Filled

Communion

have Eric invite people to come get elements

Oops - Wrong identity drives wrong life

One of the consistent themes in scripture when it comes to change…is that we (humans) generally don’t.

When consequences get costly enough, we will start to bend, but whether in our lives or generationally, when we are free of the consequences, we revert to form.

Focused on our own and our groups needs, comfort, and care, doing what makes us feel good.

When God designed us to be outward, to care, not to be cared for. To feed rather than be fed.

Until a snake told a lie that we believed. And it’s that lie that keeps humans from changing.

If you eat this fruit, “you will be like God”

The lie? We already were made in his image. The lie is that we have to reach for what we need, who we are, we have to strive after not only food and shelter, but purpose and meaning.

Instead of being givers, we became takers. Desperate to have…and so we sin. We experience greed, lust, fear, anger, despair…

Ugh - We are in Christ - His identity matters more, is our filter for ours - So why do we still live wrong?

Praise God he didn’t let us eat from the tree of life.

To live forever in that state...

Even greater praise he knew we would make that choice and before the foundation of the world put in motion a plan of redemption, to restore us not simply to right behavior, but right identity, to know we are children of God and then live like it.

We are in Christ! But we still struggle…why?

Aha! - Knowing and wrapping ourselves in his identity will steer us right

This is one of the reasons I love the Lord’s Supper. Its a reminder not only what Jesus did in his death and resurrection, but who that makes me.

Jesus I AM -

Between now and Easter we will be talking a lot about identity. Not ours so much but Jesus’. Knowing when the Word became flesh, he emptied himself, I’ve often wondered how Jesus still lived without sin in this world.

Caleb showed us how deeply Jesus relied on the Holy Spirit, and I think there is the key.

Jesus could do that, because he knew who he was. He knew he was a child of the king. He knew he was loved beyond measure. He knew he could live without bread (we’ll come back to that) before living without the words of his father.

So as we take this bread and cup this morning, it is a reminder that we are not simply believers of a truth, but those who are In Christ and have Christ in us. The same identity he has before the father, we have before the father.

This morning, examine yourselves. Look for those places where you have not lived according to that identity in Christ, and confess that to God.

Where have you failed to trust?

Where do you need to repent?

Who do you need to forgive? Who needs to hear you seek forgiveness?

Pray

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Pray

Sermon

Dismiss Kids

Announcements:

Harley - New Sunday School Class

Men’s Breakfast - surveys

Thursday morning Women’s bible study - books are in

Coming weeks - change in online giving, new online portal for all events, registrations etc.

Easter Season - Invite friends, baptism

Life Group

Series Intro - Defining 10 minutes (6)

Last week, I saw Tim Keller share a post with advice I have heard before. “Never assign your opponent a label they would not assign themselves.”

The response was immediate and predictable.

a few thankful for the reminder.

The masses dismissive. But if we know…then calling them out is honest.

Scott Adams, calls this a mental prison called mind reading.

It’s when we think we can gauge the thoughts and intent in a person’s mind and heart based on what we experience on the outside.

Bottom line, we can’t. We’re terrible at it. We hate when other people do it to us, because they’re obviously wrong. But we defend our own capacity to do it.

Follow Tim Keller on Facebook and you will see people call him everything from a Neo Marxist to a Neo Conservative. Somehow he is both!

It helps our minds to categorize. We want to know what to do with someone.

From the beginning, we have done that with God. Humanity has consistently said, “God is this”. And then defended that identity. The pagans created pantheons of gods to represent each thing a god should be and do.

It’s no wonder then, as God began to work through the family of Abraham that he never gave himself a name. He only acted. That might be part of why Abraham was chosen, is that he trusted God to be who he was.

And in Exodus, when God was preparing Moses to go free the people from Egypt, Moses has to ask, Who? Who will I tell them sent me?

And God gives Moses a name to define himself. I AM.

Reference notes and opportunity to dig deeper.

I AM. The meaning is not simply I AM existing, but I AM WHO I AM. I Will be who I will be. I remain the same no matter the day, or who you try to make me.

God came to people as HE was.

And this was the name the people of God used, I AM…Yaweh. They revered and respected the name. They certainly never used it. They found other words to talk about themselves.

As I mentioned during communion, people keep labeling Jesus with labels he wouldn’t give himself. They keep trying to define who he is, why he does what he does, what his real motives are.

The apostle John, who wrote the gospel of John, was seeing a growing movement in and around the church where people were again creating identities and “truths” about Jesus that weren’t his.

So in his account of the story, he emphasizes Jesus’ response to those who in his life tried to define him.

Jesus followed his Father’s lead. He defined himself.

He didn’t make friends this way.

Followers walked away.

Some sought to kill him.

He always disrupted the world.

