Crisis in Galilee
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from their oppressors, and exalt them to power and honor? The fact
that He claimed to be the Sent of God, and yet refused to be Israel’s
king, was a mystery which they could not fathom. His refusal was
misinterpreted. Many concluded that He dared not assert His claims
because He Himself doubted as to the divine character of His mission.
Thus they opened their hearts to unbelief, and the seed which Satan
had sown bore fruit of its kind, in misunderstanding and defection.
Now, half mockingly, a rabbi questioned, “What sign showest
Thou then, that we may see, and believe Thee? what dost Thou work?
Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them
bread from heaven to eat.”
The Jews honored Moses as the giver of the manna, ascribing
praise to the instrument, and losing sight of Him by whom the work
had been accomplished. Their fathers had murmured against Moses,
and had doubted and denied his divine mission. Now in the same
spirit the children rejected the One who bore the message of God to
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themselves. “Then said Jesus unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven.” The giver of the
manna was standing among them. It was Christ Himself who had
led the Hebrews through the wilderness, and had daily fed them with
the bread from heaven. That food was a type of the real bread from
heaven. The life-giving Spirit, flowing from the infinite fullness of
God, is the true manna. Jesus said, “The bread of God is that which
cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world.”
John 6:33
,
R. V.
Still thinking that it was temporal food to which Jesus referred,
some of His hearers exclaimed, “Lord, evermore give us this bread.”
Jesus then spoke plainly: “I am the bread of life.”
The figure which Christ used was a familiar one to the Jews. Moses,
by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had said, “Man doth not live by
bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the
Lord.” And the prophet Jeremiah had written, “Thy words were found,
and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of
mine heart.”
Deuteronomy 8:3
;
Jeremiah 15:16
. The rabbis themselves
had a saying, that the eating of bread, in its spiritual significance, was
the study of the law and the practice of good works; and it was often
said that at the Messiah’s coming all Israel would be fed. The teaching
of the prophets made plain the deep spiritual lesson in the miracle of