More than Just Bread
Eyewitness • Sermon • Submitted
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· 10 viewsBecause God is love, He can love you and at the same time not hate them.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction // 7 Minutes
1. Personal Story of Selfish Wants
i. The first to get to mom gets the cereal they really want. It could get moderately physical.
ii. I would like to say it is different, but it really is not.
iii. How can I get it before you do?!
2. Connect to Bible at General Level
i. The Professor of Microevolutionary Biology at Israeli University
ii. This is nothing new, The role religion plays in violence.
iii. Maybe better: The role violent people want religion to play.
iv. Cain and Abel, Sarah and Hagar, Jacob and Esau,
v. Sunni and Shiites, Christians and Jews, Tiger King and Carol Baskin
3. The Problem//The Sin under the Sin
i. There is only so much bread to go around.
ii. If you get some, I get less or none.
iii. Because God’s provision is in short supply there is only enough for me and mine and not you or yours.
iv. John says God loves us so much that he gave us everything we needed, all at once – namely, Himself.
4. The Solution//The Gospel Effect
i. Because God is love, He can love you and at the same time not hate them.
ii. This sign, your Bible might have a heading that says “The Fourth Sign: Feeding of the Five Thousand.”
iii. This sign is supposed to show us something incredible about Jesus. If He is the bread of life then there is more than enough love, provision for us all to make it through this wilderness journey.
Ha-foke-bah
Graphic for Series
5. Transition into Big Idea of Series
i. We’re following John’s account of his 1st century journey with the Rabbi from Nazareth. Early on, it’s clear: John followed Jesus because of what he saw and experienced.
ii. 1 John 1:1-2, 4: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life… We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” (1 John 1:4, CSB)
What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life—
that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us —
Eyewitnesses
Experiences
Evidences
End Result
We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
1. Eyewitnesses (what we heard)
2. Experiences (what he experienced)
3. Evidence (what I touched)
4. End Result (our seeing will create your believing and your believing will create your seeing). For them seeing was believing but for everyone else believing will be seeing.
iii. He wanted future generations to know what he saw and heard but not just to know so we would have data. It is more than that.
1. Who God is can be known by what Jesus does and what Jesus does is evidence of who Jesus is.
2. Recognizing who Jesus is, well it should change everything. So John tells us.
3. John 20:31 - “But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
But these are written so that you may believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name.
4. The Fourth Sign: Feeding 5,000 [+] is the most familiar to people. This is the only miracle during Jesus’ ministry that is recorded in all four Gospels (Mt. 14:13–21; Mk. 6:35–44; Lk. 9:10–17; cf. also the feeding of the four thousand, Mt. 15:21–28; Mk. 8:1–9).
It is also the most controversial for all the wrong reasons. Wrongly controversial about the Christian Eucharist.
Rightly controversial, when we understand what Jesus believes the role religion should play in violence; if, He is what this 4th sign claims Him to be.
6. Connect Big Idea to Today’s Message
i. If He is the bread of life, then God’s love for one person cannot be used to vindicate hatred of an other person.
II. Bible // 19 Minutes
1. Background to John 6
i. Let’s review where we have been. The first sign was in the Galilee at a wedding where he turned water into wine. The second was after he returned from Jerusalem and he healed a man’s son with just a word. The third sign took place in Jerusalem at the festival of Purim where he healed a paraplegic. This next story has us back at the Galilee around Passover.
After this, Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee (or Tiberias ).
The first sentence sets Roman domination and oppression. Notice how John calls it the The Sea of Galilee was but in parenthesis he add “or Tiberias.” This may seem like a trivial geographic detail but it is John’s way of saying, “I refuse to call our lake by that pagan Roman Emperor’s name Tiberius Caesar. The city of Tiberius was a new city founded by the compromised king, Herod Antipas in AD 26 (the son of Herod the Great). This city was built to flatter a Roman overloard.
Okay, let me make it real for us Texans. It would be as if Governor Abbot in an attempt to flatter the Russian President Vladimir Putin took 4000 acres of prime real estate on Lake Travis, renamed Putin-ville and then renamed Lake Travis, Lake Putin. There is no greater sign of domination and oppression then the renaming of a country’s landmarks. The Galilee was in God’s country but now it is was being renamed by a pagan and roman emperor Tiberius Caesar.
In the background we have oppression, domination, and deep poverty. Galilee was a peasant agrarian society, where fishermen and farmers were taxed heavily and frequently by the elite’s who aligned themselves with the house of Herod or collected tax for Rome. They could not get ahead and if they dead, someone more powerful, more influential would come and make sure they stayed behind.
Oppression, Domination, Poverty.
John 6:2 “a huge crowd was following him because…
And a huge crowd was following Him because they saw the signs that He was performing by healing the sick.
Explain: They followed him because they saw the signs, the healings. Remember, this is not a bad thing in John’s Gospel unless they miss who the signs point to and what those signs say about Jesus.
Explain why they were not following him: not because of faith but because of seeing.
John 6:2 A huge crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was performing by healing the sick.
Explain: saw signs, healed sick.
Explain: the motivation of the crowds is not wrong at this point just like it is not wrong for people to want to take their sick loved ones to the hospital that can help the most.
John 6:3 Jesus went up a mountain and sat down there with his disciples.
So Jesus went up a mountain and sat down there with His disciples.
Explain: mountain’s are places of experiencing God.
Explain: sat down and with his disciples. This language is meant to throw our minds back to another famous person who went up and had a magnificient meal on Mt. Sinai: Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and the seventy elders of Israel (Exo 24:1-18) after all Israel heard God speak the Ten Words, the ten Commandments but before Moses was on Sinai for 40 days receiving all the law.
This is a key moment of experiencing God.
John 6:4 Now the Passover, a Jewish festival, was near.
Now the Passover, a Jewish festival, was near.
Explain: Passover as Deliverance Feast. At the same time, the Passover Feast was to Palestinian Jews what the fourth of July is to Americans, or, better, what the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne is to loyalist Protestants in Northern Ireland. It was a rallying point for intense, nationalistic zeal. This goes some way to explaining the fervour that tried to force Jesus to become king (cf. notes on v. 15)
Explain: This is the moment where an oppressed, dominated, impoverished people being occupied by Roman overlords would yearn to break their shackles.
This would be the time where the desire to be free from overlords and the theme of national freedom in the Passover would drive even the most passive of people towards violence in the Name of God.
John 6:5 So when Jesus looked up and noticed a huge crowd coming toward him…
Therefore, when Jesus looked up and noticed a huge crowd coming toward Him, He asked Philip, “Where will we buy bread so these people can eat?”
Explain: What makes this moment a moment worth talking about is the size of the people and the passover.
Explain: five thousand men, 12 disciples, and 1 Messiah
Five Thousand: Size of a Roman Legion. Standard protocol for the Roman army was to have a minimum of 10 centurions for every one legion of soldiers.
Five Thousand army men, 12 disciples plus wives, children, and the elderly has convinced most scholars and historians that the total number of people at this is between 15,000 - 20,000 people.
This is a massive Peasant Army in the making.
John 6:5 So when Jesus looked up and noticed a huge crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, “Where will we buy bread so that these people can eat?”
Therefore, when Jesus looked up and noticed a huge crowd coming toward Him, He asked Philip, “Where will we buy bread so these people can eat?”
Explain: The craziness of this question
Validate: The answers and/or thoughts Philip would have had about this question. In this instance Philip was the obvious person to ask: he came from the nearby town of Bethsaida (1:44). Specification of such details may therefore more reasonably be taken as evidence for the recollection of an eyewitness
Validate: Philip’s background. Why is he asking Philip? Philip’s possible response!? (Humorous)
Explain: this echoes Num 11:13
Where can I get meat to give all these people? For they are crying to me: ‘Give us meat to eat!’
John 6:6 He asked this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do.
He asked this to test him, for He Himself knew what He was going to do.
Explain: This is a test question.
What local baker has enough bread on hand to feed an entire legion of men plus their families?
What is his name? Where is his store? With our resources who might “hook us up?”
Explain: We are not sure he knew the answer right.
Friedrich Nietzche once said, that, “Even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows.”
Philip knows the only place to find that much food is in the house of Herod or at the bakers for the Roman militia. There is no hook up!
John 6:7 Philip answered, “Two hundred silver pieces wouldn’t be enough to buy bread for each person to get a piece.” - the Message
Philip answered, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread wouldn’t be enough for each of them to have a little.”
Explain: He says even if we had $1,600.00 to spend on bread, that is not near enough for the size of this crowd.
Explain: Philip’s Lack of Charismatic Gift
John 6:8 One of the disciples—it was Andrew, brother to Simon Peter—said,
One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him,
Explain: Who is Andrew
John 6:9 “There’s a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish—but what are they for so many?”
“There’s a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish—but what are they for so many?”
Explain: This is a real cheeky response to Jesus.
Explain: Barley was a signal of poverty. If someone saw you eating barley loaves they knew, “poor” and impoverished. The two fish are probably sardines not big fish. Here is the point it is fine meal for poor person but it is a poor persons meal.
