“fed them with bread and water” (1 Kings 18:4, NKJV)
We are now returning to our main theme of mantle formation, with Elijah as prototype. In the previous teachings we pointed out how God sends the adversary to help you develop a Godly nature (2 Pet. 1:4), and to establish your purpose and calling (2 Pet. 1:10). But God does not only send the adversary – he also sends aid.
For Elijah this aid came in the form of Obadiah, who, in the order of individuals such as Oskar Schindler, Miep Gies or Corrie ten Boom, functioned as a holy space in which those called can find refuge. 1 Kings 18:4 explains, “For so it was, while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah had taken one hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave, and had fed them with bread and water.” In the next teaching we will get to the spirit of Jezebel. For now we are focussing on the the fact that Obadiah first kept the prophets alive with bread and water, in itself a logistical nightmare for one man doing it in secret.
But that being said – what was the nature of this diet? It seems like quite a meagre one, but on this God fed his servants, the prophets (Rev. 11:18).
What nourishes the prophets? The pairing of “bread and water” has a very specific typological symbolic value in Scripture. The combination is found 39 times in single verses in the Scripture, but ONLY in the Old Testament. A few examples of important verses:
- The first instance is Gen. 21:14, when Abraham sends Hagar away with his son Ishmael, along with “bread and a skin of water”, wandering around the Wilderness of Beersheba. Interestingly enough Hagar’s name means “to flee”. The name Beersheba means “well of an seven-fold oath”. In Scripture a well or fountain always points, in typological terms, to calling or purpose (Song of Songs 4:12) from which living water (John 7:38) springs forth. From Gal. 4:22-26 we know that Hagar represents the slavery of the law. There is a generation of children in bondage (verse 26) who also sprung forth from father Abraham, who need to be left in the spiritual desert until they reach the promise of another dispensation, namely the dispensation in which living water will spring forth for all eternity (“sevenfold oath”). In that place, all you live from is “bread and water”. It is also specified that Abraham “put[s] it on her shoulder”, in other words it is also an indication that particular authority is nestled within it (Isa. 9:6). This space has the potential of reconciling heaven and earth with another, as Jacob experienced in his dream of the ladder (Gen. 28:12), which from John 1:51 we know symbolically points to the bridging Jesus Christ made possible between heaven and earth (2 Cor. 5:18).
- In Ex. 23:25 it is said that if you serve the Lord God, “He will bless your bread and your water. And I will take sickness away from the midst of you.”
- In 1 Kings 13:8-22 a scary story is told – a prophet struggling with God’s explicit word not to stay over in a certain place, who loses his life based on the prophetic counsel of another. In these couple of verses the expression “water and bread” is foregrounded no less than seven times. Bread and water is thus not something you disregard, as Paul also for instance explains in 1 Cor. 5:11 by stating that “I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person” (emphasis added). Also take note of the wrong bread and water that the harlot (Prov. 23:27; 2:16-22; Rev. 17) provides in Hos. 2:5, and realise that this type of spiritual counsel is the water the dragon spews at the sons of God (Rev. 12:15). [“Bread gained by deceit is sweet to a man, but afterward his mouth will be filled with gravel.” – Prov. 20:17].
- Throughout the Old Testament focus is placed on offering people bread and water out of goodwill (Deut. 23:4; 1 Sam. 25:11; 30:11-12; 2 Kings 6:22; Job 22:7; Prov. 25:21; Isa. 21:14) – this expression does however, interestingly enough, not arise once within the New Testament.
- There are often instances of people not partaking of bread or water for long periods of time, like Moses (Deut. 9:9 & 18) and Ezra (10:6), which could appear as if they’re fasting, but it is rather as if they had to live on spiritual bread and spiritual water in those specific times.
- A few times it is explicitly spelled out that God gives people “the bread of adversity and the water of affliction” (Isa. 30:20), but that it always works together for good. Because of this “your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers. Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.” (verse 21). Included in this is the event in the book of Ezekiel (4:16-17; 12:18-19), where obtaining bread and water is accompanied by anxiety and misery. There is indeed “the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water” (Isa. 3:1) that the Lord will take away, because this is not His provision. This could for instance include false or dated prophesies; the “word of truth” that has not been cut correctly (2 Tim. 2:15); spiritual material that is presented “from error or uncleanness” (1 Thess. 2:3), etc.
Bread and water must thus clearly be something spiritual, as we find that the people complain to God and Moses of the lack of bread and water, yet in the same breath state that “we can’t stand this awful food” (CEV)!
This is made very clear in Neh. 9:15: “You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger, and brought them water out of the rock for their thirst, and told them to go in to possess the land which You had sworn to give them.” Take note: the bread from heaven and the water from the Rock are both metaphors for those who hail from the Rock, Christ (1 Cor. 10:4) – the rhema-words of identity in Christ! This is at the heart of the issue. Everything outside adheres to the law, and thus “are thieves and robbers” (John 10:8). Therefore Isa. 33:16 states that “He will dwell on high; His place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; bread will be given him, His water will be sure”. The Christ is the eternal space of refuge (Deut. 33:27) that we as the Bride are offered, safe in His “everlasting arms”. If Amos 8:11 spells out, “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord God, ‘That I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord’”, then it is not a prophetic pointer to physical bread and water, but to hungering and thirsting for the Bride’s rhema-words. Isa. 5:13 is indeed so true of our time: “honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.”
- Selah: Are you bread and water for a hungry world?
- Read: Luke 12-15.
- Memorise: Luke 12:31.
