Bread Of Life!
The Endless Journey - John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Reading:
3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Introduction:
Desire is defined as:
“is that internal act, which, by influencing the will, makes us proceed to action.” - Noah Webster
There are a lot of different desires a person can have.
A desire of the eyes.
What we see, we covet and want, and that desire sparks action in the direction to get what we want.
A desire for importance.
There isn’t a person on earth who doesn’t want admiration; but there is a healthy amount of admiration and an unhealthy expectation for more!
A desire for pleasure.
That speaks for itself!
Desires feed into the choices that we make and the way we think.
They cause us to take action.
Think of the desires you have and picture them as your pet.
The more you feed that little pet, the stronger it gets and demands, soon if your not careful it's strength can cloud your judgment and affect other aspects of your life.
When left unchecked, It can consume you!
(Meaning, that is what occupies the majority of your thoughts and efforts “consuming your being”)
Desires aren’t bad, God created desires and we all have the ability to desire.
There are good desires and bad ones.
The Lord tells us that our desires should be for Him.
This is something that chapter 6 confronts.
In John 6:22-71 Jesus brings claims that we should desire Him as if we desire nourishment to support our life!
Desiring Lord, as if you haven’t eaten in days..is the main picture.
Illustration:
When we starve our physical bodies some interesting things happen to think about:
Psychologically:
Cognitive decline - Concentration, memory lapses, and decision-making challenges.
Emotional distress - Heightened anxiety, depression, and obsessive thoughts about food. The psychological hunger can dominate an individual's thoughts, creating a mental fixation on eating.
Physically:
Metabolically - Glycogen is primarily stored in the liver and skeletal muscles, with smaller amounts in other tissues like the brain, kidneys, and red blood cells. Then to your muscles.
Possible organ damage.
Nutritional Deficiencies
Let’s connect this to our subject matter for today.
Transition:
If you were starving, you would have a strong desire for food and would do almost anything for it.
Not much would stop you!
What is it that you desire and are hungry for?
We can find ourselves searching for Jesus for the wrong reasons, just like the crowd searching for Him here in John 6
Searching For Jesus for the Wrong reasons.(22-34)
Searching For Jesus for the Wrong reasons.(22-34)
The miracle filled the bellies of 5,000 people.
Then next day they couldn’t find Jesus and nothing made any sense for where He was or could be.
Here is why nothing made sense to them:
22 On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but that His disciples had gone away alone.
They witnessed Him send the disciples across to Capernaum in a boat; but He didn’t get in the boat.
Logically He must’ve been somewhere around the sea of Galilee!
23 Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks.
24 So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
In a last resort they left to Capernaum to find Jesus where the disciples were heading.
As we read these passages we are given insight to their motivation for their search.
It’s revealed by how they approach Him when they find Him.
25 When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”
What did they call Him?
Rabbi. (which we gained from John 1:38 the meaning)
38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to Him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
They approached Jesus as a teacher...Why?
What did He teach them when He asked them to sit while He fed them by a miracle - Manners?
What the people were doing was typical to the tradition for seeking an “teacher” or Rabbi.
They would higher a teacher to come and teach them about various subjects including the Torah and practical aspects of a Godly life!
What did Jesus think of this?
26 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.
27 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.”
Jesus addressed their desire for seeking Him; the true motivation.
Their desire wasn’t spiritual it was material satisfaction, not out of a genuine faith in Jesus.
Jesus addressed the heart of the issue, not the surface question they asked.
He doesn’t carry a bat to beat around the bush, He has a sword to get right to the heart of the matter!
27 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.”
Seek the benefit that will last into eternity.
I can provide that because God has placed on me the “never changing” seal of His authority and approval.
Every kings message to others was identified with a sealed wax with a signet ring indicating the importance of who wrote the message!
Jesus was the message to the world and God had sealed His work or redemption.
No one had authority to change that and Jesus came to be the sacrifice!
Jesus is telling them: Desire Me, your effort will not perish at the end of your life, it will continue on into eternity.
How can we do what you ask?
29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
Trade your personal, physical desires, for God’s will and the spiritual desires He will give you for one another. (short pause)
Humans are very fickle aren’t we?
What just happened in their lives that challenged them to seek for Jesus?
Jesus took 5 little buns and 2 sardines and fed them all from it.
Not sure about you; but you couldn’t create a “slight of hand” that could do that for 5,000 people and have left overs.
They wanted more.
Just like us: none of us are really satisfied for very long.
Jesus leads them into the point to this conversation, just as He is you today!
32 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.
33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
You can hear Jesus setting them up, and cornering them into an answer they don’t really want to hear.
34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
They revealed by their actions that they searched for Jesus because of their full bellies not a spiritual desire.
Connection:
How many times have we done this too?
How can we avoid making this mistake?
Simple questions for evaluation:
Why am I seeking Jesus right now?