Validate: You need to hear the frustration in Andrew’s response, “Jesus, don’t you get it?! This is an oppressed, dominated, and impoverished people. They are not eating the fancy meals of Herod’s palace or the plate of the Roman elites These are peasants, with peasant food, what are you going to do about it.”
John 6:10 Then Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, so they sat down. The men numbered about 5,000.
Then Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, so they sat down. The men numbered about 5,000.
Explain: No Food Lines
Validate: This is a Shepherd not a Sergeant.
John 6:11 Then Jesus took the loaves, and after giving thanks
Then Jesus took the loaves, and after giving thanks He distributed them to those who were seated—so also with the fish, as much as they wanted.
Explain: No one knows what is about to happen.
Explain: This is just a standard prayer, nothing magical here folks.
Explain: This took hours and hours.
Explain: There are many stories about how this is not a miracle but just a story about sharing but lets go with the eyewitnesses.
John 6:12-13 When they were full, He told His disciples, “Collect the leftovers so that nothing is wasted.” So they collected them and filled 12 baskets with the pieces from the five barley loaves that were left over by those who had eaten.
When they were full, He told His disciples, “Collect the leftovers so that nothing is wasted.” So they collected them and filled 12 baskets with the pieces from the five barley loaves that were left over by those who had eaten.
Explain: This a sign not a miracle of radical self-denial and sharing.
Validate: The 12 baskets of left over bread would have signaled to the whole crowd that Israel as a broken nation was going to be gathered together again. The twelve tribes would unite, be fed, join together for Passover and take the land back from their cruel oppressors.
John 6:14 When the people saw the sign He had done, they said, “This really is the Prophet who was to come into the world!”
When the people saw the sign He had done, they said, “This really is the Prophet who was to come into the world!”
Explain: The popular idea behind “the Prophet” to come into the world.
“The treasury of manna shall again descend from on high, and they will eat of it in those years” (2 Baruch 29:8).
An early rabbinic commentary on Exodus 16:4 says, “As the first redeemer caused manna to descend…so will the latter redeemer cause manna to descend” (Midrash Rabbah Eccles. 1:9).
Explain: This is a Passover that will surpass all Passovers, the 2nd Exodus.
Explain: The Prophet is here with a Peasant Legion ready to fight and take Jerusalem.
John 6:15 Therefore, when Jesus knew that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.
Therefore, when Jesus knew that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.
Explain: We are hearing another echo from Israel’s history. When Aaron came down from the mountain after eating the sacred meal. Israel grew impatient waiting for Moses and they seized upon Aaron. Exo 32:1
When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!”
Explain: The people seize Aaron and he complies and makes a bull, a calf. The bull was both an idol and in Canann that represented a warrior deity.
Explain: Aaron allows extremist to define faith. But God is displeased by this. He wanted to define faith by Torah and Presence. His presence and His word.
Will Jesus do any better? Will he allow extremist to define faith? What role will violent people have in defining religion?
John 6:15
Therefore, when Jesus knew that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.
Explain: Get these messianic militia ideas out of your head. He leaves his disciple behind and goes up to the mountain again. This is just like the Exodus story where after Moses comes down sees the calf he throws down the stone tablets and then goes back to the mountain alone.
Application: He is about to call some of us out, about to call me out. He is not here to align himself with me and my party. His love for me does not mean his hatred of other people.
I know many people who have tried to turn Jesus into the ally of their political agenda and absolutely loose their shirt if anyone tells them otherwise.
I also know that many people out there have given up on faith because of the extremist who have hijacked faith. Who have made faith into a nightmare of hatred and violence. That God’s love for me means hatred of others.
And i know that many of you gave up on God because these people made you feel like you had no worth unless you somehow were helping their cause. They sin like Adam with Chava. You know this story?
God creates another for Adam in Gen 2:22.
Adam calls her Woman. That is not a name. He has a name and it is not man, it is Adam. It is like he just called her a number or just take it as “woman.” It is subservient. Not a name, a function, a role, not an identity.
Adam does not actually name Eve until after the curse Gen 3:19-20
You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground, since you were taken from it. For you are dust, and you will return to dust.” Adam named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living.
After he is cursed and realizes He needs Eve for his survival. Then he names her. Now she becomes valuable enough to have an identity.
She had an identity before but Adam just did not acknowledge it.
People who hijack faith for their agendas always treat other people this way. Your not worthy of love unless your doing something useful for me.
Will Jesus do any better? Will he allow extremist to define faith? What role will violent people have in defining religion?
John 6:25 When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
Explain: next week we talk about the fifth sign of walking on water and how he got here.
Explain: John 6:59 we are now in official religious space.
