MONDAY November 18th
As we return with the devotions today, we come to the first of the ‘I am’ statements that Jesus made in the gospel of John. It just happens to be that this one statement falls the day after I had prepared to speak from John 6 at Emmanuel Pentecostal Church, ministry I had prepared well before I wrote this devotion.
John 6:35 ‘Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”’
This statement appears in a conversation that Jesus had with those who had looked for him the day after he had performed what we call the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand.
The folk had enjoyed the bread and fish so much so that they came looking for Jesus, but he saw through them, saying to them, ‘you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves’ (v26) In other words, you are hungry again and you are hoping I’ll get you some breakfast sorted!
But Jesus in seeing through them takes it as an opportunity to turn the natural into the spiritual and he eventually makes to them the statement ‘I am the bread of life. . .’
The whole account is too much to fit into a devotion, but what Jesus was saying to them was this: You have come back again this morning because the food you ate yesterday was only sufficient to satisfy your hunger for a while, therefore you need replenishing. But I tell you that ‘I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall not hunger’. And what is more he takes up the memory of their fathers eating manna in the wilderness and says to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. As the bread of life, I have come down from heaven, and whoever eats of this bread (eats of me) will live forever!’
Well, they were happy to recall their history, but they were not happy to hear and to accept what Jesus was declaring and claiming. They even argued among themselves (v52), and it continues to say that many walked away.
But praise God that we have come and have partaken of Jesus who is the bread of life. I have mentioned before in the devotions that the best bread I have ever tasted was a few years back while I was vising Kolding in Denmark, it was amazing, I couldn’t eat enough of it, and I wanted a fresh batch each morning. But as good as it was, I was soon hungry again later in the day!
But as we have tasted of the bread of life, we have truly found that as far as spiritual hunger is concerned, we are satisfied. And the good news is that once we have partaken of this heavenly bread we will live forever.
‘I am the bread of life’ and only Jesus as the ‘I am’, as God, can make this statement for he is life itself, if you have never come to accept Jesus as your Saviour, then I recommend you come to him as the bread of life and know what it is to be spiritually fed, spiritually filled and spiritually satisfied, and not for a few hours, or a day or two, but for eternity.