The Bread of Life

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My family and I take a lot of road trips, not as many as I’d like, but when we have time, that’s one of the things we like to do is take road trips. And a lot of times we will plan our road trips around where we’re going to go eat. Anybody else ever do this?

Anybody want to admit to it? When we find some place we like, we’ll drive a long distance and we’ll find some other excuse for why we’re going there, but we really know the reasons of the trip is because we’re going to go eat. You know, many times we have taken the kids to Tulsa or to Dallas to go eat at Fuddruckers.

We have made special trips all the way to Antlers, Oklahoma, to a little place we found called Burger Barn that is in an actual, looks like they went and bought a little barn at Lowe’s, and they cooked burgers in there. We’re planning a trip to Santa Fe next summer, another trip, and Charla and I are already counting, okay, how can we work several trips to Blake’s Laudaburger into the Weight Watchers points? How can we do that?

And we were driving to Lawton to eat at McKinsey’s for years before we ever knew Central Baptist Church existed. And as I’m listing places like this, it occurs to me we sound like burger fanatics. So I think everything I’ve listed is a hamburger.

We do eat other things. As a matter of fact, we’ve driven the kids from Seminole to Warica, which is like three hours just to eat catfish. So, you know, when you find someplace good, when you find someplace you like, you’ll drive, or at least we will.

We’ll drive a good way. We’ll travel there to make sure we get there. We’ll make it a point to go back.

When you find where the good food is, you make it a point to go back. And I can’t think of anybody that would be a better cook than Jesus. Just because anything Jesus does, he’s going to be great at.

He’s God in human flesh. And so when Jesus fed some people, there’s a story in the Gospel of John here about a group of people who came back the very next day for food. The story we’re going to look at this morning is the day after the feeding of the 5,000 plus.

And I call it the feeding of the 5,000 plus because the text says that he fed 5,000 men and their families. So I’m thinking we might be selling Jesus short here. we might ought to call it the feeding of the 20,000.

You know, we don’t know how many people were there. It was at least 5,000. But they showed up the next day looking for more food, and instead Jesus told them about what they really needed.

It was more important. There were more important things for them to travel and to seek out Jesus for than just the food He was going to provide. So hopefully you’ve turned with me to John 6.

If you haven’t, please join me there. And would you stand with me if you’re able to without too much trouble? As we read together from God’s Word, and we’re going to start in verse 26, after Jesus has been found by this group of people that are looking for food, they begin to question Him, and it says in verse 26, Jesus answered them and said, Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on him. Then they said to him, What shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.

Therefore they said to him, What sign will you perform then that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert.

As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give 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.

Then they said to Him, Lord, give us this bread always. And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who 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 the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at that day.

you may be seated we’ll pick up at verse 41 in just a moment but I wanted to start there so he’s had this conversation with the people who came out to get more food and he said you’ve come for more food but there are more important things than just filling your stomach and I’m sorry you see it on the screen there’s the text I I got myself confused did I stop at 41 or 51 and I was having to look at my notes again so we’ll look at the the rest of the text in just a moment but he’s he’s confronted them about you came after physical food you came hunting for physical food and there’s spiritual food that’s far more important there are other things that that you want and so they that you really need and so they have this this back and forth where they talk about Moses and the manna that he provided and this bread that came down from heaven.

And he said, you only think this bread came down from heaven. It came down out of the sky. But the true bread I’m talking about is the bread that the father actually sent from heaven, which is me.

He’s talking about himself. And so we pick up in verse 41 again. You don’t have to stand with me again.

But he says, the Jews then complained about him because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know. How is it then that he says, I have come down from heaven?

Jesus therefore answered and said to them, do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught by God.

Therefore, 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.

Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. And I want to start off by saying there’s a lot of ground that we could cover in this passage. There’s a lot of truth that Jesus deals with in this passage, and we don’t have time to unpack all of it this morning.

