“Beginning With Moses, Part 11” by Romans
Youtube Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
We are continuing our Series "Beginning With Moses." On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus caught up with and spoke with two disciples who were sad and perplexed about the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection reports about Jesus, the One Whom they "trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21). In response to their sadness and confusion, Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. We read, “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).
First, tonight, Jesus may well have included in His review of the things that concerned Himself. Last week, we reviewed and examined the Israelites murmuring against God and Moses and the manna God had provided them. This they did with great disdain, provoking God to send fiery serpents among them.
We read of their murmuring in Numbers 21:5: “And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.” Their contempt for that “light bread” is translated in the ESV, “... and we loathe this worthless food.”
God miraculously provided manna for the children of Israel that kept them alive in the wilderness for 40 years, but they never appreciated this gift, and they expressed nothing but disdain and disrespect for it. Manna, the bread from heaven, was also an amazing symbolic and prophectic foreshadowing of Jesus Christ in many ways that is easy to overlook and miss.
But, this is my goal, and it is why I prepare these weekly Discussions: To help us all to see what we would otherwise easily read over and miss! I do this along with many others who have gone before me, and whose profound and insightful writings I have leaned on and shared in the years I have been conducting these Discussions. So, tonight, let's take a deep dive into manna, the bread from Heaven, and see all the ways it was a “type,” or a prophetic foreshadow of Christ.
Let's see, first, that the word “manna,” itself, signified, “What is this?” Jesus identified Himself with manna. We read in John 6:47-51 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Most of us are aware of Jesus' also calling Himself the Bread of Life. So let's take a closer look at manna, and see all the ways it was a Type of Christ: First, like Jesus, manna was of Divine Origin: In the Old Testament, we read in Exodus 16:4 “Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.”
In the New Testament, we read of Christ in John 6:32 “Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.”
Next, Manna was unmerited, and God provided it to give and sustain life in spite of Israel's continual murmurings: We read in Psalms 78:24, “And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.
Like the manna that was given to the children of Israel that they might live, God sent His Son as a Sacrifice to die in our places that we might live. That, too was also unmerited. In the New Testament, Paul wrote in Romans 5:6 and 8 “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly...” 8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Next, as manna was a source of confusion to the Israelites, people were also confused about the Person of Christ: First, regarding the Israelites we read in Exodus 16:15: “And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
Similarly, in the New Testament, we read that Jesus was also a Source of confusion. Notice in Matthew 16:13-14 “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.”
And also in John 7:12, “And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but he deceiveth the people.” We also read their demand for clarification in John 10:24, “Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.”
Manna was unappreciated and even resented by those to whom it was sent: In addition to what we have already seen of the Israelites murmurings about it, we also read in Numbers 11:6 “But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.”
Jesus was also unappreciated and resented by those to whom He was sent. He commented on this, Himself, in Matthew 11:18-19: He said to His detractors and critics, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.
We also read in John 10:19-20, “There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?”
And, the ultimate declaration of Jesus not being appreciated by those to whom He was sent, we read beginning in John 19:15 “But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.” They then added the inconceivable declaration is Matthew 27:25: “Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.”
Manna was sufficient to supply all the needs to those to whom it was sent: Notice in Exodus 16:18 “and they measure with an omer, and he who is gathering much hath nothing over, and he who is gathering little hath no lack, each according to his eating they have gathered.”
In the New Testament, of Jesus' adequacy we read in Philippians 4:19 “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”
Manna was sustaining: Exodus 16:35 And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.
Of Jesus we read in John 6:35 “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”
Manna was a Gift from God: In the Old Testament in Exodus 16:15 “And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
In the New Testament, Jesus spoke to the woman at the well referring to Himself as a Gift. She asked Jesus, “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water” (John 4:9-10).
So you see, from many different perspectives, when Jesus said he was the True Bread from Heaven, if we go back and consider the foreshadowing type that manna was, we get a clearer picture of Jesus, His ministry, and the Life He wants to provide us and share with us.
Of the first statement, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35), Matthew Henry tells us, “Christ, having replied to their enquiries, takes further occasion from their objection concerning the manna to discourse of himself under the similitude of bread, and of believing under the similitude of eating and drinking; to which, together with his putting both together in the eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood, and with the remarks made upon it by the hearers, the rest of this conference may be reduced.
1. Christ having spoken of himself as the great gift of God, and the true bread (Joh_6:32), largely explains and confirms this, that we may rightly know him. (1.) He here shows that he is the true bread; this he repeats again and again, (see John 6:33, 35 and 48-51). Observe, [1.] That Christ is bread is that to the soul which bread is to the body, nourishes and supports the spiritual life (is the staff of it) as bread does the bodily life; it is the staff of life.
