Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture

My notes

The Lord does as he pleases – the bread of heaven.

John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

Manna – God delivers his people and provides food

Ruth – God disciplines his children to bring them home

Bethlehem – God decided on the House of Bread before the earth came to be

Bread of Life – food to those whom the Father chooses

Despising the Bread of Life

John 6:26 “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.”

Death comes for all men

John 6:49 “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.”

The Hardness of Belief

John 6:60 “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”

The Words of Eternal Life

John 6:68 “Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life,”

Commentary

Faith will suck sweetness out of God’s rod; but unbelief can find no comfort in his greatest mercies (Psa 23:4; Num 21)

A word weakly spoken, spoken with difficulty, in temptation, and in the midst of great contempt and scorn, works wonders, if the Lord thy God will say so too.

This, then, should learn us diligently to consider the natural force of every word of God; and to judge of Christ’s ability to save, not by our sins, or by our shallow apprehensions of his grace; but by his word, which is the true measure of grace.

They murmured at him.

This comes in immediately after that solemn declaration which Christ had made of God’s will and his own undertaking concerning man’s salvation (v.

39, 40), which certainly were some of the most weighty and gracious words that ever proceeded out of the mouth of our Lord Jesus, the most faithful, and best worthy of all acceptation.

First, The divinity of Christ’s person.

As God, he had a being in heaven, whence he came to take our nature upon him: I came down from heaven, whence we may infer his antiquity, he was in the beginning with God; his ability, for heaven is the firmament of power; and his authority, he came with a divine commission

Thus apt are we to slight and overlook the appearances of God’s power and grace in our own times, while we pretend to admire the wonders of which our fathers told us.

Suppose this miracle of Christ was outdone by that of Moses, yet there were other instances in which Christ’s miracles outshone his; and, besides, all true miracles prove a divine doctrine, though not equally illustrious in the circumstances, which were ever diversified according as the occasion did require.

As much as the manna excelled the barley-loaves, so much, and much more, did the doctrine of Christ excel the law of Moses, and his heavenly institutions the carnal ordinances of that dispensation.

The work of faith is the work of God.

They enquire after the works of God (in the plural number), being careful about many things; but Christ directs them to one work, which includes all, the one thing needful: that you believe, which supersedes all the works of the ceremonial law; the work which is necessary to the acceptance of all the other works, and which produces them, for without faith you cannot please God.

It is God’s work, for it is of his working in us, it subjects the soul to his working on us, and quickens the soul in working for him, (2.)

That faith is the work of God which closes with Christ, and relies upon him.

It is to believe on him as one whom God hath sent, as God’s commissioner in the great affair of peace between God and man, and as such to rest upon him, and resign ourselves to him.

Observe here, First, Who gives this meat: the Son of man, the great householder and master of the stores, who is entrusted with the administration of the kingdom of God among men, and the dispensation of the gifts, graces, and comforts of that kingdom, and has power to give eternal life, with all the means of it and preparatives for it.

The things of the world are meat that perishes.

Worldly wealth, honour, and pleasure, are meat; they feed the fancy (and many times this is all) and fill the belly.

These are things which mean hunger after as meat, and glut themselves with, and which a carnal heart, as long as they last, may make a shift to live upon; but they perish, are of a perishing nature, wither of themselves, and are exposed to a thousand accidents; those that have the largest share of them are not sure to have them while they live, but are sure to leave them and lose them when they die.

These people complimented Christ with Rabbi, and showed him great respect, yet he told them thus faithfully of their hypocrisy; his ministers must hence learn not to flatter those that flatter them, nor to be bribed by fair words to cry peace to all that cry rabbi to them, but to give faithful reproofs where there is cause for them.

A cheap meal’s meat, that cost them nothing; no reckoning was brought in.

Note, Many follow Christ for loaves, and not for love.

Thus those do who aim at secular advantage in their profession of religion, and follow it because by this craft they get their preferments.