The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University

                                                                           

PSALM 78:25

Man did eat angels’ food.

 

The Psalmist is here setting forth the great ingratitude of the children of Israel in the wilderness, in that they still went on to provoke God, notwithstanding the great things that he did for them.

          In this place, he is speaking of God’s feeding of them with manna. God’s wonderful mercy to that evil congregation in so feeding of them, appeared in the miraculous manner of it, and it was a very miraculous thing that a congregation of about a million souls should be so fed and supported for many years with bread from heaven. V. 23, “Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them.”

          And nextly, God’s great mercy to them herein appeared in the excellency of this food. It is here called “the corn of heaven” and “angels food.” In another place viz. in the 105 psalm, v. 40, it is called “the bread of heaven.”

The Psalmist speaks of it as a wonderful mercy and honor which God conferred on [them], that they should eat such food, which was angels’ food, as though they were advanced to a like privilege and happiness with the angels. That doubtless must be excellent bread indeed, which is the food of angels of heaven.

          But then here the question is, How could this be angels’ food? Surely, the angels don’t eat such food as the children of Israel did in the wilderness. That manna was a material thing. Angels are pure spirits, and their food is no material substance.

          What Christ says of that manna in the wilderness unfolds the matter, John 6:31-33. The Jews say to Christ, “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” The place that the Jews quote is either this, he “gave them of the corn of heaven, men did eat angels’ food [Ps. 78:24]”; or that in the 105^th psalm, 40^th verse”, he “satisfied them with the bread of heaven.” But see the answer that Christ makes to ‘em: “Then Jesus said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world”, and in the 35^th verse. “I am the bread of life”, and again in the 48^th-51^st verses, “I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever." 

So that the children of Israel in the wilderness did eat that which was typically angels’ food. The excellency of the bread which the Psalmist here speaks of was not any exquisite pleasantness to the taste, or excellent quality of nourishing and strengthening the body: but it was a typical excellency.  Manna was angels’ food in the same sense as the bread and wine in the sacrament is Christ’s body and blood; that is, it represents it. Manna represented Christ with his benefits, which is the true bread from heaven, and is indeed angels’ food. The congregation of Israel continued[i] and represented the church of Christ, and their living on manna in the wilderness represented the church living upon Christ, which does therein live upon angels’ food.

           

DOCTRINE.

Those that spiritually partake of Christ, they eat angels’ food.

 

I. We would explain what it is to feed on Christ. And,

II. Show how they that do so do eat angels’ food.

 

I. Explain [what it is to feed on Christ.] Men do partake of and feed upon Christ in two senses: either in having the possession and enjoyment of the person of Christ, or in partaking of the benefits which he purchased.        

          First. Men do partake of, or feed on Christ, in receiving blessedness in the person of Christ. Believers have blessedness in the person as they choose happiness, and are happy in the glory and divine beauty of the person of Christ, and in the love of Christ.

1. They have life and blessedness in the beholding the excellencies and beauty of Christ’s person. They spiritually do behold the glory of the person of Christ; they see his divine excellency, whereby he is fairer than the sons of men, and ’tis the life of their souls.

          The believer, as to spiritual life, lives by the viewing of the beauty of Jesus Christ, as the body lives by food. As the body is refreshed by food, so when the believer sees the divine beauty of Christ, it refreshes his inward man, it rejoices his heart, it quiets his soul. If it before has been in a tumult, it gives quietness and peace to his soul; if he has been weary, it gives rest to the soul; if it has been before pained and afflicted, it gives comfort and pleasure. It is pleasant to his soul, as dainty food is to the body; it is sweeter to him than any of those dainties that are served up at kings’ tables would be.

          A seeing the glorious beauty of the Son of God enlivens the soul of a believer, as agreeable and suitable food enlivens the body. If the soul has before been dull and dead, yet, if God pleases to give a discovery of the beauty of Christ, that gives new life to it; it makes it lively in the way of God’s commandments.

          When a believer has the discovery of the beauty of Christ, it satisfies his soul. A believer hath an appetite to it, a longing desire after a seeing the glory of Christ, as a man hath after bodily food.

          A discovery of the glory of God in the face of Christ gives life to the soul, and this maintains life, as bread doth the life of the body.