He said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
John 6:25
When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
Explain: They really are there with an agenda. They address him as Rabbi (cf. notes on 1:38), betraying their own confusion and uncertainty: they acknowledge him as teacher though they are about to dispute his teaching, they clamor for him as king (v. 15) though they understand little of the nature of his reign.
John 6:26 Jesus answered, “I assure you: You are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Jesus answered, “I assure you: You are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Explain: Yeshua calls them out, he has total candor with them. You are not following me for the right reasons and I am not the leader of your peasant revolt.
Explain: Had he told them the nature of his crossing, doubtless they would have been impressed; but what follows shows that mere miracles can be corrosive of genuine faith.
John 6:27 Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal of approval on Him.”
Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal of approval on Him.”
Explain: The food that perishes is the attempt to establish man’s kingdoms. They are like bread. They perish quickly but there is something that lasts forever, a kingdom that is forever and that is worth pursuing.
Explain: Son of Man of Daniel 9 gives food that triumphs the coming darkness and judgment.
iExplain: Seal is the explicit approval of God on Jesus.
iv. Tell: the next two verses in narrative form.
John 6:30-31
“What sign then are You going to do so we may see and believe You?” they asked. “What are You going to perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
Explain: Do your next magic trick again or we quit. If this is what the synagogue crowd means, it is a demand that Jesus prove his messianic status by duplicating or surpassing the miracle of the manna in the name of “our ancestors.
Jesus said to them, “I assure you: Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the real bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the One who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Explain: He corrects them that it was not Moses who fed them but God.
Explain: He is not just for one group of people but for all people. The second exodus is bigger than anyone could imagine. It is not just Israel it is also Romans, Egyptians, Iranians, Americans. etc.
Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always!”
Explain: Do it then! Be a world wide ruler! They can’t
Narrate John 6:35-46 about his identity and their grumbling.
“I assure you: Anyone who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone may eat of it and not die.
Explain Four Controversial Things:
Anyone: I am not just your best shot for the future but also their best shot.
Your Fathers: the past is not as good as you think. Your fathers saw the signs of God and did not have faith. They died with full bellies in the wilderness because they could not see past their bellies to the God who gave life.
Who God is can be known by what Jesus does and what Jesus does is evidence of who Jesus is. John 6:48
I am the bread of life.
The Bread of Life: He is the provision of God that reunites all of mankind to God.
The 4th Sign: He is what he does and does what He is. He is God in the flesh providing a way back to God for everyone and if he can provide the way back to God for everyone then he is God in the flesh.
John 6:53-54
So Jesus said to them, “I assure you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves. Anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day,
Explain: This is not about the Eucharest and the Lord’s Table.
Explain: The Bread of Life is not fuel for you violence but fuel for radical love towards others.
You don’t get to eat this bread and
make war in the name of the God of peace,
murder someone in the name of the God of life,
be cruel in the name of the God of compassion;
nor, be hateful in the name of the God of love.
John 6:66 From that moment many of His disciples turned back and no longer accompanied Him.
From that moment many of His disciples turned back and no longer accompanied Him.
Explain: The food was not the problem, what Jesus said the sign pointed to was the problem.
Explain: If He is the bread of life then there is more than enough love, provision for us all to make it through this wilderness journey.
III. Conclusion // 13 Minutes
Application: There by the Sea of Galilee renamed after Tiberius the emperor an impoverished, oppressed, and dominated group of people were told “no” to a violent overthrow of their oppressors. Even worse, they were told God has sent a provision of life for them and you.
When there was nothing in it for them at that moment, they just walked away.
When love and not hate was the answer, they just quit.
When they were told that God’s love is not in short supply and for God to love you that does not mean he has to hat them, they just walked away.
When they were confronted with this question, “Can you see someone who is not in your image, not in your likeness, also deserving of God’s provision?”
Jesus says John 6:35-37
“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again. But as I told you, you’ve seen Me, and yet you do not believe. Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.
What about me? What about you? Are you just in this thing for what you can get out of it? Seeing is believing. But, now that you can see that he calling you to eat his flesh, drink his blood. Simply, to follow his example of radical love and sacrifice are you willing to love the people who oppress you? impoverish you? change the names of your lakes, name cities after themselves. Can you see them as also loved by God?
Because maybe if you could see them this way then maybe they would see you no longer as their subjects, their slaves and they would see not an “other” but a brother, a sister, a mother, a friend.
We are invited to believe that He is the Bread of life. He is more than able to provide all you need for eternal life, to walk you through this world into God’s eternal kingdom. How do you eat this Bread, you believe the sign that John saw: John 20:30-31
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in His name.
Right where you are, you can simply pray and receive this life.
What if for the next two weeks every Christian in America and every Messianic Jew acted like they really had experienced the Second Exodus?