The Bread Of Life

The Bread of Life

O LORD, our LORD, the majesty of your name fills the earth!

Your glory is higher than the heavens!

You are our exodus from slavery! our Salvation! and our glorious freedom! Our true temple is built and is our bread without yeast, our Sanctification and our Salvation.

To God be the Glory!

In our reading today in the book of Ezra, just five weeks after the dedication of the second temple, the Passover was held. The Passover spoke of the death of Christ, our Passover, who was offered for us.

When they gathered around the Passover, they were gathering around the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the Word of God.

So, they celebrated the Festival of Unleavened Bread for seven days and there was great joy throughout the land. But what was that Festival?, and why the unleavened bread? What do you think?

Looking up to Jesus! Setting the stage for the wonderful work of Jesus. Looking up to Jesus.

Look back at Exodus 12:6 –hundreds of years before:

“Take special care of these lambs until the evening of the fourteenth day of this first month.

Then each family in the community must slaughter its lamb. 7They are to take some of the lamb’s blood and smear it on the top and sides of the doorframe of the house where the lamb will be eaten.

8That evening everyone must eat roast lamb with bitter herbs and bread made without yeast.

The exodus! the bread without yeast! the Salvation,

the freedom!

The festival of Passover was to be an annual holiday in honor of the night when the Lord “passed over” the homes of the Israelites. The Hebrews followed God’s instructions by smearing the blood of a lamb on the doorframes of their homes. That night the firstborn son of every family that did not have blood on the doorframes was killed.

The lamb had to be killed in order to get the blood that would protect them.

(This foreshadowed the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, who gave his blood for the sins of all people.)

Inside their homes, the Israelites ate a meal of roast lamb, bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.

Unleavened bread, bread with no yeast-the bread signifying Christ, Christ with no yeast,

Christ with no sin, but able to take all of ours.

1 cor 10:17, “for we being many are one bread,

and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.” And we all eat from one loaf,

showing that we are one body.

18And think about the nation of Israel;

all who eat the sacrifices are united by that act.

The idea of unity and fellowship with God through

eating a sacrifice was strong in Judaism and Christianity as well as in paganism.

In Old Testament days, when a Jew offered a sacrifice,

he ate a part of that sacrifice as a way of restoring his unity with God, against whom he had sinned (Deuteronomy 12:17-

18You must eat this in the presence of the LORD your God at the place he will choose.

Similarly, Christians participate in Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice at the Lord’s Table when they eat the bread and drink from the cup, symbolizing his body and blood.

Matt 25:26 26 _ As they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread and asked God’s blessing on it.

Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take it and eat it, for this is my body.”

John 6:35 35 _ Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again.

Those who believe in me will never thirst.

36But you haven’t believed in me even though you have seen me. 37 _ However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.

38For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do what I want.

39 _ And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me,

but that I should raise them to eternal life at the last day.

40 _ For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life—that I should raise them at the last day.”

You know, people eat bread to satisfy physical hunger and to sustain physical life. We can satisfy spiritual hunger and sustain spiritual life only by a right relationship with Jesus Christ. No wonder he called himself the Bread of Life.

But bread must be eaten to sustain life, and Christ must be invited into our daily walk to sustain spiritual life.