Protected

Text: Ephesians 6:10-20

Focus: Spiritual warfare

Function: to see the power of God available for believers

¹⁰Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. ¹¹Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. ¹²For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. ¹⁴Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. ¹⁵As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. ¹⁶With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

¹⁸Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. ¹⁹Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

This is a whole new subject for us compared to the three weeks as we examined the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life.

Today, we are going to be looking at another mystery, spiritual warfare. I titled the message “Protected” because I hope at the end of the message we too can experience the power of faith in God through our preparation and prayer life.

Brother Paul tells us to be aware of the spiritual struggle that is going on around us. We can’t see into the spiritual realm very well, except every now and then I think I can see a shimmer of light at times that I believe to be the manifestation of an angel. Hebrews 1:14 tells us that angels are ministering spirits sent to take care of the saints. We can’t see them, but according to scripture, they are there, When Elijah was holed up in a town and the Syrian army had surrounded the town to capture him, his servant panicked until the prophet prayed that he could see the army of angels that were protecting them. I doubt if the enemy camp could see them, but while things are happening here on earth, there are also battles going on in the Spiritual realm.

Daniel fasted for 3 weeks of years. He fasted eating nothing but bread and water. He was fasting for an answer to prayer about what was going to happen in the future for the nation Israel since they were deported into captivity in Babylon.

God sent the angel Michael to answer his prayer at the beginning of the fast. But, the angel didn’t arrive for 21 years. The reason according to scripture was that the angel who had charge over Syria got into a personal combat battle with him. At the same time, on earth, there was a the Syrians conquered Israel. Then, the Persians took over Syria and the angel that protected Syria was defeated and Michael was finally able to arrive in answer to Daniel’s prayer.

Or course, Daniel is recording a metaphor for us full of symbolic language. But at the same time, he implies that there are spiritual battles going on against us of which we are not aware.

Trust in God. That is the answer.

And he gives us clues as to how we can be more effective in our Christian lives.

Remember that we are engaged in spiritual warfare and our message is contrary to the messages that the Devil puts out.

The Devil is resisting us. So Brother Paul gives us some instructions in order to win the battle against Satan.

He tells them to “take on,” to receive, to place their trust in as their weapons to protect them. It is an action, “take it up.” The battle is coming for sure and God does not want us to shrink back, but to be prepared with the resources the He has provided for us. We’ll get to that in a minute. But we have this armor that we deliberately take time to put on, learn to use, and then effectively use as genuine soldiers in God’s battle for the souls of men and women.

He says, having done all we can to stand. In other words, practice and preparation, to stand firm.

I suppose the biggest command in the passage, besides pray without ceasing later on, is this command from God to Stand firm.

Stand firm. Have faith. Don’t waver in the middle of the battle. Remember that God is on our side. Here is a promise from God from Romans 8:31. If God is for us, who can stand against us?

I mention that there were three big sins in the OT. One was idolatry. The one mentioned the most is a lack of concern for the poor and the third which is relevant to our discussion is a lack of faith in God’s promises. Hebrews 11:6 tells us that those who come to God must believe that He is and a rewarder of those who seek after Him.

Trusting the promises of God is an important step to our spiritual victory. We read the stories of faith in the OT and we see the God delivered people in His own way and in His own time and it seemed as if He delayed sometimes to test their faith. But God always came through with what God intended to happen.

I love the story of David and Goliath. It is a great metaphor for Spiritual warfare. David was probably about 14, just before age to join the army. He hears Goliath’s taunts and being filled with the Spirit, he knows that the size of the enemy is nothing compared to the power that is available to the people of God.

You know the story. But there is a detail in there about the armor of God verses trust in human resources. David goes to fight Goliath, and Saul, the king, with the finest armor available, lends him his armor to face Goliath. David puts it on and says, I can’t fight with these. He wasn’t trained in the conventional weapons, But he was trained in faith.

We know from the Psalms and from later on in the book of 1 Samuel that David worshiped the Lord. He had a prayerful relationship with God. David trusted God. Earlier when both a lion and a bear attacked the sheep he was caring for, David, by faith in God killed the predators and kept his sheep secure. He choose 5 stones. He only used one. He was prepared as best as he could, but his faith was in God.

With one stone he defeated his enemy, because God was on his side and he trusted him. And David knew that it was a spiritual battle that he was facing and that God was on his side.

