Jesus – Day 12
Jesus: The Bread of Life (2)
Bible text(s)
Jesus had recognised the spiritual dullness of the crowd following Him and had cautioned the people not to waste their energy on food that didn’t last – physical food whose function essentially is to keep the body alive. Instead He told them to work for spiritual food that He alone could give, food that would bring them eternal reward. In Mark 8:36 He reinforces this teaching with, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” These are very serious words indeed, but the people don’t get the point that they only need to believe in Jesus and that there is nothing else that they need do, or can do.
They want Jesus to give them another sign before they will believe Him, and cite the example of Moses giving their forefathers manna in the desert. They infer that Jesus had only used common bread to feed the crowd on one occasion, whereas Moses had had “bread from heaven” and had fed the whole nation on it for forty years, missing the point that even then God was the provider, and that, as God, He is free to act in whatever miraculous way He chooses. To the Israelites wandering in the desert He provided manna for their physical needs, in later years He sent His Son to provide for the spiritual needs of the whole world. But in the same way the people did not believe nor appreciate Moses and brought their own trouble on themselves, so their descendants treat Jesus. Do we not see this same unbelieving attitude in our generation?
Jesus is the true bread of God; He has come down from heaven in order to give life to the world. He has come that we “may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10) But the life that He gives could only come through sacrifice: the sacrifice of His life on the cross for the world. Those who go to Him will “never go hungry” and those who believe in Him will “never be thirsty”- not in this world nor the next. Jesus says, “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me … For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:38, 40)
Many don’t believe in Jesus, do you?
