JESUS - THE BREAD OF LIFE
It is a well-known fact that Luke's Gospel is full of references to bread, food, meals and eating. I counted 48 passages on this subject. The most notable of them all is where Luke relates the feeding of the five thousand in Luke 9:10-17. That incident is recounted in all four Gospels so it obviously has some very important things to tell us.
Jesus himself referred back to the miracle in Matthew 16:9 and expressed surprise that the disciples did not seem to have understood the full weight of what had happened that day. They only knew what they had seen with their eyes. The purpose of the eternal will of God was behind it, but nothing like that had struck them. Did they think God had just happened to feel like putting on a demonstration?
When I looked at the familiar story again, I noticed something quite unusual. Luke places this story between two similar verses: 'Herod said, '˜Who, then, is this I hear such things about?'' (Luke 9:9); 'Jesus asked them, '˜Who do the crowds say I am?'' (Luke 9:18).
The crowds Jesus asked about were those he had fed, not the general public. What did those people think of him? What had they made of the man who had displayed such omnipotence? In Jesus' mind the miracle should at least have sparked some curiosity about who he was. In fact, it should have revealed his identity. This is God's way of testing men and women. Do they see? He does not walk about wearing a designer label for all to see. His works proclaim his presence and everything about him. Appropriately Jesus once said, 'Believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves' (John 14:11).
However, this was far more than a show of strength. Just think of that famous statement of Jesus in John 14:10: 'I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.' If food for five thousand meant anything, Jesus was saying that the Father was involved every bit as much as he was himself. By his miracles Jesus gave glory to the Father and revealed the Father's heart.
Jesus is the image of God. Look at Jesus, his works, his kindness and his self-sacrifice and you will see God's face. Jesus is like God the Father and God the Father is like Jesus the Son. 'Like father like son,' we say. How perfectly that fits Jesus and his Father! Jesus said, 'The Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does' (John 5:19).
Why did Jesus feed the multitudes? Did he really have to bother? Well, yes, he did, because that is the sort of thing that God does all the time. Jesus always did what he saw his Father doing, and thus demonstrated that he was God's true Son. The Son reflected God. For instance, the Father said, 'I am the Lord who heals you' (Exodus 15:26) and Jesus also heals. The Lord is the God of salvation and Jesus saves. The Lord is the God of deliverance and Jesus delivers. The Lord is eternal and changeless and Jesus Christ is the 'same yesterday and today and for ever' (Hebrews 13:8). Within his set of circumstances and during his brief walk on earth he modelled the work of the Father. Any picture of God which is unlike Jesus is false. Everything he did, from Bethlehem back to glory, reveals the true heart of God.
I think I should point out something in the verses that Luke places before and after the feeding of the multitude. In both texts the question was really about whether Jesus was Elijah or John the Baptist raised again to life. It is interesting to think that the miracle is about 5,000 people being well fed in the wilderness, for both Elijah and John survived in the wilderness on very little, eating whatever they found. They were ascetics, like medieval saints who tried to forget that they had stomachs. No '“ Jesus was not John or Elijah. In fact, his enemies accused him of being a glutton and a wine-bibber! He trained the spotlight on God's abundance and liberality. He made more bread than was needed in the wilderness and more wine in Cana than they could drink. Bread and wine are Christ's gifts. Remember that verse from John's Gospel, 'The Son can only do what he sees his Father doing' (5:19)? In other words, the Father gives us bread and wine.
It is strange to think that Jesus made bread in the wilderness. Earlier in his life Jesus had been tempted to do that very thing and refused. The tempter came to him with the provocation, 'If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread' (Matthew 4:3). Satan was trying to provoke Jesus into proving who he was but Jesus never worked miracles out of such a motive. Jesus himself was not about to show off his power to make people believe in him. He had no faith, anyway, in people who believed in him only as a wonder worker (see John 2:23-25). He came to show people what the Father is like. He did not reveal himself but waited for people to see it for themselves and cry out like Peter, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God' (Matthew 16:16).
The identity of Jesus as the Messiah is often proved from Old Testament Scriptures. He fitted the prophecies and fulfilled those Scriptures, but Jesus was bigger than the prophecies. The Bible scholars of his day knew all about the Messiah '“ from an academic point of view. However, Jesus said they knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God! The Scriptures described the Christ but he explained the Scriptures. He did more than match the details like a mirror image. He was too big for the mirror. Prophecy fell short of his glory.
