Series on John's Gospel(12)

Jesus the Bread of Life

John 6:22-71

Introduction: Hunger that Bread Cannot Satisfy

Every day we eat, and every day we are hungry again. No meal—however good—lasts forever.

John 6 begins with hungry people, who needed to eat and Jesus fed them by way of a miracle! He fed over five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. Their stomachs are full, their excitement is high, and they go searching for Jesus again. But Jesus knows why they are looking for him. They want more bread.

What they do not yet understand is that their deepest hunger is not physical but spiritual and to show them this, Jesus refers to a simple but universal human experience - hunger - to lead us into one of the deepest teachings in the Gospel of John.

We hunger for all kinds of things - love; intimacy; material comforts; relationships; power; satisfaction - and we figure that the satisfying of that hunger will make us feel fulfilled, but it won’t. As the Rolling Stones insightfully admittted, “I can;t get no, satisfaction!” The problem with “hunger” is “The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favours, it always wants more tomorrow.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

And the world in which we live cannot satisfy that persistent longing - Only God can: 'If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.'(C.S. Lewis).

1. Seeking Bread not Jesus! (John 6:22–27)

The crowds that had experienced the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, were eager to see and hear him again.

They wondered if he had gone across the Lake but when some boats arrived from Tiberius and reported that He had not gone there, they moved on to Capernaum to track Him down. When the crowd finds Jesus, they ask Him the first of a series of questions that punctuate this chapter : ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’ (John 6:25, 30, 34, 42, 52), it appears that they just wanted to know ‘when’ he had reached Capernaum, presuming, perhaps, he had walked around the northern shore of the lake during the night.

Jesus did not answer their question becasue the real question was not how did Jesus get there it was why are the crowd here? Jesus, ignoring their question went straight to the heart of the matter, “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” - aka Solzhenitsyn - “The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favours, it always wants more tomorrow.” ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

They were thinking of bread when the significance of the miracle pointed beyond itself to the person. Signs signpost and they were failing to recognise he was the Christ, the Son of God, in whom they should put their trust. They did not understand the significance of the miracle they had just been part of not those earlier signs.

We should note that Jesus is not impressed by popularity or enthusiasm if it is driven by self-interest.

In John 6:15 this same crowd hand “intended to come and make him king by force” but clearly this was not the kind of King they wanted! The King they needed was not the King they wanted! It has been ever thus when it comes to Jesus!

Jesus challenges them—and us—to look deeper. “Why are you seeking me?” “What are you seeking for?” His opening statement penetrated to their real motives in seeking him.

What He will now go on to say is that there is another kind of food that should have had higher priority in their thinking. Jesus wanted them to seek him for himself, not for what he could do for them.

Water, food, and bread are metaphors that show how spiritual appropriation of the life which Jesus gives is necessary for salvation. Are we hungry? Are we thirsty for Jesus?

2. Saving Faith not Works! (John 6:28–29)

We live in a world that constantly tells us what we “need”: more money, more security, more success, more pleasure. Yet Jesus says: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. ”

Jesus said, in effect, do not follow me in the hope of more food provided miraculously to meet your physical needs—‘food that spoils’—like the manna provided through Moses. Instead, work for the food that endures and does not spoil, food that brings eternal life, food that the Son of Man will give.

The miraculous provision of food on the other side of the lake was meant to point to the ‘food that endures to eternal life’.

This is not to be seen as a rejection of daily bread - like thew old Monastics who abandoned ordinary life and the normal way of providing for themselves and went into the desert to be nearer to God - rather, it is a reminder that material provision alone can never satisfy the human soul. - Matthew 4:4 “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

People in the crowd ask a really important question: “What must we do to perform the works of God?”

As good Jews they wanted some way to work in order to gain God’s favour, As Tenney puts it, “To Jewish questioners, attaining eternal life consisted in finding the right formula for performing works to please God. Jesus directed them to the gift of God that could be obtained by faith in him. Again there is a similarity to his conversation with the Samaritan woman: ‘If you knew the gift of God’ (John 4:10). Jesus contradicted directly the presuppositions of his interrogators” (Tenney, EBC, p. 75).

Jesus points them not to work, but to faith and grace—“The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”(John 6:29). That note is a work of grace because we are not being asked to perform it. This is God’s work and all we need to do is BELIEVE in Jesus to gain eternal life - This explains again John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

To “believe” is to assent to; to agree to and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour! That’s it! This is the only spiritual work that pleases God is to allow him to work in us through the Holy Spirit.

