Life in the Word 63 live by bread, or physical food alone, but “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3). The rnanna was given to His people in the wilderness to teach them this lesson, and that they might learn their dependence upon God. Hence this passage was used by the Second Man in His combat with the devil in the wilderness, it being the purpose of the latter to inculcate in man the idea of independence of God. Thus did the Man Jesus Christ, with the Sword of the Spirit, strike sure and true at the central purpose of His great adversary. I t is by every word of God that man is to be fed. No part of the Bible can be neglected without loss and detriment; and it will be observed that there is, in the Bible, a variety of spiritual nutriment analogous to the variety of physical food which God has provided for the needs of the physical man. If there be milk for babes, there is also strong food for those who are mature. And there is the penalty of arrested growth paid by those who remain content with the relatively weak diet suitable for infants, who know/ perhaps, only that their sins are forgiven; as the Apostle John says: “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you” (1 John 2:12). But those who have to be fed on a milk diet, that is to say, the simplest elementary truths of the Gospel, are un- skillful in the word of righteousness. Infants cannot do any- thing for themselves, much less can they prepare food, or render any service to others. Hence the Apostle Paul, writing to the Hebrews, upbraids some of them because, at a time when they ought to have been teachers, they had need to be taught again the first principles, and were become “such as have need of milk and not of strong food. For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness : for he is a babe. But strong food belongeth to them that are of full age” (Heb. 5:12-14). Jeremiah says, “Thy words were found and I did eat them’’ (Jer. 15:16). Thereby he found spiritual strength to sustain
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