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John 6, and as we do, let's pray. Our Father, You are here, and we are here in Your presence. We thank You for the sure promise that You inhabit the praises
of Your people. Lord, You have promised to be
in the midst of Israel the true church of Jesus Christ. And Father, tonight our expectation
is of You to speak, to give that divine help to enable me to speak
so as to speak from your heart by your help, by your spirit,
and to enable all of us to hear the voice of the Son of God. Lord, this is your time. We look
unto you. Help us, cover us in the power
of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, clear the air, capture
our focus, or our minds would and will drift unless you keep
them. Our hearts would get distracted by the temporal unless you rein
us in and hedge us in with your brooding presence and
your speaking voice. Lord Jesus, this is your time. Amen. John 6, beginning reading
in verse 22. John 6, 22. On the next day,
the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that
there had been only one boat there and that Jesus, had not
entered the boat with His disciples, but that His disciples had gone
away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came
near the place where they had eaten 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
boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they found Him on
the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did
You come here? Jesus answered them, "'Truly,
truly, I say to you, you are seeking Me not because you saw
signs.'" And notice, that implies the
miracles or the signs were meant to cause them to seek Him. But He says, "'You are seeking
Me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill
of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that
perishes. but for the food that endures
to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For
on Him God the Father has set His seal." Then they said to
Him, What must we do that we might work the works of God?
Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe
on Him whom He has sent. So they said to Him, Then what
sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do
you perform? Our fathers ate the man in the
wilderness, as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven
to eat. Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it
was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father
gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God
is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
They said to Him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said
to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not
hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall 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 whoever comes to me I will never cast
out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will,
but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him
who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given
me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of
my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes
in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the
last day. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I
am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, Is not this
Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How
does he now say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered
them, Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless
the Father who sent him draws him. And I will raise him up
on the last day. It is written in the prophets
and they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and
learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen
the Father except he who is from God. He has seen the Father. Truly I say to you, whoever believes
has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your
fathers ate the men in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread
that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not
die. I am the living bread that came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
he will live forever. And the bread that I will give
for the life is my flesh." Jews then disputed among themselves,
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 you. Whoever feeds on 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. Whoever feeds on 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 whoever feeds
on Me, he also will live because of Me. This is the bread that
came down from heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died.
Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." Jesus said these
things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum. Wouldn't
you love to have been there for that sermon? This sixth chapter of John has
two big miracles in it. The first is the feeding of the
The 5,000 says 5,000 men. We don't know. At least 5,000
there, probably more. And then that night, after that
great miracle, the Lord comes walking on the water of a stormy
sea. The disciples are in the boat. And the Lord comes walking
on the rough waves to them all the way to the boat. So, two
miracles. is the content of this chapter,
in essence, and then our Lord teaching here. Not much different,
really, than the content of all four of the Gospels when you
think about it. Most chapters in the Gospels are filled with
either the teaching of the Lord or His mighty works and miracles. And that is John 6 here. The
Lord feeds the 5,000, showing that He is the Creator. And then
that evening, He comes walking on the rough sea to the boat,
showing that He rules nature and the weather. And then the
next day, after these two miracles, what does He do? After creating
bread and fish, 5,000, the next day He says, I am the bread. Now, fake water would have been
in their minds. They had just seen five small loaves and two
small fish turned into a banqueting table for thousands by this man. He created an overabundance of
food. They ate to their fill. And then
the next day, he says to them, I am that bread. I'm the true
bread. I am the bread of God. Now think
about this. He did not do the miracle of
food and then the next day say to Peter, you know, that miracle
yesterday, that'd make a great sermon. I think I'll teach a
spiritual lesson because of that miracle. No, that's not what
happened. His teaching on being the bread
of life wasn't the result of the miracle. He did the miracle
because the next day he was going to declare to them that he was
the true bread of life. Do you see the difference? The
mighty work of bread and fish was an enacted sermon illustration,
the illustration done the first day and then the sermon, the
teaching the next day. The bread, because He performs
the miracle and on the next day He says to them, the bread of
God is He who has come down from heaven and gives life to the
world. Right after He had given them
their body's physical sustenance and physical life. And this shows
us that the purpose of all His miracles was one thing, to reveal
Himself. to reveal His identity, to reveal
His deity, to display to those who observe the miracles, this
is God, this is Messiah. That was the purpose of them.
