The Bread of Life

Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship

Prayer for Illumination

As you read his word, ask God to enlighten your mind and heart:

Almighty God, and most merciful Father, we humbly submit ourselves, and fall down before your Majesty, asking you from the bottom of our hearts, that this seed of your Word now sown among us, may take such deep root, that neither the burning heat of persecution cause it to wither, nor the thorny cares of this life choke it. But that, as seed sown in good ground, it may bring forth thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold, as your heavenly wisdom has appointed. Amen.

Middelburg Liturgy

John 6:35–40 ESV

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever 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. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 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.”

Most Important Question

The most important question you need to be asking yourself as you read the accounts of Jesus life is not “what does this say about my life or how can I follow Jesus better now?” but the most important question you need to be asking is “what does this teach me about Jesus.” When we read the gospels in the New Testament, the authors Matthew Mark, Luke and John and primarily and centrally concerned with helping the reader come to know and ultimately believe in Jesus as the Messiah, he is the Son of God, the savior of the world who offers his gift of salvation freely to anyone who would believe in him.

John’s Gospel

We are beginning a new series of chapel talks that will have us meditating on the gospel of John for seven weeks. John’s gospel is often considered to be the best starting place for the new christian to go through to learn about the person and work of Jesus. This is because John is very simple and clear in his articulation of who Jesus is and what he did.

Among many of the famous sayings that come from his gospel like John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” and John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” where he connects this new age in history with the beginning of the world, John gives seven distinct identity markers for Jesus.

Seven

If you have ever read this Gospel account, John’s three letters or the book of Revelation which is also authored by him, you are very aware of how fond John is of using the number seven. This is because if the Bible the number seven is a very important number. We are first introduced to this with the seven day creation narrative in Genesis 1 where we see the number seven finally culminating in a day of rest after God had completed his work of creation. Several of the ancient religious ceremonies of the Old Testament also recieved a sevenfold repetition such as the sprinkling of blood on the tabernacle tent or the dipping of Naaman the leper in the Jordan river to be cleaned. Seven is one of the most important numbers in all of the Bible and it symbolized perfection, fullness, abundance, rest, and completion.

So when John gives of the seven I am statements in his biographical account of the life of Jesus, he is trying to show the reader that Jesus is the perfection, fullness, abundance, rest, and completion of the entire Old Testament, and of the entire history of the world. This is a huge claim to make but he is going to write his whole book to prove.

Identity

One of the most challenging things you are going to wrestle with in your time in college is identity. Who are you and what is your purpose? The biggest problem you are going to face in answering this question is if you try and answer this question apart from understanding WHO you were made for. What you are going to see as we walk through these verses is that your identity in life is going to most fully, abundantly, restfully, and completely come from understanding the person of Jesus and what he came to do for you. It is when you realize that your identity was made to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did that you are going to finally live into all that God has for you. My prayer is that you would respond like the crows who were following Jesus did and say “Sir, give us this bread always.””

Seven “I Am’s”

The seven I am statements are John 6:35 “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” John 8:12 “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”” John 10:7 “So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.” John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 11:25 “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,” John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 15:1 ““I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.”

Goal of the Chapel Talks

We are going to be covering these seven identity markers of Jesus over the next seven weeks with one big over purpose. Our goal is no different that the writer of this Gospel narrative: John 20:31 “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Bread of Life

So for starters we begin with his first statement found in John 6:35 “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Jesus’ first I am statement comes as Jesus is speaking with a crown of people who are questioning him about getting more bread from him. Jesus has just fed five thousand people by multiplying a few leaves of bread and some fish and the people are chasing after Jesus to get more bread from him. They are marveling at his teachings and asking where he came from, and to be given the bread that he is speaking about always.

Jesus as Bread?

Now what does it mean for Jesus to be the bread of life? The crowds are asking Jesus to preform a sign for them that they might believe in him. They say that John 6:31 “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”” What the disciples are asking for is proof that Jesus that they may believe in him. This Old testament reference is given for three reasons

to link this event to the exodus and passover event

2) To link Jesus as the greater Moses who has been prophesied in the Old Testament

To fulfill the expectation that God would provide manna once again in the messianic age

For Jesus to identify himself with the manna is Jesus claimng divinity for himself. he says that Moses did not make bread come down but God made bread come down. Jesus has just fed 5,000 people. Only God does that. When Jesus says that he is the bread of life, he is offering a metaphor to teach the crowds that the Messiah has finally arrived. “Jesus is the “bread of life” in the sense that he nourishes people spiritually and satisfies the deep spiritual longings of their souls. In that sense, those who trust in him shall not hunger; that is, their spiritual longing to know God will be satisfied”

Where Are You Looking for Food?

These sayings of Jesus beg the question, where are you looking for bread that fully satisfies you? Right now there are many things trying to get you to consume them to satisfy you.

Maybe it’ll be the next season of life that you are going to find rest. Once you find that job after college you will be satisffied, once you find a family youll be satisfited, once you make it to reirement you arem going to be satified.

Netflix and streaming platforms are asking you to consume hours and hours of content on an almost ritualistic basis. They are offering up to you the whole world, friendships, love, world travel, superhuman abilities, and unbelievably uncomfortable encounters in office places on a 24/7 ready access platform for you to consume. How satisfied are you be going back to these things? After you have watched 2 to 4 hours of TV a day, do you feel more at rest in the world and satisfied?

The lie the world is getting you to believe that that satisfaction you are longing for is just around the corner if you look a little harder and try a little more. Jesus is offering you that right now, a free gift that he will never take away from you.

No matter what kind of bread you turn to in your life to give you comfort, it will always require more and more of you and your time to be just as satisfying. It isn’t that other breads are bad in themselves. You need literal bread to live! Movies and TV shows are good gifts but when these things become the means by which you are trying to relax, how you veg out and what you give yourself to, you will always end up more hungry then before you started.

Let me pray to close our time.