Read: John 6:22-35
Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. (v. 32)
To the Jewish people, bread was life. Symbolically, spiritually, and literally. Their ancestors baked and ate unleavened bread during the Passover to commemorate God’s deliverance of his chosen Israel from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 12-13). They remembered the manna, a form of bread, provided as God’s sustenance through the forty years of wandering in the wilderness (Exodus 16). And, Jesus taught his disciples to pray with these words: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11).
However, that’s the thing. People needed bread every day. Hunger returned every day. Kneading and baking had to take place every day. Without it, malnutrition, disease, and ultimately death came knocking, and knocking loudly. But the arrival of Jesus ushers in a new kingdom, and with it, a new kind of bread: “bread from heaven” that can be given only by the Father (John 6:32). Bread that sustains not the body, but the soul. Bread that causes you never to be hungry. Bread that “gives life to the world” (v. 33).
Sometimes I think that we are so desperate, so hungry for Jesus that we don’t even know what we want. We eat spiritual junk food in the form of false teaching, moral relativity, and a rejection of the truth. Are you hungry? Does your soul crave something more? One thing alone can satisfy that hunger, and satisfy it for all time.
As you pray, ask Jesus to feed your soul with the Bread of Life.
About the Author
Lou Bury is the pastor at Downers Grove Community Church in Illinois. He has the pleasure of serving the Lord alongside a congregation committed to being “the hands and feet of Jesus in the community.” He and his wife Judy have two adult children and two granddogs.
