Wednesday | Week 5
John shares seven I am statements of Jesus in his Gospel. The first of these seven statements is shared in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life.” John begins chapter 6 by sharing the story of Jesus feeding 5,000. Now several verses later in this chapter, Jesus is being asked to give a sign to help the people see and believe. They allude to the daily manna, the bread from heaven, their ancestors received in the wilderness.
Jesus tells them He is the true bread from heaven. “I am the bread of life.” Stop, close your eyes, and say this again aloud—“I am the bread of life.” Think about bread and the process involved to get it into the form of a loaf. The kernel must be planted, it must be given time to grow, it must be cut and harvested. The grains are then broken, threshed and ground into meal, molded and heated until it comes out of the oven totally transformed. Do you see the parallel bread holds to Jesus’ life?
Now think about bread from the perspective of sustenance. Around the world, bread is consumed almost daily in various forms depending on the country and the culture. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray in Luke 11:2-4, He said, “Give us this day our daily bread.” The Bread of Life was in their very midst! The Lord’s Prayer teaches us daily to pray for bread, both physical bread and the spiritual bread of Jesus Christ.
One summer years ago, I had the opportunity to study in France. The bakery shops were incredible with beautiful arrays of delicious pastries displayed in the shops’ windows. The pastries were always so tempting but I remember the French people daily buying their baguettes and placing these long, narrow loaves in their purses or backpacks to take home and enjoy. They were the physical personification of “give us this day our daily bread”.
The Bible is our spiritual personification of “give us this day our daily bread.” We eat of this spiritual bread daily by reading it, praying it, meditating on it. Perhaps this is what Moses meant in Deuteronomy 8:3 when he told the Israelites, “He (God) humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
“I am the bread of life.” Give us this day our daily bread. God gives daily—are we taking daily?