Spiritual Food

What is something that everyone requires? What do our bodies need? We need food and water. From the moment we are born, our bodies require that we consume food and water in order to grow and continue to live.

We start out as babies, only drinking milk. As we grow slightly older, we start to eat foods that are slightly more solid, like rice cereal and baby food. Then as we get even older, we go and eat foods that are slightly more solid, but still softer, like hotdogs, whole bananas, maybe fish sticks. Then we get to the point to where we can eat any solid foods. Our bodies consume the foods we eat and turns it into energy so that we continue to “run.” Now, what will happen if you don’t eat any food and water? Eventually, your body will cease to run, because you don’t have any “fuel in the tank.”

A car also requires something to run. It requires some kind of fuel. You fill up your tank and the car consumes that fuel to drive down the road. Now if you drained all of the gas out of a car, what will happen? That car won’t run. In a sense, it is “dead.”

Well Christians also need something that gives them energy, and life. We need spiritual food. Baby Christians start out with the milk of God’s word, learning the beginning parts of the faith, how Jesus loves them, and died for their sins. As they grow stronger and learn more, they can handle the stronger parts of the Word, like resisting and overcoming temptation. 

We need something to fuel us spiritually. We need spiritual food. We need the bread of life.

In John 6, Jesus had just fed the five thousand and crossed over the sea. Well, the some of the people he had just fed also went into ships, and followed Jesus all the way to Capernaum. But Jesus knew the reason why they followed Him across the sea.

“Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. 

Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.” John 6:26-27

They didn’t follow Jesus because they believed in the miracle Jesus had done, they were seeking only to get physical food. So Jesus taught them what they should seek instead. Instead of seeking and laboring for earthly food, which eventually spoils and goes bad, Jesus taught them to seek to obtain spiritual food, and He told them where they could find it.

“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.” John 6:35

Jesus is the bread of life. He is what we need to live for eternity. It is Him that we need to seek to obtain. 

When Jesus had fasted in the desert for forty days, and the devil tried to tempt Him with food, what did Jesus say?

“But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4

You can eat as much food as you want, but unless you have the bread of life, Jesus, you will not live forever, for it is through Christ that we have eternal life. 

In Christ,

Andrew