The Bread

The Bread

Today we come to the first of the seven “I Am” statements that are recorded for us by John, statements that Jesus makes. And in each of these seven statements, what Jesus does is He takes the phrase, Ego eimi, which means “I Am” in Greek, which is a translation of the Hebrew name for God, what we know as the tetragrammaton, the four-character name: yod, he, vav, he, Yahweh, which means “I AM that I AM.” This is the name that God gave to Moses in Exodus 3:14. What Jesus does is He takes that translation, Ego eimi, and then pairs it with seven different analogies to sort of unpack and reveal who He is.

So for example, He says, “I am the bread of life” here in chapter 6. In chapter 8, He says, “I am the light of the world.” In chapter 10, “I am the gate.” In chapter 10, again He says, “I am the Good Shepherd.” In chapter 11, He will say, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And in chapter 14, He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And then finally in chapter 15, He says, “I am the true vine.”

Now in each of these analogies, “I am plus analogy” here, Jesus is revealing to us something profound about who He is. And today we come to the first of these, “I am the bread of life.”

Now, the first thing we need to realize before we get started is that bread in our post-industrial west is very different than bread was in the agrarian first-century world of Palestine. For example, several points of distinction: We eat a wide range of foods in our culture from all different places. We don’t have any sort of staple diet here in America. But in the Palestinian world, their diet, at least in Galilee, was bread and fish.

“What did you have today?”

“I had bread and fish.”

“And what are we having tomorrow?”

“Bread and fish.”

“And the day after that?”

“Bread and fish.”

And no one complained. Occasionally you got some lamb in there, but it was always bread. Bread, bread, and more bread.

Now, we have all kinds of bread. You go to the grocery store and we have wheat bread, white bread, whole grain bread, 37 grain, five grain, 12 grain. We have gluten-free bread. (chuckles) We have flat bread, thick bread, crusty bread. We have, I mean, really fresh bread. We have all kinds of bread, right? And they had—bread. (laughs) There it is, that’s your option. You know? When famine comes, our prices go up a little bit, but we just import bread. Right? No big deal. They died. They died, that was it. They did not have enough to sustain them.

So when Jesus comes along and says, “I am the bread of life,” in this first-century agrarian world, this is a massive statement because bread equals life in the first century. Bread equals life, and if Jesus equals bread, then Jesus equals life. I’m taking you back to your logic class with a little syllogism this morning. Do you see this? If bread is about life, and Jesus is the bread, then Jesus is life.

Now in this passage we’re going to look at this morning, we’re going to see eight insights into what this means, into the life that Jesus offers us in Himself. So open your Bibles, if you will, to John, chapter 6. We’re going to look at verses 22 down to 71.

Would you pray with me as we open God’s Word?

Father, we open your Word because in it are the words of life. This is the bread of life as it were, for man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And we pray that this bread would point us to the true bread, Jesus Himself, the Word of God, made flesh to save us and give life to this world. Help us feast upon Him today, for it’s in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen. Amen.

John 6:22–71. Just a quick refresher of where we are in the story. Last week we saw that Jesus had gone over to the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee. There He had fed the crowds of five thousand men, plus women and children, probably a great number, there in the wilderness. After He had done this, He removed Himself, went up into the mountain by Himself, made His disciples go across the lake to the western shores by themselves. Jesus later was walking on the water where He joined up with their boats, and they came together to Capernaum.

Chapter 6, verse 22, picks up the tale: “On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’”

Now just pause for a moment. So here they are. The scene is pretty amazing. Here they are searching all over the place to try to find out where Jesus went. They finally catch up with Him back in Capernaum after a bunch of searching. They find Him, verse 59 will tell us, actually in the synagogue, and so they have no idea how He got back to Capernaum. They’ve been looking for Him everywhere, and so they ask, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Now notice Jesus will not actually answer their question. He turns the focus of the conversation on to their motives.

Verse 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. Do not work 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.”

He says, “Look, you spent all of this time trying to find me, you know, because you ate the bread, and now you want another meal.” Now, this is, again, where cultural background is so important for us to understand because in the first century Galilee, as far as we know (and what we know of the era is pretty deep) the average family would spend eighty-five percent of their income on food, just to eat. Subsistence living. So it’s not just here that Jesus has fed them a really good meal, and they want more for their bellies. They see in Jesus an opportunity. I mean, if He can make bread and fish multiply, if He can pull this off, and do this everyday, this is a turning point in their fortunes. They can keep eighty-five percent of their income. They can live in prosperity, not just provision, but prosperity. And Jesus is the key to making this happen. That’s why they’ve been searching for Him all morning. They want more of this kind of stuff from Jesus.