BREAD!
The people of Israel spoke of 'el shaddai', God Almighty or the all-sufficient God (Exodus 6:3). The world's nations clung to their limited deities, rain gods, fertility gods, fire gods, river gods and the gods of the sky, each with their narrowly defined powers, while Israel knew el shaddai, the almighty, all-sufficient Lord. Israel had come to this advanced understanding a thousand years before Greece invented the gods of high Olympus and their limited powers.
The feeding of the five thousand demonstrated el shaddai, the God of all human need. It is so exciting to read the account in Luke 9! I notice that when the crowd came to Jesus, Luke tells us that he welcomed them (verse 11). If it had been left to the disciples, Jesus would have sent the people away to find food and lodging in the nearby villages. Their reaction was fair enough: the disciples and Jesus had tried to get away from the crowds for some rest as they hardly had a moment to eat. The disciples must have been taken aback when Jesus welcomed the crowds. However, they soon realised what that meant '“ Jesus installed himself as the host of that motley crowd and treated them all as his guests, Christ assumed the divine role, as host to man and beast. Jesus referred to it in his Sermon on the Mount: 'Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them' (Matthew 6:26). He was saying what Psalm 145:16 tells us: 'You satisfy the desires of every living thing.' It is precisely what is meant in those famous words from the Psalms: 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies' (Psalm 23:1, 5).
From the beginning of the Bible we are the guests of the Lord God. Adam and Eve were told that the trees of the garden would provide their food. When they sinned, they were turned out of that beautiful orchard. Their meals no longer hung on trees. Instead God decreed, 'You will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food' (Genesis 3:18-19). They had to till the ground, plant the seeds, look after the plants, bring in the harvest, grind the grain to make the flour and bake the bread '“ to go through the whole process of bread production. Things were not easy any more but they did eat; God made sure of that.
Our Lord is always the host, no matter who we are. 'He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous' (Matthew 5:45). After the Flood God made a covenant with all living things: 'Never again will I curse the ground because of man '¦ never again will I destroy all living creatures. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease' (Genesis 8:21-22). Six millenniums have passed and God has kept his word.
The Bible story is bread, bread and bread again. The word occurs over 350 times in the Bible. We think of Joseph with providential access to Egypt's granary; the people of Israel feeding on the bread from heaven during their wilderness existence; fields and harvests in the lives of Ruth, Samson and Gideon; miracles of supply with Elijah and Elisha; and many an allusion in the books of the prophets. Jesus himself speaks of bread 25 times. In Jesus' famous discourse on the bread of life in John's Gospel (6:25-59), the word occurs 14 times.
Like his Father, Jesus often slipped into the role of host. He met John and Andrew for the first time and entertained them in his home (John 1:35-39). At the well in Samaria he asks for something to drink and ends up giving the woman water (John 4:4-26). He provides wine at the wedding feast in Cana (John 2:1-11). In John 21 he prepares breakfast on the beach for the disciples hungry after a night on Galilee.
When Christ entertained the five thousand, he not only fed them but had compassion on them, healed them and taught them. What a supper party! He organised them into groups of fifty. God had fed Israel with manna in the wilderness and Christ now fed another Israel multitude.
The Pharisees would never have approved of this al fresco feast. There was no water with which to purify their hands before eating and there were no principle guests, no higher and lower tables. The greatest people there '“ Christ and his disciples '“ served the rest. Everyone sat down in rings or groups, everyone equal, and helped to pass the miracle bread round. It was really an enactment of Christ's wedding feast parable (Matthew 22), where everyone is welcome '“ cripples, poor, beggars, the unclean '“ and everyone is equal.
Ours is the God who fills all things. In his presence is fullness of joy. Time after time God asks questions like 'Why spend your money on things that are not bread?' Jesus is the bread of life, but people spend money on drugs and other questionable satisfactions that always leave life hollow.
The feeding of the five thousand revealed God the Father as he is and his infinite concern. This God filled the bellies of a huge mob on a hungry afternoon. But he made us not only with stomachs but with minds and souls, and gives far beyond bread '“ pleasures, satisfactions and necessities '“ in ten thousand areas. The Lord is the God of all goodness.
Jesus is the essential in life. He says to you, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty' (John 6:35).