GENERAL SUBJECT
CRYSTALLIZATION-STUDY OF JOSHUA, JUDGES, RUTH
Message Five
The Produce of the Land of Canaan and the Intrinsic Significance of the Allotment of the Good Land
Scripture Reading: Josh. 5:12; 13:1—22:34; Col. 1:12; Acts 26:18
I. After the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan, the manna ceased; there was no longer manna, but they ate of the yield of the land of Canaan—Josh. 5:12:
A. The ceasing of the manna when the people began to eat the produce of the land indicates that the produce of the land was the continuation of the manna.
B. The manna eaten by Israel in their wandering in the wilderness (Exo. 16) typifies Christ as the heavenly food given directly by God to His chosen people, which requires no labor on the part of the eaters.
C. The rich produce of the promised land given by God to Israel in their fighting in Canaan typifies Christ as the consummated life supply given to the believers, which requires them to labor on Him—Deut. 8:7-10:
1. As portrayed in the typology here, after possessing Christ as the land, we need to labor on Him to produce something of Him that will become our food, our life supply.
2. As we eat Christ and enjoy Him as the produce of the good land, we are constituted with Him, being made the same as Christ in life, nature, and expression—John 6:57; Phil. 1:19-21a.
3. Ultimately, our enjoying of Christ as our inheritance, our possession, will constitute us to be God's inheritance, God's treasure and possession—Eph. 1:11-14, 18b; cf. Exo. 19:5.
D. In Egypt, the wilderness, and the good land, the people of Israel experienced three stages of eating:
1. In Egypt the people of Israel ate the passover lamb—12:3, 8-9:
a. Just as the roasted flesh of the passover lamb was to be eaten for life supply, so we need to eat Christ for our life supply—vv. 8-10; John 6:53, 55-57:
1) To solve the problem of the fall of man and to accomplish God's original intention, both life and redemption are needed.
2) God's judicial redemption through the blood of Christ is the procedure to reach God's goal of dispensing Christ as life into us for our organic salvation—Rom. 5:10.
b. The children of Israel were to eat the passover lamb with its head, legs, and inward parts—Exo. 12:9:
1) The head signifies wisdom, the legs signify activity and move, and the inward parts signify the inward parts of Christ's being, including His mind, emotion, will, and heart with all their functions.
2) Eating the passover lamb with the head, legs, and inward parts signifies taking Christ in His entirety with His wisdom, His activity and move, and His inward parts—John 6:57; 1 Cor. 1:24; Rev. 14:4b; Phil. 1:8.
2. In the wilderness the people of Israel ate manna—Exo. 16:14-16, 31; Num. 11:7:
a. By giving His people manna to eat, God indicated that His intention was to change their constitution by changing their diet—Exo. 16:14-15:
1) In name the children of Israel were not Egyptian, but in nature and in constitution they did not differ from the Egyptians in the least—v. 3.
2) The Egyptian diet denotes all the things we desire to feed on in order to find satisfaction—Num. 11:4-6.
b. God wanted His redeemed people to forget the Egyptian diet and to partake of heavenly food—Deut. 8:3:
1) The more manna we eat, the more we correspond to God, are identified with Him, and live and walk according to what He is.
2) What helps us most in our daily living with the Lord is eating Christ as the heavenly food; by eating Christ, we become Christ; that is, Christ becomes our constituent—John 6:56-58.
3. In Canaan the people of Israel ate the produce of the good land—Josh. 5:11-12:
a. In the third stage of eating, they ate the rich supply of the good land, which constituted them further to be an overcoming people.
b. The good land was a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive trees with oil, and honey, all of which typify the unsearchable riches of Christ—Deut. 8:8; Eph. 3:8.
c. By enjoying the riches of the good land, the people of Israel conquered the tribes in the land, established the kingdom of God, and built up the temple as God's dwelling place on earth—Josh. 5:11-12.
4. These three stages typify the three stages of the believers' enjoyment of Christ by eating Him—John 6:51-57; 1 Cor. 5:7-8; 10:3-4; Phil. 1:19:
a. By their eating in the first two stages, the believers are energized to leave the world and are constituted with Christ as the heavenly element—John 6:51-57; 1 Cor. 5:7-8; 10:3-4.
b. To reach the goal of God's economy, we need to progress until we enter into the highest stage of eating Christ as the rich produce of the good land so that we may overcome the spiritual enemies, be built up to be God's dwelling place, and establish God's kingdom on earth.
c. As we eat Christ as the produce of the good land, we are constituted with Him and are made the same as Christ in life, nature, and expression for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ—Eph. 4:16.
II. The intrinsic significance of the allotment of the good land is that we, the possessors of the land, experience the one Christ in different ways—Josh. 13:1—22:34:
A. Within God's economy there is something called the allotment of the land—Col. 1:12.
B. After Joshua took possession of the land, God commanded him to allot the land that had been possessed and even the land that had not yet been possessed, because in God's eyes all the land was for Israel—Josh. 13:6:
1. In His wisdom, God did not allot the good land as a whole to all the children of Israel; rather, He allotted that land, that is, Christ, to the different tribes—v. 7.
2. Because the tribes were different, God could not give the same land in the same way to every tribe.
3. All the tribes were possessors of the land, but the tribes possessed particular portions of the land according to what they were—14:6-15; 18:1—19:27.
4. The fulfillment of this type of the allotment of the land is among us today—Col. 1:12:
a. We all have the same Christ, but we experience Christ in different ways—1 Cor. 1:2.
b. The land (Christ) we possess is according to what we are—Rom. 12:3; Eph. 4:7.
C. In Colossians 1:12 Paul employs the concept of the all-inclusive land, speaking of "the allotted portion of the saints":
1. The Greek word rendered "portion" can also be rendered "lot," referring to an allotment.
2. When Paul was writing the Epistle to the Colossians, he had in mind the picture of the allotting of the good land to the children of Israel; he used the word portion with the Old Testament record of the land as the background—Josh. 14:2:
a. In Colossians Christ is revealed as our portion, our lot—1:15-19; 2:6-15.
b. Just as the land of Canaan was everything to the children of Israel, so Christ, the reality of the type of the good land, is everything to us—1:12.
3. Christ as the preeminent and all-inclusive One is the allotted portion of the saints—v. 12.
4. The New Testament believers' allotted portion is not a physical land; it is the all-inclusive Christ as the life-giving Spirit—2:6-7; Gal. 3:14:
a. The riches of the good land typify the unsearchable riches of Christ in different aspects as the bountiful supply to His believers in His Spirit—Deut. 8:7-10; Eph. 3:8; Phil. 1:19.
b. By enjoying the riches of the land, the believers in Christ are built up to be His Body as the house of God and the kingdom of God—Eph. 1:22-23; 2:21-22; 1 Tim. 3:15; Matt. 16:18-19; Rom. 14:17.
D. In Acts 26:18 Paul refers to the all-inclusive Christ as our inheritance:
1. As the result of having our eyes opened and of being transferred from the authority of Satan to God, we not only have the forgiveness of sins, but we also receive a divine inheritance.
2. This inheritance is the Triune God Himself with all that He has, all that He has done, and all that He will do for His redeemed people; this Triune God is embodied in the all-inclusive Christ, who is the portion allotted to the saints as their inheritance—Col. 2:9.
3. The good land truly is a type of the all-inclusive Christ, the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God, who has been given to us as our inheritance—1:12.