God’s Hope for Your Heart from Matthew 26
WHATEVER JESUS BREAKS, HE MULTIPLIES
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” (Matthew 26:26)
There He is, Jesus the Christ, sitting with His disciples for one last meal before His imminent betrayal and execution. His friends are gathered around Him at the table, and Jesus does something for them that He has done plenty of times before.
He blesses, He breaks, and He gives.
In Scripture, as in nature, God often reveals Himself through patterns, and this particular pattern of activity has occurred at least two other times in Jesus’ ministry.
In Matthew 14:19 we find that when Jesus took “the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.”
In Matthew 15:36 we see again that Jesus “took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks He broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowd.”
Jesus blessed, He broke, and He gave. He gave the bread to the disciples and the disciples gave the bread to the people around them, and what happened each time? The gift was multiplied and the people were blessed by the results.
Now Jesus is doing it again, taking bread, breaking it, and giving it to His disciples, but there is one key difference here: this bread is more than bread. It’s His body that Jesus is breaking and giving.
What happens when Jesus breaks and gives His body? We find out in the book of Acts that the Body of Christ–the Church–experiences the same thing as those little loaves, it is multiplied and people are blessed as a result.
Maybe in your life, you feel like Jesus is breaking things. Maybe you feel like things that sustained you are being taken and broken. If that’s the case, don’t lose heart.
Remember that God’s good plan for you is that you would have something special to give back to the world, so you can rest in hope because of this truth: Whatever Jesus breaks, He multiplies.
-Pastor Phillip
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