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September 24, 2006
Bread, the Staff of Life
Deuteronomy 8: 1-10
John 6: 35-40
September 24th, 2006
This morning I invite you to look carefully with me at a great and mysterious truth that God unfolds for us gradually in the Gospel of John. Jesus said, in the verses we have just read, "I am the bread of life." In the section before this He hinted at this, but did not say this directly. Instead he calls to mind for fellow Jews who knew their Bible well those shaping moments in their history when their forebears were in the wilderness. Forty years they wandered in the desert depending on God for literally everything.
God fed them. God gave them water to drink. God guided them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. God protected them.
The bread that God gave them to eat was particularly in Jesus mind as He launched the great teaching about how all of human life is sustained. John does not quote the passage from Deuteronomy that Deb read for us moments ago. But the other Gospel writers tell us that Jesus quoted an important word from that section at the beginning of His ministry. Jesus was weakened by hunger in the desert from a forty-day fast. The devil tempted him to turn some bread-shaped stones into bread. Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6 in response: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test," or as we are more used to hearing these words, "Do not tempt the Lord your God."
When the devil persisted, urging Him to try out God's care of Him by jumping from a pinnacle of the Temple Jesus replied, "One does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." It would seem Jesus was still thinking about the bread temptation when He said this. Actually the Hebrew of this verse does not say "every word," but "all" or everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord" (kol motsa' pi adonai).
Moses said these things looking back as the end of his life drew near. He reminded his people of the mysterious bread with which God fed them in the wilderness. They called this bread "manna," which sounds like a name of some specialty bread. But when the Israelites first dubbed this bread with this name they were actually asking a question, "What is this?" The name stuck. Ever after this "what is this" was in their minds as a sign of God's provision of the staff of life in a day when there were no fields growing grain in their precincts.
This bread was mysterious in that it didn't really look like bread. The Hebrew word for bread may also be translated "food." This strange food looked flaky like frost, or perhaps like philo-dough; it was white like coriander seed; and it tasted like wafers made with honey. But this was not the whole of its mystery. The Israelites could not plan for tomorrow by gathering up more than enough for day. When Jesus taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," He had in mind the bread that they could only gather enough for one day. Because if left over night the manna was worm infested and spoiled. The psalmist called it "cereal (dagan) from heaven, the bread of powerful ones (lechem abirim)," It came from above as an abundant though mysterious supply from God and gave the strength needed to live.
But Moses also looked forward to the way God would continue to care for them. The way God would care for them didn't have the same kind of mystery to it, but if they stopped to think they would realize how life would simply open up for them.
They would go into a land "flowing with milk and honey." It would be a land with cities ready-made to move into, cities they did not build. They would live in houses they did not construct, filled with things they did not make. They would drink water from wells they did not dig, and eat vegetables from gardens they did not plant. They would drink wine made from grapes that came from vines they did not cultivate. And he had to warn them that as they enjoyed all these benefits that they would not forget the Lord who brought them out of Egypt.
In fact as we look back at God's care of ancient Israel we don't read that He expected them to "believe" in God the way we talk of believing in God. Instead they were not to forget Him. They were to thank Him. They were to fear and obey. And I wonder if these acts of mind and heart that God expected of ancient Israel were the school in which they would learn about belief—which Jesus said was needful to have one's thirst quenched.
I spoke to the children this morning about thanking their parents for the good things they provide—good food, nice looking clothes, toys and so much more. I suggested that in our families when we thank our parents they feel good to be thanked. When this takes place over the years children become the friends of their parents. And so it was for Israel that when they responded to the psalmists' words, "O give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His steadfast love endures for ever," they could remember the story of their past which told of God's care. They would remember and thank Him. They would remember the remarkable manner of God's care and it led them to feel awe before Him. They hopefully remembered to obey Him as they felt awe and gratitude, and thus they were led on to that deeper attitude of heart that the New Testament calls belief.
Belief by nature is exercised toward things unseen. As Hebrews 11: 6 puts it, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In Old Testament times God's people trusted because they could see God's supply. There were more than visual symbols; there was the actual cloud by day and the actual fire by night to guide them. There was the sudden flow of water when they were thirsty, the morning by morning descent of manna for their food. They got used to things, but there it all was, the daily visual reminder of God's care.
But not so when Jesus came, having emptied Himself of all those visual signs of deity. Now it would take faith that He was who He said He was, who He seemed to be in doing His various signs.
Jesus, on the cusp of revealing the great truths by which all people ever after could find life, looked back to the manna God gave Israel. He taught that that bread, sustaining of life and mysterious in its origin though it was, was not the bread most needed. Israel looked back nostalgically on that bread though at the time it became monotonous so that they complained about it. They complained because it did not fully satisfy. Indeed, it was the most temporary of breads. It was infested with worms and grew stale overnight if they tried to save enough for tomorrow.
