You Are What You Eat – Pt. 2

Once again, we turn to the Gospel
of John, Chapter 6. The Gospel of John, Chapter 6.
Now, in the past few weeks, we have read this chapter in its
entirety, and we will not have an opportunity to read it in
its entirety today. I pray that you would continue
to look to this passage in its entire context, and particularly
to the verses that are exclusive to John here in chapter 6. Those verses, 22 through 71,
are indeed exclusive to John’s gospel. These follow on the heels
of the attempt of the crowd to make Jesus a Jewish king after
he had performed this mighty miracle, the feeding of the 5,000,
He noticed that his own disciples, the apostles themselves, their
faith was weak and flagging, and so Jesus set up, providentially,
a special miracle for them. He sent them on a boat, and he
sent a storm, and then he came in the midst of that storm, walking
on the sea. The very next day, John picks
up with these amazing, interactive sets of dialogue
with these Jewish crowds that followed him. We pick up this
morning, for the sake of time, in verse 22, and we’ll go all
the way down to verse 60 so that we can take it in its immediate
context. The next day, the crowd that
stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other
small boat there except one, and that Jesus had not entered
with His disciples into the boat, but that His disciples had gone
away alone. There came other small boats
from Tiberias near to the place where they ate 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
small boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they found
Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “‘Rabbi,
when did you get here?’ Jesus answered them and said, “‘Truly,
truly, I say to you, “‘you seek me not because you saw signs,
“‘but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. “‘Do
not work for the food which perishes, “‘but for the food which endures
to eternal life, “‘which the Son of Man will give to you,
“‘for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.'” Therefore
they said to Him, What shall we do, so that we may do the
works of God? Jesus answered and said to them,
This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has
sent. So they said to Him, What then
do you do for a sign, so that we may see and believe you? What
work do you perform? Our fathers ate manna in the
wilderness. As it is written, He gave them
bread out of heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, Truly,
truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread
out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread
out of heaven. For the bread of God is that
which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.
Then they said to Him, Lord, always give us this bread. Jesus
said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will
not hunger, And he who believes in me will 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 certainly not 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 Him who sent
me, that of all that He has given me I lose nothing. but I raise
it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father,
that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will
have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last
day.” Therefore the Jews were grumbling about him, because
he said, I am the bread of life that came down out of heaven.
They were saying, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose
father and mother we know? How does He now say, ìI have
come down out of heaven?î Jesus answered and said to them, ìDo
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,
ìAnd they shall all be taught of God.î Everyone who has heard
and learned from the Father comes to Me. Not that anyone who has
seen the Father, except the one who is from God, he has seen
the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he
who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your
fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread
which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and
not die. I am the living bread that came
down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
he will live forever. And the bread also which I will
give for the life of the world is my flesh.” Then the Jews began
to argue with one another, saying, How can this man give us his
flesh to eat? So Jesus said to 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 yourselves. He who
eats 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. He who eats 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 he who eats me will
also live because of me, This is the bread which came down
out of heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live
forever. These things he said in the synagogue
as he taught in Capernaum. Therefore, many of his disciples,
when they heard this, said, this is a difficult statement. Who
can listen to it? of his great discourse on bread. And we began to look at it last
week with the intriguing title designed to kind of cultivate
interest and draw you in, the title, You Are What You Eat.
And we began to look last week at the bread of earth, real bread,
natural bread, whether it’s whole wheat or whole grain Whatever
the case may be, it is earthly bread, real bread. That is what
this crowd was desiring. They had seen Jesus feed an entire
crowd with just a few loaves. Miraculously, these loaves were
multiplied, and so was the interest of the crowd. The crowd was greatly
desirous of more bread. They had seen a miracle. What
they wanted was more miracle. They wanted more food. As we
began to see last week, their life, their living, their focus
was earthly. It was base. We began to consider,
last Lord’s Day, this first kind of bread. The point that I really made
there was that we need to examine the bread that we’re eating.
