The Bread of Life

Thank you very much, ladies. That was very beautiful. I guess it's the selfishness in me, but I couldn't help thinking, no matter how ridiculous I might sound during announcements, people will forget that when you have the beautiful music following. And it's hard to believe we are nearing the end of this Holy Day season in this festival. And I wondered, how many times do you think you've said or thought the word bread in the last two weeks?

If like me, quite a bit. And that got me thinking about bread. You know, bread in its various forms, and we've explored a lot of different forms this week, probably, is the most widely consumed food in the world. I consulted some historical sources to find out what I could about bread through history. Some of them say that man has been making and eating bread anywhere from 12,000 to 30,000 years.

And I thought, hmm, I suspect it's really closer to 6,000. But I'm willing to compromise with them and say, I suspect that mankind has been making and eating bread since the beginning. I've sometimes wondered about how mankind first discovered some things, and my guess is that God must have revealed certain things to Adam and Eve. Because one of the things I thought of, when you make normal bread, and matter of fact, when you make unleavened bread, you use more eggs than usual. It's hard to bake without eggs. But who do you suppose was the first person that saw something come out of the rear of a chicken and say, I'm going to break that open and mix it in with my flour?

I think God revealed certain things. Anyways, that's not in my notes. That's in the side. But, as I said, all the way from the beginning, bread has been called the staff of life. None of you have heard that before? I've made that comment dozens of times, but I've never got that much laughs out of it. Let me back up. As I was saying, bread has been called the staff of life, the staple of most cultures' diets. Through most of history, bread was not only a food.

A lot of times, a slightly stale piece of bread serves as a plate or a bowl that you can eat afterwards when the gravy is soaked into it. Or a good stiff piece of crust would serve as the eating utensil before forks and spoons and knives came along. That's another bit of history. Did you know forks are a relatively recent invention? Only wealthy people had forks until a short time ago. Everybody had stiff crusts of bread. Some form another, though. Bread has been the staff of life for much of history.

Most people couldn't afford to eat meat except on special occasions. When meat became more common, a lot of people discovered that if you eat too much of it, it's not good for you. They would develop gout or other problems. That's not true for bread. That is at least not the bread that most people have eaten for most of history.

I'll take a diversion and mention, of course, the stuff that some of us might be going out for after sundown tonight or pick up tomorrow. Those white loaves in the plastic bags on the grocery store shelves. They don't have quite the nutrition that whole wheat, real bread. But still, I love that stuff. In certain cases, I think the best toast is made out of white bread. The Wonder Bread with lots of butter melted on it.

I wonder if I do this would it be like Atonement when you start talking about food that you can't have? I love grilled cheese sandwiches. That's another one. I say, to make a good grilled cheese, you want Wonder Bread with margarine and that processed cheese stuff that's not really cheese. It's not healthy for you at all, but boy, it tastes good.

Prior to about 150 years ago, though, that white stuff that doesn't have much in it didn't exist. Most bread would be made from whole grains ground up, including the kernel, the husk, and everything. It had a much higher nutritional rate. They say it had almost complete proteins. Whereas our modern stuff has about 60% or less.

But the whole wheat would have vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other buzzwords included. I checked some sources and found an article on WebMD that said that eating whole grains is almost like having a type of health insurance. Studies show that eating them results usually in a lower average rate, weight, better heart health, protection against cancer, lower risk of type 2 diabetes, lower asthma rates in children, less risk of stroke, and even protection against gallstones.

No wonder it was called the staff of life. It even occurred to me, would we call it the bread of life? I said no, we wouldn't call it that, because we think of that term for something very different, something much more important. And I want to make that turn towards the spiritual, because you might have guessed I'm not here to talk about nutrition today. I'm talking about nutrition as of interest and value, but I didn't want to talk about that or about baking recipes.

But I hope that a brief discussion of the nutritional life-sustaining qualities of good bread can help us understand why it was so important that God would make sure to provide it for His people. Part of why it's so important, and important to look at what we eat, you know, that whatever we eat is broken down through our digestive system and then absorbed into us, and it actually becomes a part of us. Hence that saying that you are what you eat. That's very true. Things people eat every day, like bread, thus conserve as very important analogies for things that we need to do on a daily basis.

And God was aware of that, and He chose bread to be a symbol. Actually, He used it in a symbol on a number of different occasions for very important things. So I want to talk today about the meaning and significance of some of these symbols. Talk about bread. And if you like titles, I like to call this one the bread of life.