The doctrines of the gospel concerning Christ - that he is the mediator between God and man, that he is our peace, our righteousness, our Redeemer; by these things do men live. Our bodies could better live without food than our souls without Christ. Bread-corn is bruised (Isaiah 28:28), so was Christ; he was born at Bethlehem, the house of bread, and typified by the show-bread.
[2.] That he is the bread of God (John 6:33), divine bread; it is he that is of God (John 6:46), bread which my Father gives (John 6:32), which he has made to be the food of our souls; the bread of God's family, his children's bread. The Levitical sacrifices are called the bread of God (Leviticus 21:21-22), and Christ is the great sacrifice; Christ, in his word and ordinances, the feast upon the sacrifice.
[3.] That he is the bread of life (John 6:35 and 48), that bread of life, alluding to the tree of life in the midst of the garden of Eden, which was to Adam the seal of that part of the covenant, Do this and live, of which he might eat and live. Christ is the bread of life, for he is the fruit of the tree of life.
First, He is the living bread (so he explains himself, Joh_6:51): I am the living bread. Bread is itself a dead thing, and nourishes not but by the help of the faculties of a living body; but Christ is himself living bread, and nourishes by his own power.
Manna was a dead thing; if kept but one night, it putrefied and bred worms; but Christ is ever living, everlasting bread, that never moulds, nor waxes old. The doctrine of Christ crucified is now as strengthening and comforting to a believer as ever it was, and his mediation still of as much value and efficacy as ever.
Secondly, He gives life unto the world (Joh_6:33), spiritual and eternal life; the life of the soul in union and communion with God here, and in the vision and fruition of him hereafter; a life that includes in it all happiness. The manna did only reserve and support life, did not preserve and perpetuate life, much less restore it; but Christ gives life to those that were dead in sin.
The manna was ordained only for the life of the Israelites, but Christ is given for the life of the world; none are excluded from the benefit of this bread, but such as exclude themselves. Christ came to put life into the minds of men, principles productive of acceptable performances. [4.] That he is the bread which came down from heaven; this is often repeated here, John 6:33, John 6:50, John 6:51, John 6:58.
This denotes, First, The divinity of Christ's person. As God, he had a being in heaven, whence he came to take our nature upon him: I came down from heaven, whence we may infer his antiquity, he was in the beginning with God; his ability, for heaven is the firmament of power; and his authority, he came with a divine commission.
Secondly, The divine original of all that good which flows to us through him. He comes, not only katabas - that came down (John 6:51), but katabainōi - that comes down; he is descending, denoting a constant communication of light, life, and love, from God to believers through Christ, as the manna descended daily; see Ephesians 1:3. Omnia desuper - All things from above. [5.] That he is that bread of which the manna was a type and figure (John 6:58), that bread, the true bread, John 6:32.
As the rock that they drank of was Christ, so was the manna they ate of spiritual bread, (see 1 Corinthians 10:3-4). Manna was given to Israel; so Christ to the spiritual Israel. There was manna enough for them all; so in Christ a fulness of grace for all believers; he that gathers much of this manna will have none to spare when he comes to use it; and he that gathers little, when his grace comes to be perfected in glory, shall find that he has no lack.
Manna was to be gathered in the morning; and those that would find Christ must seek him early. Manna was sweet, and, as the author of the Wisdom of Solomon tells us (Wisdom 16:20), was agreeable to every palate; and to those that believe Christ is precious. Israel lived upon manna till they came to Canaan; and Christ is our life. There was a memorial of the manna preserved in the ark; so of Christ in the Lord's supper, as the food of souls.”
Finally, The Expositor's Bible tells us, “When our Lord pointed out to the Galileans that the work of God was to believe in Him, they demanded a further sign as evidence that He was God’s Messenger: “What sign doest Thou that we may see and believe Thee? What dost Thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; they had bread from heaven, not common barley loaves such as we got from You yesterday. Have You any such sign as this to give?
If You are sent from God, we may surely expect you to rival Moses.” To which Jesus replies: “The bread which your fathers received did not prevent them dying; it was meant to sustain physical life, and yet even in that respect it was not perfect. God has a better bread to give, a bread which will sustain you in spiritual life, not for a few years but for ever” (John 6:49-51). “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.”
This they could not understand. They believed that the manna came from heaven. Not the richest field of Egypt had produced it. It seemed to come direct from God’s hand. The Israelites could neither raise it nor improve upon it. But how Jesus, “whose father and mother we know,” whom they could trace to a definite human origin, could say that He came from heaven they could not understand.
And yet, even while they stumbled at His claim to a superhuman origin, they felt there might be something in it. Everyone with whom He came in contact felt there was in Him something unaccountable. The Pharisees feared while they hated Him. Pilate could not classify Him with any variety of offender he had met with. Why do men still continually attempt afresh to account for Him, and to give at last a perfectly satisfactory explanation, on ordinary principles, of all that He was and did?
