Experiencing Christ as Barley – the Resurrected Christ – and Feeding others with the Christ we Experience
…When you…reap its harvest, then you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. Lev. 23:10 There is a little boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are these for so many? John 6:9The good land is a land of barley (Deut. 8:8); barley is a type of the resurrected Christ.
Barley always ripens first in the good land; when the harvest time came, the firstfruits of the harvest had to be offered to the Lord (see Lev. 23:10), and the firstfruits were clearly of barley.
As Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:20, the firstfruits of the harvest typify Christ as the firstfruits of resurrection. As the wheat, Christ is limited and restricted, but as the barley, He is unlimited and in resurrection.
As the firstfruits, Christ has become the bread of life; hence, barley loaves signify Christ in resurrection as food to us.
In John 6:48 we see the story of feeding the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish, Five signifies responsibility, and the loaves were of barley, signifying the resurrected Christ.
If they were of wheat, they had a limitation, but as barley loaves, there could be a multiplication, an increase, an overflow, enough to feed five thousand.
The resurrected Christ is able to bear responsibility (John 6:9), and as we feed on Christ as the barley loaves, we become a loaf of barley to feed others with the Christ whom we have experienced (see Judges 7:13-14).
First we experience Christ as the wheat, which restricts us and limits us, but then we experience Him as the barley, which is the resurrected and multiplying Christ.
In Matt. 14:16 the Lord Jesus was with the crowds, and He had compassion on them for they were hungry; yet the others didn’t have anything to eat, so the Lord told His disciples, You give them something to eat.
As we experience Christ as barley, the resurrected Christ, we clearly see the need around us – people are hungry, and there is not enough food to meet the need. And the Lord tells us that we should feed those around us.
Many times we feel like this in the church life; we may be in the prophesying meeting, and the Lord in our spirit tells us to give others something to eat, but we may think we don’t have enough food for ourselves – how can we also fed others.
But if we just open our mouth, since we have experiencing and enjoying Christ as the wheat and the barley, we can speak something to supply others.
If you...believe in the resurrected Christ, and apply Him, you will find that the remainder abiding in you is more than that with which you started. This is the barley. This is not just a teaching but something for us to experience and apply every day in every situation. Apply the resurrected Christ, the unlimited, inexhaustible One. Tell Him, “Lord, I cannot meet the need; I cannot face the situation. But how I praise You, You can. I go ahead trusting wholly in You, counting wholly upon You.” Witness Lee, The All-inclusive Christ, ch. 5The key to prophesying is preparation; to prepare doesn’t merely mean that we need to read the Bible, the morning revival, and the footnotes in the Recovery Version Bible so that we may be filled with the truth.
To prepare to feed others we need to eat Christ as the wheat and the barley in the good land!
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