This week we look at the first of Jesus’ ‘I Am’ statements: I am the bread of life. In the Old Testament, God provided ‘bread’ to the Israelites in the wilderness which was called manna. It was his means of feeding and preserving His people in a region that did not have enough food to sustain them. So, after Jesus miraculously fed over five thousand people by multiplying a small amount of bread, there was a growing sense that he might be the great Prophet that Moses said would one day come. John 6 records a lengthy conversation between Jesus and a crowd of his followers in which he announces that he, himself, is the promised bread from heaven. While the bread God gave during the time of Moses preserved people physically, this ‘true’ bread from heaven would preserve people spiritually for all eternity.
As we think about how Jesus being the bread of life applies to us, we learn that we need to learn to see ‘now’ in the light of eternity (to see, value, and pursue things that have eternal value), we need to continue to ‘eat’ the bread (spend time with Jesus and learn from him), and we must rest in Christ’s work, not our own.
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