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This is John chapter 6. Don't worry, we're not reading all 71 verses of this chapter.
Let's start in verse 25.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, Rabbi, when did you get here?
Jesus answered, Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed, 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.
For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.
Then they asked him, What must we do to do the works God requires?
Jesus answered, The work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent.
So they asked him, What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?
What will you do?
Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
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.
For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
Sir, they said, always give us this bread.
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.
But as I told you, you have seen me, and still you do not believe.
Verse 41.
At this the Jews there began to grumble about him, because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.
They said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?
How can he now say, I came down from heaven?
Stop grumbling among yourselves, Jesus answered.
Verse 46.
No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God.
Only he has seen the Father.
Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.
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.
Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?
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.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.
Verse 60.
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, This is a hard teaching.
Who can accept it?
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, Does this offend you?
Verse 66.
From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
You do not want to leave too, do you?
Jesus asked the twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.
I think many of us, when we come to this passage about the bread of life, we think it's pretty straightforward.
And it is.
Jesus is like bread.
We need him to live.
That's the Christian message.
We all know that if we've been in the church for a little bit even.
You're not wrong.
But what I hope to show you this morning is that there are levels to this.
All right?
And I wonder if the message we really need to hear this morning from Jesus is not simply, I am the bread of life.
But I wonder if it's a question he has to ask us.
And the question is, what are you truly hungry for?
And are you really willing to eat my flesh and drink my blood?
So what I want us to consider this morning, what are you really hungry for?
And are you really down to eat Jesus' flesh and to drink his blood?
So to walk through this text, I have five Ps, all right?
Five points.
Don't worry, kids.
Five Ps.
They're this, if you're taking notes.
The principle, the problem, the provision, the predicament, and the person.
So first, the principle.
And the principle is this.
We all need bread.
Hunger is real.
So to appreciate what Jesus means here when he's saying, I am the bread of life, let me give you some context.
If you look at the very beginning of our passage in verses 1 through 15, verse 4 says it's now the Jewish Passover.
And yet instead of flocking to Jerusalem, what do we find?
A bunch of people, a huge crowd, has gone out into the wilderness, into the mountainside, to a remote place to follow Jesus.
And it says they followed him because he was healing people, like left and right, demonstrating amazing signs of the power of God.
And then out here in the wilderness, not only does he heal, but he feeds like 5,000 men, probably more.
This is, you know, 5,000 households, probably, 10, 15, 20, 25,000 people out here.
And he feeds them by distributing somehow and multiplying five loaves and two fish.
We all know that story.
It's the most, it's one of the most famous stories of Jesus, right?
It's the one of the only, it's the only miracle that is in all four Gospels.
And, you know, Jesus' resurrection had, what, 500 witnesses?
But here we have 20, 25,000 witnesses, and we're still telling this story, right, about this Messiah who didn't just come to teach about how to save your soul,
but who healed and nourished people's bodies too.
So this is the context.
Jesus has just fed the 5,000 with bread in abundance because he made these people and he knows the principle.
He created and established this principle that we all need bread.
He knows that.
Our God knows that we all need bread.
From the very beginning of God's story, we were created to consume, not to be consumeristic, but still to consume for our nourishment and for our life.
God gave us trees and fruit, and he set us up to explore and enjoy his creation.
He designed our minds to creatively turn wheat into loaves, right?
And our nostrils to inhale the aroma of fresh baked bread.
Our tongues to taste the tartness of Andy Brown's wonderful sourdough goodness, right?
Our jaws to appreciate the spongy, chewy character of his sourdough bread that we enjoy here at this table.
See, from the beginning, we were created with natural hungers meant to be supernaturally satisfied by our maker and sustainer.
Eating was one of the many ways we were meant to relate with God, our creator.
So the problem was never hunger or our need for bread.
But here's the second P.
The problem is that we sought and trusted bread that spoils.
Even though we were made to hunger for food and made to enjoy daily bread from the hand of our maker and sustainer,
when in our eating we chose rebellion against God instead of relationship with God,
when we hungered after that which we were never meant to consume,
when we took our lives into our own hands and we took our lives out of God's,
that's when everything went wrong.
And our natural hunger became a nagging hunger.
However, the principle remained we all need bread and we all need to eat, we all need to live.
But what changed was that we put ourselves at odds with the divine supplier of our daily bread.
Creation was cursed with thorns and thistles.
