Sermon nuggets Thurs April 24
Theme- Miraculous Manna
Verses- 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
God’s Purpose
Yesterday we talked about the temporariness of our life compared to the eternal life promised by Jesus, the true bread from heaven. The purpose of the miraculous manna in the desert was to give life to the dying. The purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ is that man may rise again from the dead and give eternal life to those under the curse of spiritual death. Jesus moves from the revelations of His power which changed water to wine, healed the sick, multiplied bread and fish, and walked on water. He kept addressing this coming miracle of raising people from the dead. He will not be affected by the bodily death. “He who eats this living bread will never die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven, if a man eats of this bread he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
The message that Jesus is telling is that just as bread will feed your bodies and keep you going, so I am the provision of God for the purpose of eternal life that will keep you going forever. God’s purpose of bread is life, that the Israelites might daily trust God and that we daily might trust God not just for things of this world but much more importantly for things of the world to come.
There is so much that the Jew understands from his culture that we do not understand in their symbols. The Passover Seder meal that celebrates the escape from enslavement of Egyptians is likened to the Passover lamb of Jesus who died that we can be free from enslavement of Satan, but there is a practice with unleavened bread in Jewish homes today when they remember the Passover. They have three matzos which is three thin unleavened pieces of bread as part of their ceremony. They leave the top one, take the second one and break it and place it in linen and hide or cover it for awhile and then they will have some of the children find it and the family eats it. It is striped and has holes in it, made only of flour and water.
Jews for Jesus explain the symbol. It is not understood by many Jews who have rejected Jesus but three pieces of bread point to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The middle matzos is broken pointing to Jesus death on the cross for us, whose body was broken without sin. The flour and water reminds them of the two natures of Jesus-God and man. Leaven is symbolic of sin and this bread is without sin. The ceremony has the broken matzos covered with a linen (death and burial). It is striped and has holes in it, thinking of the lashing and piercing of our Lord. And this bread is eaten following their meal.
We will be celebrating the service of Communion this Sunday. Our ritual, though done in different ways than the Seder meal ritual, takes bread and wine and points to the suffering savior. We take the bread and eat it as commanded by our Lord in remembrance of Him. The broken bread symbolizes his brokenness on the cross. The wine symbolizes the blood shed as the grapes are crushed to produce drink. We remind ourselves as He said, we will eat anew with Him in the Kingdom. It points to the death, burial resurrection of Jesus and the life He gives us all who take of Him. We do this with others pointing to the larger family of God.
We take the food and eat it pointing to the food that the world needs. Not simply bread of flour and water, but of spirit and truth.
Pastor Dale
