Many of us today take for granted the hard work of making bread.

Each week, we simply grab our pre-baked, pre-cut, mass-produced loaf and roll along to the next aisle to find some “fresh” salsa or a box of Cheerios. We rarely give a second thought to how this loaf came to be (unless, perhaps, like me, your intestines start a street fight with the gluten that makes bread so delicious). In Jesus’s day, however, bread was not nearly as convenient or effortless. The making of bread was an essential and time-consuming part of everyday life (and the bread was likely a lot better for it).

So how was it made?

Breadmaking for Beginners

The ingredients, of course, have always been simple enough: just wheat, water, and fire. The process, however, was much more involved. The only “machine” available was a large round rock laid on another large round rock, called a millstone. No, like so few things today, this was all done by hand.

To make bread in that day, someone had to first harvest the wheat (again, an entirely different exercise before the gas engine invaded our fields). Harvesters typically used a sickle, a sharp handheld tool used to cut husks of wheat. Someone had to separate the wheat from everything else and then pluck the edible seeds, one by one, from the husk. Next, someone took the seeds and ground them into a fine dust, called flour (with the previously mentioned millstone).

Then, someone had to mix the right amount of flour with the right amount of water to create the dough (can you imagine making this discovery?). Finally, after the dough sat for some time to rise (another major discovery along the way), someone bakes the dough over fire to make bread (almost certainly the most significant breakthrough in culinary history).

So, on the night he was betrayed, when Jesus broke and blessed the bread, his hands were not the first to touch that loaf.

What Jesus Does with Human Hands

Surely Jesus could have turned stones into some delicious rolls for his disciples, but he didn’t. No, someone had worked hard to make that simple, climactic, even cosmic meal possible. Peter Leithart writes of the Lord’s Supper,

When bread is set on the table, an agricultural and culinary science and technology lies in the background. . . . Mankind is given the creation not only to use its products in their natural state but also to transform them for the enrichment of human life; he is not only guardian of what is but is creator of what is not yet; making is not only to eat but to bake. The bread-maker is the creature who builds cities, sends probes to the edges of the galaxy, transforms sand into silicon chips. (Blessed Are the Hungry, 169)

“Jesus could have picked wheat and grapes, but he chose bread and wine, both products of human creativity and toil.”

Has any single moment paid greater tribute to the toil and labor of humanity, to the everyday work we each do to contribute to society? Jesus chose to serve bread for his great Supper — a product of labor and human effort. If Jesus could use wheat and water to feed and lead the church over millennia, what spiritual good might he do through the work of our hands? He could have picked wheat and grapes (or anything else from the garden), but he chose bread and wine, both products of human creativity and toil. Remember, Jesus knew well what ordinary work was like. His calloused hands bore the proof. He was driving nails long before they were driven into him.

By breaking bread, he dignified what fallen man could do with his hands — what you can do with your hands — and he anticipated what a redeemed humanity might be capable of.

Not So Ordinary Meal

Now, it must be mentioned, when Jesus serves bread and wine at the Last Supper, the menu didn’t come out of left field. Bread and wine had thick threads of meaning through Jewish history, specifically together in the Passover (which we’ve traced elsewhere), but even then, it seems significant that God served a meal made by normal human hands.

And not an elegant or extravagant meal, but an unbelievably ordinary one. How many times had Jesus eaten bread with his friends? They had it with every meal — literally hundreds and hundreds of times, multiple times in a day. As they ate that night, they did something utterly familiar, even mundane, and yet now scandalous and marvelous. Again, Leithart comments,

It is significant that Jesus chose as the sacrament of his kingdom one of the most common of human activities. . . . This suggests that the kingdom does not involve a cancellation of this-worldly concerns; it is not another world but rather this world transformed and transfigured. (165)

Jesus could have chosen any number of rituals by which we could have remembered his life, death, and resurrection, but he chose something we do (more or less) three times each day. And in doing so, he infused our ordinary lives with the supernatural: “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46). He also punctuated everyday life with an anticipation of the never-ending feast to come (Revelation 19:9).

In the Lord’s Supper, we eat the same kind of meal we’ve always eaten to remember that the short, simple, unremarkable life we have is fused with a profound and hidden purpose and potential. And we do so to remember that when paradise comes, it’ll be filled with hints of the short, simple, and beautiful lives we had here on earth. Heaven will be more like earth than we think (in only the best ways).

Why Not Water?

