Some years ago, during the war, a party of five people who had been helping to care for wounded soldiers in Serbia, were fleeing before the advancing enemy. The way they had to go was long and weary, but their greatest difficulty was lack of food. They were almost starving when one day they met a man who had some potatoes, and the price he asked for five potatoes, only one for each of them, was the donkey they had with them to carry their baggage. It was a high price to pay, but they gave it, for they could live without the donkey, but they could not live without food.
Sometimes God lets people be very hungry, so that they may remember that all their food comes from Himself. There was a whole crowd of hungry people once, a whole nation, six hundred thousand men, besides lots and lots of women and children, and they were in a wilderness, a desert land where there was nothing to eat, no corn to make bread, no fruit, no shops. But even there God fed them.
When they woke up in the morning “the dew lay round about the host. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist [knew] not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat” (Ex. 16:13-1513And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. 14And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. 15And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat. (Exodus 16:13‑15)).
The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and all that time God gave them manna, angels’ food, to eat. Moses told them why God had let them be so hungry, and why He had given them that wonderful food; it was to make them know that, “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live” (Deut. 8:33And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; 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 doth man live. (Deuteronomy 8:3)).
Men, women, and children have souls as well as bodies, and just as our bodies need food, so do our souls. It was because of this that Jesus said, “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” He said too, “The bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Jesus gave His flesh when He allowed wicked men to nail Him to the cross. The soldiers had put a crown of thorns on His holy head, and now they pierced His hands and feet with nails and fastened Him to a cross. He hung and suffered there for us; He died for our sins, and when He was dead a soldier with a spear pierced His side and blood and water came out. Truly Jesus gave His flesh for the life of the world. Unless we accept His sacrifice for us, we have no life in us, but the heart that loves Him feeds upon Him, and every thought of His love in going into death for us nourishes and strengthens our souls.
Those who heard Jesus speak that day did not understand what He meant, and many even of His disciples went away and walked no more with Him. “Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Peter and Andrew and the other apostles did not go away. They did not understand all that Jesus had been saying, but they knew that His words were words of life, and they believed on Him; that made the difference.