Food for Our Souls
I started reading Ezekiel this morning and came across a verse that broke my heart. At this point in the story of Scripture, much of Israel is in exile in Babylon, including Ezekiel. The fall of Jerusalem has not quite happened but will happen during Ezekiel’s writing. In the beginning of Ezekiel’s story, God is calling Ezekiel to speak God’s words to Israel, to prophesy about what is to happen. In 4:16-17, God says to Ezekiel “Son of man, I am going to cut off the supply of bread in Jerusalem. They will anxiously eat food they have weighed out and in dread drink rationed water for lack of bread and water. Everyone will be devastated and waste away because of their iniquity.” Because of Israel’s sin, God is going to stop the supply of bread, leaving his people hungry and dying.
This is clearly a dismal position for the Israelites, but my heart breaks mostly because it is a clear representation of how Israel’s relationship with God has broken. In the beginning of Israel as a family and then a nation, God tangibly provided bread for his people. Genesis tells us that God sent Jacob’s son Joseph to Egypt to prepare the land for the upcoming famine. By having a family member there, Jacob and his seventy descendants (the beginnings of Israel) can move to Egypt and have the food they need. Some generations later, God uses Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and slavery. On the way to Mount Sinai, the Israelites grow thirsty and hungry. God provides water from a rock (Exodus 17) and a bread-like substance called manna from the dew (Exodus 16). This is the relationship Israel once had with the Lord their God- one where they were needy, but he was close and provision complete.
So, what happened to make the God of provision become the God of removal? It was not God who changed, but Israel who broke the covenant they made with God at Mount Sinai. The Mosaic Covenant was a two-way covenant, where God promised to bless Israel if they followed his commands and curse them if they did not. Those curses included cutting off their supply of bread (Leviticus 26:26) and “your basket and kneading bowl will be cursed.” (Deuteronomy 28:17). At the time of Ezekiel, it has been close to eight hundred years since the Mosaic Covenant and Israel has broken this covenant time and time again. God has sent prophet after prophet to ask his people to return to faithfulness and to tell them what will happen if not. Eight hundred years of mercy and now, according to God’s word to Ezekiel, the curses will come.
It seems as if all hope is lost, that God has turned from his people. Because of Israel’s sin, the God who gave bread in abundance is now the God who takes the bread away.
But God is not a fickle or a changing God. He tells us who he is in Exodus 34. He is compassionate, gracious, abounding in steadfast love, and forgiving. He cannot change, so if this is who he was at the start, then it is who he is eight hundred years later. The Israelites are no longer the people who promised to keep God’s commands, but God is still the Lord who loves them and provides new mercies every day. We see this played out a few hundred years later when God provides bread once again, this time the bread of life: Jesus. Hope is not lost.
Jesus can be the bread of life because he never sins, even when he has been without bread himself for 40 days and the devil tempts him to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:1-4). We know that Jesus is capable of this kind of miracle. If he can turn dew into manna and draw water from a rock, he can turn stones into bread. And yet, instead of providing bread for himself, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 by saying “Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
I know what it is like to feel that hope is lost, that God is acting toward me in a new way, in a worse way. Unlike Israel’s cursing, widowhood is not a result of my breaking of the covenant. It is a result of the brokenness of a world overcome with sin. And yet, it can feel as if the God who once showered me with joy has ripped it all away. I remember sitting in my dining room in the weeks after my husband died, thinking to myself that life was going to be hardship until I died. That every day was going to be an ache or a slog. I would survive it, but joy would become a heavenly hope, not an earthly one. The hope for joy and comfort and passion felt lost in this life, realized only upon entering the next. I think I probably felt a lot like the Israelites did: that the God I knew was now absent. And yet, one day God would provide for Israel to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. In the future, he would provide the promised Messiah and a new covenantal relationship with his people. And for me, God remained near. He provided laughter and fun and energy and strength. He used friends to read Scripture to me and his Word was bread to my hungry soul.
Just before God warns of the coming lack of bread, he tells Ezekiel to eat a scroll containing God’s words. Ezekiel complies and says the scroll was as sweet as honey. In this moment, God has Ezekiel act out those same words from Deuteronomy: God’s word is sweet food for our souls.
Jesus is both the Word and the Bread of Life. His blood ratifies a new covenant, one where we can’t lose our bread. A covenant where God gifts us bread again and again in the salvation and presence of Jesus. Hope is not lost: we have the bread of life.
In Jesus Name,