John 6:25-51 • I Am The Bread of Life
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles this morning at John chapter 6. John chapter 6. Last week I ended our series on meeting Jesus, but so many people were expressing appreciation for sermons from the gospel of John that we're going to keep going a little bit, but change direction just a little bit and begin looking at the great "I am" passages. For those passages, Jesus declares Himself, "I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the true life, I am the vine." We'll be looking at those passages where virtually like Christmas ornaments shining on a tree declaring, "This is who Jesus is," as in wonderfully dear words, He explains His nature and His ministry. And we'll start right here in John 6 because it picks right up after the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on the water that we were studying last week as Jesus moves right into talking about Himself being the bread of life. You may remember what happens. He gave the bread, He walks across the water, and now people wonder, "Where is He?" And when they find Him, they begin to question Him. Let's stand as we look at God's Word together and read it. In your Grace Bibles, this is page 691, John 6, and we'll begin looking at verse 25. "When they," that is, the people, "found Jesus on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, "Rabbi, when did You come here?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking Me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." Do not labor 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. Then they said to Him, "What must we do to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God that you believe in Him who He has sent." So they said to Him, "Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?"
Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written, "He gave them bread from heaven to eat."
Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, He was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." They said to Him, "Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.
But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me, I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
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. 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."
In the next several verses, Jesus will reiterate and expand what He has just said, but a critical new truth enters as well, verses 44 and 45. Jesus adds, verse 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. 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."
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, these are wonderful words that if we would hear from You and come to Jesus, there is no way He would cast us out, but would hold us and keep us until that great day that we would be raised to new life with You, where there are no more tears, no more pain or suffering.
But our pain and suffering is often right here now.
When we wonder, "Father, is it because of something we have done that You are walking away," have we not held closely enough to You?
In this passage that speaks so much of Your holding tightly to us, would You remind us of the great assurances that are ours from the King of heaven, that when we doubt ourselves,
we would not doubt You, but would rest in the love from heaven that is ours eternally. This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Please be seated.
Aye, aye, aye.
It's Grace Family Christmas. It's Christmas time. We expect visitors and guests, and what passage of Scripture does the pastor choose? One of the most controversial in all the Bible. Oh no!
And by the way, it's also in the longest chapter in the New Testament. You're also going to go, "How long is this one going to go?"
Well, before you run to the exits, let's remind ourselves why people are going to run away from Jesus by the end of this text.
The reason this passage is so controversial, it's one of the key places in Scripture where there is that great tension being put before us of how much of our salvation is human responsibility and how much of it is divine responsibility, and how do those balance out.
And by the time Jesus has talked about the tension and some of the resulting problems, you must know that it says by verse 66 of the same chapter, "After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him."
Uh-oh.
We're helped by remembering perhaps more than anything else. What would be the question on the minds of those who've been following Jesus as they see some walking away?
What questions would be in their minds?
If I choose him, might I lose him too?
If he chooses me, might he lose me?
And it's those questions more than any other that Jesus is answering in this account.
Maybe before we get wound up in all the theological debates, we should just maybe hold to a simple image to think what Jesus is explaining to us in this passage.
When my kids were little and growing up, one of the ways that we taught them here at Christmas time is we celebrated Advent, the days leading up to Christmas, by reading a different verse of Scripture each night, and then as we would read a Scripture about the coming of the Messiah, we would have our children place a creature or a character into our nativity set that was on top of the mantle. Now here is the difficulty. The kids are this tall and the mantle is this tall. They couldn't reach it. So at the very time that we were asking our children to put the creatures and the characters into the nativity scene, we were playing elevator. You know what elevator is?
All right, grab on, and then I would raise them up, which worked fine unless I raised my arm too fast or they dangled too long trying to put the piece in place. And then I would hear a child say, "Oh, Daddy, hang on to me. I can't hang on to you."
What Jesus is saying to us is even if you can't hang on to Him, He will hang on to you. Even if you lose your love, He will not lose you.
His love is greater.
How do we know that's true from this passage? Because among the things that this passage is just telling us is about the generosity of the love of God. You see it right in the opening verses of Jesus' interaction with the crowd. You may remember what has happened.
Jesus has fed the 5,000. He's walked across the water. Now the people have gone across the corner of the lake and meet Him on the other side, and they say at the end of verse 25, "Rabbi, when did you get here? Because we didn't see you leave at night."
Verse 26, Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves."
Why are you coming after Me? Jesus is making it plain. They don't so much want the giver as the gift. They don't so much want the Messiah as a meal ticket. Why are you coming around here? Because you want more bread. The signs that declare Me to be the Savior and Messiah are not so much what you want.