It is a great story of what can happen with us when we are filled with the Spirit.

The final aspect of preparation for the battle so that we can stand firm is prayer.

Paul commands us to pray without ceasing. In other words, walk with God in your daily life.

Remember that God is there and present with you and with your thoughts. Communicate your love, concerns and needs to God through your thought life.

And when we pray, he requests that we pray for other saints as well as themselves and for him, or for preachers. Pray that they may have the boldness to say the right thing at the right time so that people may come to believe in Jesus.

It takes boldness to proclaim the gospel message of love for our enemies in the middle of such divisive times in our nation. Remember, the gospel message is good news for the entire world through Jesus Christ. The world doesn’t want to hear the message, love your enemies and there will be spiritual warfare against it. You will even be called unpatriotic. But it is a message God wants us to proclaim with boldness.

Spirit and Life

 

Text: John 6:51-69

Focus: The Bread of Life

Function: to contrast people who seek spiritual life and those who don’t

⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

⁵²The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” ⁵⁹He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

⁶⁰When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” ⁶¹But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? ⁶²Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? ⁶³It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ⁶⁴But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. ⁶⁵And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

⁶⁶Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. ⁶⁷So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” ⁶⁸Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. ⁶⁹We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

This is the culmination of our series on The Bread of Life.

We remember the story. Jesus is teaching in the wilderness and the crowd comes to Him to hear His teaching. At this point, there is no promise of the meal. It is later in the day, the crowd is hungry and it seems, the disciples are tired. They come to Jesus wondering what He will do and Jesus answer to them is that it is their responsibility to feed the crowd.

The thing to remember about the crowd is that they were hungry. They were in a desperate situation under the yoke of Roman bondage and all of a sudden there is a new kind of prophet roaming the countryside with this amazing teaching who has been healing people of all kinds of diseases and who has been shown to have absolute authority over demonic powers. Here is Jesus performing miracle after miracle of mercy toward a crowd that was desperate for someone to deliver them from the cruelty that they were experiencing. They needed a leader who would save them.

And they were sincere in their question to Jesus, are you giving us the same sign that Moses gave his people in the wilderness? Aren’t you going to keep on feeding us? You can, you know, if you did it once, of you can raise the dead, if you can walk on the water, then certainly, you can help us out of this terrible situation.

And Jesus completely blows them away with His response.

He has been telling them that He is the living bread that comes down from heaven. He is. Not the manna that Moses gave them in the wilderness. Not the bread and fishes they just ate on the other side of the lake, but He is the living bread. He is.

Just imagine that for a moment. Imagine that you hear great things about a preacher, you hear, and perhaps have even seen him perform some sort of miracle, you hear that his teaching is new and revolutionary and it includes love for everyone. You hear and see crowds flocking to this individual and you too, are hungry, needing someone to come along and offer you some sort of way out of the bondage that you are experiencing.

And then, just as you are getting ready to believe in him, to trust in him he says to you, In order for you to have eternal life, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.

About the time you are questioning if he is serious when he said, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood, he repeats it and says, what I mean is this: My flesh is true food and blood is true drink. You must eat it.

It sounds crazy. It sounds impossible. The sincere and hungry crowd asks him how he plans to give us his body and blood as drink.

Something significant happens right here in Jesus’ ministry. It answers a question for a serious student of the timeline of Jesus’ life and ministry. He feeds a crowd of 5,000 and they cross the lake to follow Him. It appears that they are willing to follow Him everywhere.

So, did you ever wonder what happened to that crowd? How did they shrink from a crowd of thousands pressing in upon Him just wanting to touch the hem of His garment so that they can be healed to a small band of disciples and followers who were only numbered around one hundred at the time of the resurrection?

We see it here, reflected tragically starting at verse 66 from our text: ⁶⁶Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. ⁶⁷So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” ⁶⁸Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. ⁶⁹We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The text tells us that all the disciples were complaining. And rightfully so. Jesus had a great thing going here. They were in on a huge movement. They were they anointed apostles of the new Kingdom who knew what kind of power and glory that would entail in the future?

They were chosen and they had planned on something incredible and all of a sudden, in a few brief phrases from Jesus, the whole thing seems to fall apart and the crowd leaves Jesus because they believe He has gone too far with His words.

Neither the crowds or the disciples understand the words. Jesus tells them that they are thinking about food all wrong. His words are Spirit and Life. By listening and believing, by trusting in those words, you can have eternal life.

Nobody got it at the time.

And it still remains somewhat a mystery. The Roman Catholic Church has chosen to believe that each and every person who partakes of the Eucharist has a miracle happen inside of them every time. The miracle being that the ordinary bread and the ordinary wine become transubstantiated into Jesus’ actual flesh and blood.

They take this literally.

I appreciated the expression of faith that is here and Jesus is speaking of the mystery of the Eucharist. I believe, again, the reason why the Roman Catholic Church uses a crucifix instead of a cross as a symbol of the faith.

In order to be saved, we must take the life of Jesus.

When we partake of the communion bread and wine, it is as if we actually were the ones responsible for His death. Our sins killed Him. He died on behalf of our sins. He died in our place. In order to be saved, we have to let Him be the sacrifice for our sins.

If Jesus were just a man, then it would be unjust to accept His death on the cross in place of mine.

But Jesus is the Bread of Heaven. He is the living bread of God, and remember, He is speaking symbolic words that are Spirit and Life to the listeners. Jesus, as the Bread of Heaven is the Living God who gives life to the world. We are taking the life of God’s own self in order to have eternal life. If Jesus were merely a man, it would be unjust. But instead, Jesus is God, in human form, given as a sacrifice for the sins of the world entire.

Let us live by the living Bread of Heaven.

There is Power in the Bread

 

Text: John 6:35-51

Focus: The bread of life

Function: to help people experience the life giving force of Communion

³⁵Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. ³⁷Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; ³⁸for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. ³⁹And 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. ⁴⁰This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

⁴¹Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴²They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Jesus is the Bread of Life, the Living Bread. He makes an extremely bold claim when he says it.

Remember the story. These are a desperate and poverty stricken people who are burdened down with the oppression of the Roman taxes. No one can save enough to get ahead and they are all living from paycheck to paycheck, as it were, with little hope of escaping the poverty unless a leader comes.

Jesus appears to be that leader.

Jesus has just fed the 5,000. He walked on the water, calmed the sea and now He starts telling the crowd, after He has fed them that it isn’t the food that they ate that they need but the Bread from Heaven, which is Himself, as a life giving force for all their needs.

By chiding them about wanting only food, as we saw last week, we see Him trying to get them to understand that eternal life is more important than physical life because God is in control of the resurrection of the dead and those who believe in Him will live even though their bodies cease to breathe.

I believe that he is referring to communion. Next week, we will hear Him say that His flesh is true food and His blood is true drink. That, I believe, is why the Roman Catholics believe that the bread and cup mysteriously transfigure themselves into the living flesh and blood of Jesus every time they take the Eucharist.

I don’t need to believe that to believe the power of the Eucharist. It is a life giving force and every time I take it I feel spiritually strengthened.

15 years ago, I did a study with a cohort of pastors whereby we studied how we can effectively make disciples of Jesus in a post Christian world. I wanted to know what needed to change in our message in order to get the gospel message across to a generation that has largely rejected Christianity.

We went to London and saw churches that were thriving in their post Christian culture. At one event, we were sitting around the tables and everyone was given two envelopes with a task, a prayer, or a reading to be revealed during the course of the evening worship. The lady across from me at the table immediately spoke up and said that she had never ever been to a church in her life and that if she was asked to pray to do something religious, she would have to refuse because she didn’t want to be an hypocrite.

The lesson that night shared the gospel of Jesus as the two disciples experienced it on the way to Emmaus.

As she heard the gospel, she began to open up about her life and her spiritual needs. She was aware of her need. When her first envelope was opened, we tensed, but it was only a reading that was positive and it helped her on her way. Her second envelope contained a prayer that she was to lead. She lead it even though she had earlier stated the otherwise.

We watched her heart soften as the Holy Spirit took over and called her to place her trust in Jesus.

At the end, the last envelope, opened by the leader was an invitation to trust Jesus through receiving the symbol of faith, the Eucharist.

With tears in her eyes she ate the bread and drank the cup. And just like faith was born in the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, we watched a new believer born into the Kingdom of heaven through the life giving force of communion. It was her first experience with Christ and it was powerful.

It wasn’t us. Yes, the service was well planned. And the different thing about the service at the time, although we were in an Anglican Church on the outskirts of London, the different thing was the audience participation. We sat at tables in community, just like the early church did, just like we do here sometimes.

So, my goal this morning, as we partake of the bread and the cup -communion with Jesus- is that we all experience the life giving force of the power of the Spirit as it again cleanses us and fills our hearts.

Our Source

 

Text: John 6:24-35

Focus: The Bread of Life

Function: a series to help people see how we are rooted in Christ

²⁴So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

²⁵When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” ²⁶Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.” ²⁸Then they said to him, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” ²⁹Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” ³⁰So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? ³¹Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” ³²Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” ³⁴They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

³⁵Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

The second half of John chapter 6 contains words like the first chapter. They are words that are full of mystery. In the first chapter of John, we hear John the Baptist, the forerunner to Jesus calling Jesus “The Light of the World.” The Jewish people attached a lot of mystery to the concept of “the light.” Especially since light was created on the First day and the Sun wasn’t created until the fourth day. The light of God is a Spiritual force. And when Jesus came to earth, the Light of God came back to earth. It was a mystery that was hard for people to understand.

In the last verse we read today, we read Jesus calling Himself “The bread of life.” This is another one of those mysterious phrases that Jesus was always using that confused His enemies. And most of the time, it seems, it confused the Apostles as well.

Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the source of our lives. And hopefully, over the next couple of weeks as we study this chapter, we can see this mystery unraveled before us. I am counting on the help of the Holy Spirit for us to be able to understand just what is occurring here in this exchange with Jesus and the crowd.

It starts out with Jesus questioning their very motive for following Him. He has just feed the 5,000. Which means that John the Baptist has just been beheaded and Jesus has decided that He needs some time alone. The disciples leave in their boats and Jesus stays behind and then comes back to them in the middle of a storm walking on the water. The disciples had been rowing against the wind all night and had not gotten far, when Jesus entered the boat, they immediately reached the other shore (after the waves immediately died down).

The disciples are seeing miracle after miracle here and the crowd is witnessing a large part of it. Because they questioned how Jesus got to the other side, I doubt if the crowd knew of the walking on water the night before, but they come to Jesus because they are intrigued.

Jesus chides them a little bit by accusing them of merely wanting another hand out. He is reaching out to them and is inviting them to something much more than physical and earthly gain. He is inviting them into the family of God where there is a great opportunity to work in partnership with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

So Jesus tells them that there is more to life than the striving for material gain that this world has to offer and they respond by questioning His authority to give them a new paradigm for living their lives.

Now this is really a strange request. They tell him that they are following Moses faithfully and they should because Moses gave them the Manna from heaven in the desert.

Jesus chides them for seeking physical needs over spiritual needs and they answer that Moses was their great leader and that is exactly what they did.

It is almost as if Jesus met His match with their argument. They statement is “what is wrong with wanting bread, Moses gave it to the people, and we are certain that Moses was called by God to lead us.”

Their questions are not meant to trip Jesus up, Jesus gets plenty of that from their leaders. Nope, this was the ordinary people, most of them living in desperate poverty and Jesus’ miracle of feeding them was truly a sign from God and they merely following, by faith, a sign from God that seemed to be like everything else that was happening with Jesus in their lives. Jesus was making a difference in their lives and they wanted more. And, it seems, they wanted to understand.

The questions were not meant to trip him, they are asking for direction from Him. It seems that in sincerity they are saying, we are desperate, just like the people were in the Exodus, are you going to continue to feed us?

They had a need.

And Jesus does not tell them no. He doesn’t tell them that they are going to get physical food from Him, but that they are going to get a food that will fill them forever.

The Bread of Life is a Spiritual bread given to us by Jesus to feed our Spiritual bodies.

“The bread that comes down from heaven gives LIFE to the world” is the promise that Jesus gives them.

Jesus gives life to the world. He is speaking, I believe, of eternal life. He is speaking of a life that is saved. I am not talking merely about a life that is bound for heaven where there is no more pain and suffering, but a life that is saved right here and now.

The promise from God is that we have life and we have it more abundantly. So Jesus gives this promise to us that if we come to Him and believe we will never again be hungry or thirsty.

Physically, we get hungry and thirsty. But spiritually, through the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us, we are alive to the mission Christ has for us.

So, we begin this dialogue with the crowd. Jesus is unfolding a mystery to them that we will see will leave them dumbfounded and will challenge their beliefs to the very core. And to begin the dialogue, Jesus is reminding them that He is the source of true life.

Let us seek Jesus the Bread of Life.