Such a discovery gives holiness, which is spiritual life. The discovery of the beauty of Christ is a sanctifying discovery. It changes the soul to a beauty of a like kind. This begets and draws forth gracious inclinations and desires and holy affection, and enables to perform truly gracious and holy actions, and to bring forth fruit unto holiness; to walk and run in the ways of God’s commandments, and be of a heavenly conversation. If holiness has been languishing in the heart before, yet let there be a new discovery of the excellency of Christ, and that will renew it; it will give new life to that holy principle.

          It strengthens the soul as food strengthens the body. When God discovers the excellency of Christ, it gives new strength to the soul to resist temptations, and to perform difficult duties.

          Knowledge is the food of the understanding, especially the knowledge of great and worthy objects. The knowledge of the glory of the person of Christ, is the food of the understandings of believers. It is the best entertainment to their minds.

          Believers are happy in the contemplating the excellency of the person of Christ as appearing in his word and works, and especially in his glorious work of redeeming mankind.

2. Men do partake of or feed on Christ in his person, as they are happy in his love. All believers are the beloved of Christ’s soul, and when Christ discovers his love to them, this is to the rejoicing and great contentment of their hearts.

          Christ gives himself to believers, to be possessed and enjoyed by them as their everlasting portion, and gives his love to them. He takes them into union with himself, and they enjoy communion with him. The manifestations of the love of Christ has the same tendencies to sanctifying, refreshing, enlivening and strengthening the soul as the discovery of his glory.

          Believers, in thus partaking of blessedness in Christ, do as it were feed upon him: for Christ in his beauty and love don’t only become as food to the soul, but in partaking of it there must be the act of the soul, as eating is the act of the man. Men come thus to partake of Christ, by their receiving of him by faith, and loving of him.

          Second. The second sense wherein men are said to feed on Christ, is in receiving and partaking of the benefits which he purchased, such as the favor of God, a being received into the number of his children, and eternal life.

          The receiving and accepting these in the way wherein, they are offered, and being made partakers of them, is what is more especially meant in the Scriptures by partaking of Christ’s body and blood, or eating the flesh of the Son of man and drinking his blood. John 6:53, “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” The eating of the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ, signifies the receiving and partaking of those benefits which he purchased by his body and blood.

          The matter is represented thus: that God had such love to us, and so pitied our famishing souls, that he gave us his own Son to be slain for us, that he might be our food to nourish and give us life. John 6:51, “And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”; that is, “Seeing the world is perishing in spiritual famine, I so love the world that I am content myself to be slain that my own flesh should be a feast for them, that they may live upon that.”

Not that Christ’s flesh is to be eaten literally, but ’tis as if Christ should resign up himself to be slain, that by eating of his flesh and drinking his blood we might live; inasmuch as we live by Christ being slain, as much as if we lived by literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood. We live by those benefits that the bruising his flesh and spilling his blood procured for us. And it was as necessary that he should be slain in order to our coming to partake of those benefits, as if those benefits were in eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ themselves. ’Tis as impossible that we should have those spiritual benefits of Christ by which we live without Christ being slain for us, as it is that we should eat up the flesh of beasts without their being slain.

          So that eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ, means our receiving and partaking of those benefits which we come by, by the slaying of Christ’s body and spilling his blood.

II. Men in thus feeding on Christ, do eat angels’ food.

First. The angels have life and happiness in contemplating the glory and enjoying the love of the same Son of God.

          The angels of heaven do live as absolutely upon God, and by the views of the glory and excellency of God, and upon the love of God, as the souls of men.

          Their happiness all consists in this. This is the entertainment and food of their understandings, viz. the glory and beauty of the Divine Being. And ’tis by this they live: by this they have their glory and beauty; ’tis the image of God’s beauty begotten and upheld by a seeing the glory of God. God’s beauty is communicated this way to them, as well as to men, viz. by their seeing and understanding of it. Their light is a borrowed light, and they borrow it this way: by seeing God’s light so, they derive it, and come to have the glory of God reflected from themselves.

          The holiness of the angels is a derived holiness; and thus it is they derive the exercises of holiness, by their views of the glory of God. Holiness is the life of those heavenly beings, as well as of the souls of men, but that they have from beholding the glory of God: they perpetually behold the glory [of God]. Matt. 18:10, “their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” And this is their life. Thus it is that they will live eternally; they live by beholding God’s glory.