You just want to fill your bellies again. And yet despite knowing that, where you would think it would just make Jesus mad, He doesn't get mad or get even.
He gets generous, an expression of His heart that we need to see. Even though He knows what is going on, remember what He says in verse 27, "Do not labor 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." What do they want? They just want a lunch loaf.
And He is promising them forever food.
That which would endure forever is what I'm offering to give you. You want to take advantage of Me and instead I am offering to you the goodness of God from heaven. I will offer you the bread that endures forever. And the reason I am willing to do that and that you should trust Me is I have the seal of God upon Me.
Now, this is not the good housekeeping seal of approval.
This is the good heaven seal of approval, where these signs that Jesus has been performing to this point in the gospel of John are Jesus' affirmation that He has been sent from God and therefore has the assurances of God to teach what He is saying.
It's almost as though even in today's culture, you know, whether it's a Washington State Apple or an Apple computer, we still see the seal of the company endorsing that product saying this has the guarantee. This has the pledge of those who sent it. What this represents is true and right and good. And what Jesus is saying is what I'm presenting to you, you can count on.
And I'm offering you eternal food that is free.
Look at verse 28.
"Then," excuse me, still in verse 27, "do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on Him God the Father has set His seal. They said to Him, "What must we do to be doing the works of God?" That's a familiar question. What must we do? Remember how the rich young ruler came up to Jesus on the road? What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus reminded him, "Listen, eternal life is not something you do." The woman at the well, remember? When she learned that Jesus was offering this well of water that would be a fountain in her welling up to eternal life, she said, "Well, how do I get that? Do I worship on this mountain or on that mountain?"
And each time Jesus said, "The things I'm offering you are spirit." They are not based upon what you do but what God does. Verse 29, "To those who are saying, "What do we do?" Jesus answered, "This is the work of God." This isn't the work of humanity. This isn't what you do. This is what God does that you believe in Him who He has sent.
It's the central and essential message of the gospel that God is saying, "I will offer you eternity, that which endures, that gives you the life you want of true satisfaction, not based on the ephemeral and passing things of this world. I offer it to you as a free gift, and the way in which you receive it is by believing in what I offer, not what you do."
I mean, it's just as simple, of course, as what we say to a child who's playing elevator with us. If we say, "I want you to put that character or that creature up on the mantle," you see eyes grow wide in dread. I can't do that.
And then the parent says, "Trust me.
Believe in me.
I will get you there." And it's the very thing that Jesus is saying here to the people. I'm not asking you to trust in what you do to get the bread of eternal life. Trust me. Believe in me instead. And if you will believe this eternity that you want, this goodness that you want will be yours, not based on what you do, but belief in what I do.
The simple fact that belief is enough was driven home to me on that trip to China a couple of weeks ago. I've mentioned to you as I travel with various other church leaders from the United States, wherever we went, we had with us from the Chinese government the various watchers.
The people who would go with us wherever we ate, wherever we traveled just to make sure that we were staying in line, doing what we were supposed to be doing.
They became so much a part of us without talking much or saying much that we almost became oblivious to them. I mean, it was kind of like referees on a football field. After a while, you don't even really see them.
One night, we did become aware of one. He was sitting at a dinner table with us. And various leaders were talking. Thanksgiving was still ahead of us. So we were talking about our different Thanksgiving traditions. And one of the American leaders just telling a story on himself said, "I have the most precocious little grandson." He said, "He's just turned into a little philosopher." He said, "Last year at Thanksgiving, I just asked my grandson to pass the bread.
And instead of passing the bread, he looked up and stroked his chin.
And to the request, passed the bread, he said, "What is bread?"
Now we all laughed the way you just did. But caught up in the moment was our watcher who was sitting at the table, who had not in any way declared himself or his beliefs. But to the child's question, what is bread?
Under his breath, even instinctively without thinking, our watcher said, "The Word of God."
What is bread?
The Word of God.
And without knowing it, declaring his belief to us, what did we certainly know?
He was a brother.
He believed. And even though he had kept it hidden, even though it wasn't out in front of everyone, the point was he believed the source of life was in the Word of God. That one who was sent, not what we provide, but what God provides instead. It is what we have to say over and over to one another. Because if we begin to depend upon what we do, upon our performance, upon the certainty of what we have done, we will doubt whether or not we are secure in heaven at all. And so Jesus is saying to us again, "You must believe, not do as the basis of what is your hope for a lifetime and eternity relationship with God."
Now, people, of course, are going to question that. Wait, wait. We've been Jews all our lives. We may have been in the church all our... Now, surely there's something that we're supposed to do to make things right with God.
