congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm sure most of you in this room have had the experience of going on some sort of long trip, some sort of family vacation, or some extended missions trip, or some trip where you've had to do some sort of extensive planning. Sure, if you've had to do the planning part of the trip, you know that that's, for most of us, the worst part of the entire trip. You probably have found that the planning often takes more time and more effort and more concern than the trip itself. Once you leave, you're kind of on the tracks that you've already set. As the old adage goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So the planning makes the trip great. At least that's the hope. There's other things that might come up. What we see is that even the most enjoyable trip, that the logistics of it, the planning, the work that goes into making it a success is often cumbersome, it's laborious, it can be miserable at times. As you know, if you've been on any lengthy trip, the detail that perhaps takes the most amount of planning and is, at the end of the day, probably the biggest chunk of your budget is the food part of your trip. Where are you going to eat? What places are you going to go? Where are you going to get food along the way? I just resumed my biannual reading of The Hobbit. I'm about to pick up The Lord of the Rings after that, but one of the things I have been struck with rereading The Hobbit this time through is just how much the detail of food comes up. It seems like every single page has some reference to whether it's Bilbo thinking about his Hobbit hole and the food that he's left behind, or the fact that they're constantly gathering food to go to their next leg of the journey, or they're figuring out what they're going to do. They've ran out of food, and they don't know where it's going to come from. Or if you know, going on in the series, right, the Lord of the Rings, there's that well-known food of the elves, the lembas bread, right, that is given to the Fellowship, and that sustains Frodo and Sam on that last arduous leg of their journey to Mount Doom. And yet, even as that's such an integral part, right, one of the tensions as the story concludes, as they get closer and closer to their mission's end, is that that question, it becomes a gnawing question. Where are they going to get food and water as they get closer? And really, it becomes clear to them, this is probably actually gonna be a suicide mission. We have food for the journey there, but we definitely don't have food to get back down out of Mordor. And yet while that makes for really good narrative tension, right, that question, where are they gonna get their food? How are they gonna make it to the journey's end? Well, it doesn't make such a great question for us in our own lives, right? That question of where are we going to get our sustenance? We would rather have a clear answer to that question. And yet, much of our lives is determined by that question. Will we have what we need to make it to the journey's end? Well, in this particular season, am I going to have enough to provide for my family, to make? ends meet, and more than just on an individual level, even on a family level. At a church level, we often are in seasons of asking that question. Well, will this church make it another year? Will this church survive? Or, you know, the broader church, Capital C Church, as we look at the church in our own age, it can feel like the church is on its last legs, that it doesn't have what it needs to get through this difficult season. And yet we know God promises to be faithful, to carry his people, his church through from generation to generation. And yet we want to ask that question, how? How is God doing that? What does God give to his people to sustain them on the way? And so that's the question I want us to come to this text with this morning. How can we as God's people be assured that we will reach our desired destination? How can we know for sure As we ask that question, as we think about the, I know it's an overused phrase, but the journey of this life as God's people, how will we get there? The first question I want us to see that Jesus answers for us in our text this morning is this, where are we going? Where are we going, right? If you wanna know if you're going to make it to the destination that you're hoping for, well, first thing, you need a destination. You need to know where actually you are headed. That's what we see here in our text that the crowds if you recall last time in chapter 6 You know Jesus did this great miracle. He fed the 5,000 and then he crossed the sea walking on the water And we see you write all these people the very next morning. They they hop on boats and they immediately follow across the Sea of Galilee to find Jesus they it says that the text says they are seeking they're looking for Jesus and And as we see them, one thing we could say about this people, they've gone already, they've walked quite a bit to follow Jesus, to hear his teachings. And we can certainly say these people are rather persistent, almost to the point of annoyance. They will not stop following Jesus. And as we see this, the drive, we see the motivation for these people, I mean, at a very basic level, it reminds us that in our own progression through this life, that we are seeking something, that all of us, I know it's a very modern thing to