Tuesday, August 12, 2025

The Tabernacle: A Lesson On The Bread

Bible Reading: Exodus 25:23-30

Key Verse: Verse 30 – “And thou shalt set upon the table shewbread before me alway.”

Key Words: shewbread before me alway

The table of shewbread, or showbread, was placed on the north side of the first apartment of the sanctuary. The table was two cubits long, a cubit and a half in width, and a cubit and a half in height.  It was overlaid with pure gold, and like the altar of incense was ornamented with a crown of gold around the top (Exodus 25:23-30; 40:22).

On the Sabbath day the Levites made twelve loaves, or cakes, of unleavened bread (1 Chronicles 9:32, Leviticus 24:5). These cakes were placed on the table hot, each Sabbath day (Leviticus 24:8; 1 Samuel 21:3-6; Matthew 12:3-4), arranged in two piles, six in a row, with pure frankincense on each row (Leviticus 24:6-7).

During the entire week the bread lay on the table.  By some translators it is called "the bread of the presence."  At the end of the week it was removed and eaten by the priests (Leviticus 24:9).

Which brings us to Jesus, the Bread of Life (John 6:48).

It is told of Sadhu Sundar Singh that many years ago he was distributing Gospels in the Central Provinces of India and he came to some non-Christians on the railway train and offered a man a copy of John's Gospel. The man took it, tore it in pieces in anger and threw the pieces out of the window.  That seemed the end, but it so happened, in the Providence of God, there was a man anxiously seeking for truth walking along the line that very day, and he picked up as he walked along a little bit of paper and looked at it, and the words on it in his own language were 'the Bread of Life'.  He did not know what it meant; but he enquired among his friends and one of them said: 'I can tell you; it is out of the Christian book.  You must not read it or you will be defiled.'  The man thought for a moment and then said: 'I want to read the book that contains that beautiful phrase': and he bought a copy of the New Testament.  He was shown where the sentence occurred- our Lord's words 'I am the Bread of Life'; and as he studied the gospel, the light flooded into his heart, he came to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and he became a preacher of the gospel in the Central Provinces of India. That little bit of paper through God's Spirit was indeed the Bread of life to him, satisfying his deepest need.

He that has never eaten from the Bread of Life will never be satisfied.

                                                                                    Dr. Mike Rouse 

What to do: 

      If you are still starving spiritually, try the Bread of Life.

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