As the multitude followed Jesus, looking for another miracle like the feeding of the five thousand,
He said to them, "Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto
everlasting life" (John 6:27). This meat is knowledge, spiritual knowledge, a knowledge which
is necessary for the power, productiveness, and right application of every other kind of
knowledge. We are to "labor" for this knowledge, yes, labor more earnestly than for what we call
our necessary food. Every instinct of our spiritual nature claims it from us.

I believe that God has now, as never before since the apostles’ days, really opened the Bible, and
put it into our hands, and is testing us with it. How sad if now we turn away!

Our land_the Word of God_is a good land, but it must be worked in order for its value to be
realized. We need to refer continually to the Word to meet the constant demands upon us in the
world through which we pass. And thus God, in His faithfulness to us, has not put the truth into
creeds which we might learn by heart and lay aside; nor has He written everything out plainly so
that there should be no difficulty. The conflicts and bitter controversies about even fundamentals,
which at least we might have thought could have been spared us, have not been spared us, as we
all are witness. Better it is, in God’s thought, that we should have constant need of reference to
our lesson book than be allowed to sink into mere dullness and lethargy, as otherwise we are
prone to do.

Truth is not taught always in Scripture in such plain form as the epistles give us. By far the largest
part of it is not this. The Lord taught much in parables. The Book of Revelation, with all the
intensity of interest attached to it, is allegorical in the highest degree. The Christian truths in the
Old Testament are taught in typical institutions and history which we are taught to "allegorize."
The man of understanding in Proverbs is expected "to understand a proverb, and the
interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings" (Prov. 1:6). So, "if thou criest after
knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searches!
for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the
knowledge of God" (Prov. 2:3-5). In fact, we are even told that "it is the glory of God to conceal
a thing" (Prov. 25:2), hiding it where a diligent spirit shall find it as its reward.

But what does all this imply? What but labor, labor, and more labor:a labor which cannot be
delegated to another, though we all are meant to help one another in it. In this there are no "laity,"
to be fed with a spoon once or twice a week, taking thankfully, and with little question, what is
given to them. In this there is no division of labor_secular things for the common people, and
sacred things for a special class. Rather, we are to "be able to comprehend with all saints what
is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height." And we shall need all saints to help us to
comprehend them.

What a new state would begin for us if we should find that, between our necessary work in the
world and our still more necessary_and more fruitful_occupation with Scripture, our time was
so fully taken up that we should have little or no time remaining for anything that was not
absolutely productive and profitable; if all that was idle, empty, and frivolous disappeared out of

our lives; if the newspaper were supplanted by news of fresh discoveries in the things of God and
of fresh blessing poured upon our lives by them!

The apostle Peter exhorts us:"Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies,
and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that
ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:1, 2). It is not, of course, that he desires us to remain "babes";
the whole effect and pretty much the purpose of "milk" is that the babes should grow up, as he
says here. But we are to be as ardent after the Word of God as a newborn babe is for its milk! And
how much is meant by that! The one business of the newborn babe is to secure its milk! The Word
of God is to be sought and longed for after that fashion.

Then notice the incompatibility of such occupation with "all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies,
and envies, and all evil speakings." Must it not be that if the Word of God becomes to us in this
manner the nurture of our souls, all things contrary to this shall pass away out of our lives and
perish, as the dying leaf falls, crowded out by the new bud? Is it not very much what is presented
to us in the delightful picture of the Israelite in the First Psalm:"Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the
scornful." That is the negative side. Now for the positive_ and in this is the power:"But his
delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and night." This is a sweet
and glowing picture. Let us look at the result:"And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers
of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever
he doeth shall prosper."

Would it not be a blessed thing to be able to sit for such a picture?

(From A Divine Movement and Our Path with God Today.)