Are my desires selfish or are they eternal?
We sometimes can find that our desire for Him is to consume Him selfishly and craft Him into an image we want Him to be.
5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
Before our devotions: What is my desire, what am I seeking?
If it isn’t to be clay in the potters hand, ask forgiveness of your impure desire, humbly receive His will instead.
Before prayer, coming to church, etc… In all of it, seek His will.
Seek Him as if your spiritual life depends on His direction, wisdom, and leading.
Because it does.
Seek Jesus because He is:
The Only True Satisfaction (35-59)
The Only True Satisfaction (35-59)
Those that sought Jesus and were conversing with Him were still stuck on thoughts of food and missed the spiritual application entirely.
Jesus highlighted His role as the one sent from God in heaven to fulfill God’s plan to sustain into eternity.
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.
36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.
Jesus’ claim is that He is the source for our spiritual being.
The claim is made here and is explained a little more thoroughly later on in chapter 15 with the vine and branches explanation.
We the Gentiles are only grafted into the source of spiritual fruit because of the Jews refusal and rejection of Christ!
17 But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree,
The non-fruit bearing branches were broken off, and the wild olive is grafted into the source so it too, can have the opportunity for producing fruit.
This thought supports and re-iterates Jesus’ statement that He is the bread of life and that salvation comes from Him, is sustained by Him so He is the source for our spiritual welfare.
He, and only He, is the source for our spiritual life and will not loose anyone.
37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever 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 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.
40 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.”
Eternal security because of Him!
47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
48 I am the bread of life.
49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
Any who have faith in Jesus, connect themselves to the source of a eternal spiritual life.
Many won’t understand this, because their desire is for the physical in an attempt to fulfill the spiritual.
Jesus uses a metaphor to express the point that they are missing:
A spiritual reality, not a physical requirement.
53 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 you.
The metaphor uses literal imagery to underscore their absurdity to believe that His blood and flesh needs to be consumed.
The eating and drinking are metaphors for faith, which is the way to God.
58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Transition:
People are still missing the teaching of these metaphors today!
Here is what happens when people misunderstand the point and have failed attempts to fulfill their desires.
They stop the pursuit for truth and answers, or worse.
They settle on a perversion that suits their selfish desires, rather than finding fulfillment in Jesus.
We get to see the people’s response from:
Jesus not giving them what they want (60-71)
Jesus not giving them what they want (60-71)
When someone seeks Jesus for their own bellies sake and He doesn’t give them what they want: they are unfulfilled.
The analogy that people use a lot here is the “square peg and round hole”.
“There is a Jesus shaped hole in you and you can attempt to fill that hole with almost anything, believing it will satisfy.
Only to realize that nothing works!
Because there is only one thing that can fill the space as it should.
Those who were present weren’t just the 12 disciples, it says there are many!
60 When many of His disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
61 But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?
It didn’t sound like they wanted Him to be their Rabbi anymore, considering the lunatic statements He was making to them...
They stopped following Him.
64 But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him.)
They didn’t get what they wanted and their desire was shattered, so they left!
66 After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.
Look how quickly they fell away or stopped believing!
This still happens today!
There are a lot of people that will make the claim:
“I tried religion, or Jesus before and nothing happened.”
To me that screams they wanted a God to fashion after their own desires, instead of allowing Him to fashion them.
Thankfully there was a remnant who re-affirmed their faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
68 Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,
They agreed to what Peter answered and believed in Him.
A difference between a follower and a believer is what happens when things aren’t going smoothly or as expected.
A follower will often come into difficulties and turn away, because their faith isn’t in Jesus being in charge.
A believer is one who knows, trusts, and believes that no matter what; Jesus is in control and allows things to work out His will in our lives.
Joy and peace are found because He is the Father who is in charge.
Conclusion:
Every morning you wake up with a hunger — not just for breakfast, but for something to make the day feel like it matters.
Something to give you direction, steadiness, a reason to keep going.
And we spend enormous energy trying to feed that hunger with things that can't hold it: approval, comfort, control, success.
Jesus stood in front of a crowd who had just watched Him do the impossible — and they were already hungry again.
Not because the miracle didn't happen, but because bread only lasts for so long.
He wasn't offended. He just told them the truth: "I am the bread of life. Come to Me and you will not hunger."
The question He's asking us isn't complicated — it's just honest:
What are you feeding on?
Are you feeding on His Word every day the way you feed your body?
Are you coming to Him before you come to your own conclusions?
Are you trusting Him when things don't go the way you wanted — or are you walking away like those who left, because He didn't didn’t give you the answer you expected?
The Twelve stayed. Not because everything made sense.
Peter said it plainly: "Where else would we go?"
That's the faith of someone who has tasted and knows.
You don't go back to lesser things when you've found the one thing that actually satisfies.
Feed on Him. Bring your real hunger to the one who can actually fill it.
-Pray!