say, we're all searching for something, we're all looking for something, but it's true, it's a universal principle. There is something inside of us that drives us, that motivates us. Often when we feel wayward, when we feel stuck or listless in life, it's because we don't have that animating, driving purpose, or at least we've forgotten it. Begs the question, what is it in your own life that drives you, that motivates your decisions? I think a very easy way to answer that question is to look at where you spend your time, where you expend your energy. That's typically a good answer to what it is that motivates you. Or maybe another way to ask it, what is your highest good? What is that thing that you're aiming for that all your actions are pointing towards? As the old saying goes, if you want to know something about a man, look at his checkbook, look at his calendar, look at the concrete details of his life, and that will tell you what that man is, what he cares about. We took a cross-section of any of our own lives. I think most of it would be good things that motivate us. Our time indicates that we care about our family, that we are in a job that we want to work hard at, that we value friendships, certainly that we value the church, that we spend time participating in church life. At the same time, if we took a cross section, there would be some things we would rather not want to expose as far as our motivations go, right? As you look at your calendar, as you look at what you spend your money on. Maybe for this newer generation, if you look at your screen time, what is your screen time in the hours or minutes you spend at certain websites or certain apps? What does that say about what you care about? Your browser history, your thought life, right? If you had a record of the countless minutes you think about things that you might rather not think about, or you're anxious about the same thing over and over. even worse as we consider the ways in which we use our resources. And sometimes we can have good things in our life, but we are using those good things for the wrong ends. You might spend a lot of time with your family, but it's not because you care about them as much as you have become obsessed with having the perfect family. Or it's not because you want to be a good worker that you spend countless hours at your job, but because you are driven to work harder and harder to climb the corporate ladder. In short, we can even turn those good things, those priorities, into idols, into the wrong motivation for our lives. And that's really what we see in our text here, is these people are seeking Jesus. It seems like a good thing. They will not stop going in boats to follow after Jesus. Jesus calls them out. He says, you're not seeking me because you think I'm anything special, because you know that I'm the Messiah. He says flat out, you seek me because you are full of bread. You're seeking me because I filled your bellies with a meal and you think that I'm gonna keep doing that. I'm gonna keep giving you food to eat. It's interesting at this point in the gospel, you know, Jesus' ministry at some level is quite successful. He's, you know, the numbers are up, the crowds are attached to him, and yet, of course, we know in any generation that that's not a true indication of the health of the church, of the positive direction of the church. I mean, there are many churches in our own day that are bursting at the seams, and yet we would say that the gospel is completely vacant from that place of worship. Often the church or the gospel, I should say, is really sold for this very thing that Jesus is calling out, that the gospel is presented as basically the news that Jesus is somehow gonna make your life better. He's going to add something to your life. He's gonna improve it. He's going to fix all the problems that you currently have in your life. Jesus says, stop following me because you think I'm gonna make your life better. And if you are seeking, if someone seeks Jesus for that reason, if someone's seeking Jesus simply because they hope that, you know, he'll give them contentment, that he'll give them comfort, that he'll give them even, you know, wealth. And frankly speaking, if, you know, all of us have, if we felt that way at some point, you know, Jesus, or at least our picture of Jesus has let us down. Jesus does not promise to do that for us. And as we'll see in just a few short verses at the end of chapter six, right, this massive crowd that is doing whatever they can to get to Jesus, they will, for the most part, they'll leave. They'll scatter because they don't like what Jesus has to say, what it means to follow him. So Jesus wants to change. I mean, he kind of has to shake them out of it. He wants to change their perspective, to show them what truly is at stake here. And really, he just says, stop, stop following me, stop this way of living, stop this way of going through the world. Now, we wanna hear what Jesus is not saying here for us as Christians. As he says, do not seek that bread which perishes. He's not saying to disengage from the world, to be Luddites and to disconnect and to just stop working and to kind of wait for the end. That's not his point. It's not that overused cliche of Christians that we're so heavenly-minded that we're of no earthly good. We know, we still, now we have earthly callings, we have earthly responsibilities that we need to take hold of, we