Thursday, November 25, 2010, 9:35 p.m. – My husband and I had gone to bed. I was praying to the Lord about a passage of scripture Rick and I had just read in the Psalms, and I was inquiring of the Lord concerning how he would want to apply its truths to my life. Just then, this song, Break Thou the Bread of Life, began playing in my mind, so I got up to hear what the Lord wanted to teach me.
Break Thou the Bread of Life / Mary Lathbury / Alexander Groves / William Sherwin
Break Thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me,
As Thou didst break the loaves beside the sea;
Beyond the sacred page I seek Thee, Lord;
My spirit pants for Thee, O living Word!
Bless Thou the truth, dear Lord, to me, to me,
As Thou didst bless the bread by Galilee;
Then shall all bondage cease, all fetters fall;
And I shall find my peace, my all in all.
Thou art the bread of life, O Lord, to me,
Thy holy Word the truth that saveth me;
Give me to eat and live with Thee above;
Teach me to love Thy truth, for Thou art love.
O send Thy Spirit, Lord, now unto me,
That He may touch my eyes, and make me see:
Show me the truth concealed within Thy Word,
And in Thy Book revealed I see the Lord.
Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read Mark 6 about a prophet who is without honor among his own, Jesus sending out his twelve disciples, the beheading of John the Baptist, and concluding with Jesus walking on the water. Right before this last section of this chapter is Mark’s recording of Jesus feeding the five thousand. Mark 6:30-44:
Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand
30 The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. 31 Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
32 So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. 33 But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
35 By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. 36 Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
37 But he answered, “You give them something to eat.”
They said to him, “That would take eight months of a man’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?”
38 “How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see.”
When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.”
39 Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. 42 They all ate and were satisfied, 43 and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. 44 The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.
My Understanding: As I prayerfully read back through the verses to this old hymn, I saw how the verses to the hymn served the purpose here of providing an outline from which to understand the practical application that I believe the Lord has for me to receive this evening from this passage of scripture.
I. Seek the Lord and His truth – The disciples, seeing it was late in the day, suggested to the Lord that he send the people away so that they could get something to eat. “But Jesus answered, ‘You give them something to eat.’” This really jumped out at me as I was reading it. The disciples were thinking in a natural realm of the cost of buying food for that many people, so the Lord asked them how many loaves of bread that they had and then he said, “Go and see.”
Jesus is the bread of life (John 6:35), so the bread that we are to “Go and see” is Jesus. We are to seek after and hunger after Him more than we hunger and seek after anything of this natural realm. The writer of the song said, “My spirit pants for Thee, O Living Word.” To pant is “to have a strong desire and yearning for somebody or something” (Encarta). So, just like Jesus told his disciples to “Go and see,” he is calling us to “Come and see,” and for our hearts’ desire to be for Him more than and above all else that this life has to offer.
Then, when we have “gone and seen” who Jesus is and what he is about and we have hungered after Him and have yearned for him as a deer pants for water, then we are to give the people something to eat. As I prayed that the Lord would give me the message he wanted me to hear from this passage this evening, the words “You give them something to eat” called out to me almost as though the Lord Jesus was audibly saying them to me. We are not to take in the Bread of Life just for ourselves, but we are to give it out to others to eat, too.
II. Pray for the Lord Jesus to impart His truth to me – The writer asked the Lord Jesus to bless the truth to him as Jesus had blessed the bread by Galilee. When Jesus prayed, he looked to heaven. He recognized that his source of power came from the Father, and then he gave thanks for what God was going to do. Then, in faith, Jesus broke the bread and he gave it to his disciples to distribute to the people. When we ask the Lord to impart His truth to us, we must recognize that the spiritual insight into His Word comes from Him. If we truly want to hear from Jesus, we must ask him to bless the Word as he blessed the bread so that what we are receiving is of the Spirit and not of our own natural thinking or reasoning.
