The Vending Machine God

John 6:26-35

INTRODUCTION

Most of us have met a god that does not exist.

Not the God of Scripture, not the Holy King who spoke galaxies into being, not the Father who sent His Son, not the Spirit who convicts and comforts. I mean the made-up versions, the knockoffs we carry around in our heads. The god of good vibes and karma, who is basically a spiritual assistant with a good attitude and a weak spine. The god who never challenges, never corrects, never calls sin what it is, and never demands repentance. A god who exists to affirm you, excuse you, and keep your life convenient.

Here is the problem. A fake god can feel incredibly real. You can sing to him. You can pray to him. You can quote verses to him. You can build a whole spiritual routine around him. However, none of it means you are actually worshiping the real God. It means you are worshiping a version of God that agrees with you. That is not faith, that is self-approval with religious packaging.

So for the next six weeks, we are going to pull the masks off. This series is called Your God is Not Real, not because God is imaginary, but because many of our assumptions about Him are. Some of the loudest arguments people have with God are arguments with a god they invented. Some of the deepest disappointments people feel toward God are disappointments because God did not behave the way their fake god promised He would.

This matters outside the church and inside the church.

Outside the church, God is often treated like an emergency number. Nobody thinks about Him until the crash. The breakup. The diagnosis. The job loss. Then, suddenly, people who have ignored God for years say, “God, if You are real, prove it.” That sounds spiritual, but often it means, “Fix my situation, and I will consider You.” That is not worship. That is bad-faith negotiations.

Inside the church, it can get even trickier because we use spiritual language. We talk about faith, prayer, blessing, and favor. None of those words are wrong. The drift happens when we start treating faith like a technique. Prayer becomes a formula. Worship becomes a lever. We learn how to sound convincing, then we assume God is supposed to respond on cue. If we say the right words, with the right intensity, with the right music in the background, then God should drop what we want into our lap.

Which brings us to today: The Vending Machine God.

You know how vending machines work. You walk up, scan the options, pick what you want, insert the money, push the button, and wait for the goods to fall. If the snack drops, you call it a win. If it gets stuck, you get offended. You do not want a relationship with the machine. You do not want to know the machine. You want the machine to produce.

People treat God like that.

We come with a list of requests, not with surrender. We treat prayer like inserting a coin. We treat faith like pushing the right buttons. Then we stare at heaven like, “God, I did my part. Now dispense the blessing.” If it drops, we call God good. If it does not, we question His goodness, or we blame our lack of faith, or we get bitter and walk away.

That is the vending machine god. He is small enough to manage, predictable enough to control, and useful enough to keep around. But he does not exist.

The real God is not a vending machine. He is a King. He does not exist to be transactional. He’s transformational. Jesus will confront this in John 6. A crowd that just got free food chases Him for another round. They want the benefits of Jesus without bowing to Jesus. They are hungry for bread, but Jesus offers Himself. He refuses to be reduced to a service provider. He exposes the motive under the motive. He invites them into something deeper than full stomachs: a real faith, real surrender, real life.

So when we come to God, what are we really after? Is it God Himself, or what you hope He will hand you?

John 6:26–35 ESV

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 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.

SCRIPTURAL ANALYSIS

The crowd finds Jesus again after the miracle of the loaves and fishes. The day before, five loaves and two fish became enough for thousands. In first-century Galilee, that is not a cute moment; it is an economic and political earthquake. A man who can multiply bread is a man who can stabilize villages, feed families, and undermine Rome’s pressure on the poor. The crowd wants to make Jesus an earthly king. They are thinking deliverer, provider, national hero.

Verse 26-27

Jesus rejects their flattering spiritual talk. They are searching for Him, not because they understood the sign, but because they were filled. In their world, a “sign” was never meant to end with the gift. A sign pointed beyond itself to the identity and authority of the one who performed it.

Jesus tells them to stop laboring for food that perishes and to pursue food that endures to eternal life. The crowd lives in a culture where daily bread is daily anxiety. Most people do not have extra, and many are one bad week away from crisis. Jesus is not condemning the need for literal bread. He is exposing what they are building their lives around.

He says the Son of Man will give this enduring bread. “Son of Man” echoes Daniel’s vision of a ruler who receives authority from God. Jesus is quietly saying, I am not the village miracle worker. I am the promised King.