We need to consider carefully what bread Jesus is discussing
here, and we need to examine it carefully because in the case
of these wanton Jewish people following around on Christ’s
heels, all they really wanted was breakfast. They wanted their
next meal. We saw that base living in verses
22 through 25 They came to Christ, they were fascinated with Him,
they were taken in with this miracle that had occurred the
previous day, and they come to Christ really with no other desire
than for more bread. John points it out that they
came to the very place where they had eaten the bread. They
follow Christ. That’s their desire. That’s the
evidence there of their base living, Dogging Christ’s steps,
not for eternal life, not for forgiveness of sin, not for righteousness
sake, but for a meal. Jesus rebukes that base living
in verse 26 by saying, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek
me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves
and were filled. There’s the proof. Jesus knows
their hearts. He knows exactly why they’re
following Him. He knows exactly what they want of Him. And he
offers them this merciful correction. Look at verse 27. Do not work
for the food which perishes. He wasn’t saying set aside all
earthly labor and merely hope for me to provide what you need
on a daily basis. He wasn’t saying that at all.
What he was saying was don’t let that just be your focus.
Don’t let that be your only focus. Don’t even let earthly bread
be your primary focus. Do not work for the food which
perishes, but work for the food which endures to eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give to you. For on Him the Father
God has set His seal. Jesus mercifully pleads with
them to turn their focus from this base earthly existence to
a spiritual yearning, to an awareness of their own sinful condition.
And so Jesus says the first kind of bread that they must consider
is the bread of earth, real bread. But there’s another kind of bread. And that’s the kind of bread
that we’ll focus on this morning. It’s what Jesus calls, what the
crowd calls, the bread of heaven. It’s a different kind of bread
entirely with a different set of pitfalls. The pitfall is religious living. And this is what Jesus wants
to address as he addresses the bread of heaven. Many people
get caught up in this and they really believe that they’re following
Christianity and all they’re really doing is chasing after
the bread of heaven. All they’re really doing is doing
what they believe God wants them to do so that God will continue
to give them their daily bread. It’s a religious pursuit. The
first evidence that we see of this religious living is in verse
28. Glance down if you would. Where
Jesus begins to correct them in verse 27, it really draws
them in. Do not work for the food which
perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life. And
they seize upon that very statement. do not work for the food which
perishes, work for the food which endures. And they say to him,
in verse 28, therefore they said to him, what shall we do that
we may work the works of God? And work, unfortunately, in some
translations, it kind of goes back and forth from labor to
work. It should be translated the same throughout in order
to maintain the continuity there. It’s translated as such, or it’s
used as such in verse 27, verse 28, verse 29, verse 30. And it’s
interesting to note that here in verse 28, they refer to works
plural. Tell us the things that we have
to do in order to do the works of God. What do we have to do? And what they point to is the religious
deeds. What are the things that we have
to do? set of rules that we have to obey? Is there more law, Jesus,
that you could give to us to clarify so that we know that
we are on the right path doing what God would have us to do? We want that bread. We need that
bread, that daily miraculous bread that God provides. What
do we have to do to secure that bread? When they mention the works of
God, there were some people that kind of went astray here. It isn’t that they wanted to
be able to work miracles like Christ had done or do miraculous
deeds as God had done. It isn’t referring at all to
the works that God works. What it points to is the works
that please God, the works that are agreeable to God, the works
that measure up to God’s standards. Maybe they even understood or
thought that Jesus was encouraging them along those lines. We want to be gracious here and
understand that when Jesus said, do not work for the food which
perishes, but work for the food which endures, maybe this was
a good thing on their part. Maybe it was a good response
that they said, okay, that’s great, we’ll work, just tell
us what to do. They knew that if they were going
to please God, if they really wanted this food, that asking what they must do
seems to many people like a natural question that would flow. What
should we do? What does God require of us? Those aren’t bad questions to
ask, but in the context, they’re totally off the mark. They knew that they wanted to
do something. They don’t know, and they’re
completely at a loss to know what exactly to do. Their only
idea is religion. Their only answer to the question is doing. The only hope for them is to
take up a religious approach and to begin to do in order to
earn. That is the religion of mankind. That is the pursuit of self-righteousness,
that I must do something. And honestly, that’s the question
that really has been the foundation of all religion throughout all
time. When you think of all of those
pilgrimages that many religions make, that if they don’t do these
certain set of things, including this lengthy trek, this asceticism,
asceticism being self-denial or even self-punishment that
somehow earns God’s favor, all the penance, all the rote prayers
that are given to us, that if we will only do these things
and pray these things, then God is put in debt, and He owes us
our salvation. It’s a system of rewards. It’s
a system of divine rewards, but we end up putting God in debt
by doing. That’s exactly what their mindset
was. As one said, they were asking
in terms of performing some meritorious deed. Merit, that’s what they
were after. That if we will only do, then
God owes us and He must, He must give. So they did this just to
merit some kind of divine approval, some obligation to give them
salvation. The Jews, as one said, had reduced
the Old Testament to a series of interpretations of performance. They would interpret the Old
Testament Scriptures down and boil it down to a performance
of specific deeds, which, if they did them, they were achieving
the righteousness that God required, and God was obligated then to
grant them eternal life. Well, as one pastor said, the
carnal mind is flattered when it consciously is doing something
for God. We sense that in and of ourselves. I count this as one of the happy
occasions of ministry, that time after time after time, we’ve
seen this, that on the Lord’s Day or some special occasion,
God has for us exactly the right passage for the moment. And here
it is, the Lord’s Table. If there is anything in the Protestant
Church that lends itself to religious thought, that if I partake of
this rightly, then God is obligated to respond. If there’s anything
that we do with God’s good gifts, it’s the Lord’s Table. We take
that and we do that with the Lord’s Table, as if the Lord’s
Table will save us, it will not. One of the things that I frequently
ask the young people when they aspire to baptism, I say, will
baptism make you more saved? No. It will make you more wet,
but it doesn’t save you. Likewise, with the Lord’s Table,
the Lord’s Table does not save. It’s one of the great confusions
with the latter part of this passage, is there are those that
want to explain away those difficult verses by saying, what Jesus
was doing here was preliminarily instituting the Lord’s table.
So let’s not get all upset about the eating his flesh and drinking
his blood. Well, there is nothing that partaking
in the Lord’s table will do for your salvation. It is a commemoration,
it is a celebration of what Christ has already done, and in what
Christ has already done in bringing us to faith, it is, as it were,
a divine stop sign to make us to pause and look at our lives
and examine and confess our sin. Back to the quote, the carnal
mind is flattered. When it consciously is doing
something for God, for his doing, man deems himself entitled to
a reward. He imagines that salvation is
due him because he has earned it. Man seeks to bring God into
the humbling position of debtor. That’s how we function. That
just is how we operate, isn’t it? And it’s frightening. It’s
frightening that even as Christians we can slip into that tendency
of attempting to put God in debt. Well, Jesus is dealing with it. He’s prepared to deal with this
religiosity. This is a different kind of bread.
This isn’t earthly bread anymore. This is the bread of heaven.
This is the bread of religious acts, doing things, even participating
in a God-given event. Jesus offers this correction
of religious living in verse 29. Jesus answered and said to
them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom
he has sent. And you have to note, whether
your translation captures it or not, here he doesn’t refer
to works in the plural, here he refers to work singular. Not religious deeds, plural,
that will ultimately compile to gain favor, but one work,
one thing most needed to enjoy eternal life, one work, one moral
act, it’s believing. There’s one thing that pleases
God, one thing. And it’s believing on His Son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, as the provision for sin. I love the way one pastor said
it, this work is really not a work at all. Instead of doing something
which will merit God’s verdict of righteousness, we are asked
simply to believe. Faith is not a work in the sense
that it implies effort that achieves some kind of earned result, but
man’s response to the work which God has performed through Christ. This is not new, it’s not exclusive
to John. when Paul was planting that church
in Philippi and came across no little trouble, was thrown into
prison. And in the course of being in
prison, events transpired that opened
the jail doors and had the prisoners escaped, the jailer would have
been obligated to commit suicide. And Paul says, don’t harm yourself. We’re here. The prison’s wide
open. The walls are knocked down. The
doors are wide open. We can leave if we want, but
don’t harm yourselves. We’re here. We don’t want you
to have to kill yourself. The jailer called for lights
and rushed in, trembling with fear. He fell down before Paul
and Silas. And after he brought them out,
he said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? You see how frequent
this is? This is the natural response
of the human heart when they come face to face with their
sin. What can I do? Their answer was no different
than John’s. It is recorded in John’s Gospel
here. They said, Believe in the Lord
Jesus and you will be saved. You and your household. religious-minded individuals,
this great crowd, ask what they can do, and Jesus says, believe,
have faith. They ask about work, work that
they can do for God. And Jesus replies essentially
that the work has already been done, But if there’s anything
left to do, it is faith. That’s the only condition, not
working for God, but placing one’s faith completely in the
Son that He sent. This will come repeatedly throughout
John’s Gospel. But if you step back and you
look at it, it really is not just a forecast, this lays the
groundwork. it is perfectly in line with
almost everything that Paul teaches on the subject. One called it, in small compass,
Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. Jesus is not going
to let these, this Jewish crowd, slip into a religious mode, this
idea of working themselves to heaven by a series of deeds,
He takes them back to the one doctrine, the one doctrine that
was the foundation of the Reformation. It’s justification by faith.
That if you want to be right with God, place your faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ, and His righteousness will be added to
you. We’ve seen this doctrine already.
Whoever believes in Him will have eternal life. John 3.15,
John 3.16 follows hard after, for God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him
shall not perish but have eternal life. We know that eternal life
is absolutely exclusive to those who have placed their faith in
Christ. It is elusive to those who have not. It is elusive to
the man who thinks that he can do a certain set of deeds to
earn favor with Almighty God. So graphic is John’s Gospel that
it tells us precisely this in John 3.36, he who believes in
the Son has already present eternal life. But he who does not obey
the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him,
and obedience there points to Christ’s command to obey. Paul
says it very succinctly in the book of Titus, He saved us, rather,
not on the basis of deeds, that’s religion, not on the basis of
deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by
the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
so that being justified by His grace, we would be made heirs
according to the hope of eternal life. We never would deserve
this. We never could score enough points
to measure up. If all of us decided to try to
live a life of righteousness good enough to save even one
man, we would fall woefully short. Jesus says, believe. Place your
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this belief, they do a little
bit of verbal gymnastics with it here in a moment, but it points
to a definite act. It points to a particular moment. But even that isn’t sufficient
to explain it. It starts there, but it’s a continual
kind of faith. It’s a faith that is placed in
Christ and then takes up residence, permanent residence, growing
into fullness from that point. It’s a faith in Christ, not just
at a crisis moment, but it’s a faith in Christ that is perpetual
and growing and burgeoning. It’s nothing short of what is
required. I want you to listen to this.
This is amazing. In the old, and I mean old, Webster
dictionary, Webster, a Christian man, is the one that first began
to compile this list of definitions for words. His definition, and
I want you to get this, because if you go home and you flip open
your modern day Webster’s, you’re not gonna see this definition.
His definition for faith, are you ready? Faith is that confiding
and affectionate belief in the person and work of Christ. Is that amazing? Faith is that confiding and affectionate
belief in the person and work of Christ which affects the character
and life and makes the man a true Christian. Now the editors have done a fine
job of erasing all semblance and resemblance of Christianity.
That’s the faith that Jesus was pointing to, faith in Himself,
faith in Christ alone for salvation. Not faith in faith, whatever
that is, not faith in His words to take Him as a trustworthy
person that faith in the finished work of what Christ accomplished
on the cross. That’s all the work that anyone
ever needs do. One pastor said this so succinctly,
of course, every well-instructed Bible reader will remember that,
strictly speaking, believing is far from being a work. It
is the opposite of working. Jesus accommodates his manner
of speaking to the ignorant minds with which he had to deal. Do
you hear what he says? It’s as if Jesus says, look,
you want to work? Do this, believe. Well, that’s
not work. Yes, I know that. Place your
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You want to do something? You
want to work? You want to labor? Place your
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was an explanation to these
people who were so steeped in their religiousness. So steeped
in this system of works that if I only do a certain set of
things, God must respond. Well, it was too clear to be
misunderstood. They had just come from this
amazing miracle. They wanted to do something to
secure God’s favor. And Jesus says, if you want God’s
favor, place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, their
stubbornness knows no bounds. There is a stubbornness to religious
living, isn’t there? You talk to your friend, and
they can have lived a life of absolute frustration. They know
that they haven’t lived a good day, they haven’t lived a good
hour. They know that if they were to
stand before God, a holy God, based on their standard of living,
there is absolutely no way, unless God grades on a very serious
curve, there’s no way they’re getting into heaven. And yet
you approach the average man, you tell him about Christ, you
talk to him about faith in Christ, You ask Him if He thinks He’s
going to heaven, and He’ll tell you every time, I’ve been a good
person, right? Stubborn religiosity. Stubborn that they were steeped
in all of this. And we see that stubbornness
in verse 30. Jesus had just given them the
only hope for sinners. Believe. Believe in Him whom
He has sent. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Place your whole heart and effort
there. Their response was out of this
stubborn religiosity. Look at verse 30. So they said
to Him, what do you do for a sign so that we may see and believe?
We want to have some proof. We want some concrete evidence
because we really want to be on your team What work do you
perform? See, and now their unbelief even
becomes manifest in their own lives. Jesus knew their hearts,
but now it starts to bubble to the surface, doesn’t it? One pastor said, nothing so thoroughly
reveals the hearts of men as a summons to believe on Christ. You call people to place their
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and they’ll give you every kind
of manner of excuse known to mankind. Either they already
have, or they believe in something different, or they think that
faith means something different than it does. Jesus calls for this deep and
abiding, this confidence in his person. but note what they do
with it. Jesus asked them to place their
faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, and they simply turn it and twist
it and manipulate the words to their own end out of their religious
stubbornness. What do you do for a sign so
that we may see and believe you? So that we may count you trustworthy.
We really would like to consider you to be trustworthy. Jesus. That’s religiousness. That’s
that stubborn religiousness that wants to play word games with
faith, what it is. They see that Jesus had just
called them to place their faith in Him whom God had sent. Jesus
Christ was standing before them, declaring himself to be the Messiah,
and now they require further proof? Here are these people who not
only saw this miracle of the feeding of 5,000, but many of
whom probably actually ate that fish and that bread and were
full, and saw the fragments collected to make 12 full baskets, And
now, not even a day later, they’re asking Him for proof? That’s
religion, isn’t it? Religion is never satisfied.
God is never finished. God is never complete in His
task of drawing sinners to Himself. It’s religiousness. It’s a pursuit.
It’s a game, really. Whatever we’ve accomplished on
one particular day, we wake up and we set out an entirely new
course to pursue God all over again. It must be one every day. The Pharisees were constantly
throwing these kinds of roadblocks before Christ, demanding new
signs, ever new signs. In our day and age, it’s no different.
You talk to the average unbeliever, they’ll want proof. No matter
what you tell them or show them or proclaim to them, your own
salvation and the testimony of your own life is always the strongest
proof. No matter what you present to
them, they’re going to want more. That’s religiosity. That’s the Pharisees. That’s
these so-called Jewish people who were interested
in Christ. They were going through the motions
that if they only had enough evidence, if they only had a
little bit more, just give us a little bit more and we’ll believe
Jesus. A miracle thing the other day, that bread and fish thing,
we need a little bit more than that and they’re going to demand
something very particular. As one pastor said, thousands
in every age do just the same. They live on, waiting for something
to convince them. Isn’t that true? Isn’t that true
of those who you know who do not place their faith in Christ? They’re constantly holding out
for more evidence. So they make their demand. They
said to him, what do you do for a sign so that we may see and
believe you? What work do you perform? They’re
kind of being a little coy, a little creative here. What are you going
to do, Jesus? And then they cast their hook
to the depths. In verse 31, Our fathers ate
manna in the wilderness. Now top that, that’s essentially
what they’re saying. Jesus, we saw this loaves and
fishes thing that you did. Moses did this for 40 years. Our fathers ate manna in the
wilderness as it is written. He gave them bread out of heaven
to eat. If God’s people would, for the
sake of time, we’ll turn there quickly to Exodus chapter 16. We can’t really take this without
considering the passage. In Exodus chapter 16, beginning
in verse 1, they set out from Elam. And all the congregation
of the people of Israel came out to the wilderness of Sin,
which is between Elam and Sinai. On the fifteenth day, on the
second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt, things
are about to get bad. The whole congregation of the
people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness,
and the people of Israel said to them, What do we have died
by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by
the meat pots and ate bread to the full? For you have brought
us out to this wilderness to kill us, this whole assembly,
with hunger. Here is Moses leading the people
of Israel by God’s own appointment, and all they want to do is grumble
about the lack of provisions. Verse 4, Then the Lord said to
Moses, Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you,
and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every
day, that I may test them. They are going to fail miserably,
whether they will walk in my laws or not on the sixth day.
