LIFE GIVING BREAD
#488 LIFE GIVING BREAD
Scripture John 6:30-59, NIV Orig. 6/7/1970
Rewr. 8/20/1990
Passage: 30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’[a]” 32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” 43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’[b] Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Purpose: Returning to series preaching from the gospel, here defining Christ as the One who is Himself the Bread of God.
Keywords: Nature of Christ Sacrifice
Timeline/Series: Bible Study of John’s Gospel Bible Study of the Parables
Introduction
This chapter dares the reader to attempt to pass through these pages without being drawn into the discussion of Christ as the “bread of God.” Chapter six can, in fact, be divided seven ways, each funneling the reader into that deeper realization of Christ as BREAD. It opens (vs 1-7) as Jesus questions the disciples about feeding the multitude that has come to hear Him. The second segment shows Andrew acknowledging (vs 8-11) a lad who still has his lunch. Next, in sequel form, (vs 12-14), the disciples are admonished to see value in fragments also. The interval between this day and the next finds Jesus coming to the disciples during the storm at sea.
Immediately the next day begins, the crowds have returned for second helpings. What Jesus fed them satisfied their daily hunger, and they were back for more (v22-29).
The sixth segment contained in this chapter is our text this morning. Jesus presents Himself as the “life giving bread” (v33). The concluding portion of the chapter (vs 60-71) reminds us of Peter’s faith in this feeding (v68), and of Judas Iscariot, who like so many then and now, were content to get by on the table scraps that they had set for themselves.
The two essentials for nourishment are food and drink. In 4:7f Jesus offers a thirsting woman water that would quench her thirst. Now, to these who hunger, food is offered. The water was from a supernatural source. So, also, the bread. If all they want is a full belly, a full belly is all they will get. It will hardly last the day.
I. First Noted is the Striving of the Bread. V33 “For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” V38 “For I came down from heaven, to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.”
Do we really, truly understand that Jesus is of more than fleshly stripe? Five times in this passage Jesus refers to His incarnation. No doubt His birth was a human birth. But it was so much more. We put great stock in important people. Go overboard getting program personalities who are important: Terry Bradshaw; Tom Lester (who played Ebb on Green Acres) was invited to Camp Harris.
This incarnation establishes divinity John 1:14 “The word was made flesh, . . . and we beheld his glory.” Do you behold Him as God? I Timothy 3:16 “Great was the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” The Greek doesn’t say “God.” The text accords to Jesus the character of God.
Do we honor Him as is His due? I John 4:2f “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. . . every spirit that confesseth not . . . this is that spirit of anti-Christ.”
Jesus comes in the flesh to do the will of God. His doing establishes that it can be done. It testifies as well that we haven’t done it, and are ourselves at risk. The glory is that faith in Christ affords us with His substitutionary atonement. Hebrews 2:9 “We see Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”
1500 years ago missionaries from far to the south came to the land we call England. Celts had never heard. Some saw this as an insult to their gods. In the Grange Hall they argued far into the night. A small bird blundered in toward the light of their oil lamp. A chief: “Like that small bird we blunder toward what light we see. But will this new religion help us as we go out into the darkness where none of us have been?”
II. Second Noted, There is the Striving with the Bread. V41 “The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven.” V52 “The Jews strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
It was striving against messianic claims. The Jews introduce a word of manna. The feeding of the multitude prompts. Jesus informs them (v31) that the bread was from God, not from Moses. The Messiah likewise will be from God to nourish people. V33 “The bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.” Nehemiah (9:15) refers to manna as “bread from heaven.”
The messianic tradition was that when Messiah came He would feed them manna. At destruction of temple, pot of manna secreted away by Jeremiah. Messiah will return it to the people. Revelation 2:17 Pergamos: “To him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the hidden manna.” For Jesus to say that He was the bread from heaven was to say He was the Messiah.
They were striving also against His presumed claims to divinity. It is so easy for a person reared in the indigenous atmosphere of church. It is not hard for people of the same culture to easily grasp faith. But for the Jew, everything they believed is being threatened. Jesus informs them that it is not Moses who offers manna, but God; and now they are offered bread.
Someone (Lockyear, p. 319) makes the point that Jesus offers life three essentials. They are defined as breath, water, food. In John, chapter 3, Jesus spoke of breath, wind of Spirit without which man cannot have eternal life. In chapter 4, Jesus offers a woman living water by which she can live forever. In chapter 6, Jesus offers Himself as the food available and essential for life here and hereafter.
We should not overlook also that in His birth it was Bethlehem, house of bread.
III. Finally, There is a Striving for the Bread. V40 “This is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Has it occurred that the only physical commodity sought in Lord’s Prayer is bread? It acknowledges the majesty of God. It confesses man’s weakness and sin. It pleads escape from our confused inner selves. Of physical needs, it pleads only bread.
Our greater need is for the One who is our daily spiritual replenishment. To what degree are you striving for Him? V50 “This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.” How readily do you accord Jesus the place of priority in your life?
I have told the story of the little boy in the home of people of means, who stuck his hand in the mouth of a Ming bowl. It would not release. Broken. Inside the clinched fist of the boy was a penny.
How many of us are intrigued with the gospel story, but our spiritual fists are clinched around some worldly device that we refuse to yield?
Your striving, my striving, must be for the bread.
V34 “Lord, evermore give us this bread.” Hear Dorothy Sayers in her book, Creed or Chaos: “The reason why the chuches are discredited today is not because they are too bigoted about theology. At the risk of appearing quite insolently obvious I shall say that if the church is to make any impression on the modern mind she will have to preach Christ and the Cross. Of late, she has not succeeded well in preaching Christ. She has preached Jesus, which is not at all the same thing.”
Conclusion
Do you have a place at the table where this bread is served? Have you called home to say, “I’ll be there, too! Set a place for me!”? V51 “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any . . . eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh.”