Bored with the Bread of Life
We bore easily. It’s tempting to blame this on modern technologies, but Israel was no different. They watched unscathed as God struck their Egyptians slaveholders with plague after plague. Rescued from centuries of bondage, they walked through a parted Red Sea; water piled like cliff walls on either side of them. The enemies who tried to follow drowned. There was no question at all that God was with them. They lived day and night with the fiery pillar of his almighty presence leading them. He showered his kindness upon them, his goodness appearing with the morning dew; bread fell from heaven for them to gather six days a week. But the miracles became humdrum, their daily bread commonplace. They complained: “we loathe this worthless food” (Num. 21.5).
“Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday and today and forever.”
Heb. 13:8
Christ, “the living bread that come down from heaven” (Jn 6:51), never changes, nor does His word. And we Christians, like Israel of old, can sometimes lose sight of the wonder of it all. The good news of his love and grace, the miracle of redemption and forgiveness came to us once as wonderful news. But when the dailiness of life kicks in day after day, year after year, we can find ourselves feeling unsatisfied. We crave something new, something more, something different, something novel, something titillating. Like Sarah Young, the author of Jesus Calling, we think: “I knew that God communicated with me though the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.”* When we think this way, we reveal that we aren’t fully convinced that God’s word is sufficient, relevant, or “personal” enough to speak to our day-to-day spiritual and emotional needs.
But even Jesus, forty-days-hungry, found the ancient words of Scripture given to Israel sufficient to resist Satan’s temptation to create his own personal miracle: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Mt 4:4, Dt 8:3). God’s word is even more essential than physical survival because God’s word leads us to eternal life in Christ: “Do not work,” Jesus tells us, “for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (Jn 6:27, note that Jesus is referencing Is 55:2).
“For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” (Jn 6:55-58)
Christ is our life, our daily bread. But Satan and our sinful flesh, unsatisfied and sly, will deceive us into thinking we need more. Here are some indications that we are losing our taste for the Gospel.
We don’t read the Bible, or we read it very little. We rarely (if ever) read it through.
When we do read the Bible, we focus on the parts that suit us—that make us feel good or help us argue our pet topics, doctrinal positions, or political views. We mainly ignore the rest.
We seek fresh, personal revelation from Jesus rather than a deeper understanding and application of the Scriptures already revealed.
We treat the Bible like a daily horoscope, flipping it open to find our personal “message for the day” rather than committing our hearts to the task of reading it as a unified whole—seeking to understand its words as they are meant to be understood in their context within the Bible’s big Gospel story.
We prefer novel interpretations or hidden meanings to the clear point of the text. We major in mysteries that are difficult to interpret, or in oft-debated topics rather than what is perfectly clear.
We use the Bible like a decoder ring to tease out secret meanings behind current events. The daily news dictates what we focus on in Scripture. We major on prophecy. We are attracted to conspiracy theories. We love the feeling of being “in the know” (even if what we think we know terrifies us).
We would rather spend an hour reading or watching things about the Bible than reading the Bible itself.
When we read books about the Bible we race through or skip over the scripture quotes.
We add to or subtract from God’s word, forbidding or condoning what it does not, “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (see Mk. 7:5-8). We might make gospel issues out of things that aren’t and are willing to judge, side-line, or divide from fellow believers who hold different views on non-essential issues. Or perhaps we try to use the Mosaic Law as our guide to sanctification rather than the Gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
When we read the Bible, our mind is on the evils of our culture or our government, or our city or our neighbor, but not on the glory of God revealed in Christ. We want to change the world, but we have little interest in being transformed into the image of Christ. In other words, we apply it to others, but do not obey it ourselves (Lk. 6:42).
I know from experience that these can be hard patterns to break. So how can we get over our dissatisfaction with God’s word?
First, remember who you are dealing with and whose word you are neglecting. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Pr. 9:10). Confess to God the ways in which you’ve neglected or tried to spice up his word. Pray, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Ps. 119:18).
Second, remember the utterly undeserved kindness God revealed to you in Christ:
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Rm 5:8-11).
Let the mercy and kindness of God revealed in Christ shape and transform you:
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rm 12:1-2).
As your heart is shaped by his word, “beholding the glory of the Lord, you will be “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3.18), and you will find fresh delight in the miraculous provision of God.
*Sarah Young, Jesus Calling (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2004), pp. XII—XIII.