I say I like to call this one. It's only the second time I've given the sermon, and the first time was two or three hours ago. But I thought before even considering some of the spiritual symbolism, let's see that when God wants to provide physically for the needs of His people, He provides bread. The first scripture that came to my mind in this was in Psalm 37. It might not be the first one you would think of, but Psalm 37 and verse 23.

This has long been a passage that I've enjoyed and kept in the back of my mind. I think perhaps because of coming of age in the 1970s when the oil crises were occurring and the big recession that followed the post-World War II boom, it sort of made an important impact on my psyche. I'm one of those people that I'm concerned about job security and food security, even though we live in a very wealthy nation. Any time I've had that concern, I've thought about this passage of scripture.

Psalm 37 and verse 23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Eternal, and He delights in His way. Though we fall, He shall not be utterly cast down, for the Eternal upholds Him with His hand. He says, I've been young, now I'm old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor is descendants begging bread. That last part is what gets me. Even through a long life, He said the righteous won't be forsaken.

Their descendants won't have to beg for bread, meaning God will provide. I imagine that bread here not only represents the actual piece of bread someone might eat, but sustenance in general. God will provide for those who are righteous. While we're in Psalms, if you turn over to Psalm 132, there's even a more direct promise. Psalm 132, beginning in verse 13, Psalm 132.13 says, For the Eternal has chosen Zion.

He's desired it for His dwelling place. Skip to verse 15, He says, I will abundantly bless her provision. I will satisfy her poor with bread. God will satisfy the poor with bread. We tend to think of this happening through God blessing our work, which He does, or providing the opportunity to earn a living. Also, of course, Him blessing the growing cycle, making sure the crops grow. When God blesses a nation, they have an abundance of bread. Sometimes, though, God will provide it even more directly than just making the rain in due season. Let's look at the story of Elijah just briefly. I wanted to set the stage on this 1 Kings 17. 1 Kings 17 will see that.

This is, of course, where Elijah comes on the scene the first time he's mentioned in Scripture. It says, Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead said to Ahab, Ahab being the king of Israel at the time, as the Lord God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years except at my word. Then, I imagine Elijah made this pronouncement and then disappeared because then the word of the Lord came to him, that is, to Elijah, saying, Get away from here.

Turn eastward and hide by the brook carith which flows into the Jordan. It will be that you'll drink from the brook and there I've commanded the ravens to feed you. It's funny, this isn't a big story in the Bible, but I've always been intrigued by that. God says, Go hide out in the wilderness. I'm going to provide for you. And he sends birds to bring him food and it says it happened in verse 5. So he went and did according to the word of the Lord.

For he went and stayed by the brook carith which flows into Jordan. And ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening. And he drank from the brook. Boy, talk about having faith in God. God says, Okay, go out there in the middle of the wilderness and birds fly in making food deliveries twice a day. God will provide for his people. We don't know what kind of meat he brought or they brought.

I guess we could say we don't know what kind of bread, probably not wonder bread. And of course, you might be thinking to yourself in this, Hey, hold on, Frank. Aren't there some bigger, more dramatic examples in the Bible of God providing bread? You do know it's Passover season, after all. What about when the children of Israel went out of Egypt and they had need? They were in the wilderness and God could have sent enough ravens to feed them all, but he came up with a different way. Of course, we know when they went out, they left Egypt at the very start of the days of unleavened bread.

As it says, they packed their kneading troughs and their clothes. They didn't have time to let the dough rise. Of course, God would have commanded them, Don't let it rise anyways. They were to eat unleavened bread for seven days, beginning right from the time they left. They went out by night and celebrated, which we commemorate every year at the very start of the days of unleavened bread. We hold a festive meal together, celebrating partly they're coming out of Egypt, but even more so, are coming out of sin.

And then they continued eating that unleavened bread for seven days. My suspicion from what we're about to read is that they brought a certain store of grain, wheat or barley or whatever with them, and they probably had little mills or mortar and pestle that they were grinding into flour and continued baking unleavened bread for most, if not all, of that seven days.

And we know that when the days of unleavened bread ended, they stopped necessarily, you know, they didn't have to eat unleavened bread anymore, but they continued eating bread. And they would continue, but they needed a source. And that's the vital point I want to make. Let's turn to the story of God bringing bread from heaven.