When they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much
as they gather daily. That was in order to honor the
Sabbath. So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel,
at evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see
the glory of the Lord, because He has heard your grumbling against
the Lord. For what are we that you grumble
against us? We’re just servants. We’re just
His appointed guides through the wilderness. Moses said, When
the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat, and the morning
bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling,
that you grumble against Him, what are we? Your grumbling is
not against us, but is against the Lord. This was designed out
of kindness to bring them to repentance. Verse 9, Then Moses
and Aaron said, Say to the whole congregation of the people of
Israel, Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.
And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the
people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness. Behold,
the glory of the Lord appeared in a cloud. The Lord said to
Moses, I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say
to them, At twilight you shall eat meat, And in the morning
you should be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am
the Lord your God. In the evening Quoio came up
and covered the camp. And in the morning dew lay around
the camp. And when the dew had gone up,
there was on the face of the wilderness a fine flake-like
thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw
it, they said to one another, what is it? But they did not
know what it was. And Moses said to them, It is
the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the
Lord has commanded. Gather of it, each one of you,
as much as he can eat. You shall take an omer according
to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent. The people of Israel did so. They gathered some more, some
less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered
much had nothing left over, whoever gathered little had no lack.
Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said
to them, Let no one leave any of it until the morning. But
they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it until the
morning, and it bred worms and stank, and Moses was angry with
them. Morning by morning they gathered
it, each as much as he could eat, but when the sun grew hot,
it melted. And here was this daily provision,
that in the middle of the second month, after they departed from
Egypt, God gave them this stuff, and they didn’t even know what
to call it. The word manna comes from essentially their reply,
man who, what is it? What is this stuff? Even that
showed their hearts hard to complain. Nehemiah records that God acknowledges
this miracle. Israel regarded this miracle
bread from heaven. Psalm 78, which verse they probably
quote when they reply to Jesus, Psalm 78, 24 says, He rained
down manna upon them to eat and gave them food from heaven. Man
did eat the bread of angels. He sent them food in abundance.
So this manna came. And it came for 40 years. It
came until Joshua’s day. This was regarded by Jews as
to be without a doubt, the greatest of all the miracles that Moses
performed. They attributed it to Moses.
They gave him credit. They glorified Moses in it. One former rabbi said that the
former Redeemer caused manna to descend for them. We’re talking
about Moses. In like manner, our latter Redeemer
shall cause manna to come down as it is written, Psalm 72, 16. They were completely off base
on this bread of heaven. This religious bread. This was
caused to celebrate. Remember, they took a portion
of it and set it aside as a remembrance. This was a miracle of God. God
did it for a purpose. They even abused the very miracle
of God. So it draws Jesus’ reply in verse
32. Back to John’s Gospel, if you
would. A merciful call. A merciful call. from religious
livings. Religious living would have been
setting up some kind of an approach, some kind of an arrangement with
God. This is what they were seeking
Jesus to be, was a mediator, set up this deal with God again
with this manna so that if we will only do what God would have
us to do, then daily He will rain down this manna. That’s
what we’d like, Jesus, for as long as we live. And Jesus takes their religious
stubbornness and he turns it instead into a merciful call
from it. Look at verse 32. Jesus then
said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has
given you the bread out of heaven, but my Father who gives you the
true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that
which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.
