(You'll need your Bible for this one)
John 6:22-51
Before
reading the passage, establish context.
Verses 1-15 recount the story of The Feeding of the Five Thousand, where
Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 men, besides women and children, with nothing but
two fish and five loaves of bread. Verses
16-21 tell the story of Jesus walking on water to meet His disciples. He had not set sail with them because He had
withdrawn into a mountain by Himself because He knew that the people wanted to
make him their king. Jesus stayed in the
mountain until evening and then met His disciples and crossed over to the other
side of the sea with them. This is where
our story picks up in verse 22.
Read
verses 22-27. This was at the
height of Jesus’s popularity. The people
had witness His healing ministry and they had been fed by His miraculous
multiplication of the bread and fish, and they wanted to see what else He had
in store. They were puzzled as to where
He had gone. They knew that He hadn’t
sailed across with His disciples, and yet, He was nowhere to be found, and so they
sailed across the Sea of Galilee , which is
actually a large lake, to find Him. When
the reached the other side, they approached him and asked Him when He had
arrived. Jesus, however, cut the small
talk and got right to the heart of the matter.
He knew why they were seeking Him.
They had seen His works and they should
have followed Him because He was, at the very least, a messenger from God, but
they had ulterior motives. They wanted
to be fed. They wanted to see what they
could get out of Jesus, instead of seeking to serve Him and further His
Kingdom. They were following Him for
self-serving reasons instead of God-centered ones.
Why do we follow Jesus? Why do we come to church? Is it just to avoid hell? Is it because it helps to ease our
consciences or solve our emotional problems?
Is it a fun social club? If so,
Albert Barnes says that “We are aiming at loaves and fishes, and not at the
honor of God and the good of his kingdom; and if this is the only or the main
motive of our entering the church, we cannot be Christians.” We must examine our hearts to make sure that
our motives are pure. We must serve
Jesus Christ because He is God and because He has saved us from our sins. We must obey Him because He is our husband
and King. We must seek His wisdom and
power, not His fringe benefits. If we
do, we are cheating ourselves of that which is true worth.
He tells them to quit working for food that
molds and decays and to focus on that which will never go bad. He tells them to realign their
priorities. They had placed the highest
value on a cheap meal and had missed what Jesus truly had to offer. What do we value most—the things of God or
the fleeting cares of the world? What is
our highest priority—our bodies or our souls?
Do we work our butts off trying to save up for a nice house and a nice
car or do we labor to serve our Savior and to glorify the Father? The Gospel that Christ is offering to us is a
transforming power. It begins by totally
reshaping our priorities. Things that
were so important begin to fade, and the things that we used to do begrudgingly
and merely out of duty, those things begin to be our greatest joys. Our focus and attention begins to slip of
ourselves and onto serving others. This
is the life-changing message that Christ came to bring, but the Jews were too
hungry to notice.
Jesus made it very clear in verse 27 that
the Father had made Him the only source of this bread, and so the people ask
Him how they might come about such bread.
In verse 28 they say, “What must we do, to be doing the works of
God.” Jesus had told them not to labor
after physical things, but after imperishable.
How, they wondered, could they do this kind of work? They were caught up on themselves? The only solution they knew of was
themselves. Albert Barnes said, “The
idea of doing something to merit salvation is one of the last [ideas] that the
sinner every surrenders.” Jesus takes
them down a notch and forces them to look outside of themselves for this
eternal bread.
In verse 29, Jesus reveals the secret. “This is the work of God,” he says, “that you
believe in him whom he has sent.” How
can we gain access to everlasting bread?
All we must do is believe in Jesus Christ. We must look outside of ourselves for eternal
life. We must look to the one way,
truth, and life whom God has provided for our forgiveness. As we saw in Isaiah 55, we must come and
receive freely from God’s hand all that He has to offer. We cannot purchase it with good deeds. We cannot earn it by being nice people who
don’t drink or smoke too much. The only
way to receive God’s forgiving grace is to embrace it by faith in Jesus Christ.
Faith and reliance upon Christ is the
beginning, and not the end, of the Christian life. When our eyes rest upon Him as our only hope,
then our actions will come into line with the Law of God. What we once hated, we will now begin to seek
to obey out of a heart of gratitude. Our
good works, apart from Christ, are worthless and repulsive to God. They are sinful and proceed from a selfish
heart, but after we have been saved by Christ, our works, as incomplete and
imperfect as they may be, are pleasing to God.
They are covered by Christ’s perfect righteousness.
They were not quite satisfied with His
answer. Verses 30 and 31 record their
next demand. “So they said to him, ‘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.’” Apparently feeding thousands of people with
five loaves of bread and two fish was not miraculous enough. Some of these Jews had probably not witnessed
that great miracle, but certainly some had.
They had traveled across the sea to find Jesus because of it. When would Jesus finally prove Himself to
them? What sign could He possibly do to
convince them that He had been sent from God?
Just a day ago they wanted to crown Him King, but now they were
questioning Him.
The
Jews bring up an interesting anecdote.
The mention of bread had brought to their minds the story of the manna,
which we read this morning. God’s
provision of manna in the wilderness for forty years was incontestable evidence
that God had truly brought them out of Egypt
Incidentally, many Jewish commentators had
indicated that the coming Messiah would bring with Him great amounts of food,
probably based off of such passages as Isaiah 55. These Jews wanted to see what Jesus could
really do. Once again, as the Jews of
Jesus’s day were prone to doing, they missed the point entirely. God had worked through the physical history
of Israel
Verses 32-33 say, “Jesus then said to them,
‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it 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.”
God had truly worked a miracle in the days of Moses, but He had not
truly given them the truly satisfying substance from Heaven. Manna was not the ultimate revelation of
God’s abundant provision—Jesus Christ was!
The Jews still didn’t get it. In verse 34 they ask, “Sir, give us this
bread always.” They had come to
understand that Jesus was claiming to be the source of this gift. They knew that they would have to get it from
Him, but they still didn’t truly grasp what He was telling them, and so Jesus
spells it our as plainly as He can: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to
me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”
What does Jesus mean that He is the bread
from Heaven? Well, in those days, meat
was something that common people enjoyed only around feast days or other
holidays. Only wealthy people would have
eaten meat every day or even every week.
Those who lived close to water would’ve eaten fish somewhat regularly,
but for the most part, the common people would’ve eaten bread as their main
source of food. We see this reflected in
Matthew 4:4 where Jesus, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, says, “It is written, ‘Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of
God.’” Now, we look at the passage and
we’re like, “Of course we don’t live on just bread. We also eat meat, and vegetables, and a bunch
of other stuff;” but that wasn’t the case in ancient days. Bread was the mainstay. Especially for poor people, it was the only
constant.
Due to the role that bread played in their diets,
bread has significant role throughout the Bible. Jesus told His disciples to pray for daily
bread. When the Israelites were hungry,
God sent bread. When there was famine in
the land, God sent ravens to bring him bread.
Satan told Jesus to turn stones into bread. There was constantly fresh bread in the Holy Place Temple
Bread was so much more than flour and
oil. It was survival. It was God’s provision for their
sustenance. Jesus picks up on this Old
Testament analogy and shows how He is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise
to provide for His covenant people.
Jesus is God’s provision. He
fulfills all our needs. He satisfies our
spiritual hunger and nourishes our souls.
He is the Word. He is the Light.
He is the only One who can supply life.
The Gospel, the good news, is much deeper
than “Christ died on a cross”, as Jesus explains in verses 36-40. Read
verses 36-40. Jesus is
explaining to these Jews why it is that they did not believe what He was
saying. They were not among the number
whom God had chosen to give Christ. They
were not elect. This passage is one of
the clearest expressions in the Bible of what theologians call the doctrine of
Limited Atonement. To put it simply,
this doctrine states that Jesus did not die for every single member of the
human race. He died only for the elect,
those people whom God chose before the foundation of the world.
Advocates of Unlimited Atonement assert
that Jesus died for every person who have ever or will ever live. He died to provide a potential salvation,
they say, which each individual must make real and effectual by making the decision
to have faith in Christ. In their
scenario, there are many people in hell for whom Christ died. In other words, some of Christ’s blood was
wasted. Jesus makes it known in verse 36
that He was on a divine mission. He was
on the earth to fulfill the calling that He had received from the Father. He was coming to rescue a people. Verses 37 and 39 make it very clear that none
of Christ’s people will be lost. Jesus
Christ faithfully fulfilled His role in the covenant of grace, and God rewarded
Him and gave Him His people. Jesus has
promised to rescue and resurrect every single soul that was given to Him by the
Father, and He will keep that promise.
We find the doctrine of God’s divine
prerogative in election clearly laid out in the 9th chapter of
Paul’s epistle to the Romans. I would
encourage you to read the whole chapter. I will only quote verses 9-18. Read
Romans 9:9-18. Paul makes it
very clear that the decision of who is saved and who is lost is based on God’s
choice, and that, far from being unfair, this is unspeakably just and
gracious. Those who cannot accept this
fact have not fully submitted their wills to the Father. They also fail to understand the weakness of
human nature.
Read
verses 41-46. Mankind was in
dire need of rescue. We badly needed a
Savior. We didn’t simply need someone to
die in our places, however. Too often
the message of the Gospel is reduced to that.
Certainly that is true, but that is only half the story. Not only did we need rescued from the guilt
of sin, but we also needed rescued from the power of sin. In other words, not only did we need our sins
to have our sins forgiven, we also needed to have our hearts changed. God could have given Jesus Christ to die for
our sins, but unless gave us the faith to receive Jesus, we would still be hopelessly
lost.
By nature, we are dead in trespasses and
sins, as Ephesians 2:1 tells us, and we are firmly fixed in that state until
God changes our hearts. We have no
interest in being saved from our sin. We
are in love with our sin. We are slaves
to our sin. Every decision we make is
darkened by our depraved condition. No
man, woman, or child can place their faith in Jesus Christ until the Father
renews their hearts and causes them to fall in love with Jesus. Jesus says it as plainly and straightforward
as possible in verse 44. He says, “No
one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” It’s just that simple.
This word draw is the Greek word elkuse. It literally means to drag. In order for us to come to Jesus Christ, the
Father has to drag us. Many people are
repulsed by this idea, as if God were forcing somebody to be saved who didn’t
really want to be saved. Well, firstly,
would that really be such a bad thing?
Would we really blame someone for rescuing a person from drowning when
that person wanted to drown? Certainly
we wouldn’t, but that is not the idea here.
The idea is not that God forces someone to do something against their
will. The idea is that God changes our
will to die into a will to live.
Before
regeneration, we were in love sin because our eyes were darkened. God opens our eyes and enables us to see the
filth in which we have been reveling. He
illuminates our minds and grants us saving faith in Jesus Christ. Verse 63 of our passage says, “It is the
Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are
spirit and life.” Jesus came preaching a
Gospel of spiritual renewal, and the Jews wanted bread. Jesus came bringing news of divine
intervention in the greatest problem facing the human race, and the Jews wanted
more bread.
What does this all have to do with
bread? Well, this is a substantial part
of what Jesus meant when He claimed to be the bread of life. Jesus claimed to be the source of life, not
just the source of forgiveness. God sent
Jesus Christ to Earth from Heaven not merely to provide a sacrifice, but to
provide illumination as well. In John
1:4-5 we read, “In him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of
men. The light shines in darkness, and
the darkness has not overcome it.” God
is no partial savior. He sent Jesus to
provide a complete salvation.
In the Old Testament, God provided food
miraculously for His people. God wanted
them to remember the gift of manna so that they would bear in mind that He was
the source of all the good things that they enjoyed. In Deuteronomy 8, Moses calls the Israelites
to remind themselves often that God is the sole source of their provision. Deuteronomy 8:3 says, “And he humbled you and
let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your
fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread
alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of
Yahweh.”
God wanted the Israelites to realize that
all things are in the power of His hand.
The first verse of Psalm 127 says, “Except Yahweh builds the house, they
labor in vain that build it.” Labor is worthless
if not blessed by God. Planting crops in
the ground will produce nothing if God does not pour out His blessing upon the
land. Giant armies can win no battles
unless God fights on our side. God wants
us to be continually mindful that He is the great Provider. His greatest Provision was the Lord Jesus
Christ, the bread of life.