That'll be in Exodus 16. As I said, we're pretty familiar with the Exodus story. I felt comfortable in summarizing that. We've read it a lot lately. As I said, God would not be finished using bread to teach lessons to the Israelites just because now they were allowed to eat it leavened. Exodus 16, verse 2, The whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the children of Israel said to them, Oh, that we had died in the land of the Egypt when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full.

For you brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Interesting. They hadn't really built up much faith and trust in God despite the amazing miracles that they'd seen. At this point, we don't know how long it had been before they had just passed through the Red Sea. The Jewish tradition says that the Israelites passed through the Red Sea on the last day of unleavened bread.

So this would be the day commemorating that. Scripture doesn't verify it for certain, but I suspect that's probably true. So they had just finished seeing amazing miracles. Egypt brought to its knees and then walls of water on both sides of them. They didn't say, Well, God, we know you'll provide us food, but we don't know how.

They said, Well, you're going to kill us with hunger. Well, maybe we should cut them a little slack because human beings don't deal well with hunger. We learn that when we fast. I know Solomon wrote that all of a man's labor is for his mouth, which I find interesting. It means what it comes down to eventually, you've got to make sure you have food. Well, God waited at least a short while to let his people realize how much they depended on him for sustenance.

And that's a lesson we learn when we fast. Of course, the Day of Atonement is the only day of the year when we all fast together. But I'll bet it's in a lot of your minds many of us choose to fast sometime before Passover. So whenever I'm in this Passover season, I have that lingering thought, Yeah, I know what it's like to be hungry. And it's kind of good because even the driest matzo looks pretty good when you haven't had anything. Well, let's go on Exodus 16 in verse 4. Then the Eternal said to Moses, Behold, I'll reign bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day.

I want to stress that. Then I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. So this going out every day was part of the test because, as it goes on to say, it shall be on the sixth day, they shall prepare what they bring in, and it will be twice as much as they gather daily.

And Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, At evening you will know that the Eternal has brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the Eternal. For he hears your complaints against the Eternal. What are we that you complain against us? Also Moses said, This shall be seen when the Eternal gives you meat to eat in the evening, and in the morning bread to the full.

For the Eternal hears your complaints which you make against him. What are we? Your complaints are not against us, but against the Eternal. Now I'm going to skip ahead. It is worth noting, of course, that God sent Quail, so he provided a balanced diet. They did have meat to eat, but our focus is on the bread, and that seems to be the emphasis in Scripture. Let's drop down to verse 13. So it was that the quails came up in the evening and covered the camp, and in the morning the dew lay all around the camp, when the layer of dew lifted there on the surface of the wilderness was a small round substance, as fine as the frost on the ground, when the children of Israel they said to one another, What is it?

What's this? For they didn't know what it was, and Moses said, This is the bread which the Lord God has given you to eat, or which the Eternal has given you to eat. So what is it? It's bread. You haven't seen it like this before. This is the thing which the Eternal has commanded. Let every man gather it, according to each one's need, one omer for each person, according to the number of persons, let every man take for those who are in his tent.

And the children of Israel did so. Some gathered more, some gathered less. It's interesting. I say, Okay, each person needs an omer. And a lot of you are saying, Yeah, right. What's an omer? Well, if you want to look at the end of the chapter, an omer is one tenth of an ephah. Which you get the, Okay, what's an ephah? I have no idea. But it must be about enough. I'm going to skip the part.

Well, I'll just summarize, but it's interesting. God emphasized going out daily. He wanted to show them, You need to get this bread every day. You can't say, Hey, there's an awful lot out there. I'm going to gather up three omers and sleep late the next two days. No, because if you tried to keep it overnight, what would happen?

It would rot and it starts stinking and you'd find worms in it. So no, you can't get extra. It's a daily thing, except God would show when the Sabbath was. On Friday, you can gather twice as much and God would work a miracle and not let it breed worms and not let it rot. That's an important lesson. By making man un-storable, he showed that he was providing on a daily basis, not yearly, not monthly, not even weekly, that people had to rely on God from day to day. And apparently what he provided them was pretty good.

We might as well note that in verse 31, the house of Israel called its name manna, which the interpretation, the Hebrew, which just means what or what's it, it was like white coriander seed. The taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

Most people think wafers made with honey are pretty good. And Moses said, this is the thing which the eternal has commanded. Fill an omer with it, however much that is, to be kept for your generations, that they may see the bread which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt. And Moses said to Aaron, take a pot, put an omer of manna in it, and lay it up before the eternal to be kept for your generations.