I want to focus in on what He says about Him being the bread of life. He said they were there to fill their stomachs, but He said He had something to give them that was greater than any kind of physical food. And over the next several weeks, I want to look at some statements that Jesus makes in the book of John where He says, I am.

and I was reading as I was researching some of these statements this week and I saw in a few different commentaries where men have written about the seven I am statements in the book of John I’m puzzled by that because I found a whole lot more than seven I picked out nine to go over in the next the next several weeks but there there were more than that even Jesus all through the book of John was saying, I am, I am, I am. He was telling them who he was, and yet they missed it. I want to go through some of these statements over the next few weeks to make sure that we don’t miss who Jesus is.

And so I decided, after I made my list of nine, I decided to just go through them in the order that they’re in the book of John. And so here we are in chapter six with, I am the bread of life. And the point that Jesus was trying to make as he confronted them about, he said, you came to me, not because you saw the signs, not because you saw the miracles and believed who I was.

You came because you got your bellies filled and you thought, hey, we’ll go back there. It was just loaves and fishes, but I imagine if Jesus prepared it, it had to be good. So they said, we’ll go back there.

And he said, but you came looking for this physical food and there’s something more important that you’re missing. And the point that he was trying to get across to them is that we shouldn’t let instant gratification or temporary satisfaction distract us from our real spiritual needs. There will always be things that come up in life.

There will always be things that catch our eye, things that we want, things that we feel like we need, things that we feel like demand our attention. I was trying to get ready for church this morning, and we had not only was I still fielding calls about the COVID issue, but Charla comes up just as I’m about ready to come downstairs and start fixing me some breakfast. I never did get to fix me any breakfast because she said the plumbing is backing up in the lower floor of the house again. And I said, can we not just ever have a normal Sunday morning?

I’m trying to think about this message and all this stuff and everything demands my attention. There’s always going to be stuff in life that pops up and demands our attention. You all know that’s true.

You’ve got things that as soon as you walk out of here, you’re going to have to be thinking about them again. But we cannot let dealing with those things, as important as they may be, some of them are important, some of them are not, but we cannot let all these things that pop up in front of us in life and demand our attention, or we feel like we want it now, or we have to have it now, we cannot let those things distract us from what is really important, the things that are going to matter in eternity. We cannot let it distract us from dealing with the spiritual needs.

Do I need to deal with the plumbing? Yes, I do. Do I need to deal with the fact that I did not ever get to fix my eggs?

Yes, I need to deal with that at some point. I’m going to have to go eat. They have to be dealt with, but not at the expense of God’s eternal plans.

The food they were looking for, the food that they came looking for was only going to sustain their lives. even if they got it, it was only going to sustain their lives for one day. And so in verses 26 and 27, Jesus makes the point that they needed to instead think about the food that was going to sustain their lives forever.

Why worry about something that’s going to feed them for one day when they needed to focus on what’s going to keep them alive forever? And so they mentioned the manna that God had provided in Moses’ day, and they asked Jesus basically to present them with some proof that He had anything better to offer. As He’s talking about this spiritual food, they go back to talking about the manna.

And they ask Jesus, what sign are You going to provide? They missed it. I mean, even before they brought up signs, He said, you saw the signs yesterday and totally ignored it.

That’s not why you’re back. He’d been showing them and telling them all along who He was. He’d been showing them and telling them all along what He could do.

The very fact that He was able to feed them all. was yet more evidence of who He was. And yet they’re still there asking, okay, well, what sign are you going to show us now?

What have you done for us lately? We kind of take that attitude with God sometimes, don’t we? They were saying, yeah, we saw your miracles yesterday, but what sign do you have to show us today?

And so as they were talking about this manna and asking what sign He was going to show to prove that He had something better to offer, Jesus made the point that the true bread always comes from God. He said, it’s not about what you think, what you expect. It’s about what God has done and what God will do.

And in verse 32, he points out that the true bread always comes from God. He said, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven. In Moses’ day, some physical bread did come down from heaven.

He said, he didn’t give you the true bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. And he identified himself as that true bread. He said the Father had sent him to be the true bread, after which, folks, we would never have to hunger or thirst again.

He reiterates that in verses 33 and 35. That because he has come as the true bread sent by the Father, the bread of life, when we partake of that true bread, we will never have to be hungry or thirsty again. Now you’re probably thinking, well, that sounds great.

We’re not talking about physical hunger either. You come to Jesus, you’ll be hungry. Case in point.

I’m experiencing that right now. You will be hungry again. Even on those times when you stuff yourself so full that you think, I’m never going to eat again.

We lie to ourselves, don’t we? We always do. We always go back and eat more.

But he said we would never have to hunger or thirst again. And he was talking about spiritual things. And that’s because Jesus has met our deepest needs.

Jesus has overcome death and Jesus has reconciled us to God. Now, look at verse 38 with me. Verse 38 says, For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

Jesus came to fulfill the Father’s plans, not to work out some program of his own, but the Father and Son had a plan set in stone from eternity past. And when Jesus came, nothing he did was by accident. It was to fulfill the plans that the Father had made and the things that the Father had been promising all throughout the Scriptures, all throughout the Old Testament. Jesus came to fulfill all of that.

And right before that, in verse 37, he explains what part of that was when he said, all that my Father gives me will come unto me, and the ones who come to me I will by no means cast out. So he came to fulfill the Father’s plans by redeeming those that the Father sent him to redeem. He came here to purchase salvation for you and me.

You realize that? That that was God’s plan from eternity past. Before He ever created anything, before He ever created us, God knew He was going to create us. He knew we were going to be sinners, but He knew He was going to love us enough that He was going to send His Son to pay for our sins.

That was His plan all along so that you and I could be with Him. and we know that Jesus accomplished this plan he fulfilled this plan by his death for us he says in verse 51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven if anyone eats of this bread he will live forever and the bread that I shall give is my flesh which I shall give for the life of the world and he explained this in a little in a little clearer detail. When He was having His final meal with the disciples right before His crucifixion, when He told them that this bread was His body broken for us.

When He was nailed to the cross, when His body was broken, when He shed His blood, it was for us. That’s how He is the bread of life. He said that bread is His flesh.

Again, that doesn’t mean we consume His actual flesh. That means He Himself is the bread of life. And by that body being broken and that blood being shed, He brings life to all who will believe in Him.

And because He conquered death by His crucifixion and His resurrection, He’s going to raise us and He’s going to provide us with new life. He talks about that all throughout this passage. In verse 39, He says, This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

That’s not talking about His resurrection because His resurrection is not at the last day. It’s already happened. When He talks about raising it up at the last day, He’s talking about you and me.

He’s talking about those who have partaken of the bread of life. We will be raised to be with Him. The dead in Christ will rise first and those of us who will remain will be caught up in the clouds and will be with Him forever.

In verse 39. And then in verse 40. This is the will of Him who sent me that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise Him up at the last day.

The same thing. He promises to raise us up. He promises to raise us to new life if we believe in Him.

And I love that sometimes in the Scriptures, you will see where something will be said in one verse, and it will be repeated in the next. And you almost think, wait, doesn’t He realize He already said that? And I think sometimes those things are in there just so we realize that whoever was writing this down, John in this case, Paul did it sometimes in Galatians, we realize they weren’t just getting so excited they wrote things and didn’t really mean what they wrote.

They thought about it and said it twice to make sure we understood they really meant it. Here Jesus says, I will raise them up at the last day. So He’s provided us with new life and this new life He gives us is eternal because He says in verse 40 that everyone who believes in Him may have everlasting life.

and then in verse 47 most assuredly I say to you he who believes in me has everlasting life so he came here to fulfill the father’s plans which means he died to pay for our sins he rose again to prove that he could do it and now he offers us new life where we will be raised to be with him and we will live with him not just for a little while but we’ll live with him forever where we will never die again and we will never have to go spiritually hungry ever again. And so while there are other solutions out there that may provide a little bit of momentary satisfaction for us or a little bit of relief from our troubles, only Jesus, only Jesus can fulfill the deepest needs of our souls and only Jesus can provide us with eternal life with the Father. Sometimes we get in a situation where we’re in pain or we’re struggling and we go looking for something that’s going to going to fix the pain.

Something that’s going to medicate the pain or deaden the pain. Something that’s going to solve all of our problems. And I’m not talking about all your physical problems. I’m not saying that when you’re sitting there taking a math test and you can’t figure out the answer that I’ll just write down Jesus because He’s the answer to all of our problems. I’m talking about spiritual issues here. But those things that gnaw at us, those things that cause us pain, and we go looking for solutions everywhere else, we may find something that will temporarily be like a band-aid on the situation, but only Jesus can actually fulfill our deepest needs.

Only Jesus can bring us lasting peace with the Father that we were created to have. Only Jesus can restore us spiritually to where we’re supposed to be. Anything else you find, anything else you look for, it may feel good for a moment, but it’s just a band-aid.

It doesn’t actually fix anything. He told them, your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. Now the manna was a miraculous thing that God provided.

If you’re not familiar with that story, it’s when the Israelites had been set free from bondage in Egypt and now they’re being made to wander around the wilderness because of their unbelief. And they’re complaining. They always complain.

Even after God had just done something miraculous, they start to question, they start to doubt, and say, well, you just brought us out here for us to die. And so God provided them with food. It would just fall out of the sky every morning.

Enough for that day so that they would learn to rely on Him. It was a miraculous thing. It was an incredible show of the power of God.

But Jesus said, even that, they ate it, it sustained them for a little bit, they’re dead. And the manna makes no difference for them in eternity. But this is the bread which comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die.

He’s not saying we won’t die physically, but He’s talking about that spiritual death. Eating the manna wouldn’t keep them from spiritual death, which is one of the ways the Bible describes this idea of being separated from the Father. We are separated from God because of our sin.

And the Bible describes it as spiritual death. Eating that manna wasn’t going to do anything to bring them peace with the Father. It wasn’t going to do anything beyond sustaining them for that day.

But He said, the Father has sent bread now that will sustain you forever. We’ll bring you a spiritual life that you cannot lose. And I want to make it clear when he says we’ll never be hungry again, it doesn’t mean we’ll have no desire for anything else.

It means we’ll have no need for anything else. Because sometimes as Christians, we get into situations where we think we’ve got this spiritual problem, we’ve got this problem within us, and we think I’ve got to find something else to fix it. So there’s sometimes a desire.

There’s a hunger and a sense of desire that I need to do something else. I tell you, for a while, I experienced a little bit of depression over the loss of my second child. It was a stillbirth, 38 weeks.

And at first, I kind of joked about it. You know, I’m going to go talk to some food about this. I found myself getting depressed.

There was a period of about six months. I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. It’s been 10 years ago or more.

I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. And when I did, I just didn’t. Some of you have been there.

It’s hard to describe if you’ve not been there. but I realized at one point I you know I would get sad and I would eat now people people do this with all sorts of things alcohol drugs I would eat and I almost got to the point where I thought well if I just eat a whole pizza I’ll feel better I won’t have to think about it and eventually I had to realize what I was using to fill a spiritual void as a Christian I was looking outside of Jesus to deal with a spiritual issue which were the questions and the struggles over the loss of this child and trying to understand God’s plan, and I was trying to put something else in there to meet the need. It was a spiritual hunger, and it was a literal physical hunger.

But again, like I said, people substitute all sorts of things in there. Mine just happened to be food, because I’m a good Baptist. I didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t run around, but I ate. There was a desire for something else, but there wasn’t a need there for something else, because the answer was right there in front of me.

The answer was with me the whole time. The answer was walking with me through that valley the whole time. And when I finally realized, you know what, instead of trying to cram something else into this spiritual void, I just need to work on my walk with Jesus.

I turned a corner. Now, I’m not saying there’s no room for help. People will get in instances of depression that’s because of a chemical issue or something like that.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with medicine. I’m saying my issue was because of something that happened that I was having trouble dealing with spiritually. Going outside Jesus might have felt better for a moment, but it did not fix the problem.

So as Christians, when He says we’ll never be hungry again, it doesn’t mean we’ll never have a desire for anything else, but the hunger means we’ll never have a need for anything else. You may want to go outside Jesus, but you don’t have to, and you shouldn’t. When He says, I am the bread of life, in verse 48, Jesus was calling us to believe in Him and to trust in His ability to meet all of our spiritual needs.

