By
Shelby G. Floyd
Bread is one of our most basic physiological needs of the body. When Lewis and Clark set out on their transcontinental expedition, bread was one of the staples that they prepared enough to take them to the mouth of the Columbia and back to St. Louis. We all need bread—healthy food to have a healthy body. In Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of human needs,” bread would be at the foundation, because it is difficult to think about anything else when a person is hungry. But bread alone will not motivate a person to be all they can be and reach their full potential both here and hereafter.
In the book of John, Jesus had told the people that “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent” (John 6:28-29). The crowd of people who came out to see and hear Jesus, challenged him to give them a miraculous sign in order that they might believe in him:
John 6:30-35
So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'”
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “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.
NIV
Jesus is the bread of life and the water of life. Without him and God’s word that he brought to us, we will shrivel up and die spiritually. It was Jesus who said to the devil who encouraged him to turn the stones into bread: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4, NKJV).
Man is a triune being—spirit, soul and body: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23, NIV). Notice that in the divine order it is “spirit, soul and body,” not “body, soul and spirit.” Man is a spirit with a body—the spirit is the primary nature of man. The spirit will survive only when it is fed with “the bread of life!” God’s children should feed on “the bread of life” every day and especially when the whole church comes together to worship on the Lord’s Day.
Copyright © 2016 Shelby G. Floyd, All Rights Reserved
Shelby G. Floyd
Heartland Church of Christ
1693 West Main Street
Greenwood, Indiana 46142