          And so they live and have joy and happiness, by the love of God. The angels are beloved of God, as is implied in their being called the sons of God, Job 38:7, and they live upon the manifestations of his love, as upon streams of rivers of life.

And they live upon the beauty and love of the Second Person of the Trinity as well as the first. They are happy in the contemplating Christ’s glory, as is evident, because they worship and adore him. Heb. 1:6, “Let all the angels of God worship him.” Adoration implies the supreme regard, admiration, love and rejoicing in the excellency of the person adored.

          Yea, the angels rejoice in and as it were feast themselves upon the glory of Christ as it appears in him as our mediator. God manifest in the flesh is an object beheld and contemplated by them with great delight, as is signified in I Tim. 3:16, “And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels.” It is not meant that he is merely seen, but contemplated with admiration and joy; and the joy they have in Jesus Christ, God-man, appears by their songs when Christ was first incarnate. There was a multitude of the heavenly hosts, praising God saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” (Luke 2:13-14).

          And so their praises of the Lamb that was slain, show the same thing. Rev. 5:11-12, “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.”

          They joyfully feed and entertain their souls in beholding and contemplating the glory of Christ as appearing in the work of redemption. We are told they desire to look into these things, I Pet. 1:12. That implies that it is their employment, and that[ii] their spirits are greatly engaged in it. They entertain and feast their souls with it.

          The angels do, and forever will, feast their souls in beholding and contemplating the beauty of Christ appearing in his person and works. This is the food of angels.

          Second. The benefits of Christ’s purchase, which believers partake of, are of the same kind with the blessings that the angels enjoy in heaven. ’Tis the favor of the same God, the same kind of eternal life, the same riches, the same kind of honors and pleasures that the angels do enjoy.

          Indeed, one of the benefits of the purchase of Christ for us is the pardon of sins, which the angels have no occasion [for], but the difference is only relative. The thing is peace with God. This is the same in us and in the angels. It differs in us only relatively, viz. as we are brought into this state from being subject to the just displeasure [of God], and they never had that displeasure.

          So that in feeding on Christ’s body, we eat angels’ food, that is, we thereby come to partake of the same kind of benefits which the angels partake of, though they don’t come to partake of them by Christ’s body, and by his being slain, as we do.

          Third, and lastly. The angels are dependent on the same Christ for these benefits, though not the same way. They ben’t dependent on Christ for their heavenly blessings as mediator and by purchase, as we are, but yet they are dependent on Christ for them as their head, as their king. As Christ is constituted by the Father the universal head and king of all the heavenly hosts, so he is the universal dispenser of God’s benefits of life and honor and blessedness to the whole society.

Christ, we are taught in the Scriptures, is the head of the heavenly world. They are all put in subjection to him. Heb. 2:5, the Apostle showing how much Christ is above the angels, says, “for unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come.” But this God had done unto Christ, as the Apostle shows in the following verses.

And we are particularly told that Christ is the head of the angels. Col. 2:10, “We are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” I Pet. 3:22, “Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.”

          The saints on earth and the saints and angels in heaven are all one society, one family, one body, and they have all one head, and that is Jesus Christ. Eph. 3:13-14, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” They are all made one body under this one head, Eph. [1]:10, that “he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.” They are gathered into one in him, and he is the universal head of government and head of communication; and as their head, is the dispenser of life and blessedness and glory to the whole society, whether they be angels or saints. Thus, they that partake of Christ and his benefits, eat the food of angels. See Eph. 4:10.[iii]

 

 

 

APPLICATION.

I. Hence we learn the excellency of Jesus Christ. It is spoken of in the text as what argued the great excellency of the bread that God bestowed upon the children of Israel, that it was angels’ food, and elsewhere, that it was the bread of heaven.

It argues the superlative excellency of Christ Jesus, that he is he upon whom the angels live for their perfection and blessedness; that his glory and beauty is that upon which they live for the entertainment of their understandings, and that his love is the fountain that supplies their eternal ecstasies of joy.

          The angels are the most noble sort of creatures that God hath made. They excel in strength and in wisdom; they are called “morning stars”, Job 38:7, by reason of the brightness of their understandings and their exalted station in glory, and “sons of God” upon the account of the dignity and excellency of their natures, whereby they are more like God than any other mere creatures. When they are mentioned in the New Testament it is commonly under some such appellations as “principalities and powers” and “authorities, thrones and dominions.”

