BREAD OF LIFE; MOSES AWUYEH

One month after leaving Egypt,
the children of Israel found...
they were rapidly running out
of food! Every night more
animals had to be slaughtered
to feed millions of hungry
mouths. They surely wondered
how long they could go on like
this.
God had them right where He
wanted them. In their plight
they should have turned to Him
for sustenance and providence,
but instead they complained
and lost faith (Exodus 16:1-3 ).
Many expressed their regret at
leaving the fleshpots of Egypt.
Unfortunately, we are often no
better. We work so hard to
provide daily bread for
ourselves that turning to God in
faith to provide our needs as
He sees fit becomes an
afterthought. Jesus commands
His people to seek first the
Kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and then God
will add to us all the things we
worry about ( Matthew 6:33 ).
God certainly intends that we
work, but not to the point of
collapse or worry, as we try to
provide what we think is so
necessary to life.
In John 6:27 , Jesus teaches we
are not to labor for the "bread
that perishes," yet we do. Over
and over. He tells his audience
verses 31-35 that manna is a
type of what God is still doing
today: making living Bread from
heaven available if we will just
go out, gather it and eat it day
by day.
In His sample prayer , Jesus
teaches us to ask, "Give us this
day our daily bread." Though
Jesus was no doubt including
physical bread and physical
needs, more often than not He
was thinking spiritually. We also
need to pray that God provide
us our daily spiritual bread, the
kind that leads to life, not the
kind that perishes. "Man shall
not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceeds from
the mouth of God" (Matthew
4:4 ).
Jesus makes it very clear:
Manna or "bread from heaven"
was a type of Himself. "I am
the bread of life" (John 6:35 ,
48), says He who was born in
Bethlehem, which means
"house of bread." Interesting,
is it not? The One who is our
daily bread began His life in a
town whose name declares His
role as the Head of a
household that receives
nourishing life from Him. The
church of God is the real
"house of bread," and Jesus is
its Head. He came down as the
true bread from God that we
should be gathering and eating
day by day ( John 6:30-35 ,
48-51), as the Israelites
depicted with the manna.
Do we think of Jesus as bread—
our daily bread—other than at
Passover ? How is He bread?
Why does He call Himself
bread? Why does He use
manna as the type of what He
is for us today? How can we eat
of Him day by day?