The Bread of Life -1 | John 6:1-59

INTRODUCTION

Today we’re going to go back to the gospel of John. John 6 is one of the most familiar stories in all the Bible, what is called the feeding of the 5000. I want to draw your attention from the feeding of the 5000 down to the narrative of Jesus as where talks, “I Am the Bread of Life.”

This is one of the first stories children hear in Sunday School. Everybody knows this story, people who have been in the church and out of the church and it goes like this:

Jesus had been on the other side of the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee and was surrounded by a huge multitude of people. It was time for the Passover and the crowd that was going to Jerusalem, sensing Jesus was by the sea crowded him. There’s a kind of tsunami of people sweeping across Galilee to see Jesus. Do you know why they were there? 

John 6:2

 and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. What drew them? It was the healing. Look, everybody wants healing. That’s the most marketable, religious commodity.

Jesus is moved by human need. Jesus’ heart is touched by the suffering of people.

Matthew 14:14

 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed the sick. Dear friend if you are suffering today in whatever way, physical problems, pressures of life, perhaps on the job, perhaps financial pressures, family problems, pressures at job, children etc; I want you to know that our God’s heart is touched by that. He is aware of that. Jesus has an answer for all your problems today.

By now 5000 men (App. 25000 people) had gathered. It was late evening and there was no food. People were hungry, some of them were becoming faint from lack of food. Jesus had compassion on them. Jesus took 5 barley loves and 2 small fishes and blessed them, and gave them to the multitude and fed the crowd.

They day had come to an end and Jesus instructed his disciples to get into the boat and go back into the other side to Capernaum. During the night a terrible storm came upon the sea and his disciples were trouble. They were in danger of their lives and then Jesus came to them and he rescued them and they went to the other side of Capernaum.

What I understand from this chapter is that whatever the human need, Jesus is there. You have a problem with your health he is there to heal you. You have a problem with the basic necessity of food. He is there to provide for you. Do you have a storm in your life, he walks through the storm comes to you and travels with you to the shore. That is who this Jesus is. He just loves you and cares for you much more than you can imagine.

The next day morning, the crowd that Jesus left on the other side of Galilee made their way back around the shoreline and found Jesus at the synagogue. So they ask him, “Why did you go away from us?”

John 6:26

 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous sings but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

By now the crowd was not even focused on miracles, they were just down to the basics, they wanted food. They wanted to have their stomachs full. So they had come looking for Jesus for a very basic physical drive in the human body, their rumbling stomachs. They said to Jesus, “Moses gave bread from heaven to our fathers in the wilderness.”

Most of the time believers are seeking God for the temporal and day-to-day affair of life. These are the things that God will take care if we are in him. We must be more bothered about the eternal things that Christ has to offer us.

1 Corinthians 15:19

 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Do not just always be concerned about the temporal, about what you will eat, where you will stay, about your stress and problem. Well Jesus takes care of it and you need to bring it to him but that should not be the very essence of your faith or life in Christ. Jesus took this crowd at their need and gave them a great sermon telling them, “I heal the sick, cast out demons, give you bread to eat but I am the true bread from heaven and I have a great significance for my coming into this world.”

The sermon is in John 6:32-59. The gist of the sermon is: 

John 6:35

 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

The most compelling statement around which this sermon is built is the repeated statement, “I am the Bread of life.” This is the first of the 7 “I AMs” in the Gospel of John, in which our Lord takes name of YHWH, The I AM that I AM, and applies it to Himself and adds a metaphor. “I am the Bread of life. I am the Good Shepherd. I am the Vine. I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life. I am the Resurrection and the Life.” All of those I AMs are efforts on the part of our Lord to make clear that He is same as God.

Now, Jesus is talking to the people who have come to him for physical food that you need to be hungering more for the spiritual food. Jesus is using bread as a metonym for food. Jesus is staying, “I am your food. I am your true soul food.”

Now, Jesus is preaching deep on who He is and the purpose of His coming into this world.

1. Jesus was preexistent God. John 6:32

Even before he was born he existed as God. The bread of God (Jesus) was preexistent before his birth. Look at the phrase, “bread that comes down from heaven” in this passage:

John 6:32

 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.

John 6:33

 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

John 6:38

 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.

Now, he switches from the metaphor, the bread has come down, and applies it to Himself and says, “I have come down.”

John 6:41

I am the bread that came down from heaven.

John 6:50

 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven.

John 6:51

 I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

John 6:58

 This is the bread that came down from heaven.

Every time we hear in the gospel that Jesus is the bread come down from heaven, we are hearing a statement of a preexistent person. Over and over and over Jesus speaks of His preexistence. John began his Gospel:

John 1:1

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word meaning Christ. Therefore, Christ was there preexistent with God, coexistent with God, self-existent with God eternally. You cannot ever reduce Jesus to a created being. Yes, His body was prepared by God for Him, but as a person He is the eternal Son of God. He existed everlastingly in the presence of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

This is the claim that Jesus makes repeatedly:

John 8:42

 Jesus said to them, “I came from God and now I am here.”

In night of the upper room discourse with his disciples we find the declaration:

John 13:3

 Jesus had come from God and was returning to God.

John 16:28

 I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.

John 17:5

 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

The first thing then to understand about the divine provision of the bread is that the bread was preexistent. The bread was eternal. Jesus is not a created being who came into existence like you and I do at the point of conception. He always existed as God the Son.

2. The bread is sent by the Father.  John 6:32

Jesus came because the Father purposed for Him to come. Jesus came on a mission to save the world sent by God the Father.

John 6:32

It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.

John 6:33

 For the bread of God (It is there called the bread of God. It is God who sends the bread.) is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. So you have here the Father sending the Son as the bread of life.

John 8:42

 Jesus said to them, “I came from God and now I am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent Me.”

In John 3, Jesus makes a statement in conversation with Nicodemus. John 3:13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven-the Son of Man. There is only one person who has come from heaven and gone into heaven that is Jesus Christ.

I think of that verse every time I see a book about somebody who went to heaven and came back. No one has done that. No one has ascended into heaven and come back to teach us. Paul, was caught up into the third heaven. He came back. He didn’t tell us anything. He said, “I can’t even speak of the things that were there.” The saints that came out of the grave at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we don’t know who they were. We don’t know where they went. They certainly did not deliver any messages from heaven. Those exceptions prove the rule. Nobody goes into heaven and comes back to instruct us.

John 6:46

 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 

I want to tell the ones who are professing about going to heaven, “You did not go to heaven and you did not see God, and you do not have a message for us.” That is exclusively the right of the Son of God, the preexistent one. Don’t believe lies about people going and coming from heaven. Don’t buy those silly books and waste your time. No one, not even the most holy saint has gone up to heaven to bring the Word of God down to us. The only One who has come from heaven is the One who descended from heaven, namely the Son of Man.

Now Jesus is the preexistent Son of God, bread form heaven and the Father proposed to send him to this world. Father God sent Jesus with a mission.

3. The purpose of the bread.

There is a divine purpose. Jesus Christ has been commissioned to do something by God the Father. What is the purpose of this bread from heaven?

John 6:37

 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.

John 6:39

 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

John 6:40

 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

John 6:44

 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.

Now, are you starting to see the plan? God purposes to send the Son, and then God purposes to draw people to the Son. The Son came, taught, lived and died. Son receives the people who believe in Him, keeps the people, raises the people from the dead to fulfill the Father’s plan.

John 10:29

 My Father who has given them to Me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. Are you starting to see the picture? The Father sends the son, the son preaches, the Son receives, the Son keeps, the Son raises, and no one can snatch whoever is in the Father’s will and the Son’s hands out of his hands. This is crystal clear.

4. What does this bread do for us? John 6:33

Well, what does Christ do for us?

John 6:33

 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Gives what? The bread gives life to the world. This is not only biological life, this is also spiritual life. That’s why He came. The promise connected to the bread is spiritual life. And He is the only bread of God, the only source of life for the whole world.

John 6:35

 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.

John 6:40

 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life. Now life is expanded with a descriptive, “ eternal life.”

John 6:47

 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.

John 6:50

 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.

John 6:51

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

John 6:53

 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.

John 6:54

 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.

Life, life, life, life. Eternal life.

John 6:58

 …whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

How do we get eternal life into these mortal bodies? Because we come into real union with Christ.

Galatians 2:20

 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

We are one in Christ. And so His eternal life is in us, granting us eternal life. Do you know that if you are truly a child of God and you belong to God through faith in Christ that the eternal life which you possess is the eternal life of Christ in you? And as we read in

John 10:29

 No one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. That’s the security of every believer.

So, divine promise. What’s the promise? Life. What kind of life? Eternal life. What is the source of that eternal life?

So the bread of life is heavenly bread. The Lord Jesus Christ comes from divine eternal preexistence into time and into space to fulfill the divine purpose of the Father, which is to provide salvation for His chosen people. That salvation is dependent on a union with Christ that is a true spiritual reality and is why we live forever. And it culminates in a resurrection. Several times Jesus says, “I’ll raise him at the last day.” It is a union that will not only be a union in spirit, but it will be a union in spiritual body. Philippians 3, “We will have a body like unto His glorious body. We will reflect His glory. We will be made like Christ when we see Him as He is,” right? This is what it means to be a Christian.  It’s not following the teachings of a man. It’s having His life in us. This is the work of God. This doesn’t happen unless you’re taught of God, as verse 45 says. This does not happen unless God the Father draws you.

CONCLUSION

I will continue this message God willing next week where I come to the application of the bread into our life. But I want to conclude by saying this as we seek God for our temporal things like hunger, job, finances, and healing. Let our soul hunger for the spiritual bread that Jesus has to offer.

How do we get that?

John 6:53-56

⁵³Jesus 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. ⁵⁴Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.⁵⁵For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.