Why, but because it is seen that as yet He has not been so accounted for? Men do not thus strive to prove that Shakespeare was a mere man, or that Socrates or Epictetus was a mere man. Alas! that is only too obvious. But to Christ men turn and turn again with the feeling that here is something which human nature does not account for;
something different, and something more than what results from human parentage and human environment, something which He Himself accounts for by the plain and unflinching statement that He is “from heaven.” For my part, I do not see that this can mean anything less than that Christ is Divine, that in Him we have God, and in Him touch the actual Source of all life.
In Him we have the one thing within our reach which is not earth-grown, the one uncorrupted Source of life to which we can turn from the inadequacy, impurity, and emptiness of a sin-sick world... Christ is the Bread from heaven, because in Christ God gives Himself to us, that by His life we may live.
There is another sense in which Christ probably used the word “living.” In contrast to the dead bread He had given them He was alive. The same law seems to hold good of our physical and of our spiritual life. We cannot sustain physical life except by using as food that which has been alive. The nutritive properties of the earth and the air must have been assimilated for us by living plants and animals before we can use them.
The plant sucks sustenance out of the earth-we can live upon the plant but not on the earth. The ox finds ample nourishment in grass; we can live on the ox but not on the grass. And so with spiritual nutriment. Abstract truth we can make little of at first hand; it needs to be embodied in a living form before we can live upon it.
Even God is remote and abstract, and non-Christian theism makes thin-blooded and spectral worshippers; it is when the Word becomes flesh; when the hidden reason of all things takes human form and steps out on the earth before us, that truth becomes nutritive, and God our life.
Still more explicitly Christ says: “The bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” For it is in this great act of dying that He becomes the Bread of Life. God sharing with us to the uttermost; God proving that His will is our righteousness;
God bearing our sorrows and our sins; God coming into our human race, and becoming a part of its history-all this is seen in the cross of Christ; but it is also seen that absolute love for men, and absolute submission to God, were the moving forces of Christ’s life.
He was obedient even unto death. This was His life, and by the cross He made it ours. The cross subdues our hearts to Him, and gives us to feel that self-sacrifice is the true life of man. A man in a sickly state of body has sometimes to make it matter of consideration, or even of consultation, what he shall eat.
How are we to avail ourselves of the life that is in Christ? As the Jews asked, How can this man give us His flesh to eat? Our Lord Himself uses several terms to express the act by which we make use of Him as the Bread of Life. “He that believeth on Me,” “He that cometh to Me,” “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life.” Each of these expressions has its own significance.
Belief must come first-belief that Christ is sent to give us life; belief that it depends upon our connection with that one Person whether we shall or shall not have life eternal. We must also “come to Him.” The people He was addressing had followed Him for miles, and had found Him and were speaking to Him, but they had not come to Him. To come to Him is to approach Him in spirit and with submissive trust;
it is to commit ourselves to Him as our Lord; it is to rest in Him as our all; it is to come to Him with open heart, accepting Him as all He claims to be; it is to meet the eye of a present, living Christ, who knows what is in man, and to say to Him “I am Thine, Thine most gladly, Thine for evermore." But most emphatically of all does our Lord say that we must “eat His flesh and drink His blood” if we are to partake of His life.
That is to say, the connection between Christ and us must be of the closest possible kind; so close that the assimilation of the food we eat is not too strong a figure to express it. The food we eat becomes our blood and flesh; it becomes our life, our self. And it does so by our eating it, not by our talking of it, not by our looking at it, and admiring its nutritive properties, but only by eating it.
And whatever process can make Christ entirely ours, and help us to assimilate all that is in Him, this process we are to use. The flesh of Christ was given for us; by the shedding of Christ’s blood, by the pouring out of His life upon the cross, spiritual life was prepared for us. Cleansing from sin and restoration to God were provided by the offering of His life in the flesh; and we eat His flesh when we use in our own behalf the death of Christ, and take the blessings it has made possible to us;
when we accept the forgiveness of sins, enter into the love of God, and adopt as our own the spirit of the cross. His flesh or human form was the manifestation of God’s love for us, the visible material of His sacrifice; and we eat His flesh when we make this our own, when we accept God’s love and adopt Christ’s sacrifice as our guiding principle of life.
We eat His flesh when we take out of His life and death the spiritual nutriment that is actually there; when we let our nature be penetrated by the spirit of the cross, and actually make Christ the Source and the Guide of our spiritual life. This figure of eating has many lessons for us. Above all, it reminds us of the poor appetite we have for spiritual nourishment.
