Jesus: The Bread of Life

Hello everyone.

Today I am going to look at the first of Jesus' "I Am" statements.  It is found in John 6:35: "I am the the Bread of Life.  Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."

Here is the context.  Earlier in chapter 6, Jesus had fed the five thousand with two fish and five loaves of bread.  That night Jesus walks on water and the next day the crowd follows him around to the other side of the lake and we get this discourse on bread.  So understand that the people that Jesus is speaking to are largely the same crowd that he had fed fish and bread to the day before.  Jesus acknowledges this in 6:26.

Jesus gives the crowd advice, saying "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life."  In this advice, he differentiates between two kinds of food, physical and spiritual, and it seems that while Jesus talks of spiritual food, his audience thinks of physical food.

The crowd asks Jesus for a sign that they should believe him, and talk about how God gave their ancestors manna in the wilderness. (v.30-31.)  (It is interesting that a crowd of people that had just been miraculously fed from five loaves of bread and two fish would ask for a food sign that Jesus was worth believing in, never-the-less they asked.)  So the crowd refers back to Exodus 16 where God sends the Israelites bread from heaven.  It must have been amazing stuff.  Asaph wrote in Psalm 78:24-25:
    He rained down manna for the people to eat,
       he gave them the grain of heaven.
    Human beings ate the bread of angels;
The people were impressed with this manna from heaven, and rightly so, because it was great.  God fed his people for forty years with it, as they wandered in the wilderness because of their disobedience.

But within the context of this manna God gave the Israelites, Jesus says, "it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." (v. 32-33) When Jesus says this bread "gives life to the world," we can see that he is talking about something different, since the manna was only given to the Israelites.  In v. 41 we see what he is talking about.  Jesus says, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 

The bread God gave the Israelites was great, but the bread God gave the whole world is far greater.  Jesus points out that those who ate manna died in the wilderness.  They ate God's bread and still died. Jesus talks about eating this new bread and living forever.  This confuses his listeners who missed the part about physical food and spiritual food.  They think Jesus is telling them to literally eat his flesh.  He is not.  They are not spiritual thinkers and therefore do not think spiritually.  Jesus had pointed out that those who ate the manna died in the wilderness, but I do not think he was talking their physical death.  That generation of Israelites, save Joshua and Caleb, spiritually died because of their lack of faith and disobedience.  They did not enter the Promised Land. 

Jesus is saying to this new generation that they are to eat his spiritual bread, that he will give them (v.27) and live eternally, or enter God's eternal Promised Land.

OK.  What does this mean for us?  God provides for our physical needs and this is terrific.  We eat food to provide us with growth and to sustain life.  Great.  But more importantly God provides us with Jesus, the Bread of Life, the Bread that has Come Down from Heaven, to provide us with spiritual growth and eternal life.  Greater. 

Let us enjoy this Bread, together.
Tom