He adds that God the Father has set His seal on Him. In the ancient world, a seal meant authorization and ownership, like a king’s signet mark on a decree. The crowd is not dealing with a spiritual vendor. Jesus is claiming to be the eternal king.

Verse 28-29

Their response shows how deeply transactional religion runs in the human heart. “What must we do to be doing the works of God?” Give us the steps. Give us the system. Give us the spiritual formula that guarantees results. Many religious people in that era and ours measured faithfulness by visible practices.

Jesus dismantles their whole approach. “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” Faith is not a technique to secure outcomes. Faith is trust in the One God has sent. Jesus shifts them from performance to a person.

Belief here is not mental agreement. In John’s Gospel, believing is relational and directional. It’s coming to Jesus, relying on Him, and attaching your life to Him.

Verse 30-33

The crowd counters with an audacious demand: “What sign do you do, that we may see and believe?” They ask for proof as if yesterday never happened. That is what entitlement does. Miracles can become expectations. Gifts can become demands.

They want something measurable, repeatable, and controllable. A vending machine always works the same way. The real God does not.

They reach back to a national memory, manna in the wilderness. For Israel, manna was more than bread; it was identity. God fed them when they had no land, no farms, no stability. The crowd is effectively saying that Moses provided daily, but you gave just one meal.

Notice the subtle manipulation. They quote Scripture to pressure Jesus into performing again. It is possible to use Bible language while still trying to control God.

Jesus corrects their history and their theology. Moses did not give the bread from heaven, God did. They want a new Moses who can run Rome out and keep the pantry full. Jesus points to the Father as the true source and then says something even bigger.

Jesus defines the bread of God as the One who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. The bread is no longer an object; it is a person. This stretches their expectations. They are thinking Israel first, national restoration, and full bellies. Jesus says the gift is life for the world. Life comes from God and is to be rooted in a relationship with Him.

Verse 34-35

They respond, “Sir, give us this bread always.” It sounds like faith, yet it still fits the old pattern. Keep the bread coming. They want a streaming service of benefits.

Jesus ends the guessing and gives the first of John’s great “I am” statements: “I am the bread of life.” In a world where bread is the baseline of existence, Jesus claims He is the essential nourishment of the soul. He does not say, I will give you bread. He says, I am what you are hungry for.

He promises that whoever comes to Him will not hunger, and whoever believes in Him will not thirst. But this is not a transaction; it is a turning. This is not pushing the right buttons; it is yielding to the King.

Humanity wants a god who exists to serve our appetites. Jesus refuses that role. He offers something better and more confronting: Himself.

TODAY’S KEY TRUTH

A Real Faith Pursues God Himself, not merely His gifts.

APPLICATION

Jesus feeds a crowd until everybody is full. The next day, they track Him down again, and they come with spiritual questions that sound sincere. Jesus does not play along. He exposes what is really driving them: they are not chasing Him because they understood the sign, they are chasing Him because they liked the benefits.

The crowd demands another miracle and points to manna in the wilderness, as if Jesus owes them a daily bread subscription. Jesus corrects them and drops the line that changes everything: “I am the bread of life.” They want His hand. He offers His heart. They want a vending machine. He reveals a King.

This passage exposes a religiously sounding lie. The lie is that God exists to be managed and controlled. If I say the right words, if I pray hard enough, if I do enough good, if I am faithful enough, then God will dispense what I want. That is vending machine religion. I insert performance and expect a product.

Jesus refuses that entire framework. He does not deny that God provides. He denies that God can be controlled.

The crowd wanted bread as the final destination. Jesus calls bread a sign, and the sign is meant to lead us to Him. In Scripture, God’s gifts are never meant to replace God. Provision is supposed to produce worship and obedience. Blessing is supposed to deepen trust. The moment the gift becomes the goal, God gets reduced from Lord to tool.

This is why Jesus anchors everything in Himself. “I am the bread of life.” He is not saying, I will become useful to you. He is saying, I will become central to you. Real faith does not treat God as a means to an end. Real faith receives God as the end.

Outside the church, we see it in crisis faith. People who never want God still want God’s rescue. The prayer is not surrender; it is a deal. “God, get me out of this, and then I will take You seriously.” That is not repentance; it is panic with religious language.

