Why do you spend money for what is not bread?

This most profound spiritual question, coming from the quill of the great prophet Isaiah (55:2), perhaps the greatest poet in Israel’s history (with the possible exception of King David), resonates through time with the question which Christ asked the disciples in the boat. “How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?” (Matt. 16:11) Truly, the Lord’s words are Spirit and Life, and He does not dwell upon the material needs of the flesh. And so believers in Christ today must grapple with where they are putting their focus — and are they getting words of Spirit and Life for their investment.

Because this Word is addressed not to atheists, agnostics, and people of the nations, but to the people of God, the Church, the body of Christ, it is revelatory of the great distance between God and His people. Many sheep have gone astray and are now putting their money into what is not bread. They are investing in a world that is passing, and in teachings that are not food for the spirit, but rather food for the flesh, part of the temporal world.

It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing. the words that I have spoken are spirit and are life.

John 10:63

As Christ was the voice of God to the prophets, how can it be other than He, the Lord, is NOT talking about food. With the disciples He was discussing the leaven of the Pharisees, the false teaching of their “traditions of men,” especially that He, Jesus, was not the Messiah. Today we see plenty of that in the Church, where the Jesus of history is often separated from the present Christ. But how can that be? He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). The Jesus Christ of history, the Word made flesh, IS the Living Christ of today. The Spirit of Christ, His Presence, is NOT separate from the person of Christ. He IS The Christ, not just a prophet who had the Christ Spirit. He is not a forerunner, but the one prophesied to come, “The Savior of the World.” Any distortion of this Truth – and Truth is in Jesus – is not bread which came from the Father as Isaiah proclaimed His Word to be our Food. It is rather “the leaven of the Pharisees, the “teaching of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1). It is something people pay for but it is not food.

The LORD is interested in our eating what is healthful in terms of Spiritual Food. And you cannot eat both, as the apostle said to the Corinthians (10:21). We cannot eat from the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

We no longer live in an age where animals are sacrificed to demons and consumed as spiritual food. That was but a dim shadow of the deeper spiritual conflict, by which the Lord signified the problem to us. The thought-forms we take in are the real food and the relevant issue at stake. That bread accomplishes all that God wishes. Because it is our spiritual formation with which God is most concerned, and not what kind of foods we eat to survive.

So if the words Christ spoke are Spirit and Life, what is the body of Christ doing searching for something better? Going beyond has no value. Whoso does that has neither the Father nor the Son (2 John 9). This amounts to the charges laid out by Malachi of sorcery and adultery, and swearing falsely.

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my respect?” says the Lord of Hosts to you, O Priests who despise My name. But you say, ‘How have we despised Thy name?’ “You are presenting defiled food upon My altar. But you say, ‘How have we defiled Thee?’ In that you say, ‘The table of the LORD is to be despised.'”

Malachi 1:7-8

In hearing the Word of the Lord, we need to attend to the place of His focus. The table of the Lord must be a table of His Word, unadulterated, but pure as the sacrifices without defect imply. You cannot eat from the table of the Lord AND the table of demons (1 Cor. 10). To mix the truth with the falsehood of “deceitful spirits” and the “teachings of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1) is to despise the table of the Lord.

Spending money on what is not food is meant to keep us from adulterating the pattern of healthful words and the spiritual words for spiritual realities which the apostles and the prophets have left us as the life-giving food from God. And today, as so many in the churches shop and consume books and teachings that are not compatible with the teachings of Christ, and go beyond what is written (1 Cor. 4:6). This rampant absorption of all things “spiritual” has laid the foundation for conditions which really will require Elijah to come and restore all things.

Let us long for the pure, unadulterated milk of the Word (1 Pet. 2:1) and thereby grow in salvation. And this we may buy without money as is written also in this same passage of Isaiah cited above:

Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost.

Isaiah 55:1

And this Word shall not return to Him empty, but shall accomplish what He desires — the growth of His children in salvation.