Abundant supply devolved to abhorrent scarcity.
Satiation got exchanged for starvation.
And all of a sudden, bread required sweat and toil.
And even that bread, that wasn't the bread of life.
That was bread that merely delayed death.
And this wasn't just food insecurity, but in all of life insecurity that entered into our world,
into our minds, our psyches, human life stopped being about loving God and enjoying Him forever.
Stopped being about loving one another as ourselves.
And it became a futile competition.
Who can accumulate the most bread?
Who can delay death the longest?
And not just bread, but who can accumulate the most stuff?
Ever since the fall, we've lived by the myth of more.
If I just had more, then I could live longer, better, stronger.
But no matter how much we've accumulated, it's never been enough.
Every few years, you know, I have to quote Rockefeller.
He was, you know, the wealthiest man in modern history.
Who, when he was asked, how much money is enough?
What did he say?
Just a little bit more.
See, we are insatiable.
We always need more.
More money, more time, more control, more security, more approval, more accomplishment.
Take a survey of your own life.
What is the bread you are chasing right now?
What is the more that you're seeking that you believe will save you from the scarcity that most frightens you?
Or maybe I could ask it this way.
What are you most anxious about?
See, our anxieties reveal the bread we seek.
Follow your worry, and it will almost always show you what your functional God, what your functional Savior is.
Losing or never having wealth, family, career, significant others, reputation.
What is the more that we all seek?
And ask yourselves, if you did get it, would it satisfy?
That the myth of more is the devil's lie that having more will somehow save us, liberate us, unlock our everlasting joy.
And this is the world, this is the lie that Jesus came to speak truth into.
All the tens of thousands that he fed here on this mountainside, they believed this lie that more bread, more fish, more healing would save them.
And they wanted a Messiah who would give them more of the things that they thought would bring them life.
Verse 15 says they even attempted to force him into being their king.
Isn't that such a contradiction, though?
What kind of authority would a forced king even have?
Really, what they wanted was a genie, not an actual king.
Jesus, in their eyes, was only a means to an end, a means to the bread they thought that they needed.
And Jesus calls them out on this in verse 26.
He says,
Provision.
The provision is Jesus himself.
Jesus is the bread of heaven.
He says, I am the bread of life, right?
Verse 27.
Unless we read verse 27 with like Jesus, with an angry, frustrated, condescending face, let's try to read him with a compassionate, even like a pleading tone.
Verse 27.
Do not work for food that spoils.
But for food that endures.
But for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.
For on him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval.
He's saying, guys, it's free.
I can give you better bread, better than FDA approved.
It's straight from heaven, approved by God himself.
And it's free.
But when Jesus says, do not work for food that spoils.
Look, all they hear are the words work and food.
Verse 28.
What must we do to do the works God requires?
That's their whole paradigm.
And it's ours too most of the time, isn't it?
No work, no food.
No sweat, no bread.
No struggle, no supper.
Food, sustenance, life itself, they must be earned, right?
They must be earned rather than graciously received.
But see, Jesus, he came to turn that notion completely upside down.
Verse 29.
No.
The work of God is this.
To believe.
To believe in the one he has sent.
Not to toil, but to trust.
Now, unfortunately, Jesus' simple invitation is met with skeptical inquiry.
Why should we trust you?
Verse 30.
What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?
What will you do?
Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness.
As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.
So they're saying like, sure, you took a little boy's cheap barley loaves
and fed thousands, tens of thousands for an afternoon.
But Moses fed hundreds of thousands with bread from heaven for over 40 years.
If we're going to trust you, you have to at least match that.
You have to outdo Moses, bro.
Verse 32.
Jesus says to them,
Very truly, I tell you,
it's not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven,
but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
Jesus is saying, wait, hold up.
You thought that Moses fed you in the wilderness?
Bro, no, he says to them back, right?
The one who fed you in the wilderness is the same one who fed you out of the five loaves and two fish.
It's always been my Father.
It's always been God himself.
And he sent me.
He sent me because, get this,
he wants to give you even better bread from heaven,
something way better than that manna.
So they're like, okay, verse 34.
Sir, always give us this bread.
And Jesus says, verse 35,
I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.
Basically, he says here,
you want manna again?
You want a new sign from heaven?
You want a greater miracle,
something to satisfy you?
I am that.
I am the bread of life.
I am straight from heaven.
I am the miracle.
