Bread, Blood, and Belief

Introduction

Our passage this morning is John 6:22-59. Turn there and follow along as I read it.

John 6:22–59 CSB

22 The next day, the crowd that had stayed on the other side of the sea saw there had been only one boat. They also saw that Jesus had not boarded the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone off alone. 23 Some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” 26 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. 27 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.” 28 “What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked. 29 Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the one he has sent.” 30 “What sign, then, are you going to do so that we may see and believe you?” they asked. “What are you going to perform? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” 32 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. 33 For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35 “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. 36 But as I told you, you’ve seen me, and yet you do not believe. 37 Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 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. 40 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.” 41 Therefore the Jews started grumbling about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. 45 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—46 not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father. 47 “Truly I tell you, anyone who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, 55 because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 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; it is not like the manna your ancestors ate—and they died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.” 59 He said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for your word. We praise you that you sent Jesus to earth not only to die for us, but to teach us so much about you. We know that you have the words of eternal life. We can go nowhere else. Help us to see the eternal satisfaction that we experience with Christ as our Savior. Now, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Last week, we talked about how Jesus provides for us as he did with feeding the 5,000. Today, we’re going to continue to talk about Jesus’s provision. Take a moment to think about what the greatest thing that Jesus has provided to you. Maybe you are thinking about a time of desperation where you were miraculously provided for, and the only answer is that Jesus provided. Maybe you were provided with supernatural comfort in a time of heartbreak. Those are good things. Great things! But the greatest thing that Jesus has given any of us is himself. And that’s our main point from the text this morning. Because the Son of God came to do the will of the Father, we receive good gifts from him. The gift of God is salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and the result of that gift is eternal life. We see this gift of Jesus himself expressed in three ways in our passage today: Jesus as the eternal bread of life, who sheds his efficacious blood that we might have union with him, and rewards enduring belief with eternal life. Briefly put: Eternal bread, efficacious blood, and enduring belief. Bread, blood, belief. All of these are ways that this passage describes the gift of Jesus that gives us the gift of eternal life.

Eternal Bread

I know that many of you know that I love Lord of the Rings. We’ve only been a church since October, and I’ve probably already mentioned Lord of the Rings too much for some of you. But I am a Tolkien-ite and unapologetic about it. In the Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship visits Rivendell, the home of the Elves. While there, the elves give gifts to the Fellowship, including a bread called lembas bread. This bread was known for its ability to give sustenance on long journey. It was a generous gift, and one small bite could fill the belly of a full grown man, dwarf, elf, or hobbit. It was a satisfying gift.

In our passage this morning, we see an eternally generous and satisfying gift. But before we get into this point, let’s take a look at the first few verses. John gives us some context as to what’s going on: After Jesus had walked on water and the disciples made it to the place they were headed, the large crowd tried to find Jesus. They find him in Capernaum, the headquarters of his ministry. Of course they wanted to find him and hear and see more from him: He had fed thousands of people and they were hooked! So they go searching and they find him.

But let’s look at Jesus’s first response to them in verse 26: “You are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” Wow. This was a pretty damning thing for Jesus to say to them. He’s, in essence, saying: “Your god is your belly and your only coming to me because you got a free meal.” He had something better for them. “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.” What was he talking about? Something like lembas bread? Some sort of food that could give them eternal life somehow? Of course this doesn’t really exist. Jesus wasn’t talking about anything natural. And this is what we see over and over again throughout the book of John. Jesus is often talking about supernatural realities, but the people around him are blind to this. They only see the natural, the physical. This happens with the woman at the well, Nicodemus, the disciples, and now this crowd.

That begs the question then: What is this bread? Look at verse 33: “For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then again in verse 35: “I am the bread of life.” When Jesus says “I am” he is using this ego eimi term again in Greek. This is the same phrase as Yahweh in the Old Testament. Jesus is identifying himself with God, and in so doing describes himself as the bread of life.

We partake in food to sustain ourselves. Every culture has what we call a staple food or staple bread. In Indian food, there is naan. Mediterranean cultures eat pita bread. In Central and South America, people eat corn tortillas. These are staples. They are easy to make and provide filling and sustenance. It’s always on the table. This crowd would have been familiar with the concept of a staple bread: they probably ate pita with most every meal. We see this even expressed in the Lord’s prayer: Jesus commands the disciples to thank God for their daily bread each time they pray. He was training them — and us — to see God as the provider for the most basic needs. And he reminds them that since the Father meets their most basic physical need (food on the table), he will meet their true spiritual need with “true bread from heaven.” And that bread is Jesus.

Jesus is our all-satisfying spiritual sustenance. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry.” God has provided an everlasting meal for his people to spiritually survive, and that is the bread of life, found in Jesus. This is what God has done for his people over and over throughout Scripture. He provides physical needs, yes, but that should serve as a sign to point to our spiritual needs. Jesus uses the example of God providing manna in the wilderness in verses 47-51. As the people escaped the clutches of Egyptian oppression and slavery, they went into the wilderness to make their way back toward the Promised Land. As they wandered around, God provided for them a food called manna. This was a miraculous provision: Manna cannot be made or grown. It was a gift of God. The whole point of God providing manna for the people was to meet a physical need that would point to a spiritual need: Reliance on God. But the people didn’t see it that way. They just wanted their bellies filled.

Why are you going to Jesus? Are you trying to have a physical need met and ignoring your spiritual state? Are you just here for a meal ticket? There are false teachers and churches who preach that it’s more important that your physical needs are met than your spiritual needs: This is the false teaching of teachers like Joel Osteen, Jesse Duplantis, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Bill Johnson, Paula White, and TD Jakes. They teach that God exists to make us happy, healthy, and wealthy. They prey on people who misunderstand the gift of God. They are more focused on riches in this world than the true gift of God: Abundant riches of mercy and grace. They are more focused on physical sustenance than the spiritual salvation found in the everlasting bread of life: Jesus Himself. They distort the message of the gospel with man-centered foolishness. I would encourage you to avoid these preachers and their ilk at all costs. He never promised health, wealth, or even happiness. Those aren’t what constitute a blessed life in God. A blessed and satisfied and sustained life in God is partaking in the true gift of God: the eternal, spiritual sustenance found in Christ alone.

So again: Why are you going to Jesus? Why are you here this morning? Jesus isn’t a meal ticket or a lottery scratcher. He’s the King of kings, Lord of lords who works all things for you and for your salvation. Money will pass away. Our physical needs will, too. But partaking in the bread of life grants us eternal life. How, then do we do that? Through a sacrificial salvation.

Efficacious Blood

Not only has Jesus given us himself as living bread, but he has shed his own blood in this sacrificial salvation.

Hebrews 9:22 says, “Without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness.” Sin created a problem. When sin entered the world, God sent a curse that created strife between humans and other humans, between humans and the earth, and most important and drastic: Between humans and God. Before sin, man walked freely with God in the garden of Eden. After the Fall, that relationship was fractured, as God’s perfect righteousness and holiness cannot abide the sinfulness of man. This is the depth of human sin: It has destroyed all that is good.

But in God’s sovereign love of his people, and in his infinite mercy and grace, he has provided a way. He has always been a provider, but this has always required sacrifice. In the garden, immediately after their sin, God provided Adam and Eve with animal skins to cover themselves and to hide their shame. What does an animal skin require? The death of an animal. The shed blood on behalf of Adam and Eve. Later, Abel’s sacrifice to God was pleasing, and it included with it a portion of his livestock: shed blood. As God strikes his covenant with Abraham, he passes between several different animals that were sacrificed. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, he provided a ram to sacrifice instead at the last moment. Time and time again, the shed blood of goats and bulls and lambs is required of God’s people.

The entire sacrificial system of the law in the Old Testament was set up and ordained by God to set a reminder of the atonement required for the sin of people. Man sins, and to atone for that sin, God required a sacrifice of a living thing. This sacrifice had to be offered in certain ways by certain people in certain locations: By priests according to the law at the temple. But it wasn’t a lasting covenant. It wasn’t a lasting sacrifice. Year after year, day after day, priests had to go into the temple, into the holy place, and offer blood sacrifice to atone for the sin of the people.

But look at Hebrews 9:11–14“11 But Christ has appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come. In the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands (that is, not of this creation), 12 he entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God?”

Christ came as both the priest and the sacrifice. And his sacrifice of his own shed blood, his own life blood, was once for all time. The shed blood of Christ is necessary for our atonement, because our sin made it so. God has provided salvation for us, but that can only happen through Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross for us. He lived a perfect life — a spotless lamb — and died a death for us. Our sin demands death, and we deserve to die. But Christ came to do the will of the Father: to die in the place of sinners like you and me. Then look at verse 53 and following: Jesus begins talking about drinking blood to have life in ourselves. We don’t believe that we need to actually drink the real blood of Christ in order to have new life. In fact, according to the Law, drinking blood was forbidden. Jesus would never lead someone to break the Law, as he came to uphold it perfectly and fulfill it. But he does tell his listeners that they would not have eternal life unless they drink his blood. But he also says that those who do eat his flesh and drink his blood will have eternal life, being raised up by him on the last day. This is highly metaphorical language. The Biblical scholar Collin Kruse says this:

“…it is clear that eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood functions as a metaphor for believing in him, especially as the one whose vicarious death on the cross secures salvation.”