And that's just exactly what these people begin to ask. The Jewish people who are following Jesus, verse 30, "So they said to him, "Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?" Now, if you're saying that we only have to believe, that's a pretty broad thing for us to have to accept. So what work can you do to confirm that what you're saying is true?
They then add this little kicker, verse 31, "Our fathers ate the man in the wilderness. As is his written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat."
Now, you get what's going on?
Why did they come around the corner of the lake to the other side? They want more bread.
Jesus said, "No, don't work for earthly bread.
You're in the provision of God for eternal bread." And they say, "Why should we believe that?
What sign can you give us that we should believe you? After all, Moses gave us some... Wink, wink, wink. Moses gave us some what?
Bread.
If you can make a guarantee like that, we'll believe you." Now, you have to understand the irony of this question.
What sign can you give us that we should believe you? You remember what had just happened the day before?
The feeding of the what?
The 5,000. No, what was it? It was more like 20,000, which you can't...not just the men, but you count all the people who were there. And that means Jesus is somehow produced, we don't quite understand it, 2,000 loaves of bread and two tons of meat. And they're saying, "What sign can you give us?"
It's kind of like going to your mom on the day after Thanksgiving and saying, "Why don't we ever have turkey?"
Were you here yesterday? Do you remember that 20-pound gobbler I spent all day? What do you mean, "Why don't we ever have turkey? We just had..." What do you mean, "What sign am I going to do?"
But Jesus doesn't get mad.
Not only does he talk about the great generosity of the love of God, he begins to talk now about the certainty of it. Why you can trust the love of God is his provision of what we cannot provide for ourselves. If you'll continue in the account, he says, "Why should you trust God and not you?" Verse 32, "Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread."
Why should you not trust that human effort is what's going to save you? Because it wasn't even really Moses who gave you bread. Who did?
"My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
Why should you believe that belief is the basis of your standing before God? Well, first of all, the bread that God gives is from God, it's not from you. Your subsistence, your life is based upon what God provides, ultimately not what you provide. That's what happened with manna in the wilderness.
That's what you should know, that you're taking in a breath. Your subsistence is all dependent ultimately on the work of God and the hand of God.
And so when the people hear Jesus saying, "Oh, really? The bread that sustains us is the bread that comes down from heaven?" Then what do they say? Do you remember? They say in verse 34, "Sir, give us this bread always. Oh, really? There's bread that comes down from heaven that will sustain us? Well, give us that."
Then what does Jesus say?
I'm right here.
I am the bread of life. Verse 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."
He wants them to recognize that what is in him has been provided from God, and that is going to be what satisfies them in ways that they cannot be satisfied in any other way. I am right here. Listen, you didn't provide me. You didn't bake the bread. You didn't buy the bread, but I'm here.
And the message that so much is here right now is what God is doing to show you the certainty of His love for you is that Jesus is here. Think of what's being said to you and me as we now know it. The Creator of the universe, the King of heaven so loved His people that He would come and be small and dirty on our behalf, that He would go to a manger, and He would take our sins upon Him and die on a cross.
Is there any evidence that we should trust Him?
That's the evidence.
It's His work, not ours, that we should be trusting.
Maybe you just have to be at life's extremity when you recognize the importance of that.
I just recognize the beauty of Major Diaz being here this morning and us thinking as a church, what does it mean to be kind of broken and hurting and wondering how you could ever make things right and learn that it's God who does what you cannot do.
And the reason you trust Him is that His made His love so clear by the work of His Son.
Last week, you don't need to know all the details, but I had an opportunity to spend some time with a young man who had spent a lot of his life, his young adulthood, as a drug dealer, fathering children out of wedlock, maintaining his control over his life by violence and threats of others.
And He told me about His walk, as it were, into Christ's arms. And He began the story just by saying it this way, "God had to save me. I couldn't save me."
He said, "I don't know why, but at some point I used to keep a King James version of the Bible in the glove compartment of my car." He said, "It wasn't because I knew what was in it or believed what was in it." He said, "For me, it was kind of like having a rabbit's foot.
I kept the King James Bible in my glove compartment as a charm, hoping the police wouldn't arrest me. It was my good luck charm."
But He said, "One night, for reasons I don't even know, I just felt compelled to take it with me into my apartment." And I began to read the Gospel of John.
You should know that this Gospel of John that we've been looking at for the last several weeks has been known through the history of the church as the Gospel of the evangelist. There seems to be so much John's purpose is to say, "This is what you need to know about the Savior."