Because in the ten occasions John recorded that we’ll talk through over the next six weeks, Jesus started by saying, “I AM”. Twice, the ones we will cover lighter, that’s all he said. Those had impact. Once, which we’ll touch on briefly today, is just to his inner circle when they were afraid of him.

Seven times, the ones we will focus on in this series, he began I AM and then added a clear defining truth about himself and his father.

We are going to let Jesus define himself as we close this series. Not a how to series like we just finished, but a who is series. Because more than any advice, if we can truly trust that Jesus IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS in greater measure it will change everything more than everything else we discussed.

Let me pray before I get into today’s statement in John 6.

Pray

Today - 25 minutes (10)

Oops - We look for God to give us what we need

We experience emptiness, we try to fill.

Not long ago I talked about my high school teacher who challenged my spoken Christian beliefs not matching my self focused actions. I’ve also shared about the kid behind me in Spanish class who forcibly invited me to church and became my best friend.

What I usually gloss over, because I don’t think about it much…is the gap between those two.

Once Mr Compton got my conscience itching…I didn’t want to do the things my friends were doing.

I stopped shoplifting. I didn’t want to sneak out at night and prowl the neighborhood. I didn’t feel comfortable with the way my friends treated each other and others.

I sort of just withdrew.

My best friend at the time, Jerry was livid. He began to get the other guys, who had always been less my friends anyway to gang up on me. They began to threaten and bully me in the halls.

“are you better than us?”

I still remember Earl squaring off with me in the locker bay while others kept me from running.

I was only saved the fight (and my beating) because a burly soccer player Therin walked in the middle and ended it with presence. Coincidentally, though I didn’t know him then, he would eventually be another groomsman in my wedding.

They finally let me alone…but that was almost worse. I was alone.

I woke up alone, walked to school alone, sat alone, ate alone, went home alone, to then be alone.

I was angry. Especially at God.

“HEY! I gave up all I loved for you and now here I am! ALONE! You are failing me!”

Can you relate? Have you ever shaken your fist at the heavens because God isn’t pulling his weight? Not keeping up his end?

Here is a critical truth to understand about us in our sinful state.

Even when we name our God right, it is our natural instinct to make gods in our image. That he will operate according to our plan. SLIDE

Present experience will tell us God is failing us.

Leaving us empty

I had a god of social acceptance. The real God was calling for my repentance, and I obeyed a little, trusting that if I did my part, if I made the right sacrifice, that then my god would give me what I needed.

What has it been for you?

Happiness? Security? Comfort? Freedom from pain? Health?

It’s funny. We look back on the norse, the greeks, the egyptians, the mesopatamians and laugh at their statues and trust in the gods of the sun, the rain, fertility, war, wind, sea, communication, justice, and so many others.

How could they believe in that?

Ugh - God rarely just gives us what we ask for… does that mean prayer is ineffective, that God doesn’t love us? (6:26-31)

We create gods out of those things. Chandlers definition of an idol. Christian’s /gods people do it too. We use God as a provider for what we aim to fill ourselves with.

Once again, Tim Keller helps us out. In his book, counterfeit gods, he describes idols not always as bad things, but “good things, that we have made ultimate things.”

Good things, become god things.

See I did not believe in lots of little gods. I did believe in one God. But…I wanted to define him and did the same thing.

God said I AM. And I said, and you will be.

I think if we saw ourselves doing this…we might back down a bit. But we don’t.

When we are empty…we need to be filled.

often when I look at stories of Christians who walked away from the faith, there is a story of God or the church letting them down. Their expectations of God weren’t met.

So they went running after something else that promised to fill.

Jesus, as we’ve seen already, did fill needs as he ministered over three years.

our text for today follows one of those times. In fact, a time of literally filling.

After teaching all day, with the contents of a lunch box, he fed 5000 men in addition to women and children. WOW!

He sends his disciples ahead across the sea of Galilee while he went to pray. (see his need for the Holy Spirit)

At night he walks on the water to his disciples in the boat. As they panic at seeing a ghost, he says, “I AM, don’t be afraid”.

Holy cow, this could be another sermon…will be someday.

The number of times in the Old Testament God reminds the people who he is and then says “fear not”...

But for today, they land the next morning…and find the people from the day before had walked around the lake to find him.

The Holy Spirit gives Jesus insight into their motives.

John 6:26-31 CSB

Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal of approval on him.” “What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked. Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the one he has sent.” “What sign, then, are you going to do so that we may see and believe you?” they asked. “What are you going to perform? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Notice a few things that happen here.

They followed him because they experienced being full.

In Philippians Paul references those who doomed to destruction and says of them, their god is their stomach. They worship what will fill it.

That’s what we see.

They didn’t follow him because they wanted to know him.

They weren’t interested in him. NOTE: These are people who were now on his side. But they wanted what he would give them…not him.

Jesus tells them to work not for food that perishes, but food that is eternal that he can give them because God has put his seal of approval on him. Check their response, because it’s so us.

