To you it shall be for meat
The universe God’s gift to man
I. THE GIFT.
1. Extensive.
2. Valuable.
3. Increasing.
Every day becoming better known and more thoroughly appreciated. All the gifts of God are productive; time unfolds their measure, discloses their meaning, and demonstrates their value.
II. THE PURPOSE.
1. To evince love. One of the great objects of creation was to manifest the love of God to the human race, which was shortly to be brought into existence. The light, the sun, the stars, and the creation of man; all these were the love tokens of God. These were designed, not to display His creative power--His wisdom, but His desire for the happiness of man.
2. To teach truth. The world is a great school. It is well supplied with teachers. It will teach an attentive student great lessons. All the Divine gifts are instructive.
3. To sustain life. God created man without means, but it was not His will to preserve him without; hence He tells him where he is to seek his food. We must make use of such creatures as God has designed for the preservation of our life. God has provided for the preservation of all life. Let us learn to trust God for the necessities of life in times of adversity. Men who have the greatest possessions in the world must receive their daily food from the hand of God. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Dependence on God
I. LET EVERYONE DEPEND UPON GOD FOR THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE.
1. Asking them by prayer.
2. Acknowledging our own beggary.
3. Trusting Him by faith.
4. Remembering His promise.
5. Obedient to His will.
II. LET US SERVE HIM FAITHFULLY AT WHOSE TABLE WE ARE FED.
1. Else we are ungrateful.
2. Else we deserve famine. All the provisions that God allows man for food are drawn out of the earth. The homeliness of the provision on which God intended man to feed. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Let no man be discontented with mean fare
1. It is as good as the body it nourishes.
2. It is better than we deserve.
3. It is more than we are able to procure of ourselves.
4. It is more profitable for health.
5. It is free from the temptation to excess. God gives us not all our provisions at once, but a daily supply of them.
(1) To manifest His Fatherly care.
(2) To make us dependent on Him.
(3) To exercise our faith.
(4) To teach economy. God makes provision for all the creatures He hath made. Man was not only a good creature but a blessed one. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Food
1. It exerts an influence on the disposition of man. A hungry man always feels the risings of cruelty, however they may be conquered by nobler principles. When you think of the cruelty of an Indian you should always think of his famished condition.
2. It indicates the civilized condition of man. You are told that a people are a wheat-eating people. Of course they must raise it; they must have the plough and the ploughshare; they must command iron, or, at least, some hard metal; they must understand the process of mining and smelting; they must have fields and fences; they must have foresight to sow and patience to wait for a crop; and, finally, they must be protected by law, for no one will lend the labour who is not assured of protection.
3. It contributes to extensive social changes. The introduction of sugar, for example, has changed the whole face of society. It was found to be one of the purest and least cloying sweets ever discovered. It was handed from the Arabs to the Spaniards; it was cultivated first in the Madeira Islands; then it was given to all the European nations; was raised in the West Indies on an immense scale. Then came rum, brandy, and all the alcoholic drinks, slavery and all its consequences, until now it is a debated problem whether the sweet cane was a blessing or a curse. At any rate this single article of food, so unimportant and neglected in its origin, changed the whole face of society.
4. It indicates the general refinement of the mind. Nay, we are instructed not to be totally indifferent to the kind of food, for discrimination here is connected with other discrimination, and indicates improvement in the taste. We will not take advantage of Dr. Johnson’s remark, who held that he who did not mind his dinner would scarcely mind anything else. Suffice it to say, that taste in food and taste in dress, science, and literature, always go together. He that feeds grossly will judge grossly.
5. It is essential in order to the higher pursuits of life. Take away from the astronomer his food, and he will soon cease to lift his telescope to the stars. The saint, the martyr, the moralist, and the poet, all pursue their sublime occupations through the vigour and animation of the body. In a word, as the sweetest blossom on the highest tree, though it seems to be fed by the very air which it decorates, is nourished by the dirt and manure around the roots of the tree, so the sublimest mind is supplied by the food of the body. (Bib. Sacra.)