I am the greatest possible proof of God's power and presence and love right in front of you.
I am all of that.
And yet, just like Israel in the wilderness,
even after receiving their manna,
here in verse 41,
they grumble.
At this, the Jews there began to grumble about him
because he said,
I am the bread that came down from heaven.
And they grumble in unbelief.
We know where you came from, Jesus.
We know your parents.
You couldn't possibly have come from God in heaven.
And in response, Jesus doesn't try to convince them.
He doesn't.
But basically tells them that they are blind and distant from God.
Verse 44,
no one can come to me unless the Father draws them.
And he just reiterates,
either believe me or don't.
Verse 47,
very truly, I tell you,
the one who believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
And look, he doesn't try to prove it to them
according to their own standards,
according to their own demands.
And by the way,
if you are a Christian
and you sometimes wonder,
how can I convince people about Jesus?
What is the best evidence,
the best argument to prove
that Christianity is true?
If you're here today
and you're not convinced about Jesus
or about Christianity
because you're waiting for some airtight,
watertight, bulletproof syllogism,
I want you to see here
that while there are strong evidences and arguments,
Jesus doesn't exist
to satisfy our rationalistic demands, no.
But he does come
to challenge our prior commitments.
There's this theologian and apologist,
his name is Cornelius Van Til.
He trained and influenced a lot of the professors
that me and Jonathan sat under in seminary,
even though Jonathan's a lot older than me, still.
But he liked to talk about this method, Van Til,
this method that we see Jesus using here.
And what he called it was
pointing out the impossibility of the contrary.
He said, when you engage in apologetics,
you don't have to like stack
those building blocks of evidence.
Why don't you just point out
the impossibility of the contrary?
Like Jesus, again, he's not trying to
set up all these rational building blocks,
trusting that people with darkened hearts
will eventually climb and put those blocks together
and see the light.
No, he goes straight after the darkness
that they're committed to.
He goes straight after the foolish things
that they trust as gods and saviors.
So look at how he doesn't try to convince them
that he's the bread of life from heaven,
but rather he tries to show them
the impossibility of their contrary bread.
He sets up a contrast.
Verse 49, your ancestors ate the manna
in the wilderness, yet they died.
You still want that kind of bread?
You still think Moses was so great?
Verse 50, but here is the bread
that comes down from heaven,
which anyone may eat and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven.
Whoever eats this bread will live forever.
And with this, Jesus confronts all of us.
He confronts the whole world.
He confronts us with the sad truth
that we are all people who work and toil
and devote our lives to acquiring spoiling bread
that can never keep us alive.
Even manna, the most miraculous bread
that Israel had ever seen straight from heaven,
even manna still led to the grave.
And how much more are modern bread,
whatever that is, your career,
your family, health, beauty, power,
influence, reputation, relationships,
retirement plans,
all good gifts,
but all terrible gods.
All of it.
In the end, bread that spoils.
And we all know it.
And we're exhausted by our pursuits,
and yet we still go after that spoiling bread
by any means necessary.
We battle for bread that rots.
We cheat for it.
We cut corners for it.
We neglect people for it.
Worse, we shed blood for it.
We step on, we step over people for it.
Every Christ you see in the news,
is it not connected to greed
and a sense of scarcity and insecurity?
Can it all be reduced?
It's the people trying to secure
their own bread and life
for as long as possible,
even at the expense of others
and with zero regard for the glory of God.
And don't you see how these pursuits
after bread that spoils,
how it makes us slaves
and murderers and oppressors
and the worst versions of ourselves.
Even if you're succeeding in life,
so successful,
maybe you're at Davos,
maybe you're speaking at the World Economic
Economic Forum,
you may still be starving your soul
and the lives and souls
of your neighbors.
So you see, Jesus,
he came to disrupt that system,
to turn the empires of this world
upside down
and to establish his better kingdom,
not based on our merit,
but based on his merit
and on his mercy.
You don't have to climb,
he says.
I am the bread of life,
come down from heaven,
given for you.
I am everything you need.
I am God,
and I am God with you,
he says.
You know,
if you turn back with me
to the beginning of John chapter 6,
I love the image here
of him feeding the 5,000.
It's not just Jesus,
the true and better Moses,
feeding people in the wilderness,
but look,
he's also Jesus,
the true and better shepherd.
He's the good shepherd
and they shall not want.
Look at how he makes them
lie down in green pastures
in verse 10.
Look at verse 11,
how he gives thanks
and prepares a table before them.
Look at verses 11, 12, and 13
and how their cups
and their baskets overflow,
all for free.
He turns scarcity into abundance,
five loaves and two fish
into a feast
for tens of thousands.
And what I love too about this
is how he gives thanks.
Like, picture him.
There are 25,000 hungry
and hurting people
in front of him.
And all that they have
is five loaves
and two fish.
And still,
he takes these five loaves
and two fish
in front of 25,000 people
and with gratitude,
he offers thanks to God.
in front of them.
No complaint about the scarcity.
No complaint about these
measly little loaves and fish.
It's almost like a joke.
And that he is not at all
fazed by the scarcity,
but he lifts them up
in thanks to his Father.
And after he had blessed the bread
and given thanks,
he broke it
and somehow
everyone
is satisfied.
Do you realize
what a provider,
what a provision
we have in this man,
in this God?
He is the bread of life.
He is everything
we need
and more.
He is our sustenance.
He is our portion.
And he doesn't ask
anything of us
but faith,
belief,
trust,
dependence.
That's what it means
to feed on Christ.
To trust him
wholly
and solely
that
and that alone
is the work
that God requires of us
and that's the gospel.
That we get to choose
prayer over panic,
surrender over striving.
But now this leads us
to the fourth P,
the predicament.
He is the provision.
He is the bread from heaven.
He is the bread of life.
But this bread is,
it's an offensive bread.
Sometimes it doesn't taste
that good.
Because Jesus doesn't
just stop at
depend on me
like I'm the bread
you need from heaven.
He gets,
he gets quite provocative here.
Even offensive.
Verse 51.
This bread is my flesh
which I will give
for the life
of the world.
Wait,
what?
They ask,
verse 52,
how can this man
give us his flesh
to eat?
And Jesus just doubles down.
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.
Whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood
has eternal life
and I will raise them up
at the last day.
For my flesh is real food
and my blood is real drink.
Whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood
remains in me
and I in them.
Just as the living Father
sent me
and I live because of the Father,
so the one who feeds on me
will live because of me.
This is the bread
that came down from heaven.
Your ancestors ate manna
and died,
but whoever feeds
on this bread
will live forever.
Wow.
Did he say it enough?
His flesh is our bread.
His blood is our drink.
Jesus refuses to back down.
He doesn't soften
any of these blows.
He doesn't even bother
to explain himself
like in more concrete terms.
This is what makes
the Gospel of John
really hard for me
as a preacher.
And while it's unclear
exactly what his listeners
would have understood
him to be saying,
and I doubt they thought
he was literally calling them
to be cannibals,
all right?
I think they're,
let's give them more credit
than that.
But what is clear
is that this guy
is claiming to be from heaven.
He's claiming to be
the Son of God,
perhaps even God Himself.
He's claiming that
the only way to life
is to depend on Him
as the bread of life
and in fact,
somehow,
they must so depend on Him
that they eat His flesh
and drink His blood.
And so on a bunch of levels,
this is incredibly provocative.
Like, first of all,
it's just kind of confusing.
What does this guy even mean?
Why is he talking to us like this?
Secondly,
for those who do understand
the basics,
it's like,
trust in you,
Jesus of Nazareth,
like you're God,
like you're the only way
to eternal life?
Come on, man.
We know your parents.
And you think
you're actually better
than Moses,
our liberator,
the great liberator
of our whole nation?
We don't want you
as the bread of life.
We want that manna
to come down again.
And now you're just talking
crazy, dude,
about us eating your flesh
and drinking your blood.
I don't even want to stick around
to find out what you mean
by that.
I'm out.
And many of His early adopters
and the outer ring
of His disciples,
they leave.
Verse 60,
On hearing it,
many of His disciples said,
this is a hard teaching.
Who can accept it?
Again, more grumbling,
aware that His disciples
were grumbling about this.
Jesus said to them,
does this offend you?
Verse 66,
From this time,
many of His disciples
turned back
and no longer followed Him.
It was just too much.
It was too hard,
too confusing,
too offensive.
And honestly,
it was even more offensive
than they even realized.
When Jesus was saying,
you must eat my flesh
and drink my blood,
only the later readers
of John's Gospel,
only the early church
would know
what Jesus meant.
He wasn't giving them
a riddle,
but a reality.