And that’s why Jesus responds in verse 27, and says, “Do not work 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.”

Jesus is saying, “Look, I can give you even better food than what I gave you yesterday. Yesterday’s bread was awesome, right? But it’s going to perish. I mean even the leftovers are stale at this point, but I have food for you that endures, that will give you not just daily provision, but will give you lifelong, eternal, everlasting life and sustenance.”

And this, friends, is the first insight, that life in Jesus is spiritual and eternal. Life in Jesus is spiritual and eternal. Friends, as human beings, we are both physical and spiritual beings, aren’t we? We are made from the dust, physical; and we have been breathed into us the breath of God, spirit. So unlike the animals who are purely physical beings, and unlike the angels who are purely spiritual beings, those who are made in God’s image, human beings, are both—both physical and spiritual at once. We are kind of amphibians, if you will, who live on the land of the physical, but swim in the water of the spiritual as well. We are alive to both realities. And just as we have an appetite for food that sustains our lives in the physical realm, we also have an appetite for food that sustains us in the spiritual realm. And just like Jesus has provided bread for this people to sustain their physical life, He now offers to them a bread of another kind that will sustain them in their spiritual lives.

Jesus says, “Look, I don’t want you working for the wrong kind of bread here. When it comes to me, what I gave you yesterday is the least of what I can offer you. You’re asking for far too small a thing. You’re working, laboring after too small a thing, and searching all over to try to find me. You need me because I have bread that’s even better than that. There’s a fuller, greater, abundant, everlasting life that I can sustain you with this bread.”

Now, they’re interested, but they fixate on one of the words that Jesus says here, and that’s the word “work.” He says, “Do not work for the food that perishes.” Verse 28: “Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’”

They say, “Listen, this food that you are offering that endures to eternal life, it sounds good, but what do we have to do to get it?” Verse 29: “Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’”

So what does God require, friends? What does He say? Faith, trust, believe not in the abstract, but in a person, in Jesus Himself. And eternal life, it turns out, doesn’t come from working, a religious effort, but by believing, by faith.

So in verse 30, they say to Him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?” And then they give Him a little nudge in the right direction. This is the kind of thing that we would find convincing. Verse 31: “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

(Laughs) Wait a minute. Didn’t Jesus just give them bread in the wilderness? Didn’t He just feed them? I mean what do they want more than that? Ah, yes, yes, but the manna (remember?) was a daily provision from God. If you look at Exodus 16 or Deuteronomy 8, you will find that God gave manna to the people of Israel in the wilderness every single day except for Sabbath. It was a perpetual, unending supply of manna, of bread from heaven. They want their eighty-five percent pay raise, friends.

Look at this. Verse 32: “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.’” Now Jesus clarifies for them here, listen. The manna that the fathers received in the wilderness was not from Moses. It was from God Himself, and now God is giving a true bread from heaven. A different kind of bread, a truer and greater bread from heaven, and it is He. It is a person who comes down and gives life to the world, not just to the Jews, but now to the world.

Verse 34: “They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life.’” “I am the bread of life. Look no further. I am the bread of life. I have come down from heaven. I am this gift that my Father has given, and I am here with a gift of my own to give life to the world, and this life will be yours, not by working for the food, but by believing and receiving.”

The second insight we see here, friends, is that life in Jesus comes by grace through faith in Christ. Life in Jesus comes by grace, through faith in Christ. Don’t you see? This moment right here is John’s equivalent of Paul’s famous statement in Romans 3:21–22: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law...the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” Now Jesus goes further here. Verse 35 continues. “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.’”

Now, I don’t know about you, but this sort of reminds me of another conversation that Jesus had back in John, chapter 4, in verses 13 and 14. Jesus is speaking with the woman at the well, and He says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give to him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

And this is our third insight, friends. It is that life in Jesus offers lasting satisfaction. Life in Jesus offers lasting satisfaction. Jesus is saying, “Listen, the life that I am offering to you in myself is one that is deeply and eternally satisfying, that the hunger and the thirst of your souls is pointing ultimately to me and I can supply. I can answer that longing. I can satisfy your souls.”

Saint Augustine said this famously when he said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” And Jesus is saying, “I am all that your soul is restless for, and if you will come to me, if you will believe in me, I am all the life you will ever need for all eternity.”

Now, not surprisingly, they are a bit skeptical, and so Jesus continues. Verse 36: “But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you 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.”