Understand that, because that applies for us today too. He said to them, I am the bread of life. And all throughout this passage, He was calling them, and by extension, He’s calling us to believe in Him and to trust in His ability to meet our spiritual needs.

Do I believe that Jesus can deal with this need or not? It’s what we need to ask ourselves. He says in verse 29, This is the work of God that you believe in Him whom He sent.

He said in verse 35, He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. Verse 40 says, Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life. Verse 47 says, He who believes in Me has everlasting life. He’s calling us to believe in Him, and He’s calling us to trust Him.

I want to be very clear in what I mean when I say believe in Him and what the Scripture means when it says it, believe in Him. And we’re not just talking about a belief that Jesus exists. You will find we live in what has been considered a Bible Belt state.

You can go outside these four walls. You can run into all sorts of people who believe that Jesus exists, believe God exists, and are just as lost and as separated from God as they can be. It is not a belief that God exists.

It’s not a belief that Jesus exists, although you need to have that. It’s not even a belief that He’s a good moral teacher or a good leader. When He says, believe in Me, He’s talking about believing all these claims that He makes for Himself.

Believing that He was sent by God. Believing that He was sent by God to be our Savior. When He says, believe in Me, He’s not saying, believe I exist. Believe I’m real. Believe I know what I’m talking about when it comes to moral issues.

He’s saying, believe in me as though I am your one and only hope, as though I am the lifeline thrown down from God’s ship while you are sinking in an ocean of sin. Believe in me as that one and only Savior that God has sent. And trust in me to meet these needs that I say I can meet.

So I would tell you this morning to believe in Him. Believe in Him as your Savior and trust that He can meet your spiritual needs. There’s a saying that I heard recently, and I can’t remember where I’ve heard it, but I’ve repeated it so many times, it might as well just be my own.

It said, if you can trust Jesus with your salvation, you can trust Him with your situation. I think that’s exactly right. And so as I come close to wrapping up this morning, let me start with those of you who are sitting in here who would say, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ. I’ve trusted Him as my Savior.

There’s no doubt in my mind that He died on the cross for my sins. I’ve asked God’s forgiveness. I’ve done all of that.

I believe in Him. then understand that if you can trust Him with your salvation, you can trust Him with your situation. If there is some spiritual need that you have this morning as a believer, He has not left you here alone to hunger for some solution to your spiritual issues outside of Him.

He has not left you here and abandoned you here to find another person or substance or an activity that is going to meet your spiritual needs. You as a believer have the bread of life living inside of you. Go to Him.

trust him to deal with those spiritual needs and this morning if you’ve never trusted christ as your savior in this passage jesus calls you to turn to him this morning and receive the spiritual bread that’s going to feed you not just for today but for all eternity because we start out in this life separated from god because we’re sinners we’re sinners by nature and we’re sinners by action we sin because it’s who we are. We are disobedient toward God. And God is holy, so our sin separates us from Him.

And we are destined to remain separated from Him, not only in this life, but as we go through physical death and into spiritual death, which is eternal separation from Him in hell. And there’s not a thing that we can do to rescue ourselves. But God sent His Son to go to the cross, be nailed to that cross, so His body could be broken and His blood could be spilled for us so that He could die in our place and rise again to prove it.

Today, He offers us the bread of life, which was His own sacrifice. He is the bread of life. Today, He says, if you’ll believe in Him, you’ll have eternal life.

If you’ll receive Him, you’ll never have that spiritual need to go elsewhere ever again. And so if you’ve never trusted Him as your Savior, I’d invite you to do that this morning. It’s as simple as realizing that you’ve sinned against God and need a Savior because you can’t save yourself, believing that Jesus died in your place to pay for all of your sins in full and rose again to prove it, and then asking God on the basis of what Jesus did for you to forgive you, to come into your life and to save you.

And you have the promise of His Word. When you believe in Him, when you trust Him, that you’ll receive that eternal life and you’ll be reconciled to the Father.