In my further meditation on the feeding of the 5,000, the 4,000, and the Last Supper, the Holy Spirit helped me focus on what Jesus actually did. In each instance He blessed, He broke, and He gave out the bread. In John’s gospel Jesus said, "I am the bread." (John 6:35) If we have any doubt about what he said about Himself, remember that there are two witnesses to His statement. The fact that He was born in the city of Bethlehem. Bethlehem meaning bread. And He was laid in the tomb on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Since He is our bread we might ask: When was He blessed, broken, and given out? I believe from my study that Jesus was first blessed in the womb of His mother Mary when she came to visit her cousin, Elizabeth. In Luke 1:41-42 Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out in a loud voice, "Blessed among women are you, and blessed is the fruit of your womb?" What was the fruit of Mary’s womb? The baby, Jesus. He was being blessed before He was born.
When was Jesus broken? He was broken on the cross when He bore our sins for us. Mark 15:37 says, "And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last."
When was Jesus given out? When Jesus commanded the apostles to go forth after they received the Holy Spirit and "be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." (Acts 1:8) With the Holy Spirit they were then armed with the power to preach, to bear witness (John 15:26,27), and to heal. And they had His authority to give out His body and blood in the form of the bread and wine "in remembrance" of Him. (1 Corinthians 11:24, 25) In all these ways Jesus was being given out to all the world.
In three places in the gospel of John Jesus proclaims that He is the bread. (John 6:35, John 6:48, and John 6:51). What does that mean? Probably more than we’ll ever know. But what we do know is that bread is food for our bodies. However, with Jesus as our bread we are fed in our bodies, in our souls, and in our spirits. He was blessed, broken, and given out for us. If we eat that bread, we will live forever (John 6:51, 58). He is our Eternal Bread.
Copyright 2010 Gloria Fisher.
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