“And
Yeshua said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never
hunger…’”
(John 6:35). "I am the bread which came down
from heaven…" (John 6:41). "I am the living bread which came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever…”
(John 6:51).
Yeshua
has chosen to compare Himself and the Life that He gives to “bread”. In
last week’s article, “Bread of Heaven”, we noted that, Yeshua told His
followers to eat His flesh and drink His blood (see John 6:53).
Therefore, “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever…”
(v. 51 emphasis added). Later Yeshua clarified these ‘hard’ statements by
saying that, "it is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits
nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life”
(v. 63 emphasis added). In other words, Yeshua, His words, His
message, and even His person constitute the “bread”.
Already
Moshe, in the wilderness, made the declaration: "So He [Elohim]
humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not
know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not
live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth
of YHVH” (Deuteronomy 8:3). But one would think that this kind of spiritual
reality would have eluded the Israelites. As hungry and distraught newly
released slaves, what would they have understood about “living by the Word”?
Indeed, they did not appear to grasp that notion. Yeshua, however, quoted some
of these very words, in reference to bread, immediately upon His encounter with
the adversary at the start of His ministry (Matt. 4:4; Luke 4:4). From then on
the ‘bread imagery’ continued to be a central theme, as we have seen, during
the rest of His time on earth. He even taught His disciples to pray:
“Give us this day our allotted portion of bread” (literal translation, based on
Proverbs 30:8).
During
the Passover meal Yeshua took the unleavened bread, broke it and said: “This
is my body”. He was reminding His disciples of what He had said to
them previously, after the feeding of the five thousand. Since they did
not understand spiritual realities, He had to make His point very
tangible. Only after being filled with the Spirit of Elohim they grasped
what Yeshua meant by “partaking of His body and blood/life”.
After
being immersed in the Spirit, these disciples had become the “one bread” and
their communing with each other, as His body, was by “eating Spirit and
drinking Life”, which each member provided. Later on Paul wrote, “Now
you are the body of Messiah…” (1 Corinthians 12:27), and a little earlier: “…The
bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Messiah? For
we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one
bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Obviously, the apostle was not
speaking of “flesh”, or anything of this creation. He was referring to Spirit
and Life, the bread which came down from heaven.
Recalling
the scene of the feeding of the five thousand, where Yeshua blessed the bread
and then broke it and gave it out, we can rest assured that He will do the same
with us. Blessing us as the “bread” is not for us personally, but for the
sake of others. Hence it says: “In whom the whole body, joined and knit together
by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every
part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in
love” (Ephesians 4:16).
Nourishing
each other in the body of Messiah with His love and all the other fruit of the
spirit will cause the body to mature. But should this not be the case, there is
a severe warning issued by Paul: “For he who eats and drinks in an
unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's
body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep”
(1 Corinthians 11:29-30). This statement is not speaking about a wafer
and a sip of wine. It is telling us to recognize the mystery of Messiah’s
Spirit in one another, as we are bound together by the Word.
After
Yeshua was glorified, He sent the Spirit of His Father in fulfillment of His
(earlier) prayer: "…that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in
Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe
that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that
they may be one just as We are one” (John 17:21-22). In John 14:8 Philip
addressed Yeshua and said to Him: "Lord, show us the Father, and it is
sufficient for us". Yeshua responded to him with a question: "Have
I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?” He then
added: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us
the Father?’” (v. 9). Yet in chapter 1 of the Gospel of John it says
that, “No one has seen [the face of] Elohim at any time. The only
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (v
18). In saying what He did to Philip, Yeshua was therefore declaring that He
was/is the very manifestation of His Father.
As
believers who have received the Spirit of Elohim, we too have become united
with the Father and His Son, Who are the “one bread”. This brings to mind
another bread, the “bread of the presence” - lechem hapanim - literally “bread
of the face”, which was in the Holy
Place Temple
Interestingly,
even after Yeshua’s resurrection He continued to remind His disciples of His
legacy and their calling, by feeding them with “bread”. Shortly after His resurrection, two of the disciples were on
their way to Emmaus when they suddenly noticed a man walking alongside
them. It was only after He broke the
bread and blessed it, when they were sitting around the table, that they
recognized Him. In their report, “about the things that had happened on
the road”, they emphasized “… how He was known to them in the breaking
of bread” (Luke 24:35). Yeshua will
also make Himself known through us when we become His blessed and broken
bread. Another episode that took place
after the resurrection was upon Yeshua’s arrival to
the shore of the Sea of Galilee . There He
prepared a meal for the hungry fishermen. “Then, as soon as they had come to
land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid on it, and bread… Yeshua
then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish”
(John 21:9 and 13). I wouldn’t doubt that this took place right
where it all started – when the five thousand were fed…
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