This week the Lord has been teaching me about what it really means when we ask for daily bread.  I have been studying about the table of showbread and comparing it to Jesus, as the True Bread from heaven.  I actually had a dream about being able to dine at a luxurious table.  In the dining room, the most wonderful sweetbreads were in cases around the room.  Yet I chose to microwave a meal and get out quickly.  I think many of us don't understand how much God wants to give us to provide for our every meal.  We settle when we could actually taste and see that the Lord is good.

On two occasions, Jesus fed multitudes of people from the only bread that was left among them.  These people had been willing to stay in the Lord’ presence for three days, despite hunger pangs.  While there, they witnessed the lame, the maimed, the blind, the dumb, and many others being cured.  Not wanting them to leave faint and exhausted, Jesus asked His disciples to collect what was left among them.  Once, He fed five loaves to five thousand and yet had twelve provision baskets of bread left over.  On another occasion, He fed seven loaves to four thousand and had seven provisions baskets of bread left.  The combined number of loaves Jesus fed to the multitude was twelve, representing the healing showbread for the twelve tribes of Israel.  The showbread foreshadowed Jesus, the True Bread from heaven, Who filled every provision for every Jew who sought Him. 

The amount of provision that was left over, the crumbs, so to speak, amounted to 19 baskets of bread.    The provision baskets symbolize the healing bread that is also available for us, the Gentiles.  The number nineteen has always been associated with faith in the Bible.  Nineteen is the combination of five, referring to grace, and 14, referring to salvation.  Through Jesus, we receive by grace, the gift of salvation, which entitles us to receive His provision by faith.  What Jesus did for the Jews foreshadowed what He would do for us, the Gentiles, if we seek Him.

By faith a woman’s daughter was delivered from demons when a Caananite woman asked Jesus to heal her daughter.  At first, Jesus told her it would not be fair to throw the children’s bread to the dogs.  Her faith was apparent to Him when she replied, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little pups eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”  Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith!  Be it done for you as you wish.  And her daughter was cured from that moment.”  (Matthew 15:26-28).

When Jesus broke bread with his disciples at Passover, saying “Take eat; this is My body”, He was comparing His body to a loaf of bread (See Matthew 26:26).  After His resurrection, Jesus again broke bread with His disciples and gave it to them.  Upon Jesus’ ascension to heaven, the early church broke bread daily with one another in each others’ houses.

Jesus, the True Bread from heaven, is the Word made flesh.  The act of daily breaking bread is a picture of daily partaking in Jesus' body, broken for us, so that we might receive all the benefits of His Word.    Jesus said of Himself,

I am the bread of life.  Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died.  But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world (John 6:48-51).