The Bread of Life (pt 2)

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Welcome

No evangelism today and no prayer meeting this week

Ashley is home sick so pray for her, were supposed to go out of town tomorrow and she needs to be well

INTRODUCTION:

We are going to be in John chapter 6 today and finishing the Bread of Life discourse. We began this section a few weeks ago, with the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus fed the huge crowd with only a few leaves of bread and a couple fish. All of that foreshadowed the remainder of chapter in which Jesus would use eating bread as an illustration of the way he provides salvation tot he world through the bread of Life.

Jesus is the bread of Life. The very source of life in this world and eternity. Those who remain intimately connected to Christ will not only be given life now, but will be given eternal life.

And Jesus said we can have this life by eating and drinking His flesh. And today we are going to look below the surface at what He really means.

John 6:44–47 “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 shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard 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. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

1) Those who come to Jesus only come because God draws them to Jesus

“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him”

This is not the first time Jesus mentioned this truth in this section, but the third time Jesus has said that it is the Father who gives OR draws people to Jesus. In other words, God is the one who begins salvation.

When we read things repeated in Scripture, we are tempted to gloss over it as if the author has a weak me worry or bad speaking skills and keeps repeating Himself.

BUT things are repeated for us in Scripture by divine purpose! God does not make mistakes. When things are said over and over it is because they are important! And God wants these truths riveted to our hearts so that we do not forget them.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DRAW PEOPLE TO JESUS?

It means that when someone decides or chooses to begin following Jesus, they do so because God worked in such a way in their lives and in their hearts to cause them to turn to Jesus.

The statement teaches us that if God did not work in some kind of way in our lives, we would never turn to Jesus on our own.

When God draws someone to Jesus, it has nothing to do with that person. They are drawn to Jesus by an inward power that they cannot control or change. Something much bigger than them is pulling them, attracting them, dragging them to the feet of the Savior.

Most people believe that them coming to Jesus was something they did. I think we all begin to think that way, that we decided to begin following Jesus. But the Word of God teaches us that is God who begins this drawing in us. Through circumstances, through unfulfillment through conviction of our sin, by opening our eyes to spiritual truth, by changing our desires, whatever God chooses to use He will use in His time in His way to bring people to Christ.

Why does this matter? Because it takes all the pride, all of the self-congratulation, all of the boasting out of our relationship with God. And how tempted are we to say, man when I turned to the Lord, I gave up everything! I got rid of all my sin, I broke it off with all my friends that I sinned with, I persevered and I’m still following Jesus because I am faithful.

Do you know what’s wrong with that? It’s not true.

The Bible says God grants repentance

The Bible says God gives us a new heart

The Bible says God opens our eyes to see

The Bible says God frees us from the power of sin

The Bible says God keeps us from falling away

And that is also why, you can tell a person who has truly been converted from one who has not. Because God is the primary teacher of His people

(v 45) “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God’. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me”

What is this teaching that comes from God?

It is first revelation. The opening of the heart to understand spiritual truth. The world hears the things of God, but they do not penetrate the heart. They have no punch, they sense no love from God.

But God divinely takes truth and makes people understand it. They see first off their condition, they’re sinners and then He allows them to see Jesus for who He really is.

This is why Jesus said in verse 40, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”

People cannot truly see Jesus, as the life giving necessity until they have been taught that by God.

Secondly, God teaches them to obey Him.

Jeremiah 31:33 ““But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

When someone truly comes to Christ, you don’t have to teach him that it is wrong to lie, it is wrong to steal, they need to go to church, they need to forgive other people, they need to be witnesses of Jesus. You don’t have to teach people these things because God teaches them this when He intervenes in their life.

God takes His law, and He writes it in the hearts of His people. It’s as if He takes His Christ following program, and downloads it into the minds and hearts of the converted. And He does it for every single person.

And everyone who comes to Jesus can see this looking back. Somehow deep in our hearts, we already knew the basics of what to do. Not everything, but a good solid foundation was laid when we placed our trust in Jesus.

2) We have no real life in us apart from the life giving death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ

John 6:53–58 “So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me. “This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.””

Explanation:

This is a difficult section and I want us to not get lost in the details so we can rightly understand it.

Jesus says unless you eat His flesh and blood you have no life (eternal life v 54)

Jesus was not speaking them in literal terms. He did not expect them to feast on Him in a literal sense by eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

And he was not speaking to them about Holy Communion as some people believe. Jesus says in this section over and over that believing in Him is what brings eternal life, not taking communion. That idea is not supported anywhere in Scripture and is not what Jesus means.

So what does Jesus mean when He says, we must eat his flesh and drink His blood?

Remember this whole thing “bread of Life” started from feeding the 5,000 with bread and fish. And then Jesus compared Himself to the manna which the Israelites ate in the wilderness.

But Jesus is explaining that it is not physical bread that is eaten and sustains only for a short time. Jesus is the Spiritual Bread which is eaten and last for eternity by giving eternal life. Jesus takes an earthly miracle and teaches a spiritual truth.

1) The flesh and the blood point forward to the cross.

The Jews do not know that Jesus will be sacrificed. They do not believe that He is the Lamb of God who take away the sins of the world. They do not believe that their only way to the Father is through Him.

Jesus is looking forward to the death of His human flesh on the cross and when His blood will be poured out as an atonement for the sins of the world. Flesh and blood both speak of His death, and it is Jesus’ sacrificial death that is essential to our forgiveness.

How is it that Jesus’ death provides forgiveness for us?

Because the Bible says that Jesus lived a perfect sinless life which made Him absolutely righteous. He obeyed God’s law perfectly, He never sinned, He was absolutely perfect, and died a completely righteous man.

Therefore when we repent and believe in Jesus, the Bible says He gives us His righteousness and He takes our sins. All the sins we commit past present and future are paid for by that one righteous sacrifice and He takes our punishment we deserve and gives us His absolute righteousness that we do not deserve.

Romans 5:17 “For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”

2) How then do eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ?

(v 56) “he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in Him”

Jesus explains what He means here. He says we must abide in Him, and He must abide in us.

The word abides is much more than a temporary interaction with Jesus. It means a continuous permanent dwelling with Jesus. it speaks of an ongoing relationship with Jesus that at some point begins when we repent and believe and it never ever ends.

How do we abide in Jesus?

Abiding is not doing a certain number of religious things. Abiding in Christ refers to having a deep intimate relationship with Jesus just as one would have with their own wife, or their own children or parents.

Relationships are intimate. They make us vulnerable because they involve trust, openness, and dependence.

The same is true for our relationship with Jesus. It’s so much more than attending a church service. It is this openness and trust in Him 7 days a week and in every area of our lives. There is nothing we can keep secret from Him, there is nothing we are allowed to hold into that doesn’t please Him, it is the giving of ourselves completely to Him.

It means we spend our lives seeking Him, learning more and more what He wants of us, learning to trust Him deeper and deeper in our lives.

When we abide in Christ, our very live become directed by Jesus.

Paul explains this intimate relationship, this oneness, in such a way that he says that when Jesus was crucified, he was crucified with Jesus.

Galatians 2:20 ““I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”

Paul says the self reliance, the self willed, the Paul who lived for himself is now dead, and now it is Christ who lives in me.

We die to the things of this world that displease God

We die to the friendships of this world that displease God

We die to our own desires and will

We die to the desires of the flesh

We live for the will of God

We live for the glory of God

We live to please God

We live in the Kingdom of God

We serve the King of Kings

No longer do we live as if this body, mind and soul belongs to us, but our lives have been intricately connected to Jesus and He lives through us.

3) Those who fall away from Jesus never really believed to begin with

John 6:60–66 “Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?”….(v 66) “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.”

After hearing Jesus talk about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, many of His followers fall away. They say, “who can listen to this?”. And they depart back into the world.

I think the temptation here is to think, “why did Jesus say this like that? Why say things in such a way to offend these people so they leave and stop following? Is that His goal to find people to follow Him?

Yes, but Jesus gives it like it is from the beginning because it weeds out the superficial followers. If God is drawing someone, difficult truth will not keep them from following. They will follow regardless.

Principle: Jesus does not withhold difficult truth to keep people following Him and neither should we

Jesus does not take the hard truth and hide it from these followers, or tell them what sounds good to fleshly ears, or only tell the good and leave out the difficult.

Jesus shoots them straight forward from the beginning and does not waver from that regardless of how they respond to it.

Luke 14:28–30 “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”

The point in these verses is about knowing what all Christianity entails and being upfront with His disciples about it from the beginning.

Luke 14:26 ““If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”

Luke 14:27 ““Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”

Luke 14:33 ““So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.”

Our natural tendencies to bring people to Jesus is to be gentle and withhold difficult statements like this, but Jesus never did. He demonstrated over and over again that it is best to tell people what this entails from the beginning rather than they begin the journey fall away because they did now know the costs.

But our rebuttal is that if you tell people hard things you will never win anyone to Christ! None will ever come if we tell them these things!

But Jesus said they will come, because it is God that not only will draw them, but God who will also teach them these same truths.

I had a pastor tell me one time that I need to stop- sharing the gospel with people because it is going to run them away from the church.

If the gospel turns them away then I assure you God is not drawing them and they are not going to truly follow Jesus.

Do not shy away from difficult truth for the sake of keeping people following, it does not make disciples.

Even if the truth hurts, it is better to be true than withhold truth

“Don’t give people what they want to hear, but give them the Bible’s answers-which they may not want to hear—to the questions they ask in language they understand, and with arguments they feel the force of, EVEN IF THEY DON’T IN THE WND AGREE WITH THEM” (Tim Keller)

John 6:67–69 “So Jesus said to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.””

Jesus is saying to us: You do not want to go away also, do you?

When I began preparing this message, I thought about how I could present this to the church. And then I thought this is what Jesus is saying to me personally. And this is what Jesus is saying to you personally.

What will you do when it gets hard. What will you do when things look impossible, when everyday becomes such a struggle that the best option is just to leave.

And maybe not leave outwardly, but to leave inwardly which would have the same implications.

Will we continue to trust Jesus, will we continue on with Jesus regardless of what it looks like, regardless of the difficulty, regardless of the sacrifice, regardless of the ridicule…

We must be like Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

The heart of a true disciple is to know that nothing else in this life can compare to the being in the will of Christ no matter how difficult it is!

Jesus must be seen as the only option, there is no other by which we obtain eternal life. There is no other way to the Father. There is no other way to live in this life, but in Christ!

And that’s what Peter expressed here. His eyes were fixed on what is coming after this life, and He knew and confessed and believed and lived that truth out. And we must too.

Will you leave too?

Will you leave because of the hard truths?

Will you leave because of the difficult valley where God has put you?

Will you leave when things get impossible?

Will you leave when it costs you everything?

OR will we be like Peter, and say again again, “to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life”

That is how we must be!

We must stay with Jesus, cling to Jesus, seek Jesus, be in Jesus no matter the level of difficulty, and only then will we see Jesus for who He really is. Only Jesus has the words of eternal life

~PRAYER~