Think here of a few examples of this, where the mighty works
of Christ witnessed and testified to the fact of His identity. For instance, Mark 1. the beginning
of our Lord's ministry. Here's the Lord teaching in the
synagogue. And there's a man in the synagogue
during service who suddenly cries out, screams out, What have you
to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are, the Holy
One of God. So that would wake you up on
a Sunday morning. If there was a blood-curdling,
demonic scream and cry about the Lord Jesus Christ, that's
what they heard He was teaching. And this cry, this demonic cry,
rings out, interrupts the synagogue service, and Christ promptly
casts out the demon. And then Mark says that all that
were there were amazed And they said, what is this? He commands
even the unclean spirits and they obey Him. And then Mark
says, immediately His fame began to spread throughout all the
region. The miracle displayed who He
was and began to bring attention to Christ Himself. Mark 4, you
have the same type of response. You have the Lord Jesus having
told the disciples, let's go to the other side. They're going
over. And when the Lord steps off,
you remember, He's going to meet the gathering demoniac. They're
in the boat, though, and a hurricane-like storm comes down upon the lake. The Lord is asleep in the back,
resting in His weariness. He's sleeping. The storm comes,
and the disciples are panicking. And they wake Him, and what do
they say to Him? Don't you care? that we're going
to perish. And the Lord Jesus arises. He
rebukes what was probably a demonically driven storm. And at once, there's
a calm, a perfect calm. The lake is perfectly calm and
the wind is gone. And the disciples are just struck
dumb. They are astounded. They are
astonished. And they are afraid. And what was their response?
Well, it was not, guys, look how peaceful the water is. Here,
let's hold hands and sing a praise chorus. They were scared. They weren't
taken up with the calm storm or the miracle. They were struck
with this man. Who is this man? that even the
winds and the seas obey Him. And they began to realize, He
commands with the Word any demon. He can stop any storm with His
will. He calls and wills into our fishing
net whole schools of fish. And Peter, when the Lord did
that the first time, Peter drops. and says, depart from me, I'm
a sinful man. Peter knew in that instant this
was God. He knew only God could do that
miracle. Every miracle that the Lord Jesus
Christ worked was a revelation before their eyes that this man
was God. Each one displayed His glory. Now John summarizes that in John
2. Remember the first miracle the
Lord Jesus did was what? The wedding. He changes the water
into wine. And John summarizes that when he says, this beginning
of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and what? And manifested
forth His glory and His disciples believed on Him. All the miracles
were a manifesting forth of the glory of Jesus Christ, and every
mighty work was meant to reveal Him so that people would believe
on Him. Not to be caught up in the miracle.
The miracles diverted people's attention to Him. The miracles
didn't draw attention to themselves. You know, when you see God do
something, Your attention is drawn and your praise is drawn
to Christ. Not just what He did, or not
who He did it for. The great purpose of the Lord
in these miracles was not just the healing of bodies, or not
the filling of hungry bellies, or not giving a thrill to human
seekers who were emotionally excited about what they saw,
but every miracle was pointing to Him. It always did. Now, the
Lord Jesus said this to the Jews in John 10. Remember what He
said? He stated this very truth when
He said, If I am not doing the works of My Father, then don't
believe in Me. But if I do them, even though
you don't believe Me, believe the works that you may know that
I am in the Father and He is in Me. Every miracle was crying
out He's divine. He's God. He's from heaven. Believe
in Him. That's what every miracle testified
to the conscience and the heart and the mind of everyone who
beheld the miracles. So it is here in John 6. The Lord Jesus creates this miracle
of an abundance of bread and fish and John says they ate as
much as they wanted. And he said, and after they ate
their fill, they gathered up twelve baskets full of fragments. Twelve baskets full of leftovers. Overabundance. Then the next
day, Jesus says, I'm the bread. of God. The bread of God is He
who comes down from heaven and who gives life to the world. I am that bread. And he's saying,
how much bread? Enough for the entire world.
Overabundance. is what I am. I'm the true bread.
I'm the living bread. I'm the bread of life. I'm the
bread that's come from above. I am the bread of God. And I
can give life to all, to everyone, to anyone, anywhere, anytime. I give life to the world, he
said. Whoever eats of me will never
hunger again. Drinks of me will never thirst
again. He's saying, I am the permanent, eternal meal for your
souls. Now that's what he was saying
through the miracle the one day and his
message the next day. In doing that, The Lord then
here in this chapter, as I want us to see in the next few minutes,
preaches, because He's the bread of God, He preaches to them some
gospel declarations. Now you know what a declaration
is. It's not a command. It's not a question. It is a statement of fact. It's
a statement of reality. And the Lord gives here through
this chapter in what he said to them, some gospel declarations. Let's see these. The first one
is found in verse 32. Declaration number one. There
in verse 32 he says, My Father gives you the true bread from
heaven. Gospel declaration number one.