The reality that we are
so broken and so starved
and so sinful
that a body had to be broken,
flesh had to be torn,
blood had to be shed
in order to atone
for our sins.
We took our lives
out of God's hands,
threw them away.
So justice demanded
that God receive
a pure life back.
And the only one available
was the life of His Son,
who took on humanity.
The I am became
I am bread,
bread sent from heaven
to be broken and torn
for the life of the world.
And really this,
this is the offense
of Jesus' words here.
The meaning that His deserters
didn't even stick around
to understand,
this is the offense.
Not that Jesus is cryptic,
but that Jesus is Lord,
which means that we are not.
I am not.
You are not.
And worse yet,
that we are more sinful
than we could ever imagine.
So sinful that only the death
of the Son of God
could remedy our sins.
It's incredibly offensive.
Like someone offering you
like weight loss pills
and a gym membership,
alright?
Think about how offensive
that would be.
But you know,
that's what you need
to be healthy.
Even if it means
that you have to face
the truth of your obesity,
shouldn't we be thankful
and glad
to receive such an offer?
This is the message
of Christianity.
That your main problem
is sin.
And you need
a Savior.
The thing is,
many of us aren't convinced
that we need
a Savior.
We don't realize
how far short we fall
and how heinous
it is
that we have not
loved the Lord our God
with all our heart,
soul, mind, and strength
and that we have not
loved our neighbors
as ourselves.
We might be willing
to admit need
for a helper,
but not a Savior.
Maybe to have some
minor home improvements,
but not a full-blown,
complete renovation.
We like the idea
of free bread,
free healings,
life enhancement,
but we don't like
the idea that we are
prodigals who have
squandered everything
and whose only hope now
is a rescue mission
that only God Himself
can accomplish.
See, Jesus,
He refuses to be useful
without also being
your Lord,
your soul,
one and only God
and Savior.
No one else
will do.
So if you want
a Jesus who never
offends you,
never disagrees with you,
if you want
a Savior who only
and always affirms
and agrees with you,
maybe you do just
prefer being a slave,
striving for your own
self-salvation.
Because see,
that's the only other
alternative to Jesus.
Either He saves us,
or we have to save
ourselves,
or we have to find
someone else who could
and would possibly
love us and be strong
enough to do so.
And this brings me
to my final P,
the preeminent person.
So Jesus turns
from the crowds
who have left,
and He looks right
into the eyes
of His remaining twelve,
one of whom He knows
will betray Him.
Verse 67,
you do not want
to leave too,
do you?
Just sit in that moment.
You do not want
to leave too,
do you?
After the crowd
has shrunk
from 25,000
to a dozen,
and after everything
He said so provocative,
so confusing,
so offensive.
But notice Jesus' question.
It's not,
do you understand it all?
It's not,
do you have
all your questions answered?
It's simpler,
it's deeper,
it's,
are you going
to stay with me?
And you know,
we like to roll
our eyes at Peter,
but what he says
might be the most
profound thing
any apostle
has ever said.
Lord,
to whom else
shall we go?
That's the impossibility
of the contrary.
Peter isn't claiming
he's figured Jesus out,
he's not saying,
yeah, Jesus,
that flesh and blood thing,
I'm so down.
No,
he's saying,
even when I don't
fully understand you,
I also,
I can't deny you.
I don't have
a flawless proof,
but I think I've found
a flawless person.
You alone
have the words
of eternal life,
and we have come
to believe
and to know
that you are
the holy one
of God.
Holy,
set apart,
unique,
one of a kind.
There is no one like you
is what Peter's saying.
But you know
what's sobering?
When Peter says that,
Judas is standing
right there too.
Same crowd,
same sermon,
same miracle,
same Jesus.
One disciple saying,
where else could I
possibly go?
Another disciple
is already beginning
to think,
where else could I go?
One sees Jesus
as the bread of life,
the other sees Jesus
as a means to an end.
One clings to Jesus,
the other keeps
a little bag of silver
nearby just in case
a better offer
comes along.
See,
the difference
between Peter
and Judas
isn't exposure
to Jesus.
It's what they
ultimately want
from Jesus.
Peter wants Jesus.
Judas wants
what Jesus
can provide.
And that question
just quietly
hangs in the air
for every single
one of us.
Are we here
because Jesus
is useful
or because Jesus
is Lord?
Are we staying
because He gives bread,
because we get free lunch
after service
on first Sundays
or because He's Lord?