How thoroughly by this process of eating does the healthy body extract from its food every particle of real nutriment. By this process the food is made to yield all that it contains of nourishing substance. But how far is this from representing our treatment of Christ.
How much is there in Him that is fitted to yield comfort and hope, and yet to us it yields none. How much that should fill us with assurance of God’s love, yet how fearfully we live. How much to make us admire self-sacrifice and fill us with earnest purpose to live for others, and yet how little of this becomes in very deed our life. God sees in Him all that can make us complete, all that can fill and gladden and suffice the soul, and yet how bare and troubled and defeated do we live.
The mode of distribution was also significant. Christ gives life to the world not directly, but through His disciples. The life He gives is Himself, but He gives it through the instrumentality of men. The bread is His. The disciples may manipulate it as they will, but it remains five loaves only. None but He can relieve the famishing multitude. Still not with His own hands does He feed them, but through the believing service of the Twelve.
And this He did not merely for the sake of teaching us that only through the Church is the world supplied with the life He furnishes, but primarily because it was the natural and fit order then, as it is the natural and fit order now, that they who themselves believe in the power of the Lord to feed the world should be the means of distributing what He gives.
Each of the disciples received from the Lord no more than would satisfy himself, yet held in his hand what would through the Lord’s blessing satisfy a hundred besides. And it is a grave truth we here meet, that every one of us who has received life from Christ has thereby in possession what may give life to many other human souls.
We may give it or we may withhold it; we may communicate it to the famishing souls around us or we may hear unconcerned the weary heart-faint sigh; but the Lord knows to whom He has given the bread of life, and He gives it not solely for our own consumption but for distribution.
It is not the privilege of the more enlightened or more fervent disciple, but of all. He who receives from the Lord what is enough for himself holds the lives of some of his fellows in his hand. Doubtless the faith of the disciples was severely tried when they were required to advance each man to his separate hundred with his morsel of bread.
There would be no struggling for the first place then. But encouraged in their faith by the simple and confident words of prayer their Master had addressed to the Father, they are emboldened to do His bidding, and if they gave sparingly and cautiously at first, their parsimony must soon have been rebuked and their hearts enlarged.
Theirs is also our trial. We know we should be more helpful to others; but in presence of the sorrowful we seem to have no word of comfort; seeing this man and that pursuing a way the end of which is death, we have yet no wise word of remonstrance, no loving entreaty; lives are trifled away at our side, and we are conscious of no ability to elevate and dignify; lives are worn out in crushing toil and misery, and we feel helpless to aid.
The habit grows upon us of expecting rather to get good than to do good. We have long recognised that we are too little influenced by God’s grace, and only at long intervals now are we ashamed of this; it has become our acknowledged state. We have found that we are not the kind of people who are to influence others. Looking at our slim faith, our stunted character, our slender knowledge, we say, “What is this among so many?”
But the thought which shines through all others as we read this narrative is the genial tenderness of Christ. He is here seen to be considerate of our wants, mindful of our weaknesses, quick to calculate our prospects and to provide for us, simple, practical, earnest in His love. We see here how He withholds no good thing from us, but considers and gives what we actually need. We see how reasonable it is that He should require us to trust Him.
To every fainting soul, to every one who has wandered far and whose strength is gone, and round whom the shadows and chills of night are gathering, He says through this miracle: “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”
The figure of eating reminds us that the acceptance of Christ is an act which each man must do for himself. No other man can eat for me. It also reminds us that as the food we eat is distributed, without our own will or supervision, to every part of the body, giving light to the eye and strength to the arm, making bone or skin in one place, nerve or blood-vessel in another, so, if only we make Christ our own, the life that is in Him suffices for all the requirements of human nature and human duty.”
So we can now clearly see that manna was a significant “type” of Christ, and His saying of Himself in reference to manna many centuries later, “I am that living bread that came down from Heaven” (John 6:51). The casual reader can easily miss these things, and certainly believers who limit their intake of spiritual food to a one-hour sermon once a week, will almost certainly miss it, doing themselves a grave disservice in the process.
These Scriptures that Jesus referred to on the Road to Emmaus contain prophecies, types, and symbols that point to Him as the Messiah and Savior. They cover a wide range of topics, including the promised seed, the sacrificial system, the suffering servant, His death and resurrection, and His coming as King. He opened these Scriptures to the two disciples on that road, and in so doing He was able to show the disciples how all of the Old Testament pointed to Him and His mission.
That is what this Series is all about, to research, cite, review and examine those same Scriptures to provide us with a clearer understanding of how Jesus was the central focus of the Word of God in so many of the events beginning with the Creation of Adam and Eve. Join me as I continue, God willing, next week this review and examination at this same place and time.
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Beginning with Moses, Part 11.”
This Discussion was presented “live” on October 4th, 2023
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