Jesus, the Bread from Heaven

“And they gathered it every morning, each man according to his eating. And when the sun became hot, it melted.” (Exodus 16:21)

This was the manna, the bread from heaven that fed and sustained the Israelites until they reached the Promised Land. Remember that all the events in the Old Testament are shadows or have implications and meaning of the New Covenant in the New Testament.

In the New Covenant, we have Jesus, the Bread of Life. “And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes on Me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35) Then He repeats later on. “I am the Bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died. This is the Bread which comes down from Heaven, so that a man may eat of it and not die.” (John 6:48-50) Jesus was saying that He is the one Who sustains us and the One Who gives us life, eternal life. One thing when we are in darkness is that we don’t know that we are dead and in reality, the living dead, dead spiritually and dead to God. It is only when we surrender to Jesus and are born again that we know we’ve been taken out of darkness and death and given life.

Unlike the manna and baked bread, Jesus not only gives us life, but sustains us in our journey to our Promised Land, eternity with the Lord. Manna gave the body of the Israelites nutrition to live, but it was not sustaining. They had to gather it every morning. The same with baked bread, the body uses the nutrition and then it’s gone. We have to keep eating to keep living. Not so with the life that the Living Bread, the Bread of Life and the Bread that came from heaven Who is Jesus, gives. “He shall also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called to the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 1Corinthians 1:8-9)

The manna the Israelites ate melted when the sun became hot. So, they had to gather it and keep it in a cool place. It was only good for that day. They couldn’t store it for the next day or it would rot. The manna only lasted that one day. They had to gather it every day for that day. “And Moses said, Let no man leave of it until the morning. But they did not listen to Moses, but some of them left of it until the morning. And it became rotten with maggots, and stank. And Moses was angry with them.” (Exodus 16:19-20) We can make an analogy to the Word; Jesus is the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In Him was life, and the life was the light of men... And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth.” (John 1:1, 4, 14) Jesus is the sustaining life in us. Just like the Israelites needed to daily gather their sustenance, we need to gather our sustenance from Jesus daily. He provides what we need for each day, what will carry us through and sustain us in His life and light for whatever we may encounter each day. Yesterday’s Word has sustaining life, but it may not be what we need for the next day. God in His Omniscience, His all knowing, gives us the Word that we need for the day. If we don’t spend time with Him in the morning, we trying to live on the Word from yesterday. Yes, it’s alive and able to empower us, but it isn’t what we need for that day. Example: We read John 3:16 one morning which we need that day to share with someone and it builds us up too because we meditate on God’s love for us. But we don’t know that tomorrow we will get hit with an illness and need Matthew 4:23 that tells us Jesus is the healer and turns our heart to the Healer. We haven’t meditated and confirmed the Word that we need for that day because we don’t know about tomorrow. Yesterday’s Word was needed yesterday. But we need a Word for today. And God’s all-knowing mercy and grace will provide the Word that we need for each day. And as we meditate on the Word that God gives us for each day, we are built up spiritually, confirmed and ready to use the Word in whatever life in this world throws at us.

In summary, we can say that the manna that the Israelites received was a foreshadow of the Bread of Life from heaven that the Father sent in the New Testament. And that is the Word John wrote about in the Gospel of John. It is Jesus. And it is His Word which is life to us and which we must receive daily to meet the need of the day.