Jesus begins by pointing out a number of things that they
had completely wrong about this bread. First of all, it wasn’t
Moses who was the giver of this bread. That was a great error. That was blasphemy. And he says,
it wasn’t Moses that gave you this bread. Remember, Moses didn’t
even ask for it. God gave that to them of his
own mercy, by his own design. It wasn’t Moses who gave the
bread. Further, in a sense, it was bread out
of heaven. You know what this bread was? It was bread from the sky. Jesus
is pointing to another kind of bread, a third kind of bread,
altogether different that really did come from heaven. This bread
was heavenly bread. This bread was of the heavens
of sort. It was from the sky. It fell
from the sky. It dripped as the dew did every
morning. But it wasn’t the bread of heaven. There’s another great difference.
to this particular bread. Not only was it not Moses, it
was God who sent the bread. Not only was it not really heavenly
bread, it was out of the atmosphere, if you will. But the third difference
touches even you and I. This bread that came down gave
life Not like bread does. And you
know, Jesus will make this point later on, that this bread that
they had, this mammoth that fell, and they gathered up, and sometimes
they would grind it, and sometimes they would boil it, prepared
all different kinds of ways. It had to be gathered again the
next morning, prepared all over again. It was daily bread. in a very real way, and it was
God-given. God-given, daily bread. In other words, it was food for
a moment. It was sustenance. But Jesus says there’s another
kind of bread. There’s real bread. There is religious bread, this
manna, this God-given bread that fell from the skies. But there’s
another kind of bread that gives a different kind of life. life
to the world. It gives eternal life. The Jews
had enjoyed this bread. The Jews had enjoyed the bread
that Jesus broke and multiplied among the masses. Among the 5,000,
He gave them this bread, real bread. The Jews in the wilderness
ate this bread for 40 years. Bread that was gathered every
morning on six days. And then they would hunger again.
that Jesus says there’s another kind of bread, still another,
that gives bread not just to the Jews, not just to the Jews
gathered on the shore of the lake, not just to the Jews wandering
in the wilderness by supernatural means, but there’s another kind
of bread that God gives. And it’s a bread that is designed
to give life to all. As one pastor said, the manna
supplied the hunger of 12 tribes of Israel, approximately 600,000
men and their families, and that only daily for physical sustenance. Jesus says there’s another kind
of bread. It’s a bread for the whole world,
and it was provided for eternal life for every member of God’s
creation. whoever would eat of it, whether
they be Jew or Gentile. You are what you eat. You take
in natural bread, it’s good for a day, a moment. You take in
spiritual, God-given bread, manna, which isn’t available to you,
by the way, in any store. It’s good for a moment. It’s
good for a day. that Jesus says there’s another
kind of bread. He’s pointing ultimately to himself.
But if you partake of that bread, it is bread for eternal life. Let’s rejoice before him as we
prepare to celebrate the Lord’s table. Our merciful God, with
what great disdain you faced that religiosity, that system
of works, that mindset of effort and doing in order to put God
in some kind of an obligation. Lord God, how graciously you
dealt with that religiosity, that desire to do, always do,
and never satisfying. Lord God, we thank you that you
have already We won’t feast on it out of this passage until
next Lord’s Day, but we know what Christ is pointing to. He’s
pointing to Himself as the bread of life. He’s pointing to Himself
in His fullness and what He accomplished on the cross, and He was mercifully
pleading, as He does even to us, to leave off single-mindedness, a single-minded
focus on earthly bread, and even on religiosity, and to look to
the Lord Jesus Christ alone for a spiritual kind of bread, a
bread that feeds for eternity. Lord God, grant us wisdom as
we approach this table. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray. Just before coming to the table,
if you would take your bulletins and let’s stand together and
sing the first three verses of the Communion Hymn. Behold the Lamb that bears our
sins away, slain for us. And we remember the promise made
to all who come in faith, find forgiveness at the cross. So we share in this bread of
life, and we dream of His sacrifice as a sign of our bonds of peace
around the table of the King. The body of our Savior Jesus
Christ, torn for you.