The Bread of Life

https://odb.org/MY/2022/05/18/crave-him

Bread represents food. At the minimum, we must eat at least bread or rice or noodles (in our context, maggie mee!) even if it’s plain and empty of egg, meat or vegetables. At times of war or famine, just a scoop of raw rice or flour to cook into a pot of rice or bake into a loaf of bread will do. Some people live to eat but the truth is we need to eat to live, like all animals and living creatures. We are made such that continuous sustenance is a prerequisite to survival. Food and drink is essential and necessary for the living.

Before Jesus started His ministry, He spent 40 days in the wilderness and one of the temptation He faced was the challenge by the devil for Him to turn stone into bread, the devil knowing that He was hungry and His body was craving for food. But we know that Jesus rebutted the devil by quoting Scripture that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The question then was not whether Jesus could do what the devil challenged Him to do, but whether He should abandon His goal of a 40-day fast to prove to the devil He could do that. Sometimes we let pride take control and forget our goal in life. For example, we ended up doing something we regret because of pride forgetting at that moment that we are to be a mirror image of Christ. We are challenged and we let go our burst of rage or conniving heart to manipulate a situation as though we are playing devil’s advocate when we are really being the devil!

The main message this morning is however that as much as bread or rice (meaning to say, in context, the means in which we put food on our table) is essential to our survival as human beings, God is still more important. Jesus is the bread of life that as we eat and drink, we will never ever grow hungry or thirsty. There is the eternal dimension in the sense of the upcoming tree of life that we will enjoy one day as revealed in Revelation 21 but more importantly, even here on this earth, we will never go hungry and thirsty if we put our trust in God. The devil will always say that we need to do what’s necessary to survive (turn stone to bread to break the hunger and fast) but the truth is man need not live on bread alone as God will ensure that we as His children will live even as we put our trust and surrender our lives fully to Him. God brought manna from heaven during the 40 years the Israelites were in the wilderness, will He not make a way for us to continue to serve Him? We need not bow down to any other gods and idols and we need not test the LORD our God. Place our trust in Jesus the Bread of Life and He will give us rest and we will never ever go hungry or thirsty!