Keep Baking Bread

Text

Leviticus 24:5–9 ESV

5 “You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf. 6 And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the Lord. 7 And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the Lord. 8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. 9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord’s food offerings, a perpetual due.”

Intro

In Exodus chapter 25, God gives Moses instructions on how to build the Tabernacle

And the details are very specific.

The type of material, the size of each piece

and the specific design of each piece of furniture and the tent itself.

Every last detail was downloaded to Moses

Who turned around and repeated it to the builders

and they built everything exactly like God had specified.

There was the tabernacle itself that had to be built

And it consisted of 3 main areas

The outer court, the holy place or sanctuary, and the Holy of Holies

The Outer Court had the brazen altar and the basin of water.

These pieces of furniture were made of bronze.

A lower valued material was used

However, when we get inside the Holy Place

The furniture is all made with pure Gold or overlaid with pure gold.

The lampstand, the altar of incense, and the table for the bread of Presence

were all pure gold

The same material as the ark of the Covenant

Where the manifest presence of God dwelt.

The Holy place and the Holy of Holies were obviously more important and sacred

We can tell by the materials used - gold rather than bronze

and by the having the word “holy” in their name

But also because of the proximity to the manifest presence of God.

The Table of Presence

I want to draw our attention to one particular piece of furniture tonight

The Table for the Bread of Presence.

The KJV calls ii the Table of Shewbread

But when you break down the words used to name this table

It has one Hebrew word, lehem, that simply means bread.

And the other Hebrew word is panim.

Panim literally means “face”.

So, Lehem Panim means Bread of the face.

And most modern scholars agree that the Hebrew word “face”

When referencing God, is almost always use figuratively to mean “Presence” or Glory.

During the Tabernacle periods,

The manifest Presence of God was tied to the Ark of the Covenant.

And so, the closer you got to the Ark

The closer you got to God’s manifest presence.

Again, we’re not talking about God’s Omnipresence

We’re talking about the manifest Presence of God

Or the place in which He revealed Himself to our natural senses

God is an Omnipresent, Eternal, Invisible Spirit

According to His own word.

So, we can’t see, touch, smell, or hear God

Unless He is manifested or revealed to our natural senses.

So, the bread of the face

— as it is literally translated—

Means The Bread of the Presence

It specifically refers to the Presence of God

Which was manifested inside the Holy of Holies

If you were the High Priest

Once per year on the Day of Atonement

You would get to go into that Holy of Holies

And sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the covenant

To make atonment for all the covenant people.

To get to the Ark, The priest had to pass by

all the furniture in the outer court

And all the furniture in the Holy Place

and one of the last piece of furniture the Priest would pass

Was the Table for the Bread of the Presence

The Bible says that the table would be on the outside of the veil

So that the bread of the Presence would be before God continually.

And the manifest Presence of God was only separated from this table of bread by the veil

The Covenant of Provision

Leviticus 24:5 ESV

5 “You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf.

In our text it specifies exactly how much fine flour was to be used

2/10s of an ephah in each loaf.

When I began to study about this table of bread

I began to dig into the significance of it

And I wanted to understand what it might truly symbolize.

Leviticus 24:8 ESV

8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever.

We find in verse 8 that the bread represented a covenant

And specifically a covenant that was eternal.

We read in verse 8 that every Sabbath day,

the priest had to arrange the bread before YAHWEH regularly.

That word regularly means continually, or in a routine manner.

It was like clockwork.

And it happened every single week

And God said, this is to remind me that I made a promise to some people

And that Promise is eternal.

We know this because God used a Hebrew Phrase

Translated as “covenant forever” here

But is often translated as “an Everlasting Covenant”

The Bible first mentions this same phrase to Noah

When God put his bow in the air

To remind himself of an everlasting covenant that he made with Noah

To never again flood the entire earth.

So, this bread was like the rainbow

It was placed before the Lord regularly, like clockwork

and it was to remind God about an everlasting covenant with Isreal

Now… There were 12 loaves of bread

One for each of the 12 tribes

And the bread was to be eaten in the Holy Place according to verse 9 of our text

So, most commentaries agree that this covenant was about provision

It was about God being our provider

When I began to study this deeper

I found that many pagan religions did something similar with their idols

They would place food and wine in front of the idol

and some still do it today

or instead of food they will put money

or something that represents provision

But The big difference is that when the pagans did this

They expected the pagan god to eat the food or accept the money

Setting food before idols meant something entirely different to the pagans

It represented the mutual dependency the people and the idol had.

It was more like an “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” sorta thing.

If I put a little food in front of an idol

Then that deity will hopefully gives us rain so we can have some food too.

This is NOT what the bread of Presence represented

Because our God doesn’t need food

He doesn’t need our provision

He is our Jehovah Jireh

He is our provider

And the bread was not “eaten” by God

It was eaten by the Levites in the Holy Place

And it represented God’s Provision for his covenant people

The Manna

There is further evidence that suggests that this Bread of the Presence

represented God’s provision

The more I studied, the more I saw a link to the Manna in the wilderness

The manna was bread that essentially fell from heaven daily

For 40 years God’s children didn’t have to worry about where their next meal came from.

They simply woke up, Walked outside

And picked up enough manna for that day.

They could not pick up manna for the next day either

They had to trust God would give them manna tomorrow

They only got what they needed for that day

Their daily bread…

And if they tried to get more than they needed

It would rot and mold overnight

So, they got what they needed for one single day—

except on the 6th day.

On the 6th day, God told his people to get two days worth of bread.

The reason being, they could do no work on the 7th day—

That was the Sabbath day

So, they had to pickup twice as much bread on the 6th day

and then on the Sabbath day they reseted and just ate the bread from the day before.

When I began to study this I found something interesting.

Exodus 16:16 ESV

16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’ ”

So, they were to gather up one omer of manna per person.

Now, an omer is a unit of measurement.

Thats how much one person was allowed to eat each day.

Exodus 16:22 (ESV)

22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. …

So, to prevent working on the Sabbath day.

The people picked up 2 omers each on the 6th day.

That’s twice as much as they were allowed to pick up on days 1-5.

On the Sabbath day, there was no manna that fell

So, they had to eat the extra manna leftover from day 6.

How much is an Omer, you might wonder?

Exodus 16:36 ESV

36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)

An ephah is another unit of measurement.

And Moses gives us the conversion rate.

1 Omer = 1/10th of an Ephah

So, they picked up 1/10th of an ephah on days 1-5

and 2/10ths of an ephah on day 6.

Now, back to our text…

Leviticus 24:5 ESV

5 “You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah shall be in each loaf.

Did you catch that?

There are 12 loves

1 loaf per tribe

And each tribe represented one of the sons of Jacob/Isreal.

And each son of Isreal got 2/10s of an ephah of bread.

That’s exactly how much bread they picked up every 6th day in the wilderness

It is twice as much bread as anyone needed for one day.

Two days worth of bread in each of those loaves.

And every 6th day of the week the Priest would bake that fresh bread

And then the 7th day they would put that bread out as close to the Presence of God as they were allowed to get

And that bread was to remind God about how He provided for his people.

And it was the same amount of bread that God gave them every 6th day of the week

so that when the Sabbath came, they didn’t have to worry about being hungry

They always had enough provisions.

That was my introduction, now I’m about to preach for a minute.

The Location

I want you to notice 3 things about the bread of the Presence.

First I want you to notice the location of the bread.

Leviticus 24:6 ESV

6 And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold before the Lord.

That word “before” is Panim in Hebrew.

It means Presence.

So, the bread was in the presence of YAHWEH.

Leviticus 24:8 ESV

8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever.

There’s the word “before” again.

And again, that’s Panim

It means Presence

So, the bread was in the presence of YHWH continually

and finally,

Leviticus 24:9 ESV

9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord’s food offerings, a perpetual due.”

So, the priests were commanded to eat the bread in the holy Place.

This means they could not take it out to the outer court

where the bloody sacrifices were happening

They couldn’t take it to the park for a picnic

or take it home to eat it later

They had to eat it right there in the holy place.

because God said this bread was a holy portion.

The location of the bread was important.

it was almost as close to God’s manifest presence as one could get.

And the location of the eating of the bread was holy

There were no chairs in there

They didn’t have a dinner table or counter

They just had to stand there and eat the bread before they left the sanctuary

Can we apply this to us today?

I think we can.

Livestream

There are 3 reasons I can think of that people watch our services via livestream.

And two of them are fine, but the other is not.

The primary reason I stream our services online

Is because we have people that are sick and shut in that cannot physically be here.

I’m so thankful that with modern technology we can provide a way

for someone like Sister Francis Jones at River City Rehab

to be able to watch our services on her phone.

If it wasn’t for that use case, I’d probably stop streaming if I’m being honest

The second reason people watch our livestream

is because they go to some other church,

but they want a little more bread

I’m guilty of this myself

I watch other services too.

But I’m also always here in person every Sunday.

So, we have people that watch our services,

but they go to a live—in person service somewhere else weekly.