If this was meant to resemble an ordinary meal, why wine and not water? Why serve wine and not just some fresh grapes off the vine? Again, like bread, the choice dignifies what mankind can do and make — the process is every bit as involved and much longer, at least when done well — but we taste some distinct notes in the wine.

While bread has been an ordinary meal for centuries, wine has been preserved and served for special meals — for feasts. Wine pairs best with singing and dancing. “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:14–15). When Israel was starving in the wilderness, God let bread fall from heaven; but when Jesus welcomes us to the marriage supper of the Lamb, he’s pouring wine: “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29). Leithart writes,

Jesus did not give his disciples grapes, but the blood of the grape, which is the creation transformed by human creativity and labor. Like bread, wine assumes a degree of technological sophistication, as well as a measure of social and political formation. Wine, however, is a drink of celebration and not mere nutrition. If Jesus had wanted to depict man’s relation to creation and to God in purely utilitarian terms, bread and water would have sufficed. This Bridegroom, however, changes water to wine, and in doing so, clarifies man’s purpose in the world. (170–171)

“Cup after cup reminds us that the Lord’s Supper is not a eulogy, but a toast.”

What’s that purpose? In both work and rest, to enjoy what God has made and done. Ultimately, to enjoy God himself (Psalm 43:4; 1 Peter 3:18). Cup after cup, the wine reminds us that the Lord’s Supper is not a eulogy, but a toast. It drowns the thorns and thistles we battle, and symbolically washes away the sin and shame we carry. The wine plays an old, raucous, and beloved chorus: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

Meal Worthy of a God-Man

When Jesus served the Supper, he was not throwing a pity party for all he would lose and suffer; he was setting the table for all we would gain and enjoy forever. This meal, like all great meals, deserves a certain weight and seriousness, but all the weight and seriousness serves the main course: a full-hearted, rest-filled, grateful joy.

By choosing bread, Jesus embraced the very basics of what it means to be human — the food that sustains ordinary lives like ours and the labor that puts that bread on the table. By choosing wine, Jesus anticipates the best of human life — the sweet rest that comes after a full day of hard work done well. Together, they’re the kind of meal worthy of a God-man, the kind of feast we could eat forever and yet always hunger for more.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15015813/be-shrewd-and-buy-up-time

Some of us fall out of Bible reading because we fail to make time for it. Busyness crowds out the minutes we might otherwise give to sitting and hearing from God. There’s always something that didn’t get done yesterday or something relatively urgent that’s come up today. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it, just how many things in our little worlds seem to trump listening to the one who made them all?

For others, it’s not busyness that gets the best of us, but a subtle cynicism about reading the Bible. How am I ever going to understand this? It’s hard to keep getting up extra early and setting aside precious minutes when you’re not convinced you’ll be able to make sense of what you see, when you might finish and strangely feel further from God, when you’re chasing a full heart morning after morning and yet often walk away just scratching your head.

If you’ve felt that way before, you’re not alone. In fact, even the men who wrote the Bible know something of what you feel. The apostle Peter says of the letters Paul wrote, “There are some things in them that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). Think about that: Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote books in the Bible, and yet even he struggled to read Romans or Thessalonians (or whatever particular letter he had in mind). If he could write on behalf of God and have a hard time understanding Scripture, we shouldn’t be surprised if we do too.

And I, for one, definitely do. I’ve battled to get through the census records in Numbers. I’ve labored through the kidneys, livers, and “entrails” of the Levitical laws. I’ve grown weary of the repetitive failures of Israel in 1–2 Kings. I’ve sometimes struggled to see what Hebrews sees in the Old Testament. Much of the imagery of Revelation is still a mystery to me. And so, I regularly find these clear and accessible words from Paul all the more meaningful and encouraging:

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. (2 Timothy 2:7)

Understanding Is Possible

This is an amazing acknowledgment from Paul to Timothy. He says, in essence, “I know some of what I am writing won’t make sense to you immediately, and you’ll be tempted to think you cannot understand it — but you can. So, don’t give up too easily. Don’t assume this is above you. Assume that God can make his words clear to you.”

Those apart from Christ cannot understand the things of God. They flip through the Bible’s majesty and wisdom in vain. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). But not you. If you’re in Christ, you can see things that they can’t. You can understand things that they can’t. Where they see foolishness and irrelevance, you see unspeakable beauty, a radiant window into reality. Not because you’re smarter or more educated or merely a better reader, but because you’re not a natural person anymore; you’re a supernatural you, with a supernatural mind and heart and eyes.

