The Aroma of Fresh Bread

³² Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers you the true bread from heaven. ³³ The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”³⁴ “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day.”³⁵ Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6:32-35

Jesus is the true bread of life, always fresh and ready to fill us physically and spiritually.

Jesus had met the needs of the people for physical nourishment with the loaves and fish. Because their physical needs were met, they followed Him. But when he began talking about their spiritual needs they were not as thrilled. Earlier in John, Jesus says that those who worship Him must worship “in spirit and in truth.” He continues this theme here as He uses bread as His metaphor. They knew full well the importance of bread to physical life but failed to make the connection to their spiritual life.

We have been decaying since the day we were born. No matter how well we take care of this physical body, it continues to decay. Nothing can stop that process!  So, Jesus is offering them hope and a future, not in the physical but the eternal.  Eating His Bread and drinking in His Spirit is necessary if we want to live with Him forever in heaven. Obviously, this crowd was still concerned only with the physical and when He moved to the spiritual, they left Him to continue searching for another to meet their needs.

 We are so often centered on what Jesus can do for our bodies, our families, our finances, our earthly concerns that we overlook the most important need that He came to meet, our need for forgiveness and eternal life.  The need to love others and put their needs ahead of our own.  The need to put God first and see and act as His hands and feet in this hungry world. We need Him to meet our daily physical needs, yes, but only to highlight the reality of our need for spiritual nourishment to prepare us for eternity.

Oh, Jesus, we have been taught to seek and serve You, but not for our physical and temporal health and success only, but to live in the spiritual reality that seeks to sacrifice so that others may come to this truth and experience hope and nourishment as they feed on the Bread of Life in community with all believers. May we drink of the Living Water and partake of the Bread of Life and share it with others both now and forever, we pray.