Well, let's read together from the scriptures as we find them in the gospel according to John, and chapter six. John's gospel, chapter six. I'm going to begin reading at verse 25. It's on page 1,075 in the church Bible. going to be looking over the course of our communion this morning at various verses here, but we're going to read now from verse 25 to verse 48. John 6, verse 25. Jesus, you remember, has fed the 5,000. At the beginning of the chapter, he has crossed over to the other side of the lake, and the crowd has followed him. And we read in verse 25, 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, 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 to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them, this is the work of God, that you believe in 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 manna 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 me 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, truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. Well, please turn again to John's gospel, chapter six. To those verses that we read together, we are working our way through what is known as the bread of life discourse in this chapter of John, John chapter six. It is the fourth of seven discourses by Jesus in John's gospel. Each discourse, each extended piece of teaching explains one of seven signs that Jesus performs. This fourth discourse is explaining the fourth sign, the feeding of the 5,000 recorded at the beginning of the chapter. And in these messages over our communion season, I'm not trying to cover every single verse. That would take much longer than we have available. Rather, I'm just trying to take one key verse in each part of the passage we're looking at and looking at the passage through that lens, seeing that verse as the key summarizing verse. Just quickly, let me recap on what we looked at last Sabbath evening in our pre-communion sermon. We saw how the Jews' understanding of and their attitude to the feeding miracle was completely worldly. Jesus is speaking, you remember, to the crowds who were fed with that miraculous bread in the feeding of the 5,000. And their Their attitude to it, their understanding of it is completely worldly. They couldn't see past the bread to the spiritual significance of the bread. They didn't see the sign, Jesus said. They just saw the bread. They're not interested, Jesus says, in spiritual realities. They wanted to make Jesus a king. We saw that back earlier in chapter six, chapter six, verse 15. They wanted to take Jesus by force and make him into a king. They wanted a political leader. a mighty warrior, someone who would set up an earthly empire, someone who would bring material, physical blessing to the Jews in this world, here and now. That's their attitude. It's worldly. It's earth-bound. They're not interested in spiritual realities. And Jesus rebuked them for this attitude. And he told them that they should focus on spiritual things, eternal things instead. Verse 27, that was the key verse that we looked at last Sabbath evening. 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. This physical bread, he says, is just a sign. It's pointing away from itself to something else. It's a picture. This physical bread is a picture of real spiritual bread. There is another bread, he says, that comes from heaven and which endures to eternal life. That's the bread that you should be interested in. That's the bread to seek. That's the bread to eat. And then he tells them in verse 33 that he himself is that bread. Verse 33, for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. But the Jews misunderstand Jesus here. They think that he's still talking about physical bread. Bread that can be handed over, bread that can be tasted. And so Jesus says, they say in verse 34, Sir, give us this bread always. They don't understand that Jesus is talking about himself. And so he spells it out for them in verse 35. 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. And it's this verse that I want us to take this morning as the lens through which to look at this next block of the Bread of Life discourse. Verses 35 to 48 are one single unit of thought. And there's a little signpost in the passage that shows us this, because in verse 35 at the beginning, and in verse 48 at the end, the same phrase is repeated. I am the bread of life. And those two phrases at the beginning and the end of this passage are like two brackets or two bookends at the beginning and the end of the passage showing that everything inside them belongs together. And the repeated phrase, I am the bread of life, also tells us the theme of this part of the passage, everything that's inside the brackets. Everything that John is talking about between verse 35 and 38 is about Jesus as the bread of life. These verses, 35 to 38, explain, they unpack this mysterious phrase. And so that's what we want to think about this morning. What does it mean that Jesus is the bread of life? And I want to suggest two things at least that we see in this passage. And here's the first. Only Jesus satisfies. Only Jesus satisfies. And we see that right there in verse 35. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. And whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Jesus is not talking here, remember, about temporal, physical life. That was the mistake that the Jews made. This is the bread that gives eternal life. Verse 40 makes that clear. 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. Jesus is talking about spiritual things. In other words, Jesus is talking about spiritual hunger. The spiritual hunger that is in every single human being that can only be filled and satisfied by God. Because we're created by God, we're created for God, and we can't ever be truly satisfied apart from him. I am the bread of life, Jesus says. I alone can satisfy you. And it's so desperately sad, isn't it, seeing men and women and young people created in the image of God, image bearers of God, made for fellowship with God, made to know God, made to relate to God, made to enjoy God. And they're trying to fill that desperate emptiness inside them with the wrong things. They're trying to fill that emptiness with the wrong kind of bread. With physical bread. It might be the bread of education. piling up more and more qualifications, accumulating more and more knowledge, becoming more and more expert and