Now let us go on to Deuteronomy 26:9-11. Verse 9 says, “And He hath brought us...” This is a word spoken by the children of Israel, yet they were charged by God to speak this. God had charged that all of Israel had to say this. Verse 10 says, “And thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God.” In this verse eating is first, and worship is second. Without eating, the worship is not proper. Verse 11 reads, “And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you.”
Now we need to read Numbers 18:12 and 13: “All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the firstfruits of them which they shall offer unto the Lord, them have I given thee. And whatsoever is first ripe in the land, which they shall bring unto the Lord, shall be thine; every one that is clean in thine house shall eat of it.” Firstfruits here is in apposition with the oil, the wine, and the wheat. The firstfruits are the best of the wheat, the olive tree, and the vine tree. The phrase “shall be thine” means they shall be the priests’.
After reading all these verses I would like to give you a picture of the groceries. First of all you have to see that what they offered to God was what they had labored on. Firstly, they labored on it. It is also what they lived by. They labored on these things, and they lived by these things. God had given them a good land, and God had given them the seed. So they had to labor on the good land with the seed which God had given them. They labored on it, and then they reaped the produce, and then they lived by the produce. Out of this produce they had to put aside a portion, the top portion, for God. When the meeting time came, that means the time of the feast, they brought all the top tenths which had been put aside for God to the meeting place to offer to God. So what they offered was what they had labored on and what they had lived by. Let me add a very meaningful word. According to the Bible the children of Israel didn’t have any other industry. They had only one industry, that is, farming. They were working on the God-given good land to produce something that they could live by. Out of that something they could offer to God the top tenth for God’s satisfaction.
What they produced from laboring on the good land was of two kingdoms: the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom. In the vegetable kingdom there were mainly three things: wheat to produce the flour, olive trees to produce the olive oil, and grapevines to produce the wine. The second kingdom was the animal kingdom that produces oxen and sheep (Deut. 14:22-23). All these things are very, very meaningful. The good land is Christ. God has given Him to us as the good land. The seed is also Christ. Both the land and the seed are Christ. Now God charges us to labor on Christ with Christ. Daily we have to labor on Christ with Christ. Then we will have the produce. Every day we will have the produce. We live by this produce which is also Christ. The land is Christ, the seed is Christ, and the produce is Christ. The land is Christ not yet labored on; the seed is Christ not yet sown into the land; the produce is Christ labored on, sown, and reaped. Once there is the reaping we need to eat for our living. We live by the very Christ whom we labor on and whom we have sown into the good land and who now becomes our produce.
Then we bring the top portion, the top tenth, of this Christ whom we have labored on, whom we have sown, whom we have reaped, and whom we have enjoyed to the meeting to present Him to God as food and to have a feast for all the saints to eat together with God.
Let us consider again the categories of groceries. In the animal kingdom you have the oxen and the sheep. In the vegetable kingdom you have the wheat, the oil, and the wine. You have to realize that the animal life is the main item of the groceries. Even today if you invite people to a meal and you serve them only vegetables, they would not appreciate it. Before the fall God ordained man to eat vegetables, but after the fall beginning with Genesis 9, God ordained that the fallen mankind had to eat animals with the shedding of blood, because the fallen people now needed redemption. If you don’t have redemption you cannot enjoy anything before God.
So Christ is firstly our groceries in the animal kingdom with the shedding of blood to take care of our problems before God so that we may have the peace to feast with God. In any kind of feast if there is no peace, there is no happy eating. The happy eating must be in a peaceful situation. Then He is also the groceries in the vegetable kingdom. We can see both of these in the Gospel of John. In chapter one there is the Lamb of God (v. 29). This is an item of groceries in the animal kingdom. But in chapter six the Lord Jesus said He was the bread (vv. 35, 48, 51), and in chapter twelve He was the grain of wheat (v. 24). Furthermore, in chapter fifteen He is the vine tree to produce the wine (vv. 1, 5). So in one Gospel there are the groceries in both kingdoms. There is the lamb in the animal kingdom, and there are the wheat and vine tree in the vegetable kingdom. Wheat indicates life and life supply. All the bread and all the cakes and wafers are made of wheat flour. The meal offering is composed mainly with wheat flour. That is for life and life supply.
The oil is produced by the olive tree, and this indicates a kind of life by the anointing Spirit. There is not only life and life supply, but also the Spirit for your living. You have to live for God by Christ as your life supply. The power and the means for you to live such a life is the oil, the anointing Spirit.
The wine which comes out of the grapevine signifies the matter of dying for God. We are destined not only to live, but also to die. This means we have to pour out the very life we live. Every day we enjoy Christ as the life supply, and we live by the anointing oil, and we die by pouring out our life.
Another item of the groceries is frankincense. Frankincense signifies life in resurrection. So Christ as the wheat is our life supply, and the oil is the anointing Spirit for us to live. Every day we have to pour out our life to God as the wine. Then we will have the flavor, the fragrance, of the resurrection life as the frankincense. These are the groceries with which we cook our divine feast. We have Christ as the wheat, with the anointing Spirit as the oil, and with the poured-out life as the wine. We have the life in resurrection as the frankincense. For us to live such a life is altogether based upon Christ being our oxen and being our lamb. He redeemed us, and He became our food. These are the groceries for us to cook the divine feast with all the courses.