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.
No comments:
Post a Comment