Jesus in the Old Testament 016: Jesus the Bread of Life

Jesus in the Old Testament 016:
Jesus the Bread of Life

Thesis: God sent bread from heaven once to continue our life physically.  Jesus has come to give us life spiritually. The first bread of heaven required a little trust.  The second requires all-in, soul-investing faith.  The first came to get Israel into the Promised Land.  The second came to bring all of mankind to heaven.

1. Nutshell with Kids:
1. Quick storytelling
2. Do you hide food in your room in case mom and dad forget to feed you?
3. Why not? (Faithful Parents, learned to trust them).
4. This was God’s original intent, to teach trust.
5. Jesus mentioned this miracle in talking about why he came.  Why do you think He did that?
6. Can we trust Jesus to be enough for us when we die? Absolutely!

2. Deeper w/ Adults:
1. Ex 16:
1. The Israelites strike out into the desert of sin and journey toward their appointment with God at Mount Sinai.

a)     No naturally occurring food or water.

b)     Dependent upon God.

c)      Grumbling

2. Moses prays (implied)
3. God answers (vs -5).

a)     Quail in evening

(1)   Some migrating species of quail return to Arabia exhausted after flying over the red sea and fall to the ground unmoving for the feat.

(2)  Every evening? For 40 years?

b)     Manna at dawn (dried dew)

(1)   Lice excrement (still harvested by Bedouins)

(2)  Dried Lichen

(3)  Neither nutritionally sufficient nor plentiful enough to feed millions of migrating people.

(4)  Neither fulfills the description of 6 days/week and twice the volume on Friday.    

c)      Miraculous! What is it?

4. It requires faith and trust.

a)     Don’t horde→ worms

b)     Then (vs 5-6), Get twice the supply→ Nothing to gather

5. Foreknowledge of the Sabbath in Jewish Culture.

a)     Jews came out of a setting of slavery, where work was ever-present, and there was no rest.

b)     The Sabbath commands won’t be codified until they get to Sinai, a few weeks out yet.

c)      The creation pattern of the workweek is already established in their culture

(1)   Gen 2:2-3, God blessed the seventh day at creation.

(2)  Ex 16:23-30,

(a)  First usage of the word “Sabbath”

(b)  God gave them this picture of Sabbath before the Law

(c)   Rebuke for not following God’s pattern of work and rest. 

6. No clear formula. The goal is to be trained to follow.
7. Not allowed to provide for themselves along the way.  They were to trust God daily.
8. Jar of Manna to be kept as a testimony. Miraculously preserved.
1. John 6:22-59
1. Context:

a)     Feeding of the 5,000 with a Lunchable

b)     If he rules, there will be no food problem!

c)      John 6:15 records, "Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself."

2. Jesus sets his followers straight about his intentions.  His purpose is to die for the sins of the world.
3. More than being the source of bread from heaven, he is himself the bread of heaven which has come down from the Father.

a)     Eat His flesh and drink His blood?

b)     Replaces the Jewish formulaic approach to God.

c)      In the desert, manna brought physical life.  Jesus comes to bring life eternal.  Jn 6:49-51

4. Jesus foretells his suffering and death at this point in all four gospels, and in John's account, He even gives us the recast meaning of Passover in what we now call "The Lord's Supper."
5. The followers of Jesus need to trust Jesus’ provision for their needs even more clearly than the Israelites did for their food.
6. Manna vs Jesus

a)     God sent bread from heaven once to continue our life physically.  Jesus has come to give us life spiritually.

b)     The first bread of heaven required a little trust.  The second requires all-in, soul-investing faith. 

c)      The first came to get Israel into the Promised Land.  The second came to bring all of mankind to heaven.

Discussion Questions:

1. How are you doing at trusting God for your daily provision?
2. Do you find it easier or more difficult to trust him with your eternal soul?
3. Do you feel like you need to understand the details of what God tells you to do before you can obey?
4. Both Israel in the wilderness and people alive today have evidence that God is able to do what He promises.  Why is it so hard to trust?

Fourth Saturday of Omer: The Bread of Heaven

This Sabbath day marks the half-way point of counting the Omer. We are now midway between the celebration of God's judgement of and deliverance from the bondage of sin (Passover and Easter) and the celebration of God's invitation, parameters, and empowerment for relationship (Shavuot and Pentecost).

 In Exodus 16, the Israelites strike out into the desert of sin and journey toward their appointment with God at Mount Sinai. In so doing, they leave behind naturally occurring sources of food and water, and they are thrust firmly into the care and provision of God. Not surprisingly, they begin to grumble against Moses and Aaron (and by implication, against God) about the lack of provision for their needs in the wilderness. Moses prays to the Lord, and God provides for their needs with manna, the bread of heaven, every morning, and a flock of quail every night.

On the surface, the immediate provision for their food is merely a loving Father's response to the needs of His children, but there is more that comes pre-loaded with the gift of food. God wants his children to trust him, on a daily basis, for the provision that they need. He tells them explicitly not to gather more than they can eat in a day and not to keep any for the next day. They fail in trusting Him, and several people keep some for the morning, only to find that it has rotted overnight and is full of worms.

