Early bread was always yeast-risen bread. In fact, the closest thing we have today is sourdough. A bit of the dough from yesterday’s bread was kept unbaked, and mixed into today’s bread. The yeast spread throughout the dough, allowing it to rise. If by some chance a family lost their starter dough, they would take the foam that comes from fermenting grape juice into wine. That foam contained yeast which was perfectly fine to mix into the new dough. Bread-making and wine-making were closely connected through the yeast that was essential for both products.
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35
As rice is to southern China, bread is to the Middle East – and all the cultures descended from the Middle East – Europe, America. It is only in the last hundred years or so that we have developed the concept of a meal without bread. But still, we have bread at almost every meal: Have you noticed the different kinds of bread?
Sliced bread, hotdog buns, hamburger buns, toast, biscuits - all made from flour and water. Even PASTA! – spaghetti, ziti, macaroni, lasagna, ravioli, linguine, penne. Breakfast foods like schnitzel, Poptarts, cereal. Even the coating on breaded fish, fried chicken, pot pies, pizza, cake and pies!
About the only things we have that truly replace bread in a meal are potatoes and rice.
In ancient Israel, there was less variety of style, but a bit more variety of grain. Barley was native to the area, as was wheat. Both could be grown over the winter, with the spring barley harvest coming first. So barley loaves were common. Wheat was more tolerant of very cold weather than barley, so it gradually replaced barley in Europe, but both were grown in ancient Israel.
There were other crops the people ate – raisins, dates, pomegranates, onions, leeks, and garlic, and some green vegetables, but for their calories, the people relied upon meat and bread. Everything else was luxury.
And so, when the Israelites who fled from Egypt with Moses found themselves in the desert, it was bread and meat that they were missing. In fact, the ancient Egyptian term for barley has come down to us: “eat” Add a Wh sound and you get Wheat. Add an M and you get meat.
So the Israelites were in the desert and they complained to Moses. “Take care of us – give us bread and meat!” they said. After all, they had all been raised as slaves – their masters had supplied them with food instead of paying them wages. Would Moses do the same?
No…but God would.
After God spoke to Moses in front of the Israelistes and promised them meat and bread, a huge flock of quail came to the camp that evening – and everyone had roasted quail that evening. The next morning, when the dew lifted from the ground, they found a little flaky substance like coriander seeds. The people looked at it and called it “manna”, which means “What is it?” The manna was edible and nourishing.
For forty years, manna appeared at the camp. For forty years, God fed the people. For forty years, until the day they crossed over Jordan into the land near Jericho, into the Promised Land, God fed the people with manna.
And so centuries later, Jesus fed 5000 men, plus women and children with five loaves of barley and two fish. And people followed Jesus across the Lake of Galilee to find him again.
Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone gave me a choice between working on a farm with hand tools in a near-desert land, suffering from the uncertainties of farming - and handing me bread just for being there, I think I’d probably be one of the people who followed Jesus from the feeding of the 5000 to where He was near the Lake of Galilee.
But Jesus points out to the crowd: “You are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”
We often give away food and other items to entice people to church. Once, when I attended a German Lutheran church in Ohio a couple of blocks from a college, we had an admin council meeting during which we seriously debated whether or not to give away free beer at Ocktoberfest to attract the college students. (Lutherans are about beer like Methodists are about grape juice – its part of the culture in many of the churches.) But eventually we decided not to offer the beer.
You see, Jesus points out the problem with giveaways – whether it be of food or of anything else: The people came looking for the bread that Jesus had given away – not because they believed He was the Son of God. And we can have that problem also when we focus too much on our giveaways and not on the spiritual advantages of finding out about Christ. Jesus gave advice:
"Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal of approval on Him.”
Now this is one of those things Jesus said that sounds good, but now we have to sit and think and figure out what the practical implications are of this. Not work for food? In those days, that command meant not to work the farm. But if you don’t work the farm, you’ll starve, right?
And then, after a while, you’ll die.
And now we get to the crux of the question of the Christian life.
Jesus tells us to work, not for food that perishes, but for the food that lasts for eternal life which Jesus will give us, because God the Father has approved Jesus. Don't work for food, work for Jesus.
In essence, we are being asked to leave the farm, to leave our jobs, to leave behind the world culture’s definition of success and how everything works – and turn to work for Jesus, and Jesus will take care of us.
Notice that Jesus is not asking this of people who have just met Him. He's not asking this of people who just walked in off the street. Jesus asks this of people who have seen what He can do. The people He is talking to are those people who just a day earlier saw Him feed 5000 men and many women and children with five loaves of bread and two fish. They have seen definite proof of His Divinity. They had seen what Jesus can do!
Have you seen what Jesus can do? Have you decided down in your heart that Jesus is the Son of God, God Himself walking on this earth? Have you decided to follow Christ because Jesus is the Son of God and everything He says is God speaking? Or have you decided to follow Christ because you've bought into the idea that you'll be financially better off by following Jesus around?
Following Jesus and working for Jesus is a difficult decision for people who are caught up in life’s details – raising children, paying off the truck, fixing up the house, working toward a promotion at work. Perhaps that’s why there are two types of people most likely to go into ministry – those in their late teens or early twenties, and those in their fifties. The first haven’t yet been sucked up by the vacuum of the world’s culture and the older people have learned what is important.