As the eternal commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the testimony. And the children of Israel ate manna forty years until they came to an inhabited land. They ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. Interesting. God worked that miracle every Friday and into the Sabbath to allow the manna to be preserved.

And apparently He worked a special miracle on that one pot of manna so it would last not only overnight but in perpetuity. Because He wanted future generations to learn this lesson, this lesson of Him providing and providing daily. We're a future generation. Now we don't have that particular pot. Somewhere along the line it disappeared. Of course, it makes me wonder, people wonder if the Ark of the Covenant is in storage somewhere. I wonder if that pot of manna is in storage somewhere.

But it doesn't matter. We don't have to have the manna. We've got the story about it. So we can certainly learn the lesson. That lesson tells us, as I said, God provides for His people. He provides in a way that only He can. He gives life. He gives the bread of life. Manna showed that we're to rely on Him continually, not just one time. Of course, while we're reading the story, we should note that as good a thing as God provides, people can start to take that for granted and lose their appreciation.

If you look over in Numbers 11, we'll see that the Israelites did exactly that. Numbers 11 and verse 4. Numbers 11, 4 says, The mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving. Now we tend to want to blame the mixed multitude. Oh, it wasn't the Israelites, but they started to get it. But the Israelites joined in. It says, So the children of Israel also wept again and said, Who will give us meat to eat?

We remember the fish that we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. They didn't remember the brick ovens and having to gather stubble when the straw was taken away. But now our whole being is dried up. There's nothing at all except this manna before our eyes. If you're feeling that way about matzos, and we don't know for sure how long they'd been eating it by then, but we're reminded, I think Moses plugged this back in to remind us that manna wasn't so bad.

It says, The manna was like coriander seed. The color was like that of bedelum. Does anybody here know what color that is? Because I don't. It's probably the same color as the size of an omer. I was hoping so. The people went around and gathered it. They ground it on millstones or beat it in the mortar. They cooked it in pans, made cakes of it. Its taste was like the taste of pastry prepared with oil. And of course, when the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna fell on it. So again, he's saying, this stuff's pretty good and it's versatile. You can grind it. You can make it into cakes.

You can do this or that. We do a lot of things with flour. As I said, I'm always amazed during the days of Unleavened Bread when you say, well, you can't use leaven. And then look at what people make. It's astounding. I also thought maybe a modern or a different type of thing that's comparable is the potato.

Think about all the different ways we can cook potatoes. And so you don't... Well, I like potatoes, so I think that's a good thing. But I don't... They weren't satisfied. They said, oh, we want variety. We want meat. We missed the cucumbers and garlic. I don't think they got in trouble. And I'm not going to continue reading, but they did get in trouble.

God would punish them. It couldn't have been just because they wanted to eat meat, because if eating meat were bad, God would have made it a sin. There'd be something in here that says, thou shalt not eat meat. The people had a rebellious and an ungrateful attitude. God was providing for them daily, but then they started doubting. They started wanting something different. They even scoffed at him. We'll see that if you turn over to Psalm number 78. There's a different account of this incident that fills in some of the details.

Psalm 78 and verse 17. Okay, I'm going to get there. This morning, for some reason, my Bible would not open to Psalm 78, but it did today, or did this afternoon. Starting in verse 17, this is breaking into the story, but it says, they sinned even more against him, that is, against God, by rebelling against the most high in the wilderness. They tested God in their heart by asking for food of their fancy. So it wasn't just, oh, we don't want man. We want whatever it is we want at the moment. Yes, they spoke against God. They said, can God prepare a table in the wilderness?

Behold, he struck the rock so that water is gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can he provide meat for his people? They were scoffing, doubting what God could do, not trusting him. That's a good example of what we should not do. We should believe God, not rebel against him. Trust his salvation in the way that he provides it.

Of course, we see what happened to them. In verse 23, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation, yet he commanded the clouds above. He opened the doors of heaven. He had rained down manna on them to eat, giving them the bread of heaven. Men ate angels' food, and he sent them food to the full. Interesting. Make note of that. The next story we're going to turn to, we see that when God provides, he provides it to the full.

There were no ration cards. Even if you only gathered an omer, I didn't read the scripture earlier, but it said that he who gathered little had no lack. And if you gathered too much, you didn't have any left over, but everybody had all they needed.