So the people learn to trust God for their daily needs and collect the manna every morning. Then, in Exodus 16:5, God embeds another test in his provision: "On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” It's as if He was saying, "I know I said before to gather every day for that day's needs, but I want you to trust me in a new thing now. On day 6, gather food for day 7. I know you think it will rot. Trust me. I'm God."

God was calling his people to trust Him on the Sabbath, to rest in God and in obedience. The commandments of the law had not yet been given to the Jews (Shavuot is coming soon!), so the commandment to rest on the Sabbath day was not yet written in stone. Still, God had modeled it in the creation week, and He wants his children to obey and follow his model. It doesn't come easy.  Later in the passage, we read that the Hebrews did not at first trust that God's provision on day 6 would be enough for two days, so they went out to gather on day 7 and found that there was nothing to be gathered.

"On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, 'How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.'” Exodus 16:27-29

First, they were told to gather only what they needed each day, and they were grossed out by the results of their disobedience. Then, they were told to gather for two days, and they were hungry if they tried to find their food on the Sabbath morning. Which is it, God? Are we to gather and store up or are we not? The answer is neither of these clear-cut, easy-to-calculate formulas. The answer is that you must trust in God to provide and obey His commands.

The reason for this whole aspect of their journey, the reason that they were not allowed to provision themselves like other oriental nomadic people with herds and short-term farms, or by raiding and pillaging other peoples, is that God wanted then to know, on a daily basis, that they were His people and that He was the one leading them and meeting their needs. Three times in the course of the passage, God says that he is doing this so that the people will know that "I am the Lord who has led you from Egypt." Also, they are to keep a jar of manna in the tabernacle before the ark as a sign for all peoples that God had done this.

One more observation from Exodus 16: This was weird! Who has ever had morning dew settle on the ground and dry into bread? Who has ever had a flock of quail land at their doorway and settle in to be easily caught and slaughtered? If it was that easy, quail hunting wouldn't be called a "sport." This is not "the way it happens." There was no precedent for this. In fact, the Hebrews had no name for this method of feeding. There is no word that means, "the bread that is left when the dew dries up." Consequently, they had to come up with a new expression. What do you call that stuff? That's what they called it. The word "manna" means, "What is it?" Nothing like it had been seen before, and God has never repeated this miracle for any other people group at any other time in history. He sent the "what is it?" to the Hebrews (who may have called it the "whatchamacallit" today) and changed everything that they knew about how one derives nutrition and provides for their family.

Several thousand years later, Jesus of Nazareth did another miracle with bread, recorded in John 6, and created food out of his hands. He started with a boy's lunchable (three fish and five loaves) and turned it into a banquet that fed around around 20,000 people. This was weird! What do you do with a man who can do that? Why, He would solve the nutritional problems for any people group that he chose to rule! Imagine the benefits that could be enjoyed by a nation that didn't have to worry about what they would eat? Farming is a thing of the past. Just get in line, and get your bread!  Not surprisingly, the crowd wanted to make Him King. John 6:15 records that, "Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself."

Following this account, Jesus has to set both his disciples and the crowds following him straight about his intentions. In all four gospels, the feeding of the 5,000 (men) is followed by testimony from Jesus about his impeding death. In John's account, it is in its fullest form, and Jesus makes use of the similarity between the "bread of heaven" miracle of manna and his own recent miraculous provision.

Jesus declares that, more than being the source of bread from heaven, he is himself the bread of heaven which has come down from the Father.  The Jews of Jesus' day had a formula for relating to God (temple worship, law-keeping, law-extending, etc), and Jesus comes with an entirely new formula--eat Jesus' flesh and drink his blood!  

What?  That's weird! 

I know, but so is dew that dries into bread.  God likes weird.  It keeps us from thinking that what he does is "normal." 

Jesus instructs the Jews that the way to eternal life is through him alone, and not just through his teaching and observing more commandments, but through the sacrifice of his body that He is about to give.  The Jews get all upset about this wholesale replacement of their formula.  This isn't how it's done!  Jesus is very clear that the rules are changing, and that the way to God is only through Him. 

Just like in Exodus, when the point of the miracle was a daily reminder that God was behind their provision, Jesus mentions many times that his statements and actions come from God--his entire miracle ministry was so that people would know and believe that He was the one sent from God into the world.  

In the desert, manna brought physical life.  Jesus comes to bring life eternal--life entirely different from the continuance of physical existence. "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." Jn 6:49-51

Jesus foretells his suffering and death at this point in all four gospels, and in John's account, He even gives us the recast meaning of Passover in what we now call "The Lord's Supper." 

God sent bread from heaven once to continue our life physically.  Jesus has come to give us life spiritually. The first bread of heaven required a little trust.  The second requires all-in, soul-investing faith.  The first came to get Israel into the Promised Land.  The second came to bring all of mankind to heaven.

Jesus is the Bread of life, and while there is no precedent for Him, and while his invitation to eat his flesh is certainly weird, the life that He brings is secure and profound. 

"As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”  Jn 6:57-58

Have you eaten the bread that comes from heaven?

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