There was a time when we felt that someone my age, late 50’s, was just about ready to retire, to slow down, to stop working and go fishing. But today, someone who is 70 years old can expect to live another 20 or 25 years and stay active until the last few years. Seventy is the new fifty. Perhaps we can think about what we should do as we age – we raise our children, we become grandparents, and then perhaps we begin teaching young people what we know about Christ, about God, about the Holy Spirit and the important things of life. We stop teaching so much about how to earn our ordinary daily bread, and we begin teaching about the Bread of Life.
For if we do not teach about Jesus, Hollywood will. Do you trust Hollywood to get it right? If we do not teach about the way of living Jesus taught, television shows will. Do you trust television to teach the commands of Christ? We can no longer count on the school system to support us like they did in the fifties and sixties. In fact, the school system is likely to teach more about other religions than about Christianity.
But if you were to volunteer at the school – who knows how much influence you might have on young people. If you were to join in developing a church children’s program – who knows what a difference it would make. If you were to become a grandparent to one of the young couples who lives just down the street from you, teaching them life lessons and lessons about the Bread of Life – what difference would it make in ten or fifteen years as their children grew up in your neighborhood.
Many of you already have pensions and social security coming in. You have no need to work for the bread that perishes. Instead, drop by this week, give me a call, send me a message – to discuss how you could work for the food that lasts for eternal life that the Son of Man provides.
Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone gave me a choice between working on a farm with hand tools in a near-desert land, suffering from the uncertainties of farming - and handing me bread just for being there, I think I’d probably be one of the people who followed Jesus from the feeding of the 5000 to where He was near the Lake of Galilee.
But Jesus points out to the crowd: “You are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.”
We often give away food and other items to entice people to church. Once, when I attended a German Lutheran church in Ohio a couple of blocks from a college, we had an admin council meeting during which we seriously debated whether or not to give away free beer at Ocktoberfest to attract the college students. (Lutherans are about beer like Methodists are about grape juice – its part of the culture in many of the churches.) But eventually we decided not to offer the beer.
You see, Jesus points out the problem with giveaways – whether it be of food or of anything else: The people came looking for the bread that Jesus had given away – not because they believed He was the Son of God. And we can have that problem also when we focus too much on our giveaways and not on the spiritual advantages of finding out about Christ. Jesus gave advice:
"Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal of approval on Him.”
Now this is one of those things Jesus said that sounds good, but now we have to sit and think and figure out what the practical implications are of this. Not work for food? In those days, that command meant not to work the farm. But if you don’t work the farm, you’ll starve, right?
And then, after a while, you’ll die.
And now we get to the crux of the question of the Christian life.
Jesus tells us to work, not for food that perishes, but for the food that lasts for eternal life which Jesus will give us, because God the Father has approved Jesus. Don't work for food, work for Jesus.
In essence, we are being asked to leave the farm, to leave our jobs, to leave behind the world culture’s definition of success and how everything works – and turn to work for Jesus, and Jesus will take care of us.
Notice that Jesus is not asking this of people who have just met Him. He's not asking this of people who just walked in off the street. Jesus asks this of people who have seen what He can do. The people He is talking to are those people who just a day earlier saw Him feed 5000 men and many women and children with five loaves of bread and two fish. They have seen definite proof of His Divinity. They had seen what Jesus can do!
Have you seen what Jesus can do? Have you decided down in your heart that Jesus is the Son of God, God Himself walking on this earth? Have you decided to follow Christ because Jesus is the Son of God and everything He says is God speaking? Or have you decided to follow Christ because you've bought into the idea that you'll be financially better off by following Jesus around?
Following Jesus and working for Jesus is a difficult decision for people who are caught up in life’s details – raising children, paying off the truck, fixing up the house, working toward a promotion at work. Perhaps that’s why there are two types of people most likely to go into ministry – those in their late teens or early twenties, and those in their fifties. The first haven’t yet been sucked up by the vacuum of the world’s culture and the older people have learned what is important.
There was a time when we felt that someone my age, late 50’s, was just about ready to retire, to slow down, to stop working and go fishing. But today, someone who is 70 years old can expect to live another 20 or 25 years and stay active until the last few years. Seventy is the new fifty. Perhaps we can think about what we should do as we age – we raise our children, we become grandparents, and then perhaps we begin teaching young people what we know about Christ, about God, about the Holy Spirit and the important things of life. We stop teaching so much about how to earn our ordinary daily bread, and we begin teaching about the Bread of Life.
For if we do not teach about Jesus, Hollywood will. Do you trust Hollywood to get it right? If we do not teach about the way of living Jesus taught, television shows will. Do you trust television to teach the commands of Christ? We can no longer count on the school system to support us like they did in the fifties and sixties. In fact, the school system is likely to teach more about other religions than about Christianity.
But if you were to volunteer at the school – who knows how much influence you might have on young people. If you were to join in developing a church children’s program – who knows what a difference it would make. If you were to become a grandparent to one of the young couples who lives just down the street from you, teaching them life lessons and lessons about the Bread of Life – what difference would it make in ten or fifteen years as their children grew up in your neighborhood.
Many of you already have pensions and social security coming in. You have no need to work for the bread that perishes. Instead, drop by this week, give me a call, send me a message – to discuss how you could work for the food that lasts for eternal life that the Son of Man provides.
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