Corona Devo 3166
Bread has always been a staple for me. I can't remember not enjoying bread and having it as a part of our daily and holiday meals.
Rye bread with corned beef and swiss sandwiches.
White bread for packed-lunch sandwiches.
Refrigerated French bread (Pillsbury) dough,...baked into a loaf of crispy-crust and hot, soft bread inside.
Italian fruit stollen bread (Panettone) for Christmas-time.
Pumpernickel bread cut into dipping cubes and paired with spinach dip.
Ciabatta bread with pasta dinners.
Cornbread with chili.
Sourdough bread sliced and toasted with butter and jam.
Yep...it's official, I love bread, and I eat some form of it daily.
And (I'm guessing)...I am not alone. Most of us enjoy bread. And God knows that. Most (all?) cultures have always enjoyed bread products (of some sort) as daily sustenance and substance. Bread is something that people can all understand/relate-to/identify with.
Perhaps that's why the Lord compares and associates His Word (the Bible) with "daily" bread.
When teaching His disciples how to pray, Jesus plainly says, "Give us this day our daily bread", and He is referring to Himself/His Word/His Father's Words as that daily bread.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (11) Give us this day our daily bread. (12) And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. (13) And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. ~Matthew 6:10-13
Daily strength comes from daily Scripture. Hence, the Bible is our daily bread.
Give us this day our daily bread. ~Matthew 6:11
As if we would starve without it. Feed our spirit through the verses and Truths and power of your Word, our daily bread. Amen.
~~~
Do we know?
Here's a hint--the term doesn't stem from daily bread deliveries (similar to when milk men brought bottles to the door daily).
It also doesn't come from regular bread traditions, such as rye bread on St. Patrick's day, or homemade bread in our ovens or breadmakers.
Daily bread is God's term for us digging in to Him and His Word daily, and the idea and example of daily bread comes to us from the Old Testament Book of Exodus. God had (miraculously) rescued His people (the Israelites) from the slavery of the Egyptians, and (after about two weeks), as the Israelites traveled to their Promised Land, they got hungry. Incidentally, they also got crabby and selfish and rude with God.
The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. (2) In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. (3) The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” ~Exodus 16:1-3
God's people had forgotten the miracles (being freed from Egyptian slavery and parting of the Red Sea) that God had (very recently!) performed for them. And they got hungry and cranky...and rude toward God.
But our Lord is so gracious...even when we get self-focused and forget His goodness (and His holiness). His love is long-suffering and unending for us, and thus, even as His people accused and abused His Lord's holy Name...the Lord was designing a way to bless them and care for them. And that blessing came through daily bread, or as the Bible (first) terms it: manna.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. (5) On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”...
(31) The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. ~Exodus 16:4-5, 31
God's people were wandering around in the wilderness of Canaan, and they needed food to live...and God provided a daily offering of food. He created it and then delivered it daily. All they had to do was gather it, and as a test of their daily faith, trust and dependence on God, the people were only to gather and keep enough manna for that day (daily bread). Extra manna (beyond what they needed for that day) would mold. Except they were to gather a double portion on the sixth day, so that they might honor God by resting on the seventh day.
Can we possibly see the correlation that God was making in His daily provision of manna to His people in the wilderness...and our daily dose of His Word (the Bible) as we seek to survive and thrive in the wilderness of this world and its cultures?
When we open up the Bible every day... God is provided a daily offering of His spiritual food to us. His daily bread. All we have to do is seek it and gather it.
But (Have we noticed?), we can't "store up" our faith. And we can't rely on someone else's faith. We have to gather God's strength and encouragement daily from the Bible, just as the Israelites gathered their manna daily.
In this way, God tested their daily faith, trust and dependence on Him. We can't store it up. We can't just read the Bible once a week. We must rely on God daily, for direction and for strength. And we must rest on Sunday's.
Read these verses again, but with us in mind:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. (5) On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”... ~Exodus 16:4-5
If (by chance), we (like the Israelites) had forgotten the miracles that God has performed in the Bible and in our lives...then let's be reminded.
If we (in life/in faith/inside) have gotten hungry and cranky...and rude toward God...then let's stop and repent.
And thank goodness (and thank God!), that our Lord is so gracious...that even when we get self-focused and we forget His goodness (and His holiness)...His love is (still) long-suffering and unending for us.
Friends, even if we have accused and abused the Lord's Holy Name...He has already designed a way to bless us and care for us, and that blessing comes through the Bible, our daily bread, our manna.
Open it up today. Eat of it. Let's be sustained and fortified by God's daily bread for us. He has gone to great lengths to provide His Word and Truth to us, and this bread will change our lives.
But we can't store it up...we must seek the Lord's face daily and search His Word for His wisdom and ways. And He will feed us through it.
Let's ask Him to give it to us today:
“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die: (8) Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. (9) Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. ~Proverbs 30:7-9
And He will.
He does.
He has.
His daily bread for us is His Word, (the Bible), but God's daily bread to us is also His Son, Jesus Christ, Who declares Himself to be our bread of life.
I am the bread of life. (49) Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. (50) But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. (51) I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
(52) Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ~John 6:48-52
Did we hear the Jews arguing among themselves?
They argued because they didn't get it. They (literally) thought Jesus wanted His followers to eat His flesh.
But that is not what Jesus meant at all.
Do we get it today? God doesn't want us to spend our lives (or another moment) missing His point. He is the point, and the Bible and Jesus are our daily bread, our manna from Heaven.
We can't store them up on a shelf or in a barn, but we can take deep drinks one day at a time and partake of both daily. Repeatedly. And daily.
We want to understand the correlation between the manna that God gave the Israelites daily in the wilderness, and the manna that He gives us daily.
Eat of God's Word, just as the Israelites ate of the manna
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. ~Revelation 2:17
~~~
We've had rye bread and sourdough bread and white bread and pumpernickel bread, but none of these compare to the Lord's daily bread.
Blessings,
sarah
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