And this young man said he was just reading the King James Bible in his apartment, and as he read about what Jesus did in the Gospel of John, he said, "I believed it. I don't even know why I believed it, but somehow God convinced me it was true."
And he said, "I went out into my apartment." He said, "You have to know there were all kinds of people there because of what we were doing." And he said, "I just said to people, you're going to have to get out."
And he said, "They did because they knew I had the guns to make them get out."
He said, "They didn't even know why I was telling them to get out." He said, "I just couldn't live that life anymore. I don't know why, but somehow God had a hole in my heart." He said, "I took thousands of dollars worth of drugs and I flushed them down the toilet."
He said, "I don't know how that happened.
All I know is that Jesus saved me."
Some of you know the necessity of why we have to say to people at times, "Listen, do not trust what you do.
Believe in him.
Trust him. He is the one that will raise you up. It's not your work. It's not your competence. It's not your performance. It's his work and your behalf. Trust him." And there's a certainty that he is showing you about his love so that you will turn to him and you will trust him because his love is so great that he would come as a baby and then as a Savior, as a sacrifice for you. Don't doubt him. Not only because of the generosity of his love that would make it available purely by your faith, but he would show you the certainty of his love by his own sacrifice upon a cross.
That's not the end of the story that Jesus will tell here. He does not only talk about the certainty of his love, but the security of the people who are in his love.
The verses that come next are sometimes good and sometimes hard for us. Verse 35, Jesus said to the people, "I'm the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst." There is a new life out there of not saying, "Am I ever going to be satisfied? Am I ever going to be okay? Is it ever going to be all right?" He says, "If you will come to me, you will have a new life.
I'm not promising you new loaves of bread.
I am promising your heart's deepest satisfaction.
Fulfill it beyond your understanding that you know you're right with God and others by the work of God in your behalf. If you will come to me, then you can have that life of assurance before God."
And that's not all that Jesus is promising. Verse 37, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out."
Why is that so important? Because we think, what does it mean that God gives people to Jesus?
That there are some who seem to have their act together, and some whose relationships are in shreds, and some whose background is terrible, and some who are struggling with terrible illnesses and addictions and struggles in this day. And we kind of have the idea at time that Jesus must take this bundle of people apples that he gets and begin to kind of pick out the good apples and the bad apples from God. And that's not what Jesus says.
He says, "Whoever God gives to me, I will not cast out."
As bad as the background, as much of the struggle, as ashamed as you are of the present, he says, "If you come to me, I'm not going to cast you out."
And then maybe even more amazing than that, verses 38 and 39, Jesus says, "For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
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. All who come are welcome, and all who are welcomed are safe forever.
I will raise them up on the last day." Lord, I can't hold on to you. Lord, my love is sometimes strong and sometimes weak. My faith is sometimes strong and sometimes… And Jesus, you must listen. My love is stronger than your love. It's the image again that when I would raise my children up and they would get to a certain height, or they would get weary, they would just say, "I can't hold on." And so what I would do is I would cover their hand with my hand, knowing my strength was greater than theirs. It was my strength that held them. And what God is saying to you and to me is not only can you have confidence of the great generosity of the love of God, you can have great knowledge of the security you are, of those who come to him. Have you come to him? He's not going to say, "I'll cast you out because you haven't qualified." Do you believe in him? Then he holds you. That's the point.
Some of you know the name David Rokhoye, a writer and psychologist in Chicago.
And he recently wrote an article about the difficulty of raising an autistic child.
And he talked about one day as he was riding with his son Ben in the car, Ben was in the back seat and just kind of shouted out of nowhere, "The letter D!"
Which Rokhoye said was my cue, I knew, to say, "What starts with the letter D?"
And the boy Ben in the back said, "Dump truck!"
And then he said, "And daddy, daddy starts with the letter D."
And Rokhoye said he looked up into the rear view mirror and his son was beaming and looking right at him. He said that hardly ever happens that his son would look right at him and moved by the moment. He said he just kind of reached his arm over the seat and patted his son on the leg and said, "That's right, Ben.
Daddy starts with D and you'll always have daddy.
Daddy will always love you."
He concluded the article saying, "It's not clear that Ben could have understood the words that I said to him.
It's more important that I understood and that it was true."
What is God doing in this passage?
If autism is somehow living in a different reality at times from everyone else, then all of us are autistic before God at times. We don't really understand the heaven realities. They're so hard to penetrate.
But God just says what's true.
Even if you can't hold on to me, I will hold on to you.
I will be yours forever and you will be mine and nothing's going to change that. You believe in me. Don't believe in me. Believe in me and you are mine now and forever.