Are we staying
because He gives bread
or because He is the bread?
These are the only two options,
the way of Peter,
the way of Judas.
And one gets to have breakfast
with the risen Messiah
filled with the Holy Spirit
as a fruitful servant
of the kingdom
at the end of his story
and another
is simply holding a bag
of 30 pieces of silver
that at the end
He doesn't even want anymore
and He is hopeless
and He realizes
how worthless
that trade was
and He cannot face Himself
or the world anymore.
You know,
I think Jesus
is asking
some of us this morning
not first of all
like do you understand everything?
What if He's just asking you
will you stay?
Will you linger?
Will you stick around?
And like sure,
you can walk away
but please think carefully
about where else you'll go
because no one walks away
to neutral ground.
If Jesus is not your bread,
you'll still need bread.
If Jesus is not your Savior,
you still need a Savior.
If Jesus is not your Lord,
something else will be.
So again,
to whom else shall we go?
Who's your better option?
There's this 19th century
Scottish minister.
I love these words
that he wrote about Jesus.
His name was John Watson.
He said,
No one has yet discovered
the word Jesus
ought to have said.
None suggested
the better word
He might have said.
No action of His
has shocked
our moral sense.
None has fallen short
of the ideal.
He is full of surprises
but they are all surprises
of perfection.
You were never amazed
one day by His greatness,
the next by His littleness.
You were quite amazed
that He is incomparably better
than you could have expected.
He is tender
without being weak,
strong without being coarse,
lowly without being servile.
He has conviction
without intolerance,
enthusiasm without fanaticism,
holiness without pharisaism,
passion without prejudice.
This man alone
never made a false step,
never struck a jarring note.
His life alone,
it was life at its highest.
Where else are you going
to find something like this?
Someone like this,
a God who doesn't demand
your blood but gives His own.
The I Am who became bread,
bread from heaven
to be broken for you.
See, this is where
eat my flesh
and drink my blood,
those words are transformed
from gory to glory, right?
This isn't about cannibalism,
it's about communion
with the living God,
crucified and risen for us
in Christ.
This isn't try harder,
it's grace.
This isn't earn your bread,
it's lie down in green pastures
and receive the bread of life.
And man,
when people are actually fed,
when they're actually satisfied
in Christ,
man, this changes everything.
This changes the world.
When we are satisfied in Christ,
we stop clawing,
we stop hoarding,
we stop stepping on people
to secure their slice
of the world.
When you know you have
the bread of life,
you don't have to hoard,
you can share.
You don't have to dominate,
you can serve.
You don't have to be anxious,
you can be generous.
Scarcity is no longer
your master.
That's what people
who feed on Christ
are like.
That's the freedom
that the early church
lived out of
in the medieval age
when plagues hit the city
and the people with means,
even the doctors,
fled to their vacation estates.
The church stayed.
They tended to the sick.
They fed the hungry.
They took in orphans.
They buried the dead.
Why?
Because when your life
is hidden with Christ in God,
when you already have
eternal, abundant,
imperishable,
resurrection life,
you can move toward suffering
instead of away from it.
You can spend yourself
because you're not losing yourself.
You're communing
with your risen Lord.
So the question today
is not first,
do you understand
everything that Jesus says?
It's this,
will you stay with Him?
Will you stay with Him?
Will you come to Him
again and again and again
at this table
with joy and thanksgiving?
And will you feed on Him
by faith, hope, and love?
For to whom else,
whom else shall we go?
Our Lord has prepared
a table before
for us.
It's already been paid for.
Supper's ready.
Come and eat.
Not because you're worthy,
but because He is.
And He saved a seat
for you at the family table.
So let's taste and see
that the Lord is good.
Blessed are those
who do not take offense
at Him,
and happy are those
who trust in Him.
Amen.
Let's pray.
Lord, this is something
that most of us
don't already know.
of course Jesus
is the bread of life.
But we confess
the ways that we cry out
in our hunger
because we've looked
to feed elsewhere.
Show us, Lord,
there is no better bread.
what a gift
that the I Am
volunteered to be
I Am
the bread of life
broken
for broken people
like us.
Give us the faith.
Give us the reverence.
Give us the joy
to feed on Him alone,
O God.
And change the world
because of that.
Because of how satisfied
Your people are
in Christ,
the bread of life.
In His name we pray.
Amen.