Sermon Cloud

June 1, 2008

John 6:22-71 “Bread of Life” (7 Sermons of Jesus - #4)

Brief context (1-24)

            I’ve got to keep the background short since I am covering 50 verses today!  Back in my series “7 signs”, we saw Jesus feed 5,000 men plus women and children.  It was more than a miracle because it pointed to His identity as the promised Messiah who would make the greatest provision for humanity!  The provision was vague in this story, but that’s about to change.  After Jesus fed the people, he went by Himself for a while and then walked on water to catch up with His disciples. Just another day at the office for God’s Son, I guess!  It’s at this point that the crowd catches back up with Jesus.

Bread of life (25-59)

1.  25-34.  Jesus doesn’t naively assume that the following of the crowd is because they understand who Jesus is and what His mission was.  No, He realizes that He fed them and they want more!  He turns the conversation to the eternal in verse 27, but the crowd has way too much confidence in their ability to merit it!  28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”  In other words, tell us what we need to do and we’ll do it.  Jesus’ response?  “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”  Want to do something? Believe in me.  The people are not impressed.  Basically they say something like, “Who do you think you are, big boy?  You need more than one miracle under your belt before you start saying things like that!  You aren’t even close to where Moses was yet!”  Jesus corrects their thinking by pointing out that it never was about Moses.  God was the one who provided then, just like He provided in Jesus’ miracle just a day or two earlier.  But here’s the kicker.  It’s not just that God provided bread, but He provides it presently (32) and the identity of the bread is revealed.  33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  God’s provision is not just the bread we eat, but its greatest expression is a person and this person will give life!  We all have spiritual hunger whether you are aware of it or not.   

2.  35-40.  They totally miss it, so Jesus gets even clearer. 35 I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.  Forget about the stupid bread the other day.  God’s provision of bread through Moses and Jesus were nothing like spiritual bread.  Jesus is God’s provision for you in a way that will keep on giving to you.  This is not at all unlike what He said to the Samaritan woman where He would be living water to her and she would never thirst again. 

            Now Jesus turns to a tricky little area that is sure to make a few of us uncomfortable today.  Well, you’ll be in good company because the disciples felt the same way at the end of this little discourse!  The tricky issue is explaining why many did not believe even with His signs and teaching (36).  The answer?  Verses 37 and 39 show that unbelief doesn’t take away anything from the power of Jesus’ ministry because all who were given to Jesus by the father will come to Him and stay with Him.  In other words, the Father doesn’t give all of humanity to Jesus.  Some will believe and some will not, but this is within God the Father’s power and Jesus came to do His will.  This is not at all unlike what Jesus said back in John 3 where the Spirit makes people born again.  Don’t think yourself into a hole here.  Some might say, “How do I know if I am one of the ones that the Father has given to the Son?”  That’s easy. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” If you believe in Jesus, you were given by the Father to the Son and you will have eternal life.  In this short little block of Scripture, you see both the control of God in salvation and our responsibility to believe.

3.  41-51.  The Jews don’t like this at all.  His claims seem way over the top.  He is saying He is the channel of the Father’s grace to all of humanity and it’s not just up to them.  Think about it.  They want to do know what thing they need to do to be ok and he says that the only work they need to do is to believe.  This cuts the heart of their pride in what they could accomplish and he follows it up again with the negative assertion of what we just heard in verses 37 and 39 in verse 44. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.  Whoever believes will have eternal life, but only those who are drawn by God will believe. 

            As frustrating as this may be for us, let’s praise Jesus that He will push us out of any over-simplified sentimental understanding of who He is.  He is saying that His purposes won’t be thwarted by anyone or anything.  No threat will undo His work in us.  He will preserve all that God the Father gives Him and give them eternal life/raise them on the last day.  This is intended to give firm confidence not to the religious, but to the converted!  He closes this little section by giving even bigger hints of where His ministry was going.  His flesh would eventually be broken on the cross and it would provide a way for new life for all who would believe. 