And that typically should satisfy us. When we are going without, when the economy's bad, you're not sure if you're going to have a job or maybe you're unemployed. That's when you start thinking, if I could just make sure my family had enough to eat, I'd be satisfied. But then human nature tends to become unsatisfied with what we have. I'm going to turn to another example of God providing bread, and there we'll turn the corner to look at, you know, their spiritual lessons we're making, but we'll make the biggest one there. We'll see that the bread that he would provide was a symbol of the true bread from heaven. And of course, you might guess that story is in John chapter 6. If you'll go with me to the book of John, we've spent some time here in the last week and a half or more. And it's interesting, this is thousands of years later, the children of Israel had come into the Promised Land. They'd been moved out of the Promised Land. Some had been allowed to come back. We see when God wants to provide for his people, still he provides bread and he provides plenty. John 6 and verse 5. Jesus lifted up his eyes. Matter of fact, let me back up to verse 4 because it shows us the time of the year, the Passover. A feast of the Jews was near. So they were in the Passover season. So people were probably thinking about bread and of course, unleavened bread. It doesn't say it had started yet, but Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw a great multitude coming towards him. He said to Philip, okay, where are we going to get bread that these may eat? It's like, okay, look who's coming to dinner. And Philip's jaw probably dropped. He said, well, first of all, it says he did this to test him. He knew what he was going to do. So you wonder if Jesus had a sense of humor. Probably, hey, Philip, we got to feed all these people. And wanted to look and see the look on his face. Philip answered, 200 denari worth of bread isn't sufficient for them that every one of them can have a little. We wanted to give each of them just a bite so they don't starve overnight. 200 denari, how much is that? That I do have some idea because a denari, they say, was equivalent to about one day's wage. Okay, so 200 would be about two-thirds of a year. Think, I heard on the radio sometime recently the average salary in the United States today, and now my memory's failing. I can't remember if they said it was $40,000 or $50,000, but that's average salary. Some people make way more than that. Some people make quite a bit less.

But imagine there's a crowd out there to where you say it's going to take like $30,000 worth of bread just to give them each a little. That's a pretty big crowd. And so, Andrew's got a wise idea. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said, well, there's a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many? Jesus said, make them sit down.

And make them... Sorry, I was looking at my notes. I thought that was the point I wanted to make there, and there probably was. Well, we know Jesus is going to teach some important lessons. He had this mapped out in advance. He said, make the people sit down. And there was a lot of grass in the place. So the men sat down and number about 5,000. Jesus took the loaves, and when He given thanks, He distributed them to the disciples and the disciples to those sitting down. Likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. So when they were filled, this wasn't just a little, you know, one rationed amount. They were filled up. Everybody had as much as they could eat. And then He said, gather up the fragments so that nothing is lost. And therefore, they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which were left over by those who had eaten. It's interesting, I'm sure. I imagine they were big enough baskets. They could hold probably more than one loaf. So they started with five loaves and ended up with 12 baskets left over.

And when those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, this truly is the prophet who's to come into the world. Therefore, Jesus perceived they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king. So He departed and went up to the mountain Himself alone. Jesus knew His time wasn't yet. He didn't want them to form a march down to Jerusalem proclaiming Him king. It wasn't time for that yet. So He was able to disappear.

And of course, I'm not going to read the account. We know He would be alone. The disciples were there with the crowd for we don't know how long, but eventually He must have left instruction. The disciples would get in their boat and go across the Sea of Galilee without Jesus. The crowd is probably thinking, well, where are they going? Where did Jesus go? Now, Jesus had a plan for catching up. Of course, during the night, He would just walk across. And there's a whole story about Peter saying, let me come on out. And that started for a while. But then the people said, well, we don't know where Jesus went, but maybe He's where the disciples went. So they came across looking for Him. And that's where we'll catch up. In verse 26, the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there. That is back where they started. Nor His disciples. They got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Him. When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said, well, Rabbi, when did you come here? They didn't understand the walking on water part.

And Jesus answered and said, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw the signs. In other words, you're not coming because of the miracles that He hoped that should build faith, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. But then He tells them what their priority should be. So you're just here for food. And He says, don't labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him. Now, He's not saying it's bad to have food. Physical food is a good thing. And we just looked at several incidents where God provides food for His people. And when God provides, it's not just a little. You know, it says that He gave them enough everyone had all they wanted, and there was a lot left over. But it perishes. It doesn't last forever. I wonder, those 12 baskets they gathered up, probably the disciples brought that and ate it for breakfast, but whatever was left, it was probably going stale already. It wasn't going to last forever. Food doesn't. So He says, He's telling them, go for something else, something better. And the people, you know, you could say they follow along Jesus' lead. Then they said to Him, well, what shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said, this is the work of God that you believe in Him whom He sent. They said therefore to Him, what sign will you perform, then, that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do? Now, you want us to believe? Do something miraculous for us to believe. But then they drop a little hint, showing that they're still thinking with their stomachs. What miracle are you going to do? Our Father's ate manna in the desert, as it's written. He gave them bread from heaven. So they're saying, what kind of miracle are you going to do? And by the way, God fed people before, you know, they're liking that idea. They want a free food. They want a continual supply. But now we'll see that Jesus uses manna, the bread that was from heaven, as a type of what He calls the true bread from heaven. In verse 32, Then Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven. In other words, the manna, the bread from heaven, was given to the ancient Israelites while they wandered. He says, But my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Obviously, Jesus was referring to Himself.

But without explaining exactly what He meant, and thus the people didn't get it. They said to Him, Lord, give us this bread. They're looking around thinking, what kind of bread is this? But we want it. You know, they wanted a daily ongoing supply of free food. So Jesus would go on to make things a little clearer for them. In verse 35, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst. Now, I will interject here. I'm certain that He's speaking of spiritual hunger and thirst, because I'm sure many of you would share this. You've known some pretty good people, righteous people, but they still got hungry and thirsty. So Jesus, it's not saying that we're all terrible sinners and we don't get it at all because we want to go out and get something to eat after services are over. But spiritually, we never have to hunger or thirst. We'll be provided for. Let's go to verse 38. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. I want to pause there because that phrase should sound familiar. As a matter of fact, if you'll put a finger or something here, we could turn back a couple pages to John 4. John 4 and verse 32. We see Jesus said something very similar. There, He said to His disciples. This is the incident of Him speaking to the Samaritan woman by the well.

John 4.32. He said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know of. The disciples were thinking somebody brought Him food. Jesus said, my food or my meat in the original King James is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.

Jesus said, my food is to do the will of the Father. That alone would suffice as a great enough spiritual analogy to carry a sermon, but there is much more, and God built in more. I'm back in John 6. I'm going to turn to verse 47 now.

John 6.47. He says, Most assuredly I say to you, He who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Strong statement. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and are dead.

Now, He's not saying that the man is what caused them to be dead. It wasn't poisonous, but it could only sustain physical life. It didn't give them immortality. That physical life eventually comes to an end. In verse 50, This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he'll live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. That's where it got to be a little too much. Some of the people thought, they said, What is He talking about? This is a pretty bold statement. Of course, in verse 52, the Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? I'm sure a lot of them were perplexed, and he didn't take the time to explain it to them right there. He did continue. Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I'll raise him up at the last day. We can see there, it doesn't mean that you would never die. Eternal life does come in a resurrection at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed. My blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so He who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven. Not as your fathers ate manna and are dead, but a He who eats this bread will live forever. Now, I didn't want to overlook the fact that he talked about abiding in him, and vice versa. We're going to come back to that terminology momentarily, but before we do that, it's worth looking at the obvious explanation of what he was referring to. So let's turn quickly to that. In Luke 22, there are a number of places we could look, but this one's pretty good. Luke 22, verse 19. Because I don't want anyone to... well, I don't think anyone here does have the idea that Jesus was talking about cannibalism. Some of the people there in front of him listening were thinking that he had such a crazy idea, but that's not what he meant. And in the Passover ceremony that he was introducing, it becomes very clear what he did mean. Luke 22 and verse 19, he took bread and gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them, saying, this is my body which is given for you. To use the terminology from John 6, he could have said, this is my flesh which is given for you, which means the same thing. This do or do this in remembrance of me. Likewise, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you. So this is a clear meaning. With that in mind, though, let's consider not only this, but some other ways that we can symbolically eat the bread from heaven.

And I did want to emphasize that word symbolically. It's symbolism to eat Christ's body and drink his blood. We do not believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation. That one gets hard to say if you try it too much. But that's a doctrine of the Catholic Church. Some of you, if you haven't heard of it before, their teaching is that when the unleavened bread, the wafer is put in your mouth, it literally becomes actual flesh. And that when you're drinking the wine, it turns into actual human blood. Like by magic. I wanted to put the word magic because they would say it's a miracle.