There was other bread that really came from above that, if eaten, strengthened the eater with eternal life. "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world," Jesus said, further tweaking their curiosity. So they asked Him, "Sir, give us this bread all the time." But they little expected the answer that would come.
"I am the bread of life." Yet there was more mystery to come. Jesus did not yet speak of eating this bread, simply of coming to Him as a means of staving off the deep hunger, and believing in Him as a means of quenching the deep thirst.
We often talk of coming to Jesus, and of believing in Him. And we do well because Jesus said to come to Him, particularly if we are weak and heavy laden. He told us that believing in Him was needful to inherit eternal life. But there is something unquantifiable about coming to Him and believing in Him. In a way we don't know when we've really come to Him and not merely to some threshold where Jesus is the subject beyond. We can't see Jesus, after all. Belief is a kind of knowledge, but when it is in someone we cannot see, it is a helpless kind of knowledge. Edith Hamilton referred to this as trust, a word that has less of a knowledge aspect than the word belief.
When Jesus taught of coming to Him and believing in Him it was like two stages along the way to the kind of relationship to Him that He would finally say with all its starkness. Of that I will speak next Lord's Day. Few of us are prepared for this next stage as few were prepared for it in Jesus' day.
How do we come to Jesus and believe in Him so as to receive this life He promised? Why did He call Himself bread?
Because bread is the most basic necessity we have. The word itself in the Old Testament is sometimes used as a synonym for food. Why? Because bread is the most basic of foods. It is made of grain crushed so as to make it digestible and then lumped together and baked. At the Communion service we remember words from a second-century Christian worship order in which we pray, "As the grain was ground . . . let our lives be spent in your service." The bread God gave Israel was not grain-bread but somehow made of coriander seed that was like honey wafers. What a curious description of bread, we think. It was in its curiosity that it suggested the far more marvelous Bread that was born in the House of Bread, which is what Bethlehem means, many years later.
It would have been most appropriate for John to tell us in our passage that Jesus said that as basic as bread is, bread is not the most basic need we have. Indeed, when Jesus wanted to find a suitable metaphor for His life-giving role with us, though He spoke of bread, it was bread unlike any bread anyone has ever eaten.
No wonder there is a reserve in John's Gospel as Jesus taught of the relationship we are to have with Him. Come to Him and have no hunger—but since when does just drawing near to bread satisfy hunger? Believe in Him and you will not thirst, but since when does believing that water is water take away thirst?
And thus we find ourselves in much the same boat as ancient Israel. It struck me how very near Israel's situation we are as it thought of entering the Promised Land. We live in cities we did not personally build, in houses we did not put up. We eat food we did not grow—that is stacked in splendid variety in the grocery stores. We drink wine made from grapes grown in Spain, France, Australia and other far flung places. And all this we are able to buy even with money we do not yet have. How like ancient Israel we are.
And so we must follow the tutorial of faith God gave to Israel. Thank God for everything. Fear Him. Obey His commands. And realizing that this does not draw us as near to Jesus as we need, let us still follow the tutorial of this means of drawing near to God. And in due time Jesus will give us this gift of faith.
Even here there is mystery to God's work with us. Because Jesus said that only those whom the Father draws to the Son will come. Yet, when we think of the story with which all this begins in John 5, where Jesus feeds 5,000 men plus women and children—who came randomly we might say from the surrounding villages and country-side, we realize that Jesus was illustrating how broad is the sweep of God's call. Indeed, how do we know the limits of God's drawing people to His Son? They come hungry and He gives them bread and fish. No, more than that, He gives Himself. Jesus is the Bread of Life. No other bread can be called that because the effects of all other bread are momentary.
I must wait till next Sunday to give the final stage in Jesus' teaching about how we engage Him by faith. But suffice it to say this morning that if we begin with gratitude, awe, and obedience as Israel did, we will surely be led into the stage of belief, by which we apprehend Jesus and find life in Him. These are deeds we must do and not just speak of them.
To speak of gratitude without expressing it is empty. To speak of reverence for God without letting our awe characterize our lives with respect to Him is pointless. To ignore God's command while speaking reverently about them is hypocrisy. The "stuff" that prepares us for faith, a gift of God, is ours to do. It is the means by which we ready ourselves for what God can give. To try to describe this work of God feels strange as I say it. But I perceive this is what happened as God, to use the term of the Apostle Paul, gave the law to be a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It is for us to accept this tutelage, trusting that it is good, and thus be drawn into that soul-satisfying, life-giving relationship to God that comes only by faith in Jesus.
Let us pray: O Lord, to speak of such hallowed things is beyond us. But grant that so much as we understand of your ways and your expectations of us we may do, so that we may believe in Jesus and thus enter into eternal life. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at September 24, 2006 09:30 AM