THE GLORIOUS NAMES OF JESUS REPRINT OF AMOS R. WELLS 1926

THE GLORIOUS NAMES OF JESUS
REPRINT OF AMOS R. WELLS 1926

The bread of life
Chapter 7

Something To Consider:
Our Lord was the creator of bread. Without Him was nothing made that has been made. Jesus was with God the Father in the beginning, when the first grain stalk shot through the soil of the earth and the first kernel was formed in its sheath.

Jesus was with man in the beginning, when grain was first pounded between stones and the flour mixed with water and the first cake baked over the coals of a primitive fire. All through the ages our Lord has furnished bread to the eater, bread ever more palatable and convenient and healthful. No one has a better right than He to call Himself the Bread of Life.

Nor did Christ disdain the bread He made. He came to feed the hungry, and He did. He did not form our marvelous bodies only to disregard their nourishment. Nor a starved stomach whether in China, India, Africa, or even in America, but moves His heart with loving pity and concern.

Jesus came that men, women, and young people might live the more abundant life, abounding in food and every other good thing. The five thousand and the four thousand Jesus fed with mere morsels, had no need to depart from Him when the hour for an evening meal came. Therefore, His creative hands drew from the capricious air an ample supply of bread and fish. All the sky becomes a breadbasket when Jesus feeds those attempting to follow Him.

Something Else To Consider:
We much too often forget these biblical truths when faced with a crisis in our own lives. Many times, we are focused on the spiritual side of our Savior’s life that we forget the physical aspects of a personal relationship with Christ. We sometimes neglect to realize that our Creator’s delight is in us, His creation. No bodily lack is too slight to take to Him. No bodily pain is insignificant in His mind.

The Lord of heaven and earth is interested in the way His bread is made, that it be well mixed, light within the crusty exterior and full of the finest of earthly grains. Therefore, ours is not a ghostly religion or a religion of vapor. The Bread of Life, Jesus, is substantial, the literal sustenance of life itself. But having said that, we must not forget that Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life in protest against those who sought Him for the barley loaves and the fish. According to Jesus, the life is more than bread.

Christ Jesus is the Bread of Life only to those who do not stop with the life of the body, which He nourishes, but also goes on to the finer feeding of the soul. Yes, Jesus is the Bread of earthly life, but He is so much more to the true seeker of His righteousness and His kingdom. Jesus is the Bread of eternal life.

That is why the Savior called those blessed that hunger after righteousness. Hungering after the righteousness of Jesus Christ is a wonderful thing. It is by our hungering after the things of God that we grow spiritually. The child without an appetite will eventually be buried due to an early death. The student without an appetite for learning shrinks into mental nothingness. The soul that is not longing after purity, truth, peace, and biblically based love, will speedily wither and die spiritually speaking.

Therefore, hunger is the handmaid of civilization, the fiery torch of progress, and the inspiring spirit of development. Though as much as starvation is terrible, hunger with ample bread at hand is the joy and exhilaration of all being.

Something More To Consider:
When Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life, He meant that He was the God of satisfaction. All searching finds its end in Him. Every desire discovers in Him its fulfillment. We rejoice in our longings, if we truly know Jesus, for we know that He is coming to meet those with anticipation filling their hearts and minds as bread so fills our physical hungering.

Yet, we have not reached the crowning meaning of this glorious name of Jesus. Not until the Lord’s Supper was it disclosed, not until the Redeemer took bread, broke it, and blessed it before His disciples in the upper room, and said, “This is My body, broken for you.” In that feast we discover Jesus to indeed be the Bread of Life.

The bread of the communion table tells us that this supreme satisfaction of all our desires and completion of all our needs is not without cost, and that of an unimaginable cost. It is an unspeakable gift. It is without money and without price to us, but paid for by the Creator Himself, and paid for at an infinite expense.

A Few Final Words:
Jesus, the Bread of Life, is a broken loaf, broken as the rock is broken to release its hidden wealth and worth; broken as the soil is broken to plant the seed that brings about an abundant harvest; broken as the alabaster cruse of expensive oil was broken in order to release an ointment of which the fragrance might fill the house.

An unblemished loaf of bread is a fine thing, but there is no perfection like the broken loaf of the communion table of which represents the sacrificial atonement that took place on an old, rugged cross on a hill called Calvary.

Therefore, let us eat the Bread of Life, all of us with most daring and with most blessed of smiles. And in doing so, flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood it shall spiritually become.

Prayer:
Our Father in heaven, thank You for allowing Jesus to become our very own Bread of Life in this earthly life as well as in eternal life. Jesus, the living Word of God fully sustains us both physically and spiritually. Therefore, may we willingly submit ourselves to His care and capable hands of sufficiency. In Him Always, Amen!