"Bread"
(Mini-Articles)
Jesus said I am the bread that gives life! John 6.35
I am the bread that gives
life: Jesus compares himself to the miraculous gift of manna that God sent from heaven. Just as God sent the manna, God sends Jesus to bring life.
Bread has always been an important and basic food for people (Gen 3.19). Bread was made at home by wives (Gen 18.6) and daughters
(2 Sam 13.7-10).
It was usually made fresh each day, but because it could last for several days without going bad, it could also be given to those setting out on a long journey (Gen 45.23).
Bread was offered to strangers who passed through the land
(Gen 14.18), and when God's people were disobedient, God warned them that their supply of daily bread would be taken away as punishment
(Lev 26.23-26).
Most bread was made in flat cakes on flat stones or in pans. Some was baked into larger, thicker loaves that were placed on a special table in the temple and offered to God as "sacred loaves of bread"
(Exod 25.23-30). Only priests could eat this bread, but David and his supporters were once given some by priests when they were starving
(1 Sam 21.1-6).
God provided bread for the Israelite people as they were wandering through the desert of Sinai on the way fromEgypt to the promised land. They called this
bread manna, which in Hebrew means,
"What is this?" This bread is also referred to as the "bread from heaven” (Exod 16.4).
Ancient documents discovered in the it twentieth century known as the Dead Sea onScrolls reveal that
Jews in the community of Qumran shared meals of bread and wine.
These meals were both a celebration of good times in the present and a celebration of the day when God would defeat their enemies and send the Messiah.
Jesus' followers believed that he was God's chosen Messiah and the true bread from heaven that gives life (John 6.32-35).
Jesus told his followers to ask God to give them the basic food (bread) they needed to live from day to day.
(Luke 9.3).
After Jesus was taken to heaven, they continued to celebrate their new life together as God's people by "breaking bread" in ordinary meals (Acts 2.42-46), and by sharing in the bread of communion, which Jesus said was his body (1 Cor 11:25, 26. Mark 14.22-25).
Making Bread in Jesus' Day.
Bread-baking, a daily chore, was almost always done by women and girls. Wheat or barley grain was ground into a coarse flour in hand-mills.
The flour was then mixed with water,Salt,and unbaked dough from the day before. This left-over dough contained the yeast needed to make the new batch of dough rise.
The yeast was massaged into the dough (a process called “kneading") to distribute it throughout the batch, and the batches were set aside until the gasses produced by the yeast made the dough rise. The dough was then shaped into round, flat loaves that baked quickly in outdoor ovens.
Amen…..
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