God doesn't work those kinds of miracles. There is no record in Scripture anywhere of God condoning eating of unclean animals, especially human beings. The Catholic Church actually adopted what I consider to be a bizarre teaching from pagan origins that had been around long before Christ's time. And it was accepted into the Church largely because people did not understand this symbolism. But we do understand it. We know that taking that unleavened bread during Passover is a symbol of Christ's body. Let's consider, though, some other ways that we can eat the bread of life. We just read the most obvious way. We ingest the bread from heaven symbolically at the Passover service when we eat the unleavened bread that's broken, and of course, his blood is symbolized in the wine. Still, as I said, there are other ways.

Because we want to think about bread more than once a year because we have to eat continually.

We should want to take the bread of life on a daily basis. And we read earlier in John 4.34, we turned back to where Jesus said that his food was to do the will of the Father.

We want to be like that, too. Certainly, we should be striving to do the will of the Father. Spiritually, it should be food for us. But we could ask the question, well, how in the world do you know what the will of the Father is? We know that, though, don't we?

To quote Jesus, again, this is such a famous quote. I'm not going to ask you to turn there, but Matthew 4 and verse 4, he equates the two. He says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

That's how we can know what the will of God is by every word from God, which is recorded in Scripture.

Interestingly, when Jesus quoted that, he quoted it to Satan during that titanic struggle after he'd been fasting. It comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8 and verse 3. I won't turn there, but in that section of Deuteronomy, God is actually reminding the Israelites that he'd been feeding them with manna. So he's basically saying, I've been giving you bread from heaven. I'm giving you all the bread you'd ever want, but man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.

Physical sustenance alone is inadequate. That is to say, maintaining physical life doesn't amount to that much because people still eventually die. That's what Jesus said. He said, Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and look what happened. They eventually died. But God's Word guides and sustains us in developing godly character that can endure forever.

We need to live by the Word of God. That's the real life sustainer. We could even say, it's the bread of life. We say, well, wait a minute. No. Jesus Christ is the bread of life. We just read the words clearly. But what else is Jesus Christ known as? On John 1, 1, we read that He was the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Of course, that Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We could say that when the Word became Jesus Christ and lived in the flesh, He was an expression of the character and the mind of God, the Father. As he said many times, My Father and I are one. He didn't mean some weird doctrine like the Trinity tries to propose, but he meant that we're in complete agreement. He told Philip, you want to see the Father? Just look at me. You've seen me, you've seen the Father. We're alike. And we can say that this book, likewise, represents Jesus Christ. It's the expression of His character and His mind. Now, we don't physically eat the pages out of our Bible, although it crossed my mind that we could, especially if you were short on fiber.

But I suggest whole bran bread or grazing bran or something. That'd be better.

But when we read and study it, we're ingesting God's Word spiritually. Now, I realize I'm making a point that many of you have heard for many years, but it's meat and dew season. It's worth us saying this. We sometimes call messages that we either hear spoken or that we read spiritual food. We talk about having a good spiritual meal on the Holy Days. At least, we hope it's as good as the one we have between services. A good message that addresses the subject of the season we call meat and dew season. It's symbolism, but it is part of feeding on the Word of God. It's a way that we take it in. And just as physically we don't eat once a year or once a month, not even once a week, matter of fact, not even once a day for most of us, right?

The food has to be coming in continually, and we need a balanced diet. Likewise, it should come when we spiritually feed on God's Word. It should be on a daily basis. This is something we need daily. Just as God said, you can't gather enough manna for three or four days. He said, you got to go out every day. We should be reading our Bible every day. And we need a balanced diet. Not just prophecy, but also not just poetry. Psalms can be nice, but you don't need just that. Not just doctrine, but you need a balance of different types of spiritual nutrition.

Now, that's about as much as I want to say about Bible study. Of course, that's a subject to go into, but I don't want to carry it further today because there is another important way that we can take in the bread of life. After I went out of my way to match the Bible as God's Word with Jesus Christ as the Word so that I could discuss reading and studying the Bible daily, I still want to come back to the person of Jesus Christ as the bread of life because we still need that bread of life daily. We read in John 6, Jesus said, he was the true bread of life that came down from heaven.

And he said, we need to eat that bread of life. Now, we've discussed two ways that we can do that. Annually, we do it symbolically with the Passover. And in another sense, we do it when we study God's Word. One other way we do this is by Jesus Christ entering into us and becoming literally a part of us. And this happens through the continual renewal of the Holy Spirit, which is God's very essence.

