Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Jesus: The Bread of Life

I. What's For Dinner?

What did you eat for dinner? Does anyone want to offer up their menu? Did you eat in your room or in the cafeteria or in a restaurant? Chances are your meal tonight was a great deal different than the one you would have eaten had you lived in the year AD 33 in Palestine. Whereas you had a virtually infinite amount of choices for your dinner, the same could not be said of a person then. Food was not easy to come by. Generally, you ate what you could grow. It was the upper class that had the time and money to shop for their food. The lower class (there was really no middle class then) resorted to what they could harvest and store.

Thus, the staple dietary item for most people then was bread. They made it in a variety of shapes and sizes and methods (loaves, biscuits, paste, wafers, etc.) but it consisted of roughly the same ingredients and achieved the same end: nourishment and life.

Not surprisingly then, we find the theme of provision of food being recurrent in the scriptures, as a common person would continually struggle to have a secured food source. In the Garden of Eden, God provided trees which bore fruit (food) so that Adam and Eve would be provided for. The toil that Adam would have to undergo after his sin revolved around the production of food. Food (or lack thereof) is an important leitmotif in the Bible.

II. The OT Background to the Bread of Life

As the Israelites were delivered out of Egypt, they immediately found themselves in the wilderness where food and water were sparse. God provided for their hunger by sending this bread-like substance from heaven which settled on the ground in the morning and could be collected and eaten (Exodus 16:11-15). Elsewhere, God also quenched the thirst of the Israelites by allowing Moses to bring forth water from a rock.

This edible substance was called “manna” (Exodus 16:31) because the Israelites were unsure what it was when they first saw it.[1] It appeared as a dusting on the ground each morning when the dew dried up. It was a light, wafer-like substance that tasted sweet. It was this provisionary food that kept the nation alive during this trying time in the wilderness.

Once the Israelites arrived in the Promised Land, the manna stopped. God provided for their dietary needs in other ways. Yet, when the Temple was constructed, He decreed that the Bread of the Presence (or Showbread) be used in the worship. There were 12 loaves (one for each tribe) that were placed on a table as a sign of the covenant that God had made with Israel. The loaves remained on the table from one Sabbath to the next, at which time they were replaced and the old ones were eaten by the priests.

III. Context of the Statements in John 6

In John 6, Jesus is somewhere near the shore of the Sea of Galilee, entertaining a crowd of people who find Him intriguing when they grow restless because Jesus has taught clear through the dinner hour. The disciples panic and Jesus calmly tells them to sit the people down while he performs a miracle. Taking 5 barley loaves and 2 fish, he feeds a large crowd (5,000+ men, not to mention women and children) with food to spare (12 baskets of fragments). That night, Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee with the disciples, but not by using a boat. He walks on water half the way and rides with the disciples the other half.

The next morning, when the crowd needs breakfast and cannot find the miraculous food-maker, they go in search of Him. They finally track Him down in Capernaum, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. At this point, Jesus rebukes them for seeking Him for the wrong reasons and with the wrong intent. They want Him to provide for their physical needs (even amidst their doubts about His many claims about His own deity) without being burdened by His call for them to follow and believe in Him.

IV. Jesus as the Bread of Life

Jesus’ statements about being the bread of life come in this context as the Jewish people seek Him only for the sake of their stomachs. They don’t believe in Him; they only want His physical food. In verse 32, Jesus reminds them that it was not Moses who provided the manna, it was God (the Jews may have confused this). When they petition for more bread, He points them to Himself, saying that He is the bread of life.

Just as the manna came down from heaven as a gift of God the Father, so Jesus Christ came down from heaven as a gift. And just as the manna provided nourishment and life for the people of God, so Jesus Christ promises to provide eternal life for those who believe in Him (which the Jews here do not). He becomes the very life sustaining substance in a dry and weary land where there is no food and there is no water. Attempting life without him will lead to death without him.

Many of the Jews and even some of the disciples following Jesus were scandalized by the things He said here. He explains faith in very graphic terms in verses 53-58 and obviously, the crowd is not ready to think according to the metaphor. Jesus even goes so far as to challenge the Jewish historical paradigm by noting that ‘the fathers’ who ate the manna in the wilderness died, but those who feed on Him (i.e. believe in Him) will never die. The idea of eating in this passage means believing and/or trusting. God promised the manna and yet, the Israelites had to trust that it would show up each morning, lest they starve to death. Jesus brings this idea together in the sense of being Himself the bread of life. This led Augustine to claim eloquently, “Crede, et manducasti” (Believe and you have eaten).

V. Application

A. The Bread of Life is the Ticket to our Salvation - Each one of us embodies the story of Israel. As the LORD delivered them physically (and spiritually, to a certain extent) out of the grip of Pharaoh, so God has delivered us spiritually (and physically, to a certain extent) out of the grip of Satan, the world, and the flesh. Here’s how our stories parallel as exodus is salvation:

Slavery in Egypt = the fallen human as a slave to sin

God’s message through Moses = God’s message through Christ (the Word)

The Passover Lamb = Christ’s death, the Passover Lamb

The Red Sea = salvation by grace through the forgiveness of sins (sign: baptism)

The manna = the daily grace which God gives to sustain us for our journey

The Promised Land = our promised inheritance with God in heaven

B. The Bread of Life Is a Gift, Not Our Due – In John 6:37-40 & 44, Jesus says some very difficult things about who can come to Him: only those who are drawn (or dragged). It is God’s chosen people who are granted the union with Christ, the forgiveness of sin, the access to the Father, and the promise of eternal life. Tasting the Bread of Life is a gift, not something that we can earn or something God owes to anyone. In the same way that God did not deliver every enslaved nation from their oppressors, so God does not rescue drag every person into his kingdom. There are some people that he leaves in their slavery to sin. As to why he chose us, it is very hard to say. It certainly was not because we are worthy of that choice. He simply did it because of his grace and his good pleasure. The response he demands in not one of pride or haughtiness, but humility and worship. The amazing blessings and benefits we can know in Christ are a pure gift, not to be earned, but only to be received and held on to for dear life.

C. The Bread of Life as Communion – Communion (or the Lord’s Supper) is one of the most important moments in the life of the church. Do you ever wonder why it is called communion? I have a feeling that it is due to the fact that we share so much in the sacrament itself. We share the bread and we share the cup. We all participate in this event and actually partake spiritually of the same Savior Jesus Christ. I think about the Israelites and how unifying the manna must have been. Sure, it was drab and they grew sick of it, but it must have been consoling to know that millions of your kinsmen were eating exactly the same food. This food came as a gift from God. The elements of communion point us back to the real element of our communion: Jesus Christ. He is what bonds us together. The only element of true biblical community is the person of Jesus Christ. Apart from the act of marriage, the only form of immediate fellowship available in this world is through Jesus Christ can give because as believers are “in Christ” (i.e. united to Christ), they are also members of the same body (just as husband and wife become one flesh). Other unifying causes can only give mediate fellowship. Any other thing we use to develop relationships between Christians (sports, music, backgrounds) is secondary to the community we have in Christ.



[1] Hebrew Man’ah means something like “What is it?”

No comments: