What Are You Eating?

What is your favorite food?

Pizza, steak, brisket, cheesecake, all kinds of food but one of my favorites is warm bread. You know the kind that you butter on and it’s so warm that butter just melts right into the bread, and the smell....

What is Bread?

Dumb Question!

Bread is food made from wheat or other grains. Bread was a major source of food for people in the time of Jesus and beyond.

Bread was also used a way of talking about anything that you ate. Anything that you ate that would sustain you physically. So bread has a symbolical use as well.

What about symbolically?

Today, Symbolically bread refers to our material belongs.

Daily Bread

There three ways we can think of daily bread.

Bread to sustain us today

Bread to sustain us for tomorrow

Bread that is Necessary for survival. The idea of Ps 30:8

Bread for Today/Tomorrow

When Jesus said this or at the very least when the disciple reflected on this saying, they would probably be reminded of the forefathers and mothers in the wilderness in Exodus 16:4-21

Exodus 16:4–21 ESV

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?” And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.” Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’ ” And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’ ” In the evening quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 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.’ ” And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

Why is this important?

a. The Lord is our provider

We should look to the Lord for what we need.

Well I make my money. I provide for myself.

The Lord gives us breathe to get up in the morning

The Lord gives us strength to go to work.

The Lord provided you a place to work.

Everything that we have the Lord Jesus as provided for us in some form or fashion.

It is human nature to complain

About what we don’t have and what we do have.

We do this as humanity when it comes to the afterlife as well. Someone well say, Why can’t I go meet God when I died? Why must I follow Christianity to go to heaven?

Then finally, the person does come to Christ. The realize that the price for salvation and a right relationship with God has been paid. All they have to do is receive it just like the children of Israel was provided manna and all they had to do was pick it up.

That same person will say, “Living for Christ is hard. Loving your neighbor as your self. Taking up your cross and following him. I didn’t sign up for this.

Instead of complaining, we need to thankful. God did not have to come and provide a way for us to be in right relationship with him. He could have left in our sins. We owe a debt we cannot pay. He paid a debt he did not owe.

He offers us forgiveness, and we accept his forgiveness we become slaves of Jesus Christ. We become bondservants. What is a bondservant? A bondservant in Jesus’ day was someone who owed a debt they could not pay. As a surety that they would pay the debt owed the would basically sell them a bond. What has the bond? They would become the other person’s servant until the debt was paid.

As Christians we have become bondservants to Christ. We have a debt we can’t pay. Jesus paid that debt for us. Now we are indebted to him. So we say, I will become your bondservant until my debt is paid. The problem is that debt that Jesus paid on the Cross can never be repaid in full even though Jesus paid it in full. Instead being bondservants because of debt. Jesus says, be my bondservant because of the love that I have for and have show for you but paying your sin debt.

That Paul says, in I Corinthians 7:21-22

1 Corinthians 7:21–22 ESV

Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ.

We can’t live off of yesterday’s blessing.

In the wilderness, God provided manna for the children of Israel everyday. You can take as much as you wanted provided you used it all that day. There was no hording. Except for Friday, when you could gather enough manna for Friday and the Sabbath, you were to take only a days worth. If you took more than you used, the next day the manna would be spoiled and unusable.

In a lot of churches, the try to move into the future relying on yesterday’s blessings. You will hear things like, “You should have seen this church back in the 1950s! We had 300 people in worship every Sunday. The youth group was strong and vital. In fact, I remember…then they will go on to recall a glorious time they had with God and say, “If only it could be like that again.”

Unfortunately, it will never be like that again. We need to look to God today and say, “Lord Jesus whatever you want me to do today to grow the kingdom I am ready.” The way we grow in God’s preferred future is by living in and using the blessings He gives us today.

That lead me into a set of questions that we need to reflect on as a congregation and maybe even as individuals.

Am I trying to move into the future by living in the past?

Do we have an idea of where God is trying to take us? Are we using our gifts and graces, our blessings of today, to propel us toward God’s preferred future for us.

Are we trusting God? Are you trusting that God has paid your debt? Do you believe that Jesus Paid It All? All to Him you owe?