Inside the church, it shows up in polished formulas. The unspoken belief is that if I do Christianity correctly, God will make my life smoother. So we treat prayer like an order, worship like a way to set the mood, giving like a spiritual investment account, and Bible reading like a daily password that unlocks favor.

Modern life fuels this mindset. We live in a world of instant results. Same-day shipping. One-click ordering. Streaming on demand. If your phone takes five seconds to load, you feel persecuted. So when we bring that consumer brain into faith, we start assuming God should operate on our timeline and respond to our preferences.

Then a prayer is not answered the way you want. The healing does not come. The job does not open. The relationship still breaks. The depression still lingers. The loved one dies. Now the vending machine god looks broken, and we either shake the machine in anger or walk away convinced God is not real.

That is the twist. The vending machine god is not real. People get angry or walk away from a god that wasn’t real to begin with.

The real God is a King. Kings do not exist to be used, they reign. Jesus does not offer a product. He offers Himself. He does not promise you will never feel hungry. He promises you will never be abandoned to it. He does not say you will never face thirst. He says you will not have to drink from broken wells.

So what does this look like on Monday?

It looks like praying differently. Not, “God, here is my order,” but, “Father, here is my heart.” It looks like trusting God’s character when we cannot track His strategy. It looks like measuring faithfulness by obedience rather than outcomes. It looks like worshiping when life is hard, because God is still worthy, not because worship is a tool to change the weather.

Job is the ultimate example of an anti-vending machine mentality. The machine took his money (his health, wealth, family) and gave him nothing back. Yet, Job said, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." He worshipped the Giver when the gifts stopped. That was true relational faith. Job worships God for God. Job trusted God’s character even though he had no idea what God’s strategy was.

Real faith comes to Jesus for Jesus. It receives His gifts with gratitude, but it refuses to make the gifts the point.

Ask yourself bluntly: If God never gives you another thing you want, is He still your treasure? If the answer is shaky, you are not being condemned; you are being invited. Jesus is still saying what He said in John 6: Stop chasing temporary bread. Come to Me. I am the bread of life.

A Real Faith Pursues God Himself, not merely His gifts.

CONCLUSION

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to approach God like a transaction. We may never say it out loud, but we feel it in our prayers: “Lord, I have been good, so please be good to me.” We feel it in our worship: “God, I showed up, so show up for me.” We feel it in our panic: “God, fix this fast, and I will take You seriously.” Now, hear me clearly: It is right to pray for your job. It is right to pray for healing. Jesus tells us to ask for daily bread. The sin is not in the asking; the sin is in the entitlement mindset.

Jesus is kind enough to confront that, because a vending machine god cannot save us. A god you can control cannot heal what is broken in you. A god who exists to serve our preferences cannot forgive our sin or remake our hearts. All that god can do is keep you temporarily comfortable, and comfort is a poor substitute for salvation.

In John 6, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Bread must be broken to be eaten. Jesus isn't just a loaf sitting on a shelf; He is the body broken for us on Calvary so we could live. He is not offering a service. He is offering Himself. Real faith is not pushing the right buttons. Real faith is coming to Christ, empty-handed, honest, and ready to surrender.

A Real Faith Pursues God Himself, not merely His gifts.

Some of you have been chasing God’s hand for a long time, and you are exhausted. You have tried to be spiritual enough, faithful enough, consistent enough to earn the outcome you want. Others of you have been disappointed because God did not perform on your timeline, and you quietly backed away. Today, Jesus is not shaming you. He is inviting you. He is saying, “Stop chasing what cannot satisfy. Come to Me.”

Salvation is not God rewarding your effort. Salvation is God giving you Jesus. You do not work your way into eternal life; you receive it by trusting the One the Father sent. The real God is not impressed by your negotiations. He is moved by repentance. He is not waiting for you to clean yourself up. Jesus is calling you to come as you are and be made new by Him.

So do you want Jesus, or do you want what Jesus can do for you? One of those paths ends in frustration. The other ends in eternal life. One path is demanding God change the situation, and the other asks God change me in the situation.

If you are ready to stop treating God like a vending machine and start bowing to Him as King, He welcomes you home. Confess your sin. Lay down the negotiation deals and demands. Trust His cross and His resurrection. Receive Him, not as a tool for your plans, but as the Lord of your life.

A Real Faith Pursues God Himself, not merely His gifts.