And I think that’s fine

The 3rd kind of person that watches our services

but doesn’t go to any church in person—

—at least not weekly

and they are trying to get a little bread through the screen

But let me just talk to you for a minute if you are watching online

and this applies to you.

There is something different about being in the House of God

and in the Presence of God

Gathered Together with the People of God

You can’t feel what we feel here today through a screen.

It’s just not the same.

There is a difference, and the Bible tells us so.

Matthew 18:20 ESV

20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Yes, you can pray alone at home

Yes you can worship alone in your car

and I encourage you to do so,

but there is something about gathering together than will never be replaced by technology

And for those that will preach to you about how you don’t need to go to church to be saved.

Let me just talk to that for a minute.

First of all, what Bible verse says that you don’t need to go to church?

Tell me, where did you read that in the Word of God?

Oh, that’s right, you didn’t

What I find instead was this instruction by Paul:

Hebrews 10:24–25 ESV

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Don’t neglect meeting tother like some people make a habit of

But he says… meet all the more as you see the Day—

—Speaking of Judgment Day—

—Approaching

There are some that will argue that they met together in their homes in the Bible

They had house churches, not big buildings

And to that I say, yes, you are correct

They met secretly in houses because they were being persecuted

and there are those that are forced to do this still today

In China they pile as many as they can into a tiny apartment

Literally sitting on top of each other

Trying to be quiet as they worship

so they don’t alert the authorities

But I’m sure those who use the house church argument

Don’t mean this kind of house church.

And I guarantee you if you gave anyone in that picture

a chance to worship freely in a larger building,

they would do it without question.

We meet in larger spaces today because we are blessed

And because we have the 1st amendment that allows it.

House churches can only hold so many people

And there is a difference when there are more people.

I know for a fact…

NAYC 2017

The Frequency of It

My Second Point, and I’ll be quick with this one.

I want to talk about the frequency of the bread.

It was always before the Lord — 24/7

and it was swapped out once a week on the Sabbath.

Verse 8 in our text says…

Leviticus 24:8 ESV

8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever.

God said make sure you arrange this fresh bread regularly.

That means every 6th day,

you bake fresh hot bread

and every 7th day you take out the old bread—

—and put in the new bread

It was a weekly exchange

and it was required to be “regular”

Or continual, or routine.

God wanted them to understand that this task was a commitment

and it was one that needed to be kept without fail — week-in and week-out

They couldn’t get sloppy with it

They needed to make sure that new bread was ready every single week.

It needed to become a routine

a habit

Something they never missed

Matthew 4:4 ESV

4 But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

The bread is symbolic of the Word of God

and it is important that the word of God is opened up daily in your homes

Just like the bread was ever before the Lord in the Holy Place

but once a week the priest delivered fresh bread

and that’s why it is so important to be in the House of God weekly

I know some people think that you only need to go to church once a year

Maybe on Easter or Christmas, or sometimes Mother’s day

But that’s not enough bread to survive on

You need fresh bread weekly

I know some people that only come to church when they have a problem

They run to the house of God to get a quick fix

and they the run back to the world to mess it all up again

Folks, you can’t live that way

You’ve got to be in church every service

I don’t know about you

but I need some fresh bread every week!

Paul said, we need to meet MORE often as the Day approaches

Not less and less

but more and more.

And, livestream doesn’t count unless you physically cannot be here

Because there won’t be a livestream of heaven

and even if there was

you wouldn’t feel what we feel when we are in the Presence of God

The Importance of it

We’ve discussed the location of the bread

Which was in the presence of God

In the Holy Place

We’ve talked about the frequency of it

Fresh bread was made once a week

But now I want to talk about something that God showed me about this routine task.

It is repetitive.

I don’t know about you, but I hate to do repetitive work

I could never work in a factory on an assembly line

God bless you if you do that kind of work

We need you to do it

but oh my, how hard is it to just do the same thing over and over and over

Repetitive work has a tendency to become monotonous.

Dull, boring, and mundane.

Week after week someone had to bake bread

Pull out the old bread

and put out the fresh bread

Just so it could sit there in front of a curtain for a week.

Then they had to stand there and eat week old bread before they could leave the holy place

And 6 days later, they repeated the process

God said, make sure it is regular

Meaning, ensure this routine is repeated forever

Don’t slack off and skip a week or two

Just keep repeating this task over and over

For 40 years in the wilderness,

they kept that bread fresh.

In fact, there is no biblical evidence that the replacing of bread was every interrupted until King Ahaz shut the doors of the Temple approx 716 years after the first batch of bread was made.

For 716 years, that repetitive task of replacing the bread went uninterrupted.

That is 32,232 batches of bread that a levite had to bake.

And they made 12 loaves,

so that’s over 386,000 loaves of bread that was made.

