Sermon Tone Analysis

What does it mean when you ask your God, Who are you?

and he answers, I AM WHO I AM?

First, God exists.

At first, this may seem so obvious and so basic that we wouldn’t need to mention it.

Well, it is obvious and it is basic, but the reason we should mention it is that most people live as if it were not true, or as if it were a truth that makes no difference in life.

No Reality Exists Behind God

God Does Not Change

God Is an Inexhaustible Source of Energy

Objectivity Is Crucial

We Must Conform to God, Not He to Us.

This God Has Drawn Near to Us in Jesus Christ.

When Jesus says “I AM”, it means He is “THE I AM”.

In Jesus Christ, we who are born of God have the amazing privilege of knowing Yahweh as our Father — I AM WHO I AM — THE GOD

who exists

whose personality and power is owing solely to himself

who never changes

from whom all power and energy in the universe flows

and to whom all creation should conform its life.

Banana Nut Bread

“Bread exists to help us know what it is like to be satisfied in Jesus.”TweetShare on Facebook

One of the reasons God created bread — or created the grain and the water and yeast and fire and human intelligence to make it, and I mean the really good kind, that’s not mainly air — is so that when Jesus Christ came into the world, he would be able to use the enjoyment of bread and the nourishment of bread as an illustration of what it means to believe on him and be satisfied with him.

I believe that with all my heart.

Bread exists to help us know what it is like to be satisfied in Jesus.

This is true for water as well.

() and light (; ) and every other good thing that God has made.

Nothing exists for itself.

“All things were created through him and for him” ().

Every honorable pleasure that we have in the created world is designed by God to give us a faint taste of heaven and make us hunger for Christ.

Every partial satisfaction in this life points to the perfect satisfaction in Jesus who made the world.

and light

John 14:6 and every other good thing that God has made.

Nothing exists for itself.

“All things were created through him and for him” ().

Every honorable pleasure that we have in the created world is designed by God to give us a faint taste of heaven and make us hunger for Christ.

Every partial satisfaction in this life points to the perfect satisfaction in Jesus who made the world.

and every other good thing that God has made.

Nothing exists for itself.

“All things were created through him and for him”

Colossians .

Every honorable pleasure that we have in the created world is designed by God to give us a faint taste of heaven and make us hunger for Christ.

Every partial satisfaction in this life points to the perfect satisfaction in Jesus who made the world.

Every pleasure that we have in the created world is designed by God to give us a faint taste of heaven and make us hunger for Christ.

Every partial satisfaction in this life points to the perfect satisfaction in Jesus who made the world.

The enjoyment of warm bread should send our senses and our spirits to Christ as the bread of life.

The enjoyment of cold water when were hot and thirsty should send our senses and our spirits to Christ as the living water.

The pleasures of light making all other natural beauties visible should send our senses and our spirits to Christ as the true light of the world.

But today I simply want us to focus on how Jesus set up this long discussion — namely, with the miracle of making real bread — enough real bread to feed over five thousand people by using only five barley loaves and a few fish.

So the chapter — the story as John tells it — has these two parts:

The miracle itself, verses 1–15

The explanation and controversy over Jesus as the bread of heaven in verses 16–71.

So let’s turn to verses 1–15.

More Than Meets the Eye

The beginning and the end of this section about the feeding of the five thousand shows us both that Jesus is doing more than feeding people with natural bread, and that the people, in general, are in no spiritual condition to see what he what he is doing.

We have seen this before in this Gospel.

Jesus says something or does something in the natural realm as a way of pointing to the spiritual realm, and the people don’t get it.

He told the leaders in Israel, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” ().

And they said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple.”

And they said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple.”

He told Nicodemus that he had to be born again, and Nicodemus asked how you get back in your mother’s womb ().

He told the woman at the well that he would give her living water (), and she said, But you don’t have a bucket.

He told Nicodemus that he had to be born again, and Nicodemus asked how you get back in your mother’s womb ().

He told the woman at the well that he would give her living water (), and she said, But you don’t have a bucket.

They Saw the Signs He Was Doing

Now notice how this happens again in the feeding of the five thousand.

And the point of John’s showing this to us, again and again, is to wake us up from being this dull.

His aim is our faith, so he shows both the deadness of unbelief and the greatness of Christ.

Notice first verses 1–2: “After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.

And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.”

They were following him because of the signs they saw him doing.

He was healing the sick, and they were amazed and desired more of the benefits of this power.

But this is not encouraging.

We have seen this phrase before: “because they saw the signs he was doing.”

said, “Many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.”

But then John adds in verse 24, “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people” ().

Something is wrong with their hearts.

They are excited by Jesus’s signs.

They believe he is a genuine miracle-worker.

But something is wrong.

Enthusiasm for the Wrong Jesus

Now jump to the end of the story of the feeding of the five thousand in , and we will see what’s wrong.

“When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”

“If your enthusiasm is for a Jesus that doesn’t exist, your enthusiasm is no honor to the real Jesus.”TweetShare

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Why did Jesus withdraw?

Because the enthusiasm these people have is not for who he really is.

This is so important for our day and for your life.

People can have a great enthusiasm for Jesus, but the Jesus they’re excited about is not the real biblical Jesus.

It may be a morally exemplary Jesus, or a socialist Jesus, or a capitalist Jesus, or an anti-Semitic Jesus, or a white-racist Jesus, or a revolutionary-liberationist Jesus, or a counter-cultural cool Jesus.

But not the whole Jesus who, in the end, gives his life a ransom for sinners ().

And if your enthusiasm for Jesus is for a Jesus that doesn’t exist, your enthusiasm is no honor to the real Jesus, and he will leave you and go into the mountain.

Jesus As the Prophet

So these people saw that Jesus was the predicted Prophet and the long-expected king of Israel.

Isn’t that right?

Verse 14–15: “They said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king Jesus withdrew.”

Isn’t he the king of Israel?

Isn’t he the Prophet?

The reference to the Prophet points back to where Moses prophesied, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen.”

Jesus was indeed this predicted Prophet like Moses.