As sweet as those words are, there are words that we struggle with in this passage. I read some of them to you already. One of the struggle verses is verse 37.
"All the Father gives to me will come to me." And verse 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." Yeah, all the Father gives will come and all the Father draws. Jesus will raise up on the last day. But here's the problem.
It's also clear from the passage that God doesn't give everybody and He doesn't draw everybody.
Remember verse 36, Jesus Himself, "I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe." He speaks to the very people who were there.
Verse 66, "After this, many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him."
And if you went on toward the end to verse 70, I told you it was a long chapter, Jesus answered to disciples and said, "Did I not choose you the twelve and yet one of you is a devil?"
He said, speaking of Judas.
God doesn't give everybody and He doesn't draw everybody.
And because we're just human people, regular people, our minds jump real fast to the justice and fairness questions. Well, why doesn't He?
Well, we've only argued about that for about 2,000 years and I'm not going to give you the answer today. I don't know. I don't know what God knows about the nature of different individuals and about His own plan. What I recognize is what this passage is about is not trying to solve all the questions about why them and not them. I mean, that's just not what the passage is dealing with. What the passage is dealing about is our assurance if we are given by God and drawn by Him.
And really it's that question that's being answered because what has happened here is there's kind of an unbreakable chain that has been established by the passage where Jesus is saying this, "Those who live are those who believe and those who believe are those who come and those who come are the ones that God gives and the ones that God gives are the ones that He draws."
And if you put the chain from beginning to end, it's saying those that God draws are those that ultimately are the very ones who live eternally.
And the question we begin to struggle with inside is, "Am I one of those?
Am I one that God has drawn?
How can I know that?"
The answer occurs a little bit later in the book of John.
The twelfth chapter in the thirty-second verse is Jesus is just before His crucifixion declaring this, "The Son of Man will be lifted up and will draw all men to Himself."
I recognize that God's drawing us as a work of the Holy Spirit, that I can't explain or fully fathom as He takes our hearts and makes them sensitive to the work of Christ, as He takes rebellious, broken, sinful hearts and says, "Jesus is your hope," and we actually believe it. That's somehow the work of the Holy Spirit, but the instrument that Jesus is saying is the drawing power, the magnet, as it were, is the Son of Man being lifted up upon the cross.
Ultimately, those who come and believe are those who are drawn to the cross, who for all of its ugliness, for all of the goryness and awfulness of the cross, we look at that and say it is sweet, that He would take my sin upon Him, that He would know my weariness and my sorrow and my sickness and my sin, and He would take it upon Himself, He would die for me, and somehow that's my hope, and I love Him for that. That the fact that I love the cross is the message that I am drawn, the assurance of it. If I am drawn to the cross, then I am a child of God, and that's the very evidence that His Spirit is at work in my heart.
Maybe I can just compare it this way. You know, in my family's tradition as I was growing up, what we always did the day after Christmas was we went to my grandparents' farm for the big after Christmas celebration, and I love going to the farm, you know, to see the animals and play in the hayloft and sleep in the feather bed.
I mean the mattress must have been that thick.
When you slept in that feather bed, I mean you just think I could sleep here for a decade,
but I never did because there was something that would draw me out of the darkness of the bedroom. You know what it was? Early in the morning, before my grandmother would be about the business of fixing the goose and the greens and the black-eyed peas, she would begin baking the bread.
And the smell would just fill up the house and it would seep into the bedroom even into that deep feather bed.
And it was like this magnet, you know, pulling me out of the darkness, pulling me to the kitchen, pulling me to the light. And I knew that when I got to the light, I was not only going to get some bread, but no one was going to cast me out of the kitchen. You know why?
Because my grandmother was in charge and she loved me and she was going to give me the bread.
The bread of life has been offered to you.
And if it is a magnet to your soul, you know it because the cross has become sweet to you.
And all the questions of, "Am I one of those? Does he really love me? Am I safe? Am I secure?" are answered in this.
Are you drawn to the cross?
Do you believe that what happened there was for you?
Have you come to the cross and said, "Jesus, I believe in you." Not me. I don't believe in me. I believe in you.
That you came for me.
That I am yours.
And then he says, "You're mine now and forever. You're mine because you've come to the cross."
Father so work in our hearts what you intend.
The wonderful blessing of knowing the Savior who's come to show us a generous heart and a certain love and security beyond our making because He holds us even when we cannot hold on to Him.
Give us that deep assurance that makes us bright and shining lights. Remind us of the goodness of the bread of life so that we would come, come to the cross and bring others with us by our love of you.
This we ask in Jesus' name, amen.