I love it when Jesus quotes Scripture! And that’s what happened in John 6:45. So, we have the Word of God quoting the word of God. It’s just so cool!
And He uses an interesting communication technique here – one He employs in other places in the Gospels as well. He quotes just the first part of Isaiah 54:13 confident that it’s so familiar His hearers will automatically recall the rest of the context.
It’s like what happened the other day when a friend commented on the tendency of people to associate with others who share similar interests. My friend said, “Birds of a feather…” And he didn’t have to finish the saying because he knew my mind would search my memory and fill in the rest, “flock together.” I knew the whole quote, “Birds of a feather flock together.”
This technique stimulates a person to think more deeply about what’s being said, and that’s what Jesus wanted.
As His audience continued wrestling with His claim to be the Bread of Life, He wanted to lead them beyond the shallow, literal thinking that was constraining their ability to hear what He was really saying. So, He injected into the conversation a small piece of a very familiar and much-loved passage of Scripture that at first glance seems completely unrelated. But as their minds reflexively became engaged in the process of completing the quote, He knew they would find themselves recalling the sweet promises of God’s grace contained in those verses.
He wanted them to see His role as Bread of Life in the context of that flow of God’s redeeming love to them.
It’s amazing how God’s word can do that, take us to a deeper and richer place when we get stuck on the surface. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so important to read the Bible and allow its treasures to become stored in our memories. It gives the Lord something to draw on when He needs to point our minds and hearts toward an unexpected discovery.
The direction of my entire adult life hinges on one of those times.
As a young man in my early twenties, I’d reached a point where my future was completely uncertain. It seemed that the trail I’d been following suddenly disappeared. My heart began to fill with anxiety and my mind became exhausted from running what-if scenarios.
Then, out of the blue, as I sat alone on a lunch break at my warehouse job, the first part of 2 Timothy 2:15 bubbled up unbidden into my thoughts from the place in my memory where I had stored that verse as a child. And as my mind filled in the balance of the quote, I knew God was speaking to me through it. He was restoring a calling to pastoral ministry I thought I’d disqualified myself from, and He was preparing me for the next steps along that journey.
The door to the rest of my life opened in that moment and having that little verse of Scripture committed to memory was the key.
Dear one, let’s make a fresh commitment to having more keys on the ring by soaking in God’s word today.