BREAD FROM HEAVEN

Introduction

-Back in 1987, when I was in high school, the world was introduced to the books of WHERE’S WALDO. The books featured several 2-page illustrated spreads of different locations where Waldo the world traveler had visited. Somewhere within the chaotic scene the lost traveler was hiding, and readers had to find him along with some of his friends.

~Although the different illustrations may have portrayed a beach scene or a crowded city street, there was more to the picture than first met the eye, and the reader had to take a deeper look to see what was hidden within it.

-I make mention of this because it reminded me of what Jesus has done in the passage that I’m about to read. In the passage I read last week, Jesus gave His Jewish listeners a particular picture about Himself—calling Himself the Bread of Life, or the Bread that came from Heaven.

-After Jesus claims this for himself, what we find is that the Jews didn’t really like what He had to say—but the problem was that they did not look deep enough into the picture that Jesus was painting with this metaphor in order to understand the deep spiritual truths that He revealed.

-What I hope to do today is to very quickly unpack some spiritual lessons that I hope we grasp onto. Because with this picture of Him being the Bread from Heaven, Jesus demonstrates that our spiritual life is even more important than our physical life, and He alone provides what our spiritual life needs.

-And my hope is, even though this is a hard passage to understand to an extent, that in learning some of these truths you will desire to partake of this Bread from Heaven.

John 6:41–59 ESV

41 So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 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. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 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. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 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.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

-So what exactly do we learn when we look deeper into this picture of the bread of heaven?

I) We learn about Jesus’ heavenly origin

-v. 41 tells us that the people started grumbling because Jesus claimed to be the bread that came down from heaven.----They rightfully understood this as a divine claim.

-But they couldn’t grasp this, because as it says in v. 42, they knew his earthly, adopted father Joseph and they knew Mary his mother, so how could He claim to be from heaven.

-The Jews could not see beyond the mere physical to understand the spiritual—they couldn’t get past the human Jesus in order to see the divine Jesus.

-It may have been scandalous and blasphemous to the Jews to claim this divine origin, but as Jesus describes throughout this chapter, it was for the good of mankind that God sent His Son.

-We have heard of (or maybe know) people who have acted arrogantly, and so we say THAT PERSON THINKS THEY’RE GOD’S GIFT TO MAN. But Jesus was not being arrogant in His claim—He literally is God’s gift to mankind.

-And for us, that means that Jesus is no mere moralist or self-help guru, but He is the divine Creator who sees the state that His creation is in and has come to set things right.

-That means that we have a God who so loves us that He was willing to give up the glories of heaven to come down and rescue us in our time of need.----This is true for us in the daily troubles and problems that we all face. By the bread of heaven coming down to earth, God demonstrated that He cares about every single thing that goes on in our lives, and although for His divine purposes He may allow us to go through some suffering, ultimately, He has us in His hands.

-And most importantly, we know that our greatest need, which is the sinful nature that grips us and the effects of the sin that we commit that brings us condemnation, has been taken care of by the very God we have offended.

-But what the bread from heaven did for us is not automatically applied to us, but we must believe and accept it, so God calls us to that, and we see:

II) We learn about the Father’s luring work

-In v. 44 Jesus points out that no one can come to Him without the Father drawing them.----this verse is not saying that the Father only draws some and does not draw others----what it is saying is that no one in their natural, sinful state will begin looking for Jesus, so the Father lures people to Jesus but it is up to them to believe and receive.

-The Father sent the Son to save everyone since He is not willing that any should perish—and so the Father draws people like a magnet to Jesus

-Or maybe a better picture is that of a fishing lure. Back when I would fish I had some success getting bass with this lure that looked just like a minnow, and as I was reeling in, it looked like a minnow swimming along, and it would entice the fish. Some of the fish would ignore it, some of the fish would bite into it. But the lure was there to draw the fish to me.

-And God the Father is luring people to come and believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls and to find peace in their hearts. But it is up to the individual to believe or not. It is up to the individual to rest their hearts in Jesus or not.

-The problem is that the devil uses the world to entice and lure the flesh within us away from Jesus. So while the Father is drawing toward Jesus, the devil is trying to draw away from Jesus to the world which leads to death.

-And so, even now, for the non-Christian God is drawing you to Jesus for your good. And for the Christian, God is drawing you to Jesus for your daily living. But we have a choice of whether or not we accept what it is that God is drawing us to, or are we going to follow the devil’s lure into living in and for the world.

