Jesus said ‘I am the bread of life’. Yet there are two types of bread that feature in John chapter 6. Jesus defines them quite clearly in v 27. There is ordinary physical bread. The bread we need to feed us. That is God given bread. It is the bread we pray for when we say the Lord’s prayer, asking God to give us this day our daily bread. It is the sort of bread Jesus had produced when he fed the 5000. It is a basic that everyone needs. But Jesus says to the crowds, ‘Do not look for the food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life’.

Although Jesus, the divine son of the creator God could and did provide bread for people to eat, although it was a legitimate expression of God’s love and generosity, yet Jesus knew how prone human beings are to be so tied up with material things, that they can be spiritually malnourished. Jesus knew that God had decreed that man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.

Jesus had come primarily to impart spiritual bread to impart the basics of eternal life. So he says to the crowd, ‘Look for the food that endures to eternal life’. Where as people were ready and eager to accept all they could get in the way of practical physical benefits from Jesus, they wanted food, they wanted miracles of healing; but people were far less eager, and they found it far less easy to accept this other type bread, the bread of life, which was what Jesus had come to give.

We live in a world today where people are still very willing to expend their energies to obtain their practical needs, many are even willing to pray for God to provide them with the things that they want, but as in Jesus day, people are often far less concerned with eternal things. Five Thousand people want to make Jesus King when he gives them bread to eat. But when he offers them the bread of life the crowds disappear, his supporters fall away. Why is this? We’ll look at the passage and see what lessons are there for us.

First lesson is that Jesus agenda is very different from the world’s agenda. All societies have their hopes and aspirations. The people of Galilee, part of God’s chosen race were a people under Roman rule. The oppression of this occupation felt to them as intolerable as it had been for their ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt. But God had delivered them from their slavery. He had sent Moses, who had performed miracles and had led them to freedom. In fact it was now Passover time John tells us, a feast instituted by Moses when God’s people celebrated their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Moses, before he had died had promised them that one-day God would send them another prophet like himself. When Jesus performs the sign of the loaves and fishes, they decide that he must be the promised prophet. God has sent them a deliverer, and they want to make him king.

But Jesus will have none of it. He departs. However justified their cause was, Jesus had not come to be the victor in another war. He knew that ultimately wars do not solve mankind’s problems. Ultimately the only answer to the plight of human beings is to be found in a relationship with the living God. He had come to offer such a relationship.
He had come to inaugurate a new community, a community that would transcend all international borders and all barriers of race. People were far less willing to accept that from him. They would rather have had a king to drive out the Romans, but Jesus came to proclaim a different sort of kingdom, a kingdom that was not of this world. It is interesting to note that in this gospel, John avoids using the term Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven. Instead of talking about Jesus’ work in these terms he talks about eternal life. This means exactly the same as Kingdom of Heaven in Matthews Gospel or Kingdom of God in Luke. But maybe John uses the term he does to avoid any suggestion that Jesus was just another revolutionary of political leader. Jesus was none of these; he was the unique, divine son of the living God who had stepped onto the world’s stage.

We have groups with their particular agendas today. There are Friends of the Earth, animal rights groups, political parties in Britain and other countries. In many countries there are revolutionary parties, often engaged in armed struggle. Often they would like to take Christianity and use it for their own ends, and often they try. But Jesus will not be used in that way. The church must always remember that its priority, its primary purpose is not supplying bread for people’s stomachs, but the bread for people’s souls.

It is often the case that this is a less popular enterprise. It can be fraught with difficulties. People don’t find it easy to understand or accept what Christ has to offer. It was so here in John’s Gospel. Let’s look at how Jesus talks about the living bread that he offers to mankind, and at the objections that people put forward.

The first thing we learn about the living bread is that you cannot earn it. The crowd are interested when Jesus talks about their need to relate to God. They ask ‘What must we do to do the work God requires?’ Jesus reply is that it is not work that God wants, he wants people to simply believe in the one he has sent. Living bread is not given as a payment for human effort. It is given as a gift to a receptive, believing heart. But what is believing? Lets get one thing straight about faith and about believing. Faith is not believing what you know is not really true. That is only make-believe. Faith is to believe what you have discovered is true. To receive the living bread people have to discover the truth about Jesus, who he is and where he has come from.