4.  52-59.  Flesh to eat?  This is crazy stuff.  Jesus goes further and talks about people drinking His blood.  Wow.  He is talking about His blood being spilled on the cross.  If we feed on Jesus…not cannibalism…but if we believe in Him (the first part of this story established the metaphor), then we will live forever with Jesus.  Some traditions have believed this means that if we just take the Lord’s Supper, we’ll live forever.  The force of this passage rules this out, doesn’t it?  This really isn’t about the Lord’s Supper.  This is about Jesus and his provision for all who would believe in Him. 

            This is the whole point of the Bible.  I think a lot of people think the main goal of Jesus is to forgive people’s sin so they can go to heaven and kind of hang out forever.  Well, that does occupy the main direction of His earthly ministry, but it doesn’t mean that it is the end goal.  Jesus’ bloody death and resurrection do forgive sins of all believers.  That much is true.  But it’s just not all!  The forgiveness established through His flesh and blood is a means to an end!  What end?  Our life forever with God.  Apparently, communion with God will be so great that it will feed us forever in a way that no other earthly provision can do.  Think about that!  Better than the best marriage and sex.  Better than the best food or drink.  Better than the best thrill.  Better than the best achievement.  Better than the best accolades from people.  He will be better.  As John Piper has said, forgiveness is not the ultimate reality in the universe; God is.  This challenges me a lot. Essentially we are probing the same idea Nathan hit last week- Do we honor Jesus?  Do we feast on Him?  Or do we just like to critique people?  Or critique churches?  Or be moral?  Often, I find myself settling for religious/moral activity instead of enjoying Him.

“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (60-71)

            Much of this is hard for you and it was hard for them.  It’s not just the non-believing Jews that are having a tough time with this.  Even Jesus’ disciples are half-way tempted to chuck it.  In fact, one will end up walking away in a treacherous way (Judas).  Jesus reiterates one of major subthemes of this chapter-he knows who has really believed and who doesn’t.  Therefore, no one can say that Jesus has failed in the case of Judas or any other person that reveals they were never a Christian by their renouncing of Christ. 

            All of this is hard, isn’t it?  God is at the helm of salvation.  To have eternal life we must come “eat and drink” (i.e. believe) from Jesus.  This is pretty much everything prideful humanity hates to hear.  You are not ok, your own pathway to God is not valid since it doesn’t go through Jesus, and you need Jesus.  These bold claims really do force us to either walk away or, like Peter, to say “Where else can we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  I hope some of you, while uncomfortable with these claims, will keep looking to Jesus since life is found in the Son.  The funny thing is that the thing you are trying to protect more than anything…probably that you are ok like you are…will be pronounced over you in Christ.  He will give you a new heart and pronounce you clean, enough, and accepted by God because of Jesus.  In other words, the thing you want to protect, you don’t have right now, but it can be yours if you ask.  “He is no fool who gives what he can not keep, to gain what he can not lose.” Jim Elliot

Meditating on what’s so Great about God

            I hope you will wrestle with these truths and not only come to grips with them, but enjoy the fact that God is much greater than you first imagined.  On that note, I thought we’d conclude our time this morning doing what Jesus told us to do.  Let’s feast on His flesh and drink His blood.  In other words, let’s come to Him, believe in Him, and be satisfied for all that He is for us. As I said earlier, He has forgiven us and that great act of redemption should be one of the most prominent things we honor Jesus for doing, but that forgiveness enables us to enjoy an inexhaustible supply of God’s riches for all of eternity.  It is so vast that you’ll have all of eternity to learn and experience all that He is, but you won’t be able to do it.  You’ll know and experience a lot, but you will never know and experience all of God that there is…He is infinite.  Now that you mention it, that’s something to enjoy about God right there!

This is where singing is at its very best!  We are going to spend lots of time this morning going to the Lord’s table symbolize our soul’s desire: to enjoy Him and declare His cross and resurrection and His surpassing excellence.  We hope to center on enjoying God individually, in small communities, among friends, and together with the church.  My prayer is that this will fuel our enjoyment of Him for the rest of the week as well!