need to engage in. Of course, the point here is that our destination, where we're headed, where Jesus is pointing us to, that shapes every aspect, every decision we make, every desire we have, every goal that we set ourselves towards. Or in other words, Jesus is saying we don't want to confuse or we shouldn't, we mustn't confuse the ends with the means. That's what these people have done. They've forgotten or they've lost focus on the ends of all things and they focus on the means, bread, I need to get bread, I need to get more, I need to be sustained, that's the goal in life. Jesus said stop worrying about that. And it's not just because it's futile, or it's not just because it's foolish, or it's misguided, but really, Jesus is showing it's actually deadly to live this way. Again, he says, do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life. Notice the contrast here. It's not just that the food perishes, your food spoils, it gets moldy, you have to toss it out, but the idea is you keep eating this food, one day you're gonna perish. It's not gonna sustain you forever, But there's this other sort of food that if you eat it, you'll live forever, it'll sustain you perpetually for eternal life. If you choose this way of living, it leads to perishing, to punishment, to separation from God. If you choose this, it leads to life, to blessing, to glory. In a very real way, Jesus is saying life and death, eternal life, eternal death, is what is at stake here. That's where he wants to push their focus, not just on daily bread, not just on their bellies. The world says that the one who, at the end of the day, dies with the most toys wins. Maybe you've seen that bumper sticker. And that's what so many people, they live their life to just acquire, to get more, and then, as Ecclesiastes says, they die and then someone else gets all their stuff. If I could paraphrase Ecclesiastes. But what does Jesus say? What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but he forfeits his soul? And that's what Jesus is getting at here. Look higher, look beyond your present circumstances. We too, you know, we can get so caught up in the cares, the concerns of this life. There are real things that we get anxious about. We need to remember our ultimate end, that these things are not ultimate. These things are not what we are striving towards. That there's this goal, and that's what Jesus is doing. He's, you could say, setting our eyes heavenward. He's setting our eyes Godward in our trajectory in this life. Again, that question, where are we going? You're going to the ultimate end of all people. But there's that question, right? Is it perishing or is it eternal life? as he presents this to the people, or as we're reminding them, look up, look at where you're headed, brings up another question for us, right? It's not just about knowing where we're going, but secondly then, we wanna ask the question this morning, how do we get there? Right, if we know the destination, it's life, it's the end of all things, it's eternity, then how do we get there? How do we make it to that end? Notice the people's question. Jesus says, stop worrying about bread, right? Worry about eternal life. The people then go on and they ask this question. Okay, Jesus, what must we do? What must we do to be doing the works of God? It's an interesting question. They immediately jump to works. Jesus says, is talking about food and bread and eternal life, but their question is, okay, what do we have to do? What do we have to contribute to get there? I think it's telling, too, as we look at the crowd. It reminds us, too, that we all are, in some sense, wired for works. We're wired to do something, to figure out a solution, to try and work to gain something. In part, that's how things were set up originally. You consider Adam in the garden, right? Adam was created in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and there was this promise held out before him. If you obey me, if you don't eat of the tree, if you are faithful in all that I've commanded you, you will have life and blessedness. You will have your reward. That was true for one person at one time. That was the case. And yet, the fall changes all that. That doing to earn doesn't work anymore. We fail to earn what was put before us. And yet, It's not just a first-century Jewish problem. It's not just that they were works-oriented. This is, again, this is our common problem to ask, what do I need to do to inherit life? What steps, what actions do I need to take to acquire what I need to get? And what striving do we need to do to get to God? And yet we know Jesus will teach us over and over that way has closed. I mean, the very fact that Jesus is here is evidence you cannot make it to heaven on your own. Well, Jesus tells them, he gives them an answer. What is the one work that people need to do to inherit eternal life? He says, the one work that you need to do is believe. Maybe we want to be careful, because we want to separate faith and works are two completely different things, and yet it seems that Jesus is being a little bit, he's playing with words here to kind of shake them up, right? Okay, you want a work to do, you want something to grasp hold of, okay, believe. Believe in me, that's the one thing that you can do to have eternal life. They hear that, but it doesn't seem that they're quite grasping that salvation is by faith alone, by grace through