Religion will emphasise effort - prayer; fasting; pilgrimage; even suffering as a means to salvation, but God says - salvation is not something you achieve by all of that effort, it is to believe!

Martin Luther became a monk around 1505, aged 21 because walking home from his Law firm, he was terrified in the midst of a severe thunderstorm with the lightning being so intense that he thought for sure he would die, he cried out “Saint Anne, spare me and I will become a monk!” Fifteen days later, he left law school behind and entered an Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, Germany. Fast forward 5 years to 1510, Luther was disillusioned. He had done everything within his power to placate his guilty conscience and earn the favour of God. Of all of the monks in the monastery, he became the most fastidious. He dedicated himself to the sacraments, fasting, and penance. He even performed acts of self-punishment like surpassing sleep, enduring cold winter nights without a blanket, and, in an attempt to atone for his sins, even whipping himself. Reflecting on this time of his life, he would later say, “if anyone could have earned heaven by the life of a monk, it was I” Even his supervisor, the head of the monastery, became concerned that this young man was too introspective and too consumed with questions about his own salvation.

Still he pursued - on to Rome, the central place of the Holy Roman Church. Surely, If anyone could help him calm the storm that waged in his soul, surely it would the pope, the cardinals, and the priests of Rome along with its holy churches and relics. He paid homage to the shrines of the apostles and made confession there, surely this would secure the greatest absolution possible and earn the favour of God. He visited the graves of forty-six popes and the cemeteries of 80,000 martyr’s bones. But he would soon be severely disappointed because Rome was also filled with corruption, greed, and immorality.

Still he tried, he visited the a place called Scala Sancta, which means “holy stairs” in the Latin. According to the Christian tradition, these were the very steps that led up to the Praetorium of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, which Jesus Christ stood on during his Passion on his way to trial. The stairs were said to be brought to Rome by St. Helena in the 4th Century. They consisted of 28 white marble steps, now encased by wood. They are located next to a church which was built on ground brought from Mount Calvary. The Catholic Church taught that by ascending these steps on your knees in an appropriate fashion, you can buy an indulgence for someone in purgatory. If you ascended each step reciting “Our Father” (Pater Noster), you could release a soul from purgatory. Luther wanted to free his grandfather – Lindemann Luther – from purgatory. While Luther was climbing the stairs on his knees, he thought he heard a voice of thunder which cried at the bottom of his heart, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ He was said to rise up in amazement from the steps and began to feel personal horror and shame. He rose up and left!

Luther wrote later of this experience: “Although I was a holy and irreproachable monk, my conscience was full of trouble and anguish. I could not bear the words, ‘Justice of God.’ I loved not the just and holy God who punishes sinners. I was filled with secret rage against him, and hated him, because, not satisfied with terrifying his miserable creatures, already lost by original sin, with his law and the miseries of life, he still further increased our torment by the gospel. . . . But when, by the Spirit of God, I comprehended these words; when I learned how the sinner’s justification proceeds from the pure mercy of the Lord by means of faith, then I felt myself revived like a new man, and entered at open doors into the very paradise of God. “From that time, also, I beheld the precious sacred volume with new eyes. I went over all the Bible, and collected a great number of passages which taught me what the work of God was. And as I had previously, with all my heart, hated the words, ‘Justice of God,’ so from that time I began to esteem and love them, as words most sweet and most consoling. In truth, these words were to me the true gate of paradise.”

WHAT MUST I DO - YOU DO - TO BE SAVED? BELEIVE!

The Jews were ready to act, to strive, to earn. But Jesus’ answer overturns their assumptions: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” Faith is not passive, but it is not something we manufacture. Eternal life begins not with religious performance but with trust.

Eternal life is not the reward of work; it is always and only a free gift.

Many people are exhausted by religion because they are trying to earn what can only be received. Jesus calls us not to self-improvement, but to faithful dependence.

3. Unbelief is sometimes Perverse! (John 6:30–34)

The crowd ask, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

What will you do? How about, ‘I will feed over 5000 of your with 5 loaves and two fish and you will be more than satisfied, indeed we will collect twelve basketfuls of food so that it is not waster - more by the way than we had at the start! How about that for a “miraculous sign”?

Such unbelief is staggering in its unwillingness to believe even in the face of the evidence!

But not only that, their unbelief was born out of ignorance - “it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven” and physical bread was not the main issue; spiritual bread was—the bread of life about whom Jesus would soon speak in detail. This is because Manna sustained Israel for a day at a time. It could not be stored. It could not be controlled. It taught them daily dependence on God.

But now, says Jesus, there is imperishable bread that must be eaten spiritually. It also came down from heaven; it also was given from the gracious hand of the Father; and it also provided life for a dying people. And, Jesus makes this staggering claim: “I am the bread of life.” Not “I am the provider of bread”, nor “I can teach you how to make bread.” But “I am the bread - YOU NEED ME!”

“This is the first of the notable ‘I am’ sayings in this gospel, in which we hear a clear echo of the divine self-definition in Exodus 3:14: ‘I am who I am.’ - Milne, B. (1993). The message of John: here is your king!: with study guide (p. 111). InterVarsity Press.

“The saying enshrines the essence of Jesus’ message—he is the answer to the needs of the human heart. The bread of life implies the fundamental, elemental role Jesus claims to fulfil in relation to the yearning of the human spirit.” - Milne, B. (1993). The message of John: here is your king!: with study guide (p. 111). InterVarsity Press.

Jesus is the Bread of life and He is offering this Bread for free! There is no work other than HUNGER - All you need is to be hungry for it!

The cost of food in the kingdom is hunger for the Bread of Life. (John Piper)

“The bread of life also points to the satisfying nature of Jesus. This is drawn out in the corollary, never go hungry and never be thirsty. All other breads, like the manna in the wilderness, leave a sense of dissatisfaction. The inner ache is not permanently assuaged; we hunger again. By contrast Jesus, once tasted, obviates the need for further satisfaction. As Jesus had said to the woman in 4:14, ‘whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst’, so now he says to the Galileans, he who believes in me will never be thirsty. Jesus alone can satisfy the heart. In a society which has experimented to the point of satiation with every form of material, physical and spiritual palliative to fill the inner emptiness of its heart, Jesus’ invitation comes with wonderful relevance—He who comes to me will never go hungry … will never be thirsty.” - Milne, B. (1993). The message of John: here is your king!: with study guide (p. 111). InterVarsity Press.

4. Living Bread on Offer but must be Accepted! (John 6:35-59)

At first their response to this teaching appears favourable - “from now on give us this bread!”(John 6:34)

What a wonderful response, at least on the part of some! Though sadly it is clear that for many it is not a sincere response as they are still thinking of material bread, liking the idea of free lunch!

(a). For those who accepted there is eternal life - John 6:35-40.

They are ‘given’ to the Son by the Father (37, 39).

God’s sovereignty is asserted in this saying, an emphasis which we will meet regularly in this gospel.

As elsewhere in Scripture, this does not imply a denial of the cruciality of faith for salvation, nor of the need to proclaim the gospel to the world and to urge all to believe. Jesus is patently engaged in just such an endeavour in this passage.

But God ‘who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will’ (Eph. 1:11) is also at work in human response to the work of his Son. Those who come to Jesus, have been previously given to Him by the Father - John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”

And the really excellent news is this - “whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” Jesus, the Son is committed to keeping and protecting all of them. This is simply part of his full obedience to the Father’s will - John 6:38-40 “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me…For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.””

The ‘keeping’ ministry of the Son will include securing his own people at the judgment at the end - John 6:39 “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.”

To trust in Jesus Christ is to have the confidence of being ‘raised up’ at the last day For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”(John 6:40).

Look to Jesus and you will be saved. Look to Jesus and you will lvie forever! All of this is rooted in God’s everlasting purposes. God has claimed us from the beginning and He gaver us the power and the faith and the desire to come to Christ and Jesus, will raise us at the end; we belong to eternity.

“Long before time began you were part of his plan. Let no fear cloud your brow; he will not forsake you now!” - Milne, B. (1993). The message of John: here is your king!: with study guide (pp. 111–112). InterVarsity Press.

(b). For those who reject Jesus there is there is death - John 6:41-66

The majority of those who heard Jesus that day, did not like what he had to say. They grumbled(vs 41-43) and they continued to think in material terms as He spoke of coming down from His Father which they confused with his earthly father, Joseph back in Nazareth(John 6:42).

So in response and to stir them further, Jesus shared with the a shocking metaphor : John 6:52-56: “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”

These words are intentionally confronting and Jesus knew it! He was not of course promoting cannibalism but rather calling for total participation in his life, death, and sacrifice.

Now this verse had been misunderstood, precisely because there has been an over-literal interpretation of it, particularly conflating this saying with the act of communion and eating the bread which some have taught magically turns into the actual body and blood of Christ at the act of a Priest, uttering words at the Mass.

But this cannot be the meaning, first because there is no reference at all here to the Lord’s Supper and even more importantly in the context, John has already told us that eternal lfie is given to them as they “come” to Him and “look” to Him and “believe” in Him, so this metaphor that is now used to speak of eating His flesh and drinking His blood must correspond with this and the language is metaphoric and not literal.

To “eat” Christ is to:

Receive him fully,

depend on him daily and

make him our source of your life!

This points forward to the cross, upon which He sacrificed Himself - “my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”(John 6:51). He is ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29), and the one who will be ‘lifted up’, just like “the snake in the desert”(John 3:14) so that anyone who looks to the crucified Son of God will live!

And when we believe in Him, when we discern His broken body, and blood poured out, on the cross, we need to personally receive Him just as we must personally receive bread and eat it if it is to do us any good!

‘Believe and you have eaten.’ (Augustine).

Now of course it is impossible not to link this to communion which is the gospel in picture! When I eat brad and here the words “This is my body”, I am saying, Christ I take all of you; I eat and feed on yoyu by faith and when I hear the words, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood, drink it in remembrance of me” I say, Jesus I drink this remembering that your blood was shed for me. It is not the literal bread and wine that saves me; it is Jesus, that this bread and wine represents!

Tragically many Turn Away (John 6:60–66):

Now remember that all of these people had experienced a miracle BUT for the majority of them it made no permanent difference. Jesus words about the Bread of Life, speaks about the permanency of the effect. Those who eat will never be hungry. Those who drink will never be thirsty. But the faith that produces this kind of result is not just faith in miracles but a genuine commitment to the person of the miracle worker—Jesus the Son of God.

And this shows itself this point, many disciples say: “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” The crowds loved Jesus for what they could get out of him, preferably another free lunch. When he spoke again of the Father, they seemed ready to respond, but rejected him more vehemently.

And then comes one of the saddest lines in Scripture: “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”

And notice that Jesus does not soften the message to keep the crowd. He does not chase them. He allows them to walk away. Jesus is not overwhelmed by the loss of commitment on the part of many who had professed some allegiance to him. He knows about human response to him (John 6:64; cf. John 2:25), and he is unshaken in his confidence that through it all God’s purpose is being fulfilled (John 6:65). This moment represents a decisive turning point for the crowds in Galilee. A year from now, as the Passover is celebrated once more in Jerusalem, the Messiah will die on a cross, forsaken and alone.

Following Jesus is not always comfortable. Some teachings challenge our pride, our control, our preferences. The question is not: Is this easy? The question is: Is this true?

5. Turn away or Remain True - the Choice is Yours! (John 6:67–71)

Jesus turns to the Twelve and asks: “Do you also wish to go away?”

Peter answers with words that echo through the centuries: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Peter does not claim perfect understanding. He simply recognises that life itself is found in Jesus.

Peter reaffirms their loyalty on the grounds that, since Jesus alone has the words of eternal life, there is no other to turn to - “We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God (John 6:69).

But just in case Peter and this small band of loyal disciples decide to congratulate themselves for their adherence to Jesus, Jesus reminds them that their being with him rests finally on his sovereign choice of them - John 6:70 “Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” ).

Jesus, who knows all hearts, recognized the terrible possibility within Judas, even as he afforded him the supreme and surpassing privilege of belonging to the twelve.

The only true security is in having no security except the mercy of God. To believe is to have been brought to the place where one knows that one has to rely completely on Jesus, and on Jesus alone

Our faith is tested. When discipleship is costly. When obedience is hard. To whom or what will we turn?

Conclusion: Come, Eat and Be Filled!

You would never satisfy your hunger by simply admiring bread or analysing bread. You must eat it! Faith is not distant observation; it is personal, transformative surrender.

In an age of information overload ... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the Bread of Life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God. - Rachel Held Evans

We are all hungry. The question is what we are feeding on.

“If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” ― John Piper, A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting And Prayer

Jesus offers himself—freely, fully, and forever—as the Bread of Life. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

May we come not just to receive blessings, but to receive Christ himself.