the shout of “Fire!” in the street, and it startles you; but those who have ever heard the cry of “Bread!” in a bread riot, say that the alarm of “Fire!” is nothing to it. There is something so sharp, so awful, so determined, so ferocious, so like the yell of wild beasts, about men and women that scream for bread, that it is the most awful of sounds. And “Drink!” What a word that must be for a number of poor wretches shut up as they were in the Black Hole of Calcutta, raving through those little windows at the guard outside for drink; and stretching out their hands and beseeching them to turn their carbines upon them, and shoot them, rather than let them die there a lingering death of suffocation and of thirst! How when a little water was passed in they fought and struggled for it, if so be a man might but get a drop, or suck a handkerchief that had been diy»23ed into it, and linger on a little longer. Now, nobody can have a greater need than an actual want of bread and want of water; but that is what you want, my dear friends who are without Christ; your soul wants bread and water. Think not that you are rich and increased in goods if you have not Christ, for in truth you are naked, and poor, and miserable. If you do not trust him, love him, serve him, your poor soul has not even a drop to drink. What can it do but die? And oh! what must be its wretchedness when your soul shall ask for a drop of water to cool its tongue, tormented in that flame? While others are feasting you shall have the gnashing of your hungry teeth to be your endless portion. God grant you may not be so cruel to your souls as to starve them by going without Christ!
Ay, and if Christ be meat and drink, ^ohat need there is of a real reception of him. If you get meat and drink, yon cannot make use of them unless you eat and drink them. Take meat to a hungry man; hold it out on your hand and ask him, “Don’t you feel better?” “No,” saith he. “Look at it, man; look at it.” “No, I feel more hungry.” “But cut it; here is the knife.” “Oh!” saith he, “what is the use of that? You mock me; I want to get it between my teeth; I want to get it worked into my system, or else it t <)i IK) avail.” Hcai’er, of what service is it to yon that Tdu coine and listen, Sunday after Sunday, but never decide c ti-ust C’hrist, and lake him into ynnr soul? ‘ou hear me pour out the water, V)ut you do nut drink. You see it sj.arkle as I speak of it, but you do not receive it. What is tha good of it to you? Oh! you will perish, you AvilJ perish with the bread withhi your reach; with the clear brook of eternal lil’e tiouing at your feet. ^Vhy this folly! You act not so in other things. Men are not satisfied a ith seeing gold; they want to lake it home and put it in their jjockets, and how is it that they are content with hearing about (.’lirist, — with talking about Christ, — but never ask lor reas faith, and for vital union with the Lord Jesus Christ? See to this, I pray you; and see to it soon, or death will see to you.
Moreover, if Jesus Christ be both meat and drink, beloved in the Lord — I speak to you now — what reason there is for giving thanks! I said in the reading that a man is very unmannerly, very beast-like, who sits down to his meat and his drink without thanks. Well, then, my soul, whenever thou comest to feed on Christ — whenever thou thinkeston him — and that shouldst thou do always — always give thanks. The true spirit of a Christian is perpetual thankfulness. I like the remark of a dear friend who is present now, who, when the November fogs began, said to me on a Sunday morning, “I tell all ray family to be more cheerful than ever now the dreary weather has come, so as to shake oif the dulness around us by keeping v;p cheerfulness within.” Now, you are always feeding on Christ, and so every time you feed you ought to give thanks; “rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say, rejoice.” They used to call this Supper, in the ancient church,” the Eucharist” — the giving of thanks. Well, let the life of the Christian be a constant Eucharist, and as he feeds on Jesus always, let him always offer this tribute of jd raise — “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”
Yea, and if Jesus Christ be meat and drink, then here is a reason why you Christians should be very earnest to tell of him to others — to hand him out. Oh! if we had this house full of bread to-night, and there were a famine all over London, in the East End, the West End, and the North and the South, and men were dropping down dead in the streets.
and they were crowding outside there, out at the Elephant and Castle, and down Newington-causeway, I know what I eliould say, if the bread belonged to me:” Brethren and sisters, come and help rae. Out of the windows with it! hot the hungry creatures come in at every door; let them crowd t every window; and let them eat to the full. And if they were thirsty, and we had the mains laid on here, and there was no water to be had anywhere else, oh! I am sure there is not a little child here but would be glad to take his little tin can and hand out a draught of water to the thirsty people. Well, you then, with little abilities, who love Christ — tell about him to others. He is meat and drink to the famishing and thirsty ones. K he were merely a dainty, I would not press it; but as lie is a necessity to the dying sons of men, tell them about him, and if they despise him, well then you have done your part; but if they perish without your telling them of Christ, their blood may lie at your door. Bethink you, while you are going home to-night, walking down the streets, whether there is any house you pass where there is a man living who can charge you with having neglected him. Do not let it be so any longer, but seek that, as his flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed, you may hand out Jesus Christ to the famishing crowds, that they may be satisfied.
The Lord bless you richly, for his name’s sake.