faith. They say, okay, well, if you want us to believe you, Jesus, give us a sign. Prove to us that you are worth believing in, which is really ironic because he's just done two amazing signs. They're following him because, the text says, because of the signs he's doing. They say, prove it to us one more time. If you just prove it once again, then we will believe in you, Jesus. How many times have you heard that, right? How many times have you thought that? If you just do one more thing, then I'll truly believe you. But the point here is this, right, they're essentially saying, right, they bring up Moses, they say, Moses, he fed us in the wilderness for 40 years. The point being, okay, you gave us bread once, Jesus, but are you gonna feed us for 40 years like the prophet Moses? And there's this irony here, right, this irony that they're bringing up their forefathers in the wilderness, talking about how God cared for them for 40 years, and yet we know that that generation died in the wilderness. You know, they didn't make it into the promised land. It's like, do you really wanna compare yourself to the wilderness generation? We're told why, they perished on the way because they lacked faith. Hebrews 3 and 4 tells us this, that they were not united by faith with those who believed, who received the blessing and the inheritance. And yet Jesus goes on, he says more than this, he says it wasn't Moses that gave your people bread, it was God. God was the true giver of bread, but more than this, He says it wasn't even about bread at all. Again, you're concerned about bread. You're concerned about your stomach. See, he says, God gave these people the true bread which came down from heaven. This is our problem. We see ourselves as these people approaching Jesus so often because so often this is how we approach Jesus. This is how we deal with difficult situations, right? You know, Jesus, If you just do this one thing for me, then I'll believe. Or as we present the gospel to the world, okay, unless Jesus does X, unless Jesus does this one thing, I won't believe. Unless Jesus shows up here in person and speaks to me, I won't come to faith. What Jesus is saying is the opposite. Unless you truly understand that you need me, unless you truly understand that you are really hungry, really thirsty, not just in a physical sense, but if you are in true need of salvation, you will never come to me. You'll find your sufficiency elsewhere. You'll find another avenue to provide for your means. Unless you truly believe that you are dead in your sins and in need of a savior, I'm of no use to you. I'm the true bread, he says. And as we hear this call, Jesus is saying, you need to believe. That's the one thing that is required for salvation. You need to trust and believe in me. Well, I think it's fair to say that faith is hard. Faith is challenging. Our faith so often is not strong and robust, it's often weak, it's often failing. And the very fact, one of the clearest images we have in the New Testament of our life as Christians in this age is the picture of wilderness wandering, right? That is how we're modeled in the New Testament, that we are pilgrims, that we're strangers. in this age, and we feel that so often. We feel like that wilderness generation in the Old Testament, right? There's, even in the text we read in Exodus, that temptation, they look back, oh, it was so much better for us in Egypt. Oh, that we had died in the land of Egypt with our pots full of meat. And we are tempted to look back, to doubt, to wonder, is this the right course? Is this worth it? And Jesus here, he seems to end on somewhat of a negative note, at least that's what it appears, that there's this, almost a despairing in Jesus's tone as he talks about the faithlessness, as he kind of bemoans this generation. And again, there's this call in this text that, We truly have to walk by faith, that we truly are called to live looking to Jesus. That is our lot in this life. That is our task in this life. We often don't know where our daily bread is coming from. I mean, how often when you're on a road trip to your children's ask that continual question, you know, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Every day we're asking God, are we there yet? Have we made it? Are you with us? Are you going to continue to care for us? Well, again, as important as that question is, the how will we get there, the question of faith, right? Faith is required to get to the ends. There's a third question, a final question that we need to deal with that Jesus answers for us, and it is this simple question, will we make it? We know where we're going, we know how to get there by faith and trust in Jesus, but really the deepest question is this, will we make it? Are we going to make it to the end? And to that question, Jesus gives to us a promise this morning. In verse 37, he says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. All that the Father, he goes on in verse 37, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. That language is interesting, as he promises, you know, that if you come to me, you're secure. But that language of casting out is interesting. The hearers would have immediately recognized what he was talking about because that language of casting out is so integral to their national history. I mean, the language comes from Genesis, you know, the picture of Adam and Eve being cast out from the garden. And