"I will satisfy her poor with bread"

King Solomon is probably the suppliant in Psalm 132. He desires Jehovah to "remember for David all his affliction;" calls upon Jehovah to arise into His rest, and asks that His priests might be clothed with righteousness and that His saints might shout for joy. His closing request is, "For Thy servant David's sake, turn not away the face of Thine anointed."

Jehovah answers to every request, not according to Solomon's asking, but according to His own goodness and pleasure. He will certainly remember all the affliction of His servant David, but He will also fulfil His promise and oath, "He will not turn from it: of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne." This will have its complete fulfilment when, according to the announcement of the angel to Mary, "The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:32-33).

When the Lord Jesus was upon earth, He came first as the promised Messiah, and faith could see Him fulfil the divine promise to Solomon. "I will satisfy her poor with bread." The poor had no place in the requests of Solomon, but they were not forgotten by Jehovah, and when the Lord Jesus came. He not only preached the Gospel to the poor, as had been prophesied by Isaiah (Luke 4:18-21), but in feeding the five thousand and the four thousand, He satisfied the poor of Israel with bread (Psalm 132:15).

Yet there were those who disparaged the work of the Lord, who asked of Him a sign from heaven so that they might believe in Him, saying, "Our fathers did eat manna in the desert: as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat" (John 6:30. 31). They virtually said, Your feeding of the five thousand is a small matter compared with what Moses did in supplying Israel with manna in the wilderness.

To this the Lord replied, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven: but My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world" (John 6:32-33). God was the source of the manna, and now, in His Son, the True Bread, that of which the manna was a type, was offered to men, not only to Israel, but to the world. No man in this world could have life apart from feeding on the bread of God. He was the bread that God supplied, but also the One who satisfied and delighted the heart of God.

Christ Himself was the Bread of Life, the Living Bread, who brought life to men, an entirely new kind of life, the eternal life that was with the Father, and a life that death had no claim on. Whoever ate of this bread would live for ever, not in the conditions of man after the flesh, where sin dominated all, but in a scene of love where everything is for the pleasure of the Father and the Son.

To make this life available to all, the Son of God must enter into death. He has died, and life is obtained by feeding upon His death. As we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, the soul partakes of the life, the affections and all that was manifested for us in that wonderful death. We must appropriate that death to partake of what God has for us.