Jesus Came Down

What Did Jesus Do?

For the bread of heaven is he who comes down from heaven
and gives his life to the world.
John 6.33

I’m not one to worry about making a fool of myself, so I don’t mind telling you about the time I was convinced there was something wrong with our breadmaker. We had one of those machines where you throw all the ingredients in and it kneads the bread, lets it rise, and bakes it, all while you can be busy doing anything else you please. Pour in the ingredients, push a button, come back in a couple of hours, and you’ve got bread!

Well that’s just what I did one time, only to come back and find a doorstop in the breadmaker! I had about a two inch high “loaf” of, well, I couldn’t quite call it bread. Usually the loaf would have been maybe 8-9 inches long. Well, I gamely tried to eat the, well, not bread, but I am not sure what to call it. Unfortunately it was just about as hard as it was dense, so I couldn’t even get a decent bite of it.

It was only a couple of weeks later when I mentioned to a friend that our breadmaket wasn’t working well, that I discovered that brewer’s yeast, while apparently good for making beer, does not make good bread because it doesn’t rise. So, now you know what a dope I used to be (I’d never be so dumb now. Believe that and I have this bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.).

All this is to say that most of us are used to bread that rises. But, in the long run, the bread we really need is the bread that came down. Not that He was the first, of course. The ancient Israelites had been sustained through forty years of wilderness sojourning by bread that came down from heaven. That bread had been manna, manna from God, not Moses. Ironically, all the faithless generation which had come out of Egypt and was fed by the manna perished in the wilderness. While manna could sustain people who were hungry, it couldn’t give life to those who were truly perishing because of their sins.

But the other bread that “came down,” the bread that not only came down, but stood there before the people, he was the “true bread from heaven.” In a rather strange, but gloriously divine, process, the “true bread” had to be lifted up on the cross, then laid low in a tomb, in order that He should do what bread does—rise. Of course, Jesus rose like no bread any of us have ever known. He rose with redeeming power and with life in Him. And, that we might have life, the Holy Spirit makes whatever bread we partake in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the true living bead in us.

Now most of us are not all that interested in coming down; we’d much rather rise, thank you very much. But life, true life, is only for those who are first willing to give up their life (See Matthew 16.25). That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4