then the people of God from the promised land, they were cast out, they were dispersed amongst the nations. And Jesus is saying, if you come to me, I will never cast you out. I mean, what is Jesus declaring here? He is saying, I am the promised land. I am the true Eden. I am the true place where God's people come to rest, to live. I mean, say it this way, Jesus has revealed himself to be the giver of bread. He's just said, I am the bread itself. I'm the bread of life. But Jesus, too, we see is also the destination. Jesus is that to which we are headed. And yet, even this promise might be a challenge, right? Jesus says, all you have to do is just get to me. If you get to me, you're safe, right? It's like when you're a kid, you're playing tag or something. There's the safe. Once you get there, no one can touch you. The question is, how are you gonna get there? Are you going to get there? And that is the struggle, right? Life is long. We often groan and are weary and are beset with challenges and temptations. like God's people in the wilderness? And what do we do? Do we just grit our teeth? Do we just hope beyond hope? Do we just say, I'm gonna endure, I'm gonna get there to the end by my own strength, by my own willpower? Because frankly speaking, if that's true, then we are all hopeless. That is not what we have to look forward to. Brothers and sisters, here is the good news that answers that question. Will we make it? Will we get there? Jesus says this in verse 38, for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me. He returns to this theme, right, this idea he's been talking about the last couple chapters of doing the will of God, of accomplishing that for which he was sent. But notice what he says, I have come down to do this. That is to say, it's not us making it to heaven. It's not that we climb the mountain to get to God and that's how we are saved. No, Jesus comes down to us. Jesus descended so that we might be near to God. I mean, look at the Old Testament. God was with his covenant people through the wilderness. He followed them in pillar and in fire, or cloud and fire. He sends them bread, he's near to them, he's providing what they need, but now what do we have? The living bread, Jesus himself, not just manna, but the bread of life comes down to provide that which is needed for God's people. Brothers and sisters, we don't come to God through our works, even through our faith as this thing which we achieve or attain something. We come to God looking to him who came down to us, who accomplished what was necessary for our salvation. I mean, the reason Jesus can make such a strong promise, you will never be cast out, you will never be cut off. if you come to me, is because he was cast out for our sake. He was cut off, he was exiled. He endured the true exile of death so that we, even now as pilgrims, we never have to experience that. We are always, even now, with him. And he gives, he's just adding promise to promise in this conclusion, but you'll note he adds one more promise to the, ones he's made here as he concludes in verse 40. 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. That is, congregation, the promise Jesus makes to you, that as you have faith in him, he will be faithful to raise all of us up on the last day. And even as we hear that, obviously there's a future connotation to that promise, that one day we will be raised up in glory with God. And yet that truth, that reality, is not just a future reality, that we, even now, Christ has descended, he has accomplished the work of salvation, but already Jesus, we know, has raised us up, he has established us with him. And what does it mean to come to Jesus, right? But to be united to him by faith, to be united unbreakably, right? This perfect, this eternal bond that we have, this unbreakable connection to our Savior. I mean, Paul will say, without batting an eye in Colossians, he'll say, Christians, set your mind on things that are above. Not just because that's where Jesus is, that's where you're going, but why? Because you, even now, are seated with Christ at the right hand of God, that you have been raised with Christ, Paul will say. I mean, even now, what are we doing right now? We are being brought nearer to Christ, right? We are in the heavenly Jerusalem as we come to gather before him. in worship, we are raised to heaven, we get a foretaste of what we will experience fully on that great day. So as we conclude this morning, as we go through our life as pilgrims, as we are sojourners, as we are often wondering where our bread is going to come from, we can hear the promises of Jesus, we can be assured that Jesus has given us all that is necessary, he will give us all that is necessary, and that he, as we walk by faith, he will bring us to himself on that last day. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we once again give you thanks for your word. Lord, we thank you, God, that there is nothing we can do, no work that we can accomplish to reach you, but you have sent your son as the savior of the world. We do ask that you would increase our faith, that we would trust in him, that we would cast our cares upon him, Lord, and that we would Have endurance, Lord, not only individually, but even as we walk together as your saints, God, that we would endure until the end, and that in this age, your church would advance despite all opposition. We do pray in Jesus' name, amen.