By the Holy Spirit, God the Father and Jesus Christ live in us. And that's not a new doctrine, either. We read in John 6, verse 56. That's where I wanted to point out that word abiding. Christ said, He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. He later used that terminology with his disciples when he was trying to explain to them what it would be like when the Holy Spirit came in them. We can see that in John 14. John 14 and verse 23. John 14, 23. Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he'll keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. Abode is the 1611 King James Version. The New King James says, Make our home. But I wanted to match the terminology with John 6. We see a few verses earlier Jesus had explained. He was talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit. Look back to verse 16. He says, I'll pray the Father, and he'll give you another helper, or Greek paraclete, a comforter, that he may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, that the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it, but you know it, for it dwells with you and will be in you. We say there's a crucial difference that happens at baptism. Now for them, it wasn't a matter of baptism, it was the fact that Christ had not yet been sacrificed, and so the Holy Spirit wasn't dwelling in them. When it did come to dwell in them, of course, is the subject of a holy day that we'll be visiting in a few weeks from now. But that's important. When we're baptized and have hands laid on us and the Holy Spirit comes into us, we become a new creation. Or the Bible someplace says a new creature. We have that mount, that spirit in us that Mr. Armstrong called the Spirit and Man. Actually, you could say the Apostle Paul called it that. But when the Holy Spirit from God joins with that, it's like a new embryo is created spiritually, and we are a new creation, a new life beginning. Jesus is living in us through the Spirit. That's why Paul said what he did in Galatians 2, verse 20. Galatians 2, 20. I've tried to quote this enough times and noticed that I was getting it wrong, that I'm going to turn there. But here Paul says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Now, this doesn't mean that we stop being separate people. It crossed my mind. If you watched...

I'm a big fan of the original Star Trek, but I've seen some of the newer ones where they have what they call the Borg, the Collective, You Will Be Assimilated. God's not saying we're going to lose our separate identity and just become part of this huge collective. We're still us, but a new us.

That makes sense? A better individual because of God's Spirit growing in us. Just like, of course, when a woman is impregnated, this new life has the characteristics of the mother and the father join in a new, unique individualist form. Each of us will continue to be a unique individual, but different than we were before the Spirit became part of us, before Christ started living in us.

It's good for us to think of this in terms of the food we eat every day. As I mentioned, when you take in food, your body, your digestive system breaks it down all the way down to the molecular level, and some of those molecules are absorbed, and they become part of your body. And that should be the way with Jesus Christ. He's actually... His essence is being absorbed into us and becoming part of us. If what we eat... If we are what we eat physically, then so it should be spiritually.

We must eat the bread of life, who is the Son of God. And if we are what we eat, then that's so...

What we become is sons of God. Boy, I belabored that and didn't come out the way I wanted, but I was saying, we're eating the bread of life, the Son of God, we become sons of God. We could say daughters too, but we become children of God. That's a reason for us to pray daily for God to renew His Spirit in us, or to put it in us. We don't eat a meal once a week. We need a continual supply of food. I'm going to refer to Philippians 1 and verse 19, where it refers to the supply of the Spirit of Christ. We want to continually renew this flow of God's Spirit through us. We ask Him to supply it, and then we let it flow through us, and it comes out in our words and in our actions.

So, you know, the Spirit, it's not like a stagnant body of water, but like a river. Water is used to symbolize the Spirit often, so it comes in and it goes out, but there's a constant supply still coming in. That subject, of course, of the supply of the Holy Spirit, and what the Spirit does in this, is a huge subject. One that's appropriate for the next Holy Day. I thought of this, as I said, a good transition. Bread, we've been focusing on a lot of what we eat this time of year, and bread is this wonderful symbol. During the days of unleavened bread, leaven of any kind pictures sin, and we've got to put that out. Replace it with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, because we don't stop eating bread. As I said, it's just unleavened.

Throughout history, bread has been a staple of man's diet. It's been the staff of life.

When God let Israel in the wilderness for 40 years, He kept them alive by providing bread.

Man was a type of bread from heaven. It was given miraculously from God, given what they needed, but it was a type of a much more important bread from heaven.

When Jesus Christ came, He explained that He Himself was the much more important bread from heaven. He was the bread of life. And we have access to that bread of life. That bread can give us eternal life. We should want that bread every day. And of course, we have opportunity to take it in every day. So that's how I want to leave us with that thought. As I said, we've got unleavened bread yet to eat today. We'll start eating our bread with leaven. It won't symbolize sin after sunset tonight. But either way we eat it, as we eat that bread, think of the bread of life and the eternal life that we look forward to.