-But if we allow God to lure us to Jesus, then:

III) We learn about Christ’s atoning sacrifice

-Not only does Jesus claim to be the bread that came down from heaven, part of the picture is that He is the Bread of Life, or the bread that gives life.

-And at the end of v. 51, Jesus says:

And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

-Jesus is claiming that the portrait that He gives of the bread is picturing His flesh that He will sacrifice on the cross on behalf of mankind.

-This sacrifice will make the payment for sin so that any debt that has been built up with God will be completely paid for, so that mankind and God can have their relationship reconciled.

-And the promise is that only this bread is able to pay that debt and give people eternal life—nothing else will take care of the sin debt.

-Earlier in the chapter the Jews took a literal meaning about bread and made mention that Moses gave them manna—the bread that sustained them in the wilderness journey.

-But Jesus reminds them in vv. 48 & 58 that the bread that their ancestors ate in the wilderness did not give them eternal life. It sustained them physically for a time, but their ancestors still died. The bread that Jesus offers (this flesh that is going to be sacrificed to atone for sins) will sustain them for all of eternity.

-But, this then leads to the next part of the picture:

IV) We learn about our personal appropriation

-Not that the Jews didn’t already have problems with this picture that Jesus was portraying, but then Jesus tells them something that sets them over the edge.

-in vv. 50-55, Jesus talks of the necessity of eating this bread (which is His flesh) and drinking His blood as the means of having eternal life.

-The Jews, who were spiritually blind, did not understand the spiritual aspects of what Jesus was trying to say—they were taking everything literally.

-The Jews were thinking He was advocating cannibalism. And they were really offended in that Jesus said to drink His blood, because Jewish law forbids the consumption of blood because blood is life.

~So they’re thinking Jesus is a cannibal or a vampire or something.

-But obviously Jesus is not advocating literally eating His flesh and literally drinking His blood.

~And, it should be noted, that this passage has absolutely nothing to do with the Lord’s Supper. Some religions have equated this passage with the Lord’s supper, and so they equate the bread and wine as literally being His flesh and blood.

~But the Lord’s Supper hadn’t been instituted yet, so this has nothing to do with that.

-Jesus is talking about appropriating, or receiving for oneself, this gift of life that is only found in Him. No one can make the choice for you. If you want eternal life, and you want a close walk with God, then you and you alone are going to have to believe and trust in Jesus Christ----or, to go with the picture=you are going to have to eat His flesh and drink His blood…

-Eating and drinking is a picture of personally internalizing this truth. Without this eating and drinking (that is, without this believing and receiving) you are not going to have eternal life.

-But this eternal life Jesus offers is not just for having a future in heaven:

V) We learn about our present abiding

-The eternal life received by personally accepting the bread from heaven is not just a long life that goes on for infinity, but it is a lifestyle for the here and now—it has implications on how you live and the choices that you make now.

-v. 56 says:

56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him

-To abide is to live and rest—and so when we abide in Christ we are resting in His peace and hope and life, and then allowing His life to flow through us into our daily living.

-In John chapter 15 Jesus used another metaphor for this when He said that He is the vine and we are the branches that are connected to the vine. The branch cannot produce fruit in and of itself, but must rely on its connection to the vine, and the life of the vine flows through branch and then fruit is produced.

-We always get so frustrated when things don’t go our way, or we make stupid mistakes or choices. But when we abide or rest in Jesus, and His life flows through us, then we have the proper reaction to some of the things going on, and we get a heavenly perspective which better guides us in the path.

-After we first appropriate the bread from heaven, then we are able to abide in the bread from heaven, and then supernatural peace and hope are available to us whatever our circumstance might be.

Conclusion

-I’ll close with this.

Cartoonist Rube Goldberg drew zany pictures of complicated gadgets that were weird and yet difficult to figure out how they work. For example, in a picture called AN AUTOMATIC BACK SCRATCHER a water hose sprays a man who then grabs an umbrella that pulls a string that lifts a board that drops a bowling ball that pulls a string that pulls a hammer that breaks a glass that wakes a baby causing someone to rock a baby in a crib that is attached to a back scratcher.

-And the picture of Christ being the bread from heaven that we are to eat with blood might seem to be as complicated as that.

~But the picture in the deepest of levels was meant to demonstrate Christ’s heavenly origin to whom the Father is drawing us because of His atoning sacrifice, so we must appropriate this by faith and abide in Him all our days.

-If you have not received this bread, during the invitation I invite you to do so.

-Christian, if you are anxious or worried, come to the altar and find the rest that is yours in Christ.

-If you are looking for a church that points people to Jesus, I invite you to come and join…