It is the Father who is the giver of the bread. Now this is important. Because you see, all through
the Gospels, the Lord Jesus Christ is always talking about Him who
sent me. He's always declaring in His
humanity His relationship with the Father. That I do nothing
of my own initiative, but what I see and hear from the Father,
that's what I do. Him who sent me is true. He has borne witness
of me. So the Lord Jesus here gives
this declaration that is a gospel declaration, that it is God the
Father, it is Jehovah the Father who is the giver of the bread.
This means it was the Father that sent the Son. The Son did
not send Himself. Now He says this over and over
throughout this chapter. Just look at the number of places
that He says it. For instance, Verse 33, he says, For the bread of God
is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
Now when he says the bread of God and the one who comes down
from heaven, the implication is that God The Father sent this
bread. He is the bread of God. All the reality of this is referring
to the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ was sent on a mission
by the Father. In the economy of the Trinity,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Father sent
the Son on a mission of mercy. It's the Father who sends the
Son. The incarnation and the life, the earthly life and the
ministry and the death of the Son of God was not of His own
initiative in eternity. The Father was on a great mission
of mystery and mercy and the divine purpose of God in all
eternity was to send the Son. As somebody said once, before
there ever was a garden and a fall, there was a Redeemer. The Lamb
was slain from the foundation of the world. And so the divine
purpose of Jehovah the Father was to send the Son and to give
the Son. And when the Lord Jesus says
that my Father gives the bread, He's really saying that I am
a gift to the lost world. I am the bread that is a true
gift to the lost world. The Lord Jesus was always speaking
of Him who sent me. He said it over and over and
over all the time. Verse 29, notice this. He said,
This is the work of God that you believe on Him whom the Father
has sent. Verse 38. I have come down from
heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent
me." Verse 44, no man can come to me unless the Father who sent
me draws him. Verse 57, the living Father sent
me and I live by the Father. Earlier in John's Gospel, the
Lord Jesus had said in chapter 4, my food is to do the will
of who? Him who sent me. And later in
John 12, he says this, whoever believes in me, doesn't just
believe in me, but also is believing in Him who sent me, and whoever
sees me, sees Him who sent me. Now not to overload the point,
the fact that the first gospel declaration is that it was the
Father that sent the Son, You have Paul and John the Apostle
affirming the same thing. They all spoke of this reality
that the Father was the one in the economy of redemption who
sent His Son, and that was His work in redemption. Paul said,
in the Galatians, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son. In Romans, he said, by sending
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, He condemns sin
in the flesh. Now, John summarizes the whole
doctrine later, after he writes his gospel in his epistles. He
summarizes the whole doctrine of the Father sending the Son
when he says this, in this is love, herein is love, not that
we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. And we've seen and testify that
the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world in eternity. The Father and the Son agreed. And the Father somehow said to
the Lord Jesus Christ, Son, you must go and I will send you. You must go
and become one of them. You must go and take on their
flesh. You must go. and live with their
body and have their mind and their will and their emotions.
You must become one of them and walk where they walk and live
as they live. You must be made of a woman and
be made under the law. You must go and redeem them.
You must go and bring many sons to glory. I'm sending you. The Father sent the Son, and
the Son did respond because we know Hebrews
quotes the Psalms, the writer of the Hebrews quotes it, and
he says, Yes, Father, I delight to do thy will. Sacrifices and
offerings you don't want, but a body you've prepared me. I
delight to do thy will. Oh, my God. So the son said,
I will go. I will do all your will. I'll
be obedient in all things. I'll be willing to drink the
cup and I'll lay my life down for the sheep. Father, you are
sending me and I'm going." And he did. And at the end of the
journey, you remember what he said to the father? He said,
Father, I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. This is what Jesus means when
He says, My Father gives the true bread. The Father sent the
Son. The Son was a gift to us, for
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. So that's the first declaration
the Lord Jesus made. Number two, Gospel declaration
number two is verse 33. The bread of God is He who comes
down from heaven. What's the declaration? Christ
is the bread of heaven. And he said this numerous times
right in this chapter. He claimed to be the bread from
heaven. The living bread. The bread of
life. In verse 35, he said it. I am
the bread of life. In verse 48, again, he says the
same words. I am the bread of life. In verse
51, he said, I'm the living bread that came down from heaven. Again,
he says, the bread that I will give for the life of the world
is my flesh. Five times in this teaching,
he declares himself to be the bread of God. And he was saying,
in me alone is life. In me alone is nourishment and
sustenance. Christ created all of creation. He was the author of life. He
is the giver of life. He is the sustainer of life.
And He is the only source, the only source of spiritual life.
He and He alone. That's why He speaks so much
here about life. For instance, verse 33, this
bread gives life to the world. He says, labor not for the food
that perishes, but for the food that
endures to everlasting life. And he says later, whoever looks
on the Son and believes in Him has eternal life. If anyone eats
this bread, he will live forever. Whoever feeds on this bread,
he lives forever. It's simply unbelievable to think
of the reality that the Lord Jesus is the living bread the
living God, the living Savior. And whoever will partake of Him
will live forever. Live forever. It's unbelievable. But it's not. It's believable. He said it. And He meant it.
And He declares it. Gospel declaration 1. The Father
sent the Son. 2. The Son is the bread of God. And then number 3. Look down
at verses 51 through 58. Gospel declaration number 3.
Our Lord said, You must eat and drink the bread of God. You must eat and drink the bread
of God. If He has been sent from the
Father, and He's the only bread that gives life, then there's
only one alternative. You must eat the flesh and drink
the blood of the Son of God. That's what he said. Look at
the beginning in verse 51. And look how much he says it
over and over and over. In baseball, they talk about
a pitcher pounding the strike zone. He's pounding the strike
zone here. Verse 51, if anyone eats this
bread, he lives forever. 53, truly I say to you, unless
you eat the flesh and drink the blood, you have no life in you. Verse 54, whoever feeds on my
flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. Verse 55, my flesh
is true food. And my blood is true drink. Verse 56, whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. 57, whoever feeds on me, he will
live because of me. 58, whoever feeds on this bread. So, eating is flesh and drinking
is blood. The Lord Jesus Christ said, this
is a necessity. This is a must. This is essential. Unless you do it, you have no
life in you. Unless you do it, you will not
have eternal life. So, it's pretty important. Eating
and drinking. Eating is flesh. Drinking is
blood. What does He mean? What does
the Lord mean here? Well, immediately we toss out the literal viewpoint of it. We know he's not talking about
physically eating his body or physically drinking his blood.
But what does he mean? Well, he says earlier that the
bread is his flesh, his body, which he gives for the world. So his flesh, was His body, the
offering of His body that was crucified on the tree. Peter
says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree. His
physical death, the death of His body, the death of His flesh
and blood body, that death was the sacrifice. It was an atonement. It was a payment. And His blood
was the ransom atoning offering, the only basis of forgiveness.
In fact, Romans 5, 9 says, seeing that, being that we are justified
by His blood on the basis of His blood alone, we are justified. The offering of His body, the
offering of His blood. Our Lord is speaking of eating
and drinking of the atonement and the cross and His death.
That's fully what he's talking about. His death. He's saying
there is life alone in my death. In the giving of my body, in
the shedding of my blood, there is life alone and only there. Life alone by my one act of dying,
by one offering, Hebrews says. He perfected forever those who
were set apart. We are redeemed and set apart
as He is by the single offering of Himself. That's what he was
talking about when he says, eat my flesh and drink my blood. But that won't help anyone one
bit. We can sing about the cross,
we can read about his offering, we can listen to preaching, we
can talk about it, but we must eat and drink. Him. That is, we must go to Him personally
and take His death for us. We must partake of that. We must
feast upon that. We must see that as our one source
of life and nourishment and go and eat and drink and partake. going to Him, taking His death
for us, drinking down and participating of and appropriating the justifying
act of the offering of His blood. That's what He means. Now what
Jesus said in verse 36 about some, He said, He said, you've seen Him, but
you still won't believe. What he said about some of the
Jews there in verse 36 is true tonight about some of you that
are here. You have seen Him, but you still
won't believe. You've seen the reality of the
Gospel, and you refuse to believe. You have seen the reality of
Jesus Christ, and yet you refuse to believe. You have seen the
power of Jesus Christ transform lives that you know. You've observed
the life and the change in those who have eaten and drunken of
His body and His blood. You've seen it. and you know
the reality of it, and yet you stay where you are and you will
not come to Him that you might have life. You have seen Me,
Jesus said, but you still won't believe. Why? Why would you stay
where you are when there's no life in you, rather than come
and eat and drink and live forever? It's insanity. It's absurdity. It's the height of eternal moral
stupidity. Why sit we here till we die? Those lepers said in Israel,
outside the city there was a famine and God had sent The whole city
away, and the lepers were there, and they go to the city. And
first, one of them said, well, if we go, there might be people
there, there might be soldiers there, and they'll kill us. And
they finally said, what have we got to lose? Why sit here
until we die? If we stay here, we're going
to die in this famine. We're going to perish. So let's
go. Peradventure, we might find life there. And they went and
they ate to their body's content and then they went and told others.
Why will you sit there in your deadness and in your unbelief
and in your stubborn will and refuse to come and eat and drink
of Christ? He says that to you. Some of
you, that's all you've done your entire life. You've seen Him
at the Bentley Camp. You've seen the glory of Christ.
You've heard His voice speaking to you through the truth. You've
seen the reality in your father, your mother, your brothers, your
sisters, your pastor, the beloved ones in your church who've loved
you. You've seen, you've beheld, you're without excuse. It's all
naked and open before your eyes, and yet you still won't believe. Well, if you're going to live, if you're not going to remain
dead while you live, Jesus said, whoever looks at the sun, you
better get to looking. Take your eyes off men. and truly
look away with your mind and your heart and your soul and
look and focus and feast your soul
on Christ alone. You had better begin to look.
Jesus said, whoever eats My flesh, you had better get to eating.
You had better begin to let your heart go to and receive and take
in for yourself the reality that Jesus Christ laid down His life
for me. He died and laid down His body
for me and His body was payment for my sin. I believe He died
for me. That's feasting upon His flesh. You better get to feasting on
His flesh. You better get to eating the
flesh of the Son of Man. Jesus said, whoever drinks My
blood, you've got to begin drinking that blood. Meaning, you have
got to come to the place where you say, if my sins are going
to be forgiven, if I'm going to ever have eternal life, if
I'm going to know God, I have one source of cleansing. There's
one fountain that can wash away my sins and wash my soul clean
and make me pure inside. And it is the blood that He shed
on the cross. His blood alone will justify
my soul before God. You better get to looking and
believing and drinking of that justifying fountain of the offering
of the blood of Jesus Christ. Why will you yet remain not believing? Jesus said, whoever comes to
Me, you better get to coming. Why
would you wait? There is a moment, there is a
time that every believing soul, they cast their fears to the
wind, they pour contempt on their pride, and they say, it doesn't
matter if I'm embarrassed, it doesn't matter what people think,
I am going to arise and I am going to go to Jesus Christ.
And I'm going to embrace Him. I'm going to fall before Him
and tell Him that His death is my only food. His blood is my
only drink. He is my only diet. I will only
find life in Him. I'm going to go to Him and tell
Him that. And He said, whoever will come
to Me, I will in no wise cast out. We don't even have time
for the Gospel promises that are here where Jesus said, whoever
comes to Me, They'll never hunger and thirst
again. Every Christian in this room
tonight could honestly say, I hungered and I thirsted my whole life. And when I came to the Lord Jesus
Christ, my hunger was over. I was satisfied. And when I came
to Him and I came to drink of Him, my thirst was quenched and
only Christ satisfies. And if you haven't done that,
you are yet hungry and you are yet thirsty and you will remain
so. And nothing, nothing in this
temporal world, nothing among the food that perishes that you
pursue and labor for, none of it will satisfy. Now, none but
Christ can satisfy the Lord Jesus Christ. fed to
5,000, and then he stood up the next day and he said, I am the
bread of God that comes down from heaven, who gives life to
the world. He said that so that hearts there
would say, I will believe. I do believe. O Lamb of God,
I come. Have you done that? Have you
said to Him, with all your heart and soul, Lord Jesus, I will
believe, I do believe that You're the Savior of the world who died
for my sins. Your body, Your flesh is my food
indeed. Your blood is my drink indeed. I'm coming to You. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you are the way and the truth and
the life. We thank you that you're the
resurrection and the life. We thank you that you're the
good shepherd, the true shepherd, that you're the door, that you're
the light of the world, that you're the light that lights
everyone who comes into the world. And we thank you tonight that
you are the bread of life, that you are the water of life, that you are the Savior of the
world. Lord, tonight would you cause each one of us by your grace and mercy to participate,
to receive, to come to, to drink and feed of the life-giving offering
of the Son of God. Father, thank you very much for
the Lord Jesus in all that He did, in all that
He said. Thank you for what you have given to us here in John
6 that declares to us the greatness and the glory of our Savior. We ask you, O Lord, to impart
Christ to our hearts. Let us feast and eat and live by faith and
by your Holy Spirit. Thank you, Father, in Jesus'
name, Amen.
Jesus is the Bread of Life
| Sermon ID | 1016111348458 |
| Duration | 46:28 |
| Date | |
| Category | Camp Meeting |
| Bible Text | John 6:22-59 |
| Language | English |
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