What can we do? They wanted to earn it.

my anger with God? I did what he wanted me to do and didn’t get what I EARNED.

So Jesus tells them to believe in the one God sent, himself.

They look to be filled their way again

Ok, prove it again. Do a trick. Our ancestors got bread from heaven.

Do you see how their pattern matched mine?

I’ve experienced God in some way, but I want it my way.

So I am disappointed in God when even after my sacrifice, I am not given what is promised.

I begin to see God as distant, disinterested, cruel even.

Been awhile since I’ve mentioned a marvel movie, but this is the origin story of the villain in the latest Thor movie. Gor was one who had ultimate trust in his god and then was let down and it destroys everything good in him.

Our God is not cruel, not disinterested, or distant. He is holy. He is love. He is just. He also is who he is and not who we want him to be.

We want to be filled with bread…Jesus, like his father says, that’s not what I’m here for.

I care that you’re hungry…that’s why I fed you. But it’s more than that.

Aha! - No, instead God IS what we need. (32-35)

Jesus defines himself as THE life filler.

First he addresses their comparison of him and Moses

John 6:32 CSB

“Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.”

Get the source right. God is the giver. Now he’ll change the terms.

John 6:33-34 CSB

“For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

They are ready for true bread. Can you imagine? You go to breakfast at Carol’s Corner Cafe and order the omelette with choice of toast and they say, white, wheat, sourdough, rye, english muffin or the true bread of heaven.

They totally glance over a part of what he just said. The bread of God is the one who comes.

It’s not a meal you need…but a person.

John 6:35 CSB

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.”

I was lonely. I wanted to be filled with friendship.

what is it for you?

Finances insecure, you want to be filled with plenty.

In this world you have fear and you want to be filled with security.

You experience sickness and want to be filled with health

loss and you want to be filled with gain

Jesus says I AM the one that fills. The one that satisfies. I AM the bread you need. If I fill you, you will be full! If I fill you you will never hunger or thirst again!

Did he mean for bread and water? no. The disciples all ate and drank. The book of acts is filled with meals. The deacons were formed because there were a group of hungry widows being ignored.

What did he say the work was? To believe in the one God sent.

They believed in Jesus. They saw him in front of them. They didn’t believe he was enough to satisfy. They wanted bread too.

But what happens when we hear I AM THE BREAD and believe?

Whee! - We will live FILLED we TRUST (36-40), RECEIVE (43-46), WALK (47-58)

When we believe him, it changes us.

I AM the Bread.

This bread may not fill your belly, but it is 100% Recommended daily allowance of what matters more.

Believing in the Bread of Life Gives confidence beyond this life and it’s troubles.

John 6:36-40 CSB

“But as I told you, you’ve seen me, and yet you do not believe. Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

If you and I really trusted that in a relationship with Jesus we are looking forward to a forever of life made new in his presence…would the less than a hundred little years really bother us so much?

Our whole family dealt with some illness this last week or so. Monica is still on the mend. Was it no fun? Oh yeah. But did we despair of life? no. because we trusted that these illnesses would pass.

Do you know that every trouble you experience now will pass?

My loneliness felt like an eternity. But it wasn’t. I was angry with God because he had not replaced my old friends with new ones on my schedule.

You know what I started to figure out. God didn’t move away when I got angry. He was always present. I just started to get a glimpse of the reality that he WAS the bread I needed. He was the filler.

Then, once I started down that road, he did go one better and had a nerd in Spanish class invite me to a church where I would have community again.

But if God had not brought Trevor, still, if I could have trusted Jesus fully, I would have still been filled.

Is the stress of emptiness overwhelming you? Are you looking for your marriage, your children, your job, your church, or anything else to fill that emptiness?

Jesus says, I AM the Bread of Life.

In the darkest days of Monica and I’s marriage, Jesus was the satisfaction that kept us working

In our deepest struggles as parents, Jesus was the satisfaction that kept us connected

In the moments in ministry and church life that made us question our calling, Jesus was the satisfaction that held us together.

Our biggest mistakes and regrets come from the times when we consciously or unconsciously didn’t trust the I AM to be who he was.

When we fought to be filled our way

When we looked for life in our power.

If you are here this morning and have never trusted Jesus, I want you to know he might not solve your problem. He might not fill your belly. He will fill a deeper need that changes everything.

He is the bread that brings eternal life. That word eternal is so much more than a measurement of time. If so, our hope would be for after we die. It is a whole different type of life. A life in relationship with the God who is and always will be. A life where we take on the calling and identity we were always meant to have. Where even our pain has purpose and in dying to self we find life increase all the more.

On Easter, as I mentioned, we will have a baptism service. Baptism is a public display of believing in the bread of life. If you have never been baptized, I hope you’ll consider it. Indicate on a connection card your desire for more info and we’ll reach out in the next couple weeks with more information.