Our sin leaves us lacking: Lacking satisfaction that comes from living in right relationship with God. Lacking sustenance found in living in union with Christ. Lacking the spiritual benefits of living for him. But God has made a way for us: He willed that we should be save. It is the Father’s will to save his people, and that salvation comes through Christ alone. More specifically, that salvation comes through Christ being obedient to the Father’s will and dying on the cross. Sin requires punishment. That punishment is death. Jesus took our punishment and our sin on Calvary, and in so doing, restored us. He was the final sacrifice. So the animal skins for Adam and Eve were pointing forward to the cross of Christ. Abel’s sacrifice was pointing forward to the cross of Christ. The ram in the thicket to take Isaac’s place was pointing forward to the cross of Christ. The lambs slaughtered on Passover in Egypt were pointing forward to the cross of Christ. Every goat, bull, and lamb under the sacrificial system in Israel was pointing forward to the cross of Christ.

Believer, Jesus has shed his blood for you! He has provided an everlasting salvation for you. What does that mean for you? Verse 56: The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” By Christ’s salvific work for us, we have union with him. We are bound to him by his blood and for his glory. Even in the midst of your sin, Christ died for you and bound himself to you. He abides with you, and you abide with him. What comfort! What life found in Christ!

The blood of Christ is efficacious: It is effective; it produces results. And what is that result: Eternal life and salvation for all who would believe. And that turns us to our last point: Enduring belief.

Enduring Belief

Because Jesus accomplished the will of Father and gave us himself as everlasting, living bread, and shed his efficacious blood on the cross for us, we should stake our souls on him in faith. In belief. Access to the blood of Christ and partaking in Christ’s gift of himself comes on through faith. Faith alone. Now, some preachers and teachers might simply leave it there: Have more faith. But I really don’t believe that we can ‘have more faith.’ If that’s the call on our lives, we would fail. We cannot muster up faith. Faith is described by God to be the gift of God. And in our passage, belief is the work of God.

Many people think that their entrance into salvation is based upon a work of their own doing: They made a move of faith. But that would mean that salvation is a result of our own works, our own act of having faith. Jesus teaches us differently: God has worked and willed salvation for his people. God has drawn people to himself, and God has worked belief in those people. God willed your salvation. God drew you to himself. God gave you faith to believe in Christ. And Christ accomplished your salvation. This is the work of God. This is the miracle of salvation. This is the only way that salvation can work, because salvation is completely and totally to the glory of God that no man can boast.

If you believe in Christ today as your savior, praise God! He has chosen you, adopted you, shown you mercy and grace, sent Christ for you, and will keep you. You have been given to the Son by the Father in his infinite wisdom, and your salvation is finished. And based upon that work, Christ will keep you forever. He will lose none of his sheep. He will never cast out one of his sheep. He knows his sheep and his sheep know him.

God has come to save a people for his own glory. And if you confess Christ, you are in that kingdom. He will never cast you out. You can’t sin your way out of the covenant because you didn’t earn your way in. This is a blessing and a freedom: Freedom to live for Christ for all of our days. In the 1500s, a group of Reformers wrote a catechism to teach their church the basic truths of the Christian life. They called it the Heidelberg Catechism, and the first question is this: What is your only comfort in life and death? The answer is: “That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

Conclusion

We all want to live a life pleasing to God. That’s why we’re here at church on a snowy cold Sunday morning. God has provided the way to live for him: The life of Christ, given for us. Because God has given us Christ, we experience all the blessing of salvation. He has given us eternal bread for our spiritual sustenance. He has given us sacrificial salvation through the efficacious blood of Jesus. And he has given us enduring belief to stake our souls on Christ. All of this is the gift of God. Why are you here? Why are you coming to Christ? See him today for all that he’s given you: Everything. He has given you everything. For that, let us respond in praise and adoration, commitment to him and contentment in him. Let’s pray.

In what ways does this passage relate Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system?

How can recognizing Jesus as the 'bread of life' change the way you view your daily needs?

In what ways can you practically seek the eternal bread instead of focusing on temporary physical needs?

How do you personally experience the sufficiency of Christ in your life during times of hardship?

How do the concepts of sacrifice and atonement in this passage reflect the character of God?

What steps can you take to ensure your faith remains focused on Christ amid life’s distractions?