What would you expect coming down when you had just accused God of conspiracy to murder?
I want to portray two scenes for you, and we are in the second scene. The first scene is in Exodus 16. After all of God’s goodness to them, His power manifested in Egypt, His breaking the bonds of their slavery, and delivering them through the Red Sea, their hearts doubted His love and despised His grace. Now they had accused Him of forcing them to leave their supposedly lavish living in Goshen, and of conspiring with Moses to kill them all in the wilderness. If you were God, how would you feel? When He spoke to Moses in response, and said in verse 4, “Behold, I will rain blank from heaven,” how would you fill in the blank? “Fire and brimstone”? But here’s what we read: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you.’” Oh, the grace of God! Now travel through time to the first century AD. The same nation has presumed on God’s goodness, has ignored His word, and despised His ways. In fact, the whole human race is guilty of the same. If you were God, what would You do? Destroy the world? No, You decide to open heaven and send Your Son to save them! What matchless mercy! So said the Lord Jesus to the Jews of His day, after He had fed the multitudes with a little boy’s lunch, “The bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.…I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger” (Jn 6:33-35). The manna was life-sustaining, but it was not life-giving. You may have noticed, said Jesus, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead” (v 49). No use giving bread to a dead man—unless it is Christ, the life-producing Bread, who gives eternal life to those spiritually dead (vv 47-48). Have you received heaven’s Bread?