“Because you’re someone new, you can understand more of the Bible than you might think.”

Or as Paul says elsewhere of natural people, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18). But not you. You’re not alienated from God anymore. Through the cross, he’s brought you near, and in bringing you near, he’s softened your heart and unlocked your mind. The God who flooded all creation with light “has shone in [your] heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). That’s who you are when you open the Bible.

And because you’re someone new, you can understand more of the Bible than you might think.

In Everything

Not only can you understand more than you think, but the apostle goes even further: “ . . . the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” If God lives in you, nothing in the Bible is above you — not the genealogies of Numbers, or the sacrificial laws of Leviticus, or the prophetic visions of Ezekiel, or the apocalyptic imagery of Revelation. With God, all are within your reach.

Lest we think Paul’s talking only about the verses immediately before this one, he comes back to the same reality in the very next chapter: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). As much of the Bible that has been breathed out by God — all of it! — that much is now profitable for you. Even on the most obscure, most confusing pages, God means to teach you, to exhort you, to correct you, to train you, to equip you — he means to speak to you.

“Even on the most obscure, most confusing pages, God means to teach you.”

Before any of that can happen, however, we first have to understand what God is saying — which is exactly where God promises to help us: “The Lord will give you understanding in everything.”

Varied Means of Understanding

None of this means we just sit alone with our Bibles until we understand everything. No, God gives the gift of understanding in a hundred different ways. Remember, most Christians in the history of the world didn’t own a Bible (much less carry it with them everywhere in their pockets). They depended on the regular reading and reciting of Scripture in community. From the first church to today, believers have depended on faithful teachers to rehearse, explain, and model the words of God for them.

And God has multiplied pathways to understanding in our day — first and foremost through our local churches, but then through messages, articles, books, study Bibles, online courses, commentaries, podcasts, and more. So understanding may come in any number of ways. The point here, however, is that you really can understand what’s in this book — everything that’s in this book, Paul says.

Now, to say that we can understand everything in the Bible is not to suggest that we will understand everything immediately and fully. We won’t — and certainly not the first (or second or even tenth) time through. God can give us understanding in every passage without giving us understanding of every part of a passage. He also often chooses to give understanding, not immediately, but over years or even decades. As we keep reading (and living), familiar verses will emerge with new or deeper meaning and relevance. Some questions will be answered slowly. So don’t expect to understand everything now, but expect to understand something now — and then more tomorrow.

Ask God

Up until now, we’ve seen only that we can understand more than we may assume. You should be asking how. What makes this kind of supernatural reading possible? How do the lights come on?

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

On our own, we can’t understand the Bible. If God leaves us alone with this book, it wouldn’t be worth getting up early, pouring more hours in, and pressing through difficult verses and chapters. We would search and ask and wrestle in vain. But if it’s God who makes things clear, then he can overcome our limitations and blind spots. You can understand the Bible because God will give you understanding. When you read, he’s not just over your shoulder; he’s inside of you — in your eyes, your mind, your heart — showing you what you’d never see on your own.

The one who reveals himself in the Bible wants to make himself clear. He’s not content to have divinely inspired words on the page; he wants them written on our hearts. He wants to see understanding, and satisfaction, and transformation — and so he won’t leave you alone with your Bible. This may be why Paul ends the letter the way he does: “The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you” (2 Timothy 4:22). We need the present, spiritual help of God in all we do all the time, and especially in understanding his word.

Think Hard

This understanding, however, doesn’t float down from the clouds and land softly on our heads. No, God gives the gift of understanding through the hard work of reading well. This verse demands almost as much as it promises: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” This won’t come easily, Timothy. Yes, God is the one who gives understanding, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have to work for it.

Isn’t it strange that some of us hear that God sovereignly gives understanding, and we assume that means we need to do less? Satan teaches this kind of calculus all year round (and not just in Bible reading).

No, 2 Timothy 2:7 is far more like God’s words to Joshua before Israel entered the promised land:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. . . . Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:8–9)

“I will be with you” didn’t mean “You won’t have to fight.” Along with his promise of help and protection, God gave Joshua a charge: “Be strong and courageous.” Fight all the harder because you know I’ll fight with you and for you.

So, when you open your Bible, be strong and courageous. God will be with you wherever you read. Don’t be discouraged or intimidated. Think harder and longer because you know the Lord loves to give you understanding.