Can you imagine this for a second?

Imagine you are the levite that has to replace the bread.

Imagine that you get assigned this task at the age of 20

and you do it until you are 65.

You would have made 2,340 batches of bread.

Or 28,000 loaves of bread.

That’s a lot of bread to make

I just imagine that being my job

and I know myself well

and I know for a fact I would ask more than once

Why am I making all this bread

just to sit it out on a golden table for a week

I mean, can’t we just carve some bread out of wood

and put that out there one time and call it a day?

Why are we baking this bread?

I know we get to eat it

but only after it sits for a week

Why can’t we eat it right out of the oven?

I know I would have these questions.

I know I would.

Week after week,

Loaf after loaf

Just baking bread every Friday night instead of hanging out with my friends.

Surely I can skip a week now and then right?

No, God said make sure you routinely replace this bread every Sabbath.

We can’t skip a week. Not one.

Why can’t I have the candle job?

He just lights some candles at night

and blows them out in the morning

Or the incense job

He just lights some incense every morning until it goes out on its own

and then lights it again at night.

Why do I have to make all this bread every week.

Anybody feel like they could relate to this poor levite?

Can you sympathize with him for a minute?

But what that levite didn’t know

that only God knew

Is that this bread was going to used one day

by someone special

someone important

And week after week of baking bread

makes it hard to see the big picture

but God saw it.

The point of the bread was to remind God of his Provision for his People.

And the Bible tells us a story in 1 Sam chapter 21

Where David is running from Saul who is trying to kill him out of jealousy

And David is without a weapon, and without food

and he is going to die if no one helps him

So when he is famished

Starving to death

and in need of nourishment

He runs to the house of God

And that’s where we should always run when we need nourishment from the word.

And the Bible says that David runs to the High Priest Ahimelech and asks him…

1 Samuel 21:3–4 ESV

3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” 4 And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.”

David says, give me whatever you have to eat.

I’ll take anything

Just feed me… I’m starving

And the priest says I don’t have anything but holy bread

The bread of the presence

So, this must have been the Sabbath day

Because the Priest was just about to swap out last weeks bread.

Only the priest could eat that bread in the Holy Place

But the entire point of the bread was for God to remind himself

That he is our provider for eternity

And David was starving

And God could not let David die

Listen to the irony of that

The very thing that could keep David alive is that bread

The bread David wasn’t allowed to eat

And that bread symbolized God’s provision for his people.

So, David says, yes my men are clean in verse 5.

And verse 6 says…

1 Samuel 21:6 ESV

6 So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

430 years prior to this event taking place

God instituted a weekly routine

of baking fresh bread and putting it on a table in the Holy Place

Don’t you know God could see the future?

Don’t you know God knew that David would run to the Holy Place for help

Don’t you know God knew all of that when he told Moses

Make fresh bread every week?

And make sure it is regular

Don’t skip a single week

And I know it won’t make sense

but just keep baking that bread

Let’s all stand

And the part that God knew, but didn’t tell Moses or the levites for 430 years was this…

One day David is coming to this tent

and you don’t know who David is Moses

but He will be starving and he is going to need this bread to be fresh.

So, keep putting the bread out weekly

You never know when David is coming

It might be next week, or next year, or 430 years from now

But keep putting out the bread

Because this mundane task is going to save David’s life some day.

You don’t know it little levite,

but without that bread you bake every week

David would die

and Without David

There’s no son of David

And without a son of David

I can’t keep my Covenant

Remember the bread is for the covenant

and God didn’t say which covenant

But without that bread, David dies

And without David there’s no Jesus

And without Jesus, there’s no cross

and without the cross there’s no salvation.

So, little levite, that bread you keep baking every week

That bread is going to ensure that I keep my covenant

and come to earth in the form of a man

and die on a cross for you and everyone else someday

You can’t see that, but I can, says the LORD.

So, keep baking bread.

Don’t get weary in well doing

Keep showing up on Sundays.

Because you never know what that bread will bring in your future.

You see, we don’t see the future, but God does.

And we have no idea what showing up this Sunday will do to our future

But God knows.

God knew David was going to need bread 430 years before David asked for it.

So he started a process of having fresh bread ready every week

until David needed it.

Sister Trinda,

God knew about your healing before you were ever afflicted

Before that cancer ever developed

He planned the Sunday service where you would show up for weekly bread

and leave cancer free.

God knew all of that before it happened

but it still required you to come to his house

The holy place

And bake some bread

I wonder if I can convicce someone tonight

Who might be asking why you’re still here

Would you consider for a moment

that God needs you to keep baking bread…