Jesus says, “Look, I am all the life you’ll ever need for all eternity.” Why? “Because everyone the Father gives to me will come to me, and everyone who looks on the Son and believes, they will have eternal life. Right here, right now they will be spiritually alive in me. But not only that, I will never cast them out. I will hold onto them forever all the days of their life. I will keep them safe in my love. And even after they die, I will keep them forever because I will raise them up at the last day, at the resurrection at the end of time. I will call them into resurrection life.”

And this is our fourth insight, friend, that life in Jesus is as durable as He is faithful. Life in Jesus is as durable as He is faithful. The reason Jesus is all the life we’ll ever need for all of eternity is that Jesus is faithful both now and all the days of our life, and then forevermore. This is the will of His Father, and the Son is faithful to the very end of time and unto all eternity.

Now the audacity of these claims is not missed by His fellow Jews, and so in verse 41, “The Jews grumbled about him, because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ 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?”’”

Look, we know this guy. We know His family. They’re our friends and neighbors. He grew up right down the street. How can He say He’s come from heaven? Come on!

Verse 43: “Jesus answered them, ‘Do not grumble among yourselves. 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—not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.’”

Jesus says, “Look, the only way this is ever going to make sense to you, the only way you are ever going to come to me, and actually believe in me, is if my Father draws you to me. You have to be taught by God.” You see, it’s an allusion here to Isaiah 54, verse 13, which is all full of new covenant promises.

Now, our fifth insight is this: Life in Jesus requires a divinely transformed heart. Life in Jesus requires a divinely transformed heart. Friends, this is hard teaching, but the Bible is crystal clear here, Jesus does not stutter, that apart from Him we are spiritually dead, that we are blinded to the truth, and it takes God’s enlivening, transforming, animating, awakening work in our souls to allow us then to have faith and trust in His Son, in Jesus. No one comes to the Son unless the Father draws Him. In other words, we must be taught by God. The Scriptures are clear that even faith itself is a gift of God and it is not of our own.

So it is the Father, don’t you see, who draws out the appetite for life in His Son. God gives us that appetite. It is the Father who then draws us with that appetite to come to His Son and believe in Him.

Verse 47: Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever 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 one may eat of it and not die. 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.”

The manna was an amazing provision from God, wasn’t it? It was God’s grace to them and it came and sustained their life day by day, but it was ever only bread. It wasn’t enough to sustain them unto eternal life. Eventually they died. But this bread, this life in Jesus, is different.

The sixth insight we see here is that life in Jesus is death-defying and eternal. Life in Jesus is death-defying and eternal. Verse 50 says the one who eats of it will live and not die, for this is the living bread, and if anyone eats this bread (verse 51), he will live forever. Now, Jesus presses this analogy even further. He says, “The bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Verse 52: “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said 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. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 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. 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.’ Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.”

Now at first flush, these comments here, this invitation from Jesus, sounds a bit cannibalistic doesn’t it? We have to remember we’re firmly in the world of analogy here. And these analogies are not that totally foreign to us. I mean we say things like, “Boy, I really devoured that book,” or we talk about “swallowing our pride,” or “we chew over an idea,” or “we eat our own words.” But to say what Jesus does here, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you,” this really is unsettling language.

What does it mean “to eat my flesh and drink my blood?” What do you mean, Jesus? Well, it’s interesting. This verse, 6:54, is exactly parallel to 6:40 earlier in the chapter. So this 6:54 reads, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” If you go back up to verse 40, if you look up there with me, Jesus says there, “Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” You notice that the second part is exactly parallel in both verses, and so the comments leading into it, the “if” part of the statement helps us to clarify the meaning. So to “eat my flesh and drink my blood” is parallel to looking on the Son and believing in Him.

So what this means is that to eat His flesh and drink His blood is to have an all-consuming embrace and trust in the person of Jesus. But why this ghastly analogy? I mean why go this far with it? Why not just stick with bread? “I’m bread. Eat the bread.” Why do you have to make it flesh and blood, Jesus? Well, of course, we know where He’s going with this, don’t we? This is all foreshadowing the cross where Jesus’ body will be broken. Right? The bread. He broke the bread and said, “This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood that is poured out for you for the new covenant in my blood,” that Jesus will die in our place and for our sake. He will exchange His life for ours. He will lay down his life to save the world, to give life to the world, and He will rise again on the third day. And so it is an indication to look at Him and believe in Him, to have an all-consuming embrace of who He is for us, that we might be forgiven and set free and made alive now and forever in Jesus Christ.