The second thing we learn is that you cannot dictate to Jesus what proofs you want to see from him. The people ask Jesus to prove who he is by giving them more bread. Their minds are also still on Moses, they still want someone to deliver them from the Romans. They remind Jesus that Moses gave them bread every day (bar the Sabbath), they want Jesus to do another miracle, give them some more bread, then they will believe he is a prophet like Moses. Jesus points them away from Moses, to Moses’ God, to the one who really provided the manna in the wilderness. It is the God of Moses who provides the living bread, which they really need. It is God who provides the evidence that he deems appropriate, it’s not for us to attempt to dictate to him. God present his evidence in Jesus, his divine son who walked the earth and lived among us.

The third thing we learn is that the living bread is Jesus himself. ‘I am the bread of life.’ It is Jesus alone who can satisfy spiritual hunger. Jesus is the one who can satisfy the longings that men and women have for eternity, Jesus alone can open the way between heaven and earth that has been closed to mankind by the terrible barrier of death. Jesus can do it because God can access that barrier, Jesus has come down from heaven, and Jesus alone can give access to heaven, Jesus can give eternal life. Now some people who met Jesus still do not believe this. They know something of Jesus background. They come from Galilee, and Nazareth is in Galilee. They know his mother Mary, and they think that his father is Joseph who they also know.

While perhaps they could accept that Jesus was a prophet like Moses, he is claiming to be more than that. Jesus is claiming to have come down from heaven. They can’t believe that. And there are many like that today who won’t believe in the virgin birth. But Jesus claims to be the living bread that has come down from heaven. We have an advantage over those folk who knew Jesus family that they did not have at the time. We have both the account of his unique birth, and we have the evidence of the resurrection; the proof that Jesus has the power to pass through the barrier of death. Jesus is himself the living bread that has come down from heaven, and who raises men and women up to heaven.

The fourth thing we learn is that to believe, to come to Christ can only happen when God draws a person. This is a statement that reminds us that we have no right to choose how and when we believe. No one should assume that they can come to Christ as and when they choose; as if they were taking out membership in a club. The bible warns that people can leave it too late. They can find the door closed. Yet we mustn’t think of God as vengeful, it is God’s love for the world that sent Christ to seek and save the lost. ‘Whoever comes to me I will never drive away’ says Jesus. But we have to understand that God is the one who holds the key, not us. Verse 45 helps us to understand how God draws people to Jesus. ‘Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me’ Jesus tells us. There is the two stages, listening and learning. We have to listen to God’s word. But we also have to learn, we have to take it in. As we do that, we are drawn to Jesus.

The fifth thing we learn is that the living bread is Christ’s own flesh. Given for the life of the world. There are profound consequences involved when Christ breaks open the barrier of death that separates heaven from earth. Death was the penalty for mankind’s sin. When Adam sinned, death was the penalty for that sin. That was when death became the barrier between heaven and earth, between God and man. Jesus was the only one who could open a way between God and man; and to do that he had to pay the penalty for human sin. The living bread is Christ’s body given for us. John in his gospel doesn’t tell us of the last supper, but here he tells us of that profound truth, that Christ’s life was given for us, that only though his broken body, and only through his shed blood can we have eternal life.

This is not an easy chapter for us. Of those 5000 that ate the loaves, few are left as we come to the end of the chapter. They found the message unpalatable, it did not fit in with their aspirations and ideas. Even some of Jesus disciples left as a result of the things he had said. So Jesus turns to the 12. Read v 67-69

There is nowhere else to go, but to Jesus. Although many people still find his message unpalatable, yet millions have found life in him, and only in Jesus is there hope for the world.

Amen
 

Acknowledgement.

I lay no claim to originality in my sermons. They are an attempt to pass on the gospel message in a contemporary way and depend on the bible as well as others who have studied and written on the passages in question. In preaching from John’s Gospel, I acknowledge my debt to Roy Clements for his book Introducing Jesus and I have also used material from Readings in John’s Gospel by William Temple. PN Jan 04

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