Man’s proper food
Remark here, that when God assigned to man, while still innocent, his proper food, he gave him only the fruits of the field; and it was not till after the earth had been twice cursed because of sin that he was permitted to eat the flesh of animals. “Upon this point also,” says
M. de Rougemont, in his interesting “History of the Earth,”--“upon this point, as well as others, science has arrived, by long, circuitous ways, and painful study, at the very same truths which are plainly revealed to us in Genesis.” “It is a question,” says M. Flourens, “which has much perplexed physiologists, and which they have not yet been able to determine, what was the natural and primitive food of man. Now, thanks to comparative anatomy, it is very easy to see that man was originally neither herbivorous nor carnivorous, but frugivorous.” It was not till after the curse had been brought on the earth by sin that man began to feed on the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. Before he sinned he had a dominion over the creatures, which he lost in a great measure, and which he only keeps in a degree by force and violence; but at first they did not flee from him, and he did not eat them. Doubtless, before man sinned, the productions of the earth were richer and better than they are now, and offered a much greater variety of food and nourishment to man. But at the fall the nature of the soil and of its vegetable productions must have been in some way altered. Probably God greatly reduced the number of food-producing plants, and the earth brought forth instead those bearing useless thorns, and even some whose fruits or juices cause death. (Prof. Gaussen.)
The miracle of nourishment
Perhaps it may appear to you a very natural thing that corn, strawberries, cherries, grapes, figs, dates, peaches, pineapples, and all the various and delicious fruits of our orchards and of other climates, should feed and nourish you; but think of the miracle which must be wrought in your body--in your stomach, your lungs, your heart, your veins, your glands, your arteries, and all the various parts within you--before these fruits, or any other food that you eat, can be prepared inyour stomach, changed into a kind of milky substance, and conveyed in your veins, and passed with your blood through one of the ventricles of your heart, and thence into your lungs, to be burned and purified there, and return again as perfect blood into the other ventricle, and thence be driven by a rapid movement into your arteries, and to the very extremities of your body, in order that it may reproduce, without your interference, your skin, your flesh, your bones, your nerves, your nails, and the thousands and thousands of the hairs of your head. It is a miracle wrought by God, that any kind of food, whether leaves, seeds, fruits, or bread should serve as food and nourishment to me at all; it is a mystery and a wonder how it is changed into a part of my body, so as to make it grow, repair it, and renew its waste: and therefore it was a work of almighty power when God appointed man’s food, and said of the trees and plants, “To you it shall be for meat.” What is bread? It is a paste composed of ground corn, water, and salt, baked after it has begun to ferment. But how does it happen that the corn and the salt should nourish me? Corn, we are told, is composed of carbon and the two gases which form water. Now, how can carbon or charcoal nourish me? Try to eat a bit of charcoal, and you will find it like taking a mouthful of sand. Think how wonderfully these substances, of which corn is composed, must be transformed by Divine power to produce the corn, and then still further changed to become a part of our bodies. Then salt is composed of two substances which separately would hurt me, and yet combined they are wholesome, and help to cause the corn and other things to nourish me. If I were to take two phials, one filled with sodium and the other with hydrochloric acid, and if I were to mix them in a glass, they would combine and form salt at the bottom of the glass; and yet, separately, each of these phials would contain a destructive poison. If I were to swallow the hydrochloric acid, it would burn my stomach; and if I were to pour it into the palm of my hand and hold it there, it would soon burn a hole right through my hand; and yet this dreadful poison, when combined with sodium, forms salt, which is so wholesome and so necessary for our health. (Prof. Gaussen.)
Nature productive
The botanist Ray tells us that he counted 2,000 grains of maize on a single plant of maize sprung from one seed, 4,000 seeds on one plant of sunflower, 32,000 seeds on a single poppy plant, and 36,000 seeds on one plant of tobacco. Pliny tells us that a Roman governor in Africa sent to the Emperor Augustus a single plant of corn with 340 stems, bearing 340 ears--that is to say, at least 60,000 grains of corn had been produced from a single seed. In modern times, 12,780 grains have been produced by a single grain of the famous corn of Smyrna. In eight years, as much corn might spring from one seed as to supply all mankind with bread for a year and a half. (Prof. Gaussen.)