And yet our Jesus Christ, that took on him our natures and died for us, is he in whose beauty is the glorious entertainment of their noble and exalted powers, of their bright and enlarged understandings: this employs the utmost strength of those heavenly intelligences. Our Redeemer’s beauty and love fills the vast capacities of those spirits with joy and happiness.

To enjoy Christ, they esteem a happiness noble enough for them; they look upon the fountain as large enough. The glory of Christ is bright enough for the strength of their eyes to sustain. They look upon the love of Jesus Christ as a stream that is satisfying, even unto them.

          They are prying and searching into the discoveries of Christ’s glory in his work of redemption, esteeming it an employment that they are hot debased but honored and exalted by.

          Christ is the darling of heaven. He is the glorious light of that world, that enlightens saints and angels; he is the tree of life that grows in that paradise, that bears the delicious fruit that is the food of all the heavenly hosts. How glorious and excellent a person, then, doth this argue Jesus Christ to be.

          II. Hence we learn the greatness of the sin of unbelief, for by that men do despise and reject Jesus Christ and his benefits. They refuse angels’ food when God offers it to ‘em; they make no account of the bread of heaven when it is laid in their way, and they may have it at as cheap a rate as the children of Israel had manna, only for taking of it. We need not say, “Who shall ascend into heaven, to fetch it down for us from thence?” God hath sent it down, and it is nigh us, and lies round about us.

          Unbelievers do indeed despise and loath Christ and his benefits, as the children of Israel did manna in the wilderness. Their hearts go wholly after other things; they are hankering after the vanities of the things, the enjoyments and gratifications of their lusts, as the children of Israel did after the food of Egypt. Num. 11:5-6, “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic: but now our soul is dried away.” So unbelievers look upon it, that they shall be in a famishing condition without something else besides Christ, and there is nothing at all besides this manna before our eyes, accounting that as nothing at all. So unbelievers have no relish of Christ; they see nothing in him that should satisfy or delight their souls.

          And again, Num. 21:5, “And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread”—they did not count manna worthy the name of bread—“neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.”

          God heinously resented the people’s despising manna as they did. He smote them with the plague at one time, Num. 11:33, and sent fiery serpents among them at another [Num. 21:6-7].

          But if it was so heinous to slight that corporeal manna that was but a type of Christ, how much more heinous is their sin who loath the spiritual Manna, the true Bread from heaven, and that which is indeed the food of angels.

          III. Hence we learn how much cause we have to admire at the grace of God in advancing us to such an honor and happiness as the feeding upon Christ; that we who dwell in houses of clay, and have our foundation in the dust, and are such poor sinful creatures, should have angels’ food given [us] that God should rain upon us in great plenty of that spiritual and heavenly bread.

          That God should provide such a feast for us, that we, that dwell upon earth, may sit at a table that God has furnished with the same kind of fare as their feasts are made of in the heaven of heavens: what great cause have we to bless the name of God, that he should deal in such wonderful grace with us!

And this consideration should especially excite our wonder to God’s grace: and that is that this food is provided for us at immensely greater expense than ’tis for the angels. We not only have the same food that the angels have, but God has been at great expense to provide it for.

          ’Tis provided for us at a great price: ’tis bought by the precious blood of the Son of God. We could not have it at any cheaper rate. Christ was slain in order to our partaking of him; we could not feed upon him by any other means.

          Now it is not so with the angels: God never was at such expense to provide it for them; it did not cost God anything to give it to them: so that the goodness of God has been more wonderful to us than them.[iv]

          IV. Hence learn how great the sin of those is who neglect the Lord’s Supper. The bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper is angels’ food, in the same sense that the manna in the wilderness was, that is, it[v] represents that spiritual food of angels: Jesus Christ and his benefits.

          And we know how God was provoked by their slighting the [manna in the wilderness] and doubtless, for the same reason, he is provoked by persons, turning their backs upon this ordinance.

          And there is this difference that makes the sin more provoking: that is, that the relation between the sacramental bread and wine to this heavenly food is much more known amongst us than the relation of the manna in the wilderness. We have the spiritual[vi] benefits which this sacraments represents most plainly and particularly set before us, and they had not so concerning the manna.

          A neglecting of this ordinance, that signifies this angels’ [food], can be no other than interpretationally a despising of that bread itself.[vii]

 

Notes on sermon on 78:25