Through Jesus Christ, we have been given
all things. I’d like to show three
things specifically that we have been given in Christ. Firstly, through Jesus, the Father has
provided for our regeneration. What is
regeneration? Simply put, regeneration
is the new birth. It is spiritual
rebirth. Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus,
makes it clear that spiritual rebirth is necessary for salvation. In John 3:3 he says, “Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God;” and in verses
5 and 6 he says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and
the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit.” We see this dichotomy
throughout the Bible between Spirit and flesh.
The flesh pictures man’s fallen state that we have inherited from
Adam. The Spirit speaks of man’s
condition after he has been reborn by the Holy Spirit.
In John 1:11-13 we read, “He [Jesus] came
to his own, and his own people did not receive
him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the
right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Those who believe in Jesus Christ are not
born of the flesh, that is, of this depraved, sinful heart, but they are born
of God. Faith does not come from the
will of man, but from God.
In Titus 3:5, Paul says, “For we ourselves
were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and
pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one
another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our
Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in
righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration
and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through
Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might
become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Secondly, as the Bread of life, Jesus
Christ has provided us with justification.
The Titus passage that we just read told us that regeneration leads to
justification. What is
justification? Justification is when God
declares once and for all that we are innocent of any sin, and that we are
righteous before Him. While in
regeneration we are freed from the power of our sin, in justification we are
legally freed from the guilt of our sin.
Romans 4:25 tells us that Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and
raised for our justification.”
Galatians 2:16 says, “…yet we know that a
person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus
Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by
faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one
will be justified.”
In Acts 13:38-39 Paul says, “Let it be
known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is
proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from
everything from which you could not be freed by the Law of Moses.” Jesus’s death has made it possible for us,
guilty sinners, enslaved to our sin and condemned by the Law, to be declared
innocent of all charges.
Finally, the ministry of Jesus Christ has
provided for our sanctification.
Sanctification is the continuation of the work of the Spirit that was
begun in our lives by our regeneration.
It is the work of the Spirit by which God is progressively shaping our
lives to resemble the character of Jesus.
Sanctification is a necessary and vital part of God’s plan for
salvation. It is the putting to death of
the old man and the growth of the new man in our lives. Colossians 3:9-10 describes it this way. It says, “Do not lie to one another, seeing
that you have put off the old man with its practices and have put on
the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its
creator.”
Romans 6:1-4 says, “What shall we say then?
Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we
who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have
been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life.” Jesus has provided us
with newness of life. He had given us
new priorities and new affections. He
has renewed our minds so that we might understand the Gospel, not only
mentally, but spiritually, and that we might place our hope for eternal life in
His able, wounded hands.
These are merely three of the benefits that
we derive from the work of Jesus Christ.
Romans 8:32, a well-loved passage, gives us this promise. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave
him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” The Israelites received manna for forty
years, but we will receive the true Heavenly bread for all eternity.
Look at verses 47-51 of John 6. Read
verses 47-51. This is yet
another example of how the new covenant is better than the old covenant. The Old Testament saints received miraculous
bread. It kept them alive, but they had
to keep eating and keep eating it, and they eventually died. The manna could not provide immortality. In the New Testament, we can feed upon the
bread of life that will give us eternal life and truly satisfy our hunger. In the Old Testament, the Israelites received
water from a rock to sustain their lives and the lives of their flocks and
herds. In the New Testament, we drink
living water, the kind that will take away our thirst forever.
So, God has provided us with the Bread from
Heaven, but how do we feed upon Him?
This passage is full of symbolism and metaphors. What does this really mean? How do we eat spiritual bread and drink
spiritual water? You do this by
embracing Jesus Christ as He is set before you today. Embrace His death. Embrace His life. Accept the terms of the covenant that you are
offered to you today. Forsake your
sin. Forsake your own attempts to earn
salvation. Feast upon our Savior. Come in faith to the meal that your Savior
has provided for you to remind you of His flesh and blood. Come to the Table.
Administration of the Bread,
Read John
6:52-56. These elements are just bread and wine. They do not contain any mystical power to
save us. Jesus gave this meal to us for
a purpose though. The bread and the wine
point to that which can save us. By
eating this, we are declaring to God and to each other that Jesus Christ is our
savior.
Administration of the Wine
Hebrews 10:19-22 says, “Therefore,
brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of
Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain,
that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of
God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with
our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with
pure water.”
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