If you do know Jesus, If you’ve tasted the bread of life…you know. But do you remember what it was like to not have that confidence? To not know your identity and value in Jesus?

There is someone in your life desperate for the bread of life.

Do you know that 75% Millennials and Gen Z believe in a God and want to increase in their spiritual lives. They have seen the emptiness of life and are more likely than any other generation in memory to hear the gospel and respond. If anyone would bother.

6 weeks to easter. Will you do something with that time?

Not for points in heaven, but out of loving response to your own filling by the Bread of Life!

Especially when we consider that receiving the bread of life is just that. Receiving what we haven’t earned and can’t achieve.

The crowd begins to grumble at this “I am bread” nonsense. He’s Joseph’s kid, he’s ordinary.

Jesus continues:

John 6:43-46 CSB

Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets: And they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has listened to and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father.”

Paul says it again in Ephesians

Ephesians 2:8-9 CSB

“For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.”

No one comes to the Father unless the Father draws them.

This is why the Holy Spirit is the essential component in evangelism.

But if you are filled by the bread of life, don’t think of yourself as somehow smarter, or wiser, or more morally pure than one who isn’t.

You have been given a gift, taught by God. And God uses whatever it takes to draw us to him.

He used a marketing teacher, nearly getting my lights knocked out, and a season of loneliness to call me. Before that grandparents who taught me about the God who loves, Sunday school teachers who taught me stories, and preachers who kept calling me to know Jesus. But it was God who used all those things to draw me in.

He wants to use you today. He wants to draw you even closer. Let him do both.

Finally, when we receive the I AM as the bread of life, it will change how we walk.

John 6:56-58 CSB

“The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 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. This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the manna your ancestors ate—and they died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”

They say you are what you eat. Not sure they had this in mind…but Jesus seems to go with it.

If Jesus is the I AM the Bread in our lives, if we trust him to satisfy, then he says we “remain in him” and “He in us” Spoiler alert, almost these exact words will come back in our last message in the series.

We will walk different because we will understand something essential.

God gave the Israelites Manna. They were hungry the next day. They still died.

My god was social acceptance and friendship. Guess what. Though the friends God gave me in Trevor, and Therin and James were awesome and we never quit being friends, we’re scattered on the West Coast from San Francisco to Vancouver. I don’t see them, haven’t communicated in person in years. Trevor and I grabbed breakfast four years ago, James and I a dinner about the same time.

When you get married, the reality is that barring a disaster, one of you will say goodbye to the other. Many of you have.

If God fixed your finances today with a check for 100k, that money would spend, and one medical emergency could wipe it out in a minute.

If you got a rest today from all your worries…tomorrow will worries anew.

These are like the manna God sent. They fill…but don’t stay.

So why do we shape our entire lives around them.

Back to the beginning, Jesus said, Don’t work for food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life,

Which Jesus came to be. To Give to us, by his life, death, and resurrection.

If that’s the food we’re after, if we are living satisfied in him, we can’t help but change.

(35 minute) What changes? - Reality check…it doesn’t happen naturally (60-65) None of these statements will bring warm fuzzies…when Jesus is clear on who he is, it prompts reactions. When you embrace God’s truth about you, you will react, and so will others.

Let me invite the worship and prayer team to come up. During the last song, or after the service, if you need prayer, or to respond to something God did in you today, come forward and let the prayer team pray with you.

As they come up, a last note.

Verse 60-66

John 6:60-66 CSB

“Therefore, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?” Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to observe the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and the one who would betray him.) He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.” From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him.”

Ouch.

That’s how bad we fight to be satisfied with the world and what we can get for ourselves.

Many of his disciples…people who were following him already turned back.

The gift of faith is being able to remain hungry in our stomachs and full in Christ.

It’s not looking to God in anger when he doesn’t give you what you’ve earned, but trusting that he’s given you what you need most.

It allows you to give grace when hurt, because they didn’t take anything you needed.

It allows you to be radically hospitable and generous, because your security is not in money, food, or time.

I want to ask you to take these steps this week

Do the extra readings and take time to journal out the answers to the questions. Get to know more about the I AM and the bread of life.

Look for one area of your life where you are not trusting Jesus to be what you need. And make a choice. Take an action of trust.

Maybe it’s forgiving, maybe it’s confessing, maybe giving something up. I don’t know what your idol is, but replace it with Jesus.

The crowd that followed him around a lake for another meal…not interested.

Too hard.

That’s not good enough news.

I’m going to give Peter the last word. I have given him a hard time in the past few months…here’s a chance to see him get it right. Jesus watches the crowds leave, clearly he wasn’t desperate for acceptance like me.

So he turns to the twelve his chosen disciples and asks them if they want to leave too.

John 6:68-69 CSB

Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

You are the I AM who is the bread of life.

Pray