We have seen that there are many types of Christ in the Old Testament, but only one is the all-inclusive type of Christ, that is, the land of Canaan. This land is frequently referred to as the good land. The Lord called it “a good land,” and once it was called “an exceeding good land.” We have considered how good it is in many aspects, such as its spaciousness, its transcendency, and its unsearchable riches. We have seen how rich it is in water, and now we will see its riches in various kinds of food.
The Lord in the Gospel of John said that He would give us the living water, and in the same Gospel He told us that He is the bread of life from heaven. He not only gives us the living water, but He is also the bread of life. Something to drink always accompanies food. If I invite you to a meal, I will give you something to drink, and I will also give you something to eat. Food and drink always go together.
Now you can understand why Deuteronomy 8 has such an order. It speaks first of water, several kinds of waters—springs, fountains, and streams. The waters are different not only in their stages, that is, the stage of the spring, the stage of the fountain, and the stage of the stream, but also different in various kinds of springs, fountains, and streams. We have already considered these. Then immediately after speaking about the waters of the land, it speaks about the food.
The matter of the food has much more detail. Let us look at verse 8:
A land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees with oil and of honey.
There are six items, all of which belong to the vegetable kingdom, and a seventh which is quite peculiar—honey. It seems that honey belongs partly to the animal kingdom and partly to the vegetable kingdom, for it is produced by bees; there is a mingling together of the two kingdoms. Let us name the various items: wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive trees, and honey. There are two kinds of grain, four kinds of trees, and honey. The first tree, the vine, produces wine, and the last tree, the olive, produces oil; so we have wine and oil. The second tree produces figs; figs were taken by the Hebrew people as food. The third tree, the pomegranate, produces a fruit of beauty and of bountiful life. So we have four trees—the vine, the fig, the pomegranate, and the olive—and we have two grains, wheat and barley.
What is the meaning of all these things? It is very easy to find a verse telling us the meaning of wheat. John 12:24 tells us that the Lord Himself is a grain of wheat. So wheat clearly represents the Lord Jesus Himself. What then does barley typify? Barley represents Christ too. I know you are certain what the vine represents. The Lord said that He is the true vine. The Lord Himself is the vine. Then who does the fig tree represent? Without question it is Christ again. And the olive tree also is undoubtedly Christ. All these things—the wheat, the barley, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree—represent Christ. But what aspects of Christ are typified by all these items? We need to spend some time to carefully consider this matter.
Oh, we must worship the Lord for His Word! He put wheat first, not the barley or the vine. What aspect of Christ does wheat represent? From John 12:24 we can see that the Lord is a grain of wheat falling into the earth to die and to be buried. The wheat represents Christ incarnated. Christ is God incarnated as man to fall into the earth, to die and to be buried. This is the wheat. It typifies the Christ who was incarnated, the Christ who died, and the Christ who was buried.
Then what does the barley represent? The resurrected Christ! Wheat points to His incarnation, death, and burial, and following this the barley points to His resurrection, the resurrected Christ. How can we prove it? In the land of Canaan, the barley always ripens first; among all the grains, the barley is first. In Leviticus 23:10 the Lord said, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I am giving you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest.” When the harvest time came, the firstfruits of the harvest had to be offered to the Lord, and the first fruit was clearly the barley. Now we must read 1 Corinthians 15:20: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” All students of the Scriptures recognize that the first fruits of the harvest typify Christ as the first fruits of resurrection. We can prove by this that barley represents the resurrected Christ.
Wheat represents the incarnated, crucified, and buried Christ. Barley represents the resurrected Christ. These two kinds of grains represent two aspects of Christ, His coming and His going. They represent the Christ coming down to be the wheat and the Christ going up to be the barley. You must pay full attention to these two matters. Have you experienced Christ as wheat? And have you ever experienced Christ as barley? What kind of experience of Christ is wheat? And what kind of experience of Christ is barley?
When Jesus fed the five thousand, he fed them with five loaves made of barley. So many are familiar with the miracle of the five loaves, but very few are aware that those loaves were loaves of barley. This Scripture is really wonderful. If they were loaves of wheat, something would be wrong. But they were not wheat; they were loaves of barley. As barley loaves, they could feed five thousand people with twelve baskets of fragments left over. This is resurrection. Christ can only be rich to us in His resurrection. In His incarnation He is exceedingly limited, but in His resurrection He is so very rich. There is no limit to Him as the resurrected Christ. As Christ incarnate, He was just one grain, a little Nazarene, a humble carpenter. But when He came into resurrection, He was unlimited. Time and space and material things could limit Him no longer. There were five loaves, but in effect there were countless loaves. There was enough to feed five thousand, not counting the women and children, and the remains alone—twelve baskets full—were more than the original five loaves. This is barley. This is Christ in His resurrection. Christ in His resurrection can never be limited.