And I don’t know if you realize this, friends, but whenever you eat, something has to die so you can live. Did you realize that? If you go to McDonald’s and you get a hamburger or something, the cow dies so that you would live. If you get a chicken sandwich, the chicken died so that you might live. If you get a fish filet, the fish died so that you might live. Even if you have the Impossible patty, right? Even then, the plants have to die so that you might live. And so, friends, don’t you see the analogy? The metaphor is working on all of these different levels. Our physical life is sustained by consuming the life of another that is sacrificed so that we might live. And the same principal is true on the spiritual plane, that our spiritual life is sustained by consuming the life of another that is sacrificed in order that we might live.

And the seventh insight here, friends, is that life in Jesus is offered in His all-consuming sacrifice. Life in Jesus is offered in His all-consuming sacrifice. “This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood poured out for you.” “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he will also live because of me.” It’s a giant chain of life from God the Father through Jesus to us. Come, look, believe, eat, and live.

Verse 60: “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’ But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, ‘Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? 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. But there are some of you who do not believe.’ (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’”

Verse 66: “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.’ He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.”

In many ways, this teaching of Jesus becomes the parting of the ways. Those who were after a meal and didn’t get it, they leave. And those who couldn’t believe these statements or were offended by them, they head off. Even in the broader contingency of disciples, many of them turn aside and no longer follow Jesus. And even in the twelve, the faithful twelve who remain, one of those will eventually betray Jesus.

Now, why is this so controversial? Why is the teaching of Jesus so difficult? Why is it so polarizing? Well, the last insight here is that life in Jesus is humbling. Life in Jesus is humbling. Friends, if Jesus alone is our life, and the only way we can have Him is by grace through faith in Christ alone, if the Father draws us to trust in His all-consuming sacrifice on our behalf, then a number of humbling realities set in immediately. The first is that we are dead apart from Jesus, that we all have a spiritual ache, a longing, a hole inside, and it’s not just that we’re missing a piece for our souls. It’s that something in us is dead. We’re spiritually dead on the inside.

And the next humbling reality is that we cannot give life to ourselves, no matter how hard we try. No matter how much we believe in ourselves, or love ourselves, or accept ourselves, or express ourselves, we can never give ourselves the spiritual life that we need. We can never bring ourselves to life. We were meant to draw life from another. It’s simply the way we were designed.

The third humbling reality is that all the life work that we do ultimately perishes. We spend a lot of effort trying to build a life for ourselves, don’t we? Make a life for ourselves, just like the Galileans. They were working really hard. They worked for their provision and prosperity, and Jesus said don’t work for that. Don’t work for the food that’s going to perish. Work for the food that endures to eternal life.

Friends, all the life that we rely on, all the things we put, that we think give us life and make life worth living, ultimately, we can’t take any of that with us. The eternal life that we need is found in Jesus alone. And what good is it, as Jesus will say “for a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”

The fourth humbling reality is that even our religious efforts are useless. Even our religious efforts are useless. Remember, they asked Him, “What must we do to do the works of God?” In other words, “We want life, but we want it on our terms. We want to be the ones who earn that life. We want to work our way into the blessings and life of God. So just tell us what to do and we’ll do it.” And Jesus says, “It doesn’t work that way. The only way you get this life is it’s a gift. You have to believe and receive it.” Because the fifth humbling reality is that life is found in Jesus alone.

Life is found in Jesus alone, which means, friends, that the only way we get it is when we come empty and desperate and helpless and needy and impoverished and famished and parched. The only way we experience and receive the fullness of the life of Jesus is when we bring Him the emptiness of our own lives. And that’s why so many people turn aside and no longer follow Jesus. I mean this teaching is honestly too humbling. It’s too invasive. It’s too revealing. It’s too penetrating. It’s too hard to swallow. But Peter had it right, didn’t he? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God.”

And so, friends, the takeaway is very simple. Jesus is life. Jesus is life. Is He your life? Is He your life? Come, look, believe, eat, and live.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” Father, help us look to Jesus. Help us bring our emptiness, our desperateness, our famishedness, our impoverishedness. We come emptyhanded to you, and ask that you would be our life, our abundant, eternal, everlasting, all-satisfying, all-consuming life beyond the walls of the world, that Christ would be everything in us, that what Paul says in Galatians would be true, that we have been crucified with Christ, and therefore we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. This is the only way we live, and it is what we most desperately need. And so we come, we look, we believe, and we eat the living Christ today, for it is in His name we pray, Amen. Amen.