The Wilderness Bread

When Moses looked back on the forty years in the wilderness, he told Israel what the manna had been for. It was not merely to keep them alive. He humbled thee, Moses says, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD. The bread from heaven was a lesson written in hunger and provision, teaching a truth the soul could learn no other way, that our deepest life comes not from bread but from the word of God.

See the strange order of God’s dealing. He humbled them, and suffered them to hunger, and then fed them. The hunger came first, and the hunger was his doing, allowed on purpose. He let them feel the emptiness, the real and gnawing need, before he sent the manna, so that in the hunger and the feeding together they might learn their dependence, not on the bread that filled the stomach, but on the God who sent it, and on his word. The lesson was in the whole of it, the emptying and the filling, and the emptying was as much a mercy as the filling, for it taught the need that the filling then met.

THE DEEPER HUNGER

For man has a hunger that bread cannot fill. We are made of dust, and the body must be fed with bread, but we are more than dust, and the soul has a hunger of its own that no amount of bread will ever satisfy. A man may have every material need supplied, his table full and his barns overflowing, and still starve in his soul, for the soul does not live on bread. This is the emptiness at the heart of a life fed only on the material, the strange hunger that persists in the midst of plenty, the ache that more possessions and more comforts never reach, because they are bread, and the hunger is not a hunger for bread.

And our great folly is to try to fill the soul’s hunger with more bread. Feeling the deep emptiness, we reach for more of the material, more food, more pleasure, more possessions, more of everything the world can give, and we stay starved, for we are feeding the wrong hunger. The soul cannot be fed on bread, and every attempt to fill it so leaves it emptier than before. God suffered Israel to hunger that they might learn this, and he suffers us to hunger still, letting the material fail to satisfy, so that we might turn at last from the bread that cannot fill the soul to the word that can.

THE WORD OVER THE BREAD

Our Lord himself took this very verse as his weapon in his own wilderness. After forty days of fasting, hungry as any man ever was, he was tempted to turn stones into bread, to use his power to meet his own need on his own terms. And he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. He chose the word over the bread, dependence on the Father over self-provision, in the very extremity of hunger. He would rather starve on the word of God than feast by stepping outside his Father’s will. The word was his true food, more than the bread his body craved.

And he showed us where this truth leads, for on another day he said, I am the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger. The word that proceeds from the mouth of God is, in the end, the living Word himself, Christ, the true bread come down from heaven, of which the wilderness manna was only a shadow. The deep hunger of the soul is a hunger for him, and it is filled only by feeding on him, receiving him, living on him as the body lives on bread. The whole lesson of the wilderness bread points here, to the Bread of Life, who alone can fill the hunger that no earthly bread reaches.

FEEDING ON THE WORD

So we are to feed on the word as truly as we feed on bread, taking it in, chewing it, digesting it, making it the strength of the soul. Thy words were found, said the prophet Jeremiah, and I did eat them, and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. He did not merely read the words; he ate them, took them into himself as food. How sweet are thy words unto my taste, says the psalmist, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. And the apostle bids the young, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. The word is not information to be surveyed but food to be eaten, and the soul grows or starves according to whether it feeds.

And we must feed on every word, not only the pleasant ones. Man lives by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD, the words of comfort and the words of rebuke alike, the promises and the commands, the sweet and the searching. A soul that feeds only on its favorite portions, the comforting promises it likes, while it leaves untouched the hard commands and the sharp reproofs, is a malnourished soul, living on sweets and refusing the bread and the meat. The whole counsel of God is the balanced diet of the soul, and we are fed and grown by every word, not by a chosen few.

THE DANGER OF PLENTY

Moses did not teach this lesson of the wilderness only for the wilderness. He taught it precisely as Israel stood on the edge of a good land, a land of brooks and wheat and vines, of bread without scarceness, and he warned them that the lesson learned in hunger must be kept in plenty, for plenty has its own peculiar danger. Beware, he said, that thou forget not the LORD thy God. When thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and thy herds and thy flocks multiply, then beware, lest thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD. The manna taught dependence in the wilderness; the peril was that the full barns of the promised land would teach forgetfulness.

For it is often harder to remember that we do not live by bread alone when the bread is abundant. In the wilderness, with nothing but the daily manna, dependence on God was plain and unavoidable. In the land of plenty, with the storehouses full and every need met, the soul easily forgets the Giver and imagines that its own hand has gotten it this wealth. The very abundance that seems a blessing becomes a snare, dulling the hunger that once drove us to God, lulling us into the forgetfulness that thinks it has no need. Plenty is a more dangerous school than want, and many a soul kept faithful in the wilderness has forgotten God in the promised land.

So the lesson of the wilderness bread must be deliberately kept when the manna stops and the land flows with milk and honey. In abundance we must remind ourselves of what want made obvious, that man does not live by bread alone, that the full barns cannot feed the soul, that the Giver is more than all his gifts, and that the hunger of the soul persists in the midst of the fullest table and is filled only by the word of God. The full soul must fight to remember what the hungry soul could not forget.

This is why God sometimes suffers even his own to hunger again, letting the plenty fail, sending a season of want into a comfortable life, not in anger but in mercy, to teach afresh the lesson that abundance had let us forget. The dry season, the loss, the emptying, may be his way of weaning us again from the bread that cannot feed the soul, and turning us back to the word that can. Do not resent such seasons. They may be the mercy that keeps us from the deadlier danger of a plenty that forgets God.

So recognize the deeper hunger in you, the ache that no bread has ever filled, and stop trying to fill it with more of the material, which only leaves it emptier. Turn from the bread that cannot feed the soul to the word that can, and beyond the word to the living Word, Christ the Bread of Life, who alone satisfies. Feed on the word as truly as on bread, taking it in, eating it, growing by it, and feed on every word, the searching as well as the sweet. For man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD.