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.