Where did lunch come from?

“For they [the wicked] eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.”
-Proverbs 4:17

In my line of work (insurance), I occasionally come across people who are trying to defraud my company of how ever much money we are willing to give them. Strangely, they don’t seem like total jerks at all (well, most of them), but when the chance for some quick cash arises, it has an odd effect on them.

Some of these are really obvious. Others are not. For some, it just seems like they are acting a little more hurt than they really are. A groan here or there will do it, they think.

I came across two interpretations of this verse, the second of which we’ll take a look at next time. In the first, the bread and wine mentioned are gained through unjust causes. Honestly, I was going to skip this interpretation completely. I immediately thought, “This isn’t about me. I work an honest job, and I worked it honestly.” And I doubt many of my readers are thieves either, though I could be wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be quick to make assumptions on that one. Still, I really wanted to just pass to the second interpretation.

It’s true that I do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. But that’s not where I slip. I slip, like some of those hurt people I deal with, when an unexpected opportunity for gain or loss comes by. Do I exaggerate the truth when it fits my purposes? Do I hold back when I think it may get me into trouble? I remember several times when I withheld a bit of information when returning an item to a store or calling customer service about my bill. Can I really say I was that honest when it came to getting that money?

For some of us, our jobs may not be that honest. It’s probably legal, and it probably doesn’t involved violence, but that doesn’t mean it’s honest. Does our daily bread come from taking advantage of people? Does it come from misleading them at all? Does it come from clever sales pitches and pressure sales? Does it come from overly inflating prices?

I can think of a few times even recently where my daily bread didn’t come out of hard work and love. It came from something else.

These little lies, these little misrepresentations, they come from a lack of faith. See, God told us He would provide our daily bread. It is He that gives us our jobs and income, and it is also He who knows where our next meal is coming from. So it’s only when we doubt this provision that we resort to dishonesty to get more money. If we really believed that God would keep His promise, we would continue to work in honesty and uprightness.

That bread and that wine are temporary. Tomorrow you will need more. And so we have to begin all over again in dishonesty and, Heaven forbid, violence.

Jesus provides the water of life, which is eternal. He offered His own body and blood up as a sacrifice for us, which, remember, He first offered to His followers as bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. Even when we, in our lack of faith, turn from God and to our own devices, Jesus died on our behalf so we could live. To the woman at the well He said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

God not only is our provision in this life, but for eternity. We have sinned, each one of us, and none of us deserve life, but Jesus took the punishment for our sins upon Himself on the Cross. By His Grace we can have the life we did not deserve.

It is His death we remember every time we take Communion. Such righteousness does Jesus possess, and like His body and blood, it is righteousness He gives to us.