Latest / The Daily Word / August 4 – The Bread of Life
Transcript
- Cory: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good we hours of the night. Whatever time you're joining us, welcome to the Daily Word Podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes, and it is my privilege to pastor our Katabacampus. And I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode. We're going to be taking a look at John chapter six and doing a devotion out of it now. The verses that we'll be looking at today are John 6 48. eight through fifty one. This is Jesus speaking. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. If any one eats this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. This is the this is the first of the seven I am statements of the book of John. Seven times in John, Jesus says, I am, and gives us a picture of who he is, something we can look to so that we can understand him a little bit more clearly. And here he's saying, I am the bread. of life. He's he's giving us a picture of something so tangible, something that you and I, we we deal with every day. And it's something that that the his listeners at the time would have also been super familiar with. They would have eaten bread since they were little babies. I am the bread of life. See, it's bread that gives our natural body nourishment. It gives us the carbs, the energy that we need to be able to take on the day. And it has been a staple of the human diet in on in pretty much every culture in different ways. For thousands of years. So Jesus is saying, I am the bread of life. And just like bread gives your natural body nourishment for real life, life abundant, the kind of life that I came to give you, I am the bread that you eat of for that kind of life. And he draws a picture here to the fact that your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. See, if you're if you remember after the Hebrews left Egyptian captivity and slavery, they traveled through the wilderness, and God supernaturally provided for them during that journey with something called manna. It would be every morning they would wake up and as the dew dried, there would be little flakes. of this of this powdery kind of flaky substance and they would gather it and they would bake it and they would make bread out of this manna and then they would eat it. And that is what sustained them through the wilderness. And Jesus is calling attention here. He's pointing to the fact it's like he's using a red a red a red pen and he's going all the way from him and he's drawing all the way back to the book of Exodus and he is point painting this picture. And he is highlighting the fact that that manna in the wilderness was a type and was a shadow of what was to come. See, when God instituted the manna in the wilderness, it was a picture in that period of history, it was a picture that was pointing forward to Jesus and what Jesus would be in the future to the people of God. So that tells us three things. If you really want to do an in-depth study, you can go and you can read in the book of Exodus. You can read and you can you can see some of these different nuances in the book of in I said Exodus, in the book of numbers, we can see some different qualities of manna that I just want to do our devotion based out of. first of all, the first thing I want us to see is that Jesus, when he's comparing himself to the To the bread of life, to the manna. the first thing that tells us is that Jesus is all that we need. The manna had everything that the Egyptians needed, that the Israelites needed in the wilderness to be sustained, to live, to breathe. Be sustained to be able to journey and travel. It had all the nutrients, everything they needed for their natural bodies to live. And Jesus is all that we need to have the life that He promised us. The second thing I want us to see is that the bread isn't based on behavior. See, even when the the Israelites sinned, the manna kept. Come in. God never once in those 40 years in the wilderness, and there were some sinning going on. There was some unfaithfulness. There were some issues going on in the wilderness with those Israelites, but God never cut off the manna switch. He never stopped providing for them. Jesus never stops providing for us. No matter how big a mistake we made, no matter how much we err, no matter what what transgressions we make. Jesus is always available to us, ready to continue sustaining us in this life. And we're very well aware of that, that he was the propitiation for our sins, that he washes us clean, that his atonement was once and for all. He covered all the sins of human history from the very beginning to the very end. And when we come and we trust in his name, he never cuts off that forgiveness. He never stops washing us. From our sin. the last thing I want to point out to us is that you can't live on yesterday's bread. when the Israelites had manna in the wilderness, the Lord told them, forbid them from collecting enough manna on Monday to have manna on Tuesday. He forbid them from that because he wanted to show that he was faithful to provide. So if someone went out and they scooped up a jar of manna on Monday, just in case God didn't show up on Tuesday, when they woke up on Tuesday, their jar would be rotten and it wouldn't be sustaining. It wouldn't be there for life. And that gives us a picture that you can't live on yesterday's encounter with Jesus. You have to continually be coming back to him, be refreshing. Be walking with him, living with him, breathing with him, connecting with him. The the the daily Bible reading plan is one way of doing that. It's an anchored discipline that helps us to come back to him. But whether we come to him through worship, through prayer, through any other means, it's that connection with Jesus that is important, regardless of the means by which we engage with that connection. And we can't live. On what we gained from our connection yesterday. We have to continually be walking with him and enjoying the fresh connection we have to be able to continue partaking of the bread that sustains life. So, so all that is scripture, that's observation, application. Well, we can bring an application out of all three of those. Are you living a life where you think that there's more than you need besides Jesus? Like search your heart, Lord. Is there anything that I think that I need besides you? Is there anything getting in the way that I'm looking at to provide for me besides you? Provide for for eternal life, from for my soul, from for salvation, for my spiritual well being, my life, my life abundant, Lord? Is there any way that you feel like the Lord may have cut you off based on sin and on behavior? Well, ask him to forgive you. He never stops forgiving you and engage in that forgiveness. And are you engaging with the Lord daily, regularly, however you do that? Jesus isn't tied to connecting with people any one specific way. Jesus connects with us. It's it's very individual. Are you remaining connected? Are you relying on him today, not on what he did yesterday? That's scripture, our observation, our application. Let's pray. Father, I just thank you. I thank you, Jesus, that you revealed yourself to us. I thank you that you're so good and you have such good things for those of us who choose to put our faith in you. We praise you and we thank you for your great love and your mercy. And we thank you, Jesus, that you are the bread of life. You sustain us. You give us abundant life. Life to the full, life to the most, life without any death, life that is full and thriving. And we thank you that you are the bread that we can come to day after day. And we can count on you always being there. You never shut us off. You never cut us out. You are always there providing yourself with a fresh serving of life every day. In the name of Jesus, we thank you for who you are. Amen.