Then, when we share its truth with others, it will have the blessing of God upon it and we will be sharing it in the power of the Holy Spirit, imparting Spiritual truths with Spiritual words instead of just sharing our own intellectual or natural understanding. And, it is God’s intention that we share it, too. He had the disciples seek out the bread and he has us seek Him and His truth. Then, he put His blessing upon it so that the miracle of God’s grace could flow through it, and then he gave the food to the disciples to give out. And, that is how he works with us in giving us His Word, in giving us spiritual understanding, and by telling us to go and to tell others what Jesus has done for us. And, it is only the power of the Holy Spirit and the living Word of God that has the power to free us from the strongholds (bondage) in our lives. Our own words cannot set people free.
III. Ask the Lord Jesus to teach me to love His truth – The writer here recognized that Jesus is the bread of life and that he is his Savior, and the Word of truth what led him to salvation, so he desires that he might love the truth of God. This brings me to the other sections of this 6th chapter of Mark’s gospel. When I think about the Lord teaching me to love Him, to love His Word and to love His truth, these three sections prior to the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand comes to mind.
When we love the truth of Jesus and we share the bread of life with others, we need to know that very possibly we will have to go through some of the things mentioned in these verses. The people took offense at Jesus and his words because they did not see him as someone important enough to share such wisdom. It was kind of like someone saying, “Who does he think he is?” There are those who think you must have a seminary degree or have attained some official position or be a certain age or be male in order to speak with wisdom and understanding of the Words of God. So, most likely we will face opposition or rejection from people from our own families, from familiar surroundings, etc.
Also, in learning to love the truth of Jesus, we must want to share it with others and be willing to not be welcomed and to have people not want to listen to us. If we give out only feel-good, comfortable messages that do not convict of sin and do not call for repentance, then we will probably be accepted. Yet, if we preach Christ crucified and us crucified with him, of the need for us to repent, i.e. to turn from our sin and to turn to God/Jesus in faith and obedience, then we are more likely to not be welcomed and maybe even be asked to leave. Jesus said that if they don’t welcome us or they won’t listen to the truth of the Word of God, then we are to leave and to shake the dust off our feet. Herod didn’t like John the Baptist because he said that Herod shouldn’t have his brother’s wife. People don’t like to have someone point out sin in their lives. So, he was beheaded.
IV. Request to have my eyes opened to see the truth in His Word – In the last section of this passage of scripture, the disciples were out on the lake on a boat, the winds and waves came, they were afraid, and they were trying in their own strength to combat the forces against them. Jesus came to them, but they didn’t recognize him. So he said, “It is I, Don’t be afraid.” When he got into the boat, the wind died down. Mark said, “They were completely amazed for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.”
When Jesus teaches us lessons, when he performs miracles in our lives, and when we see him working over and over again and then we come up against something we can’t handle in our own flesh and we respond with fear, it is because we didn’t get it. We didn’t see that it was him all along. We didn’t understand the truth he was trying to reveal about himself to us. So, we need our eyes opened to see that it is Jesus. We need to see that it is him so that we are not afraid. Fear can blind our eyes to truth, and so can stubborn hearts that don’t want to receive the truth. There are many barriers to us being able to see with spiritual eyes what the Lord has for us; to teach us. So, when he says, “It is I,” we need to pay attention. We need to not fear what he wants to show us, and we must receive his truth with willing hearts and with obedience. If we don’t obey the truth, disobedience will also blind us to truth. So, we need to obey.
When the disciples realized that the people needed to be fed, Jesus said, “You give them something to eat.” It is not the responsibility of a preacher or an evangelist or someone else to tell the people in our lives about Jesus, the bread of life, and about salvation through Him. Jesus, I believe, is saying to his disciples today, “You give them something to eat.” We must seek out the truth; we must pant after Jesus; we must love His Word; and we must have our eyes opened to the truth. We must operate in the power of the Holy Spirit and not in the strength of the natural man, seeing through natural eyes, but we must see spiritual truth through spiritual eyes. Then, we must give the people the bread of life. If we don’t, who will? The people of the world are hungry for truth. Will we send them off to go purchase their truth somewhere else? Or, will we seek after the truth, ask for spiritual understanding, obey what we’ve been shown, be willing to love the truth and love the Lord so much to suffer for His sake and the sake of the gospel, and then give the people we know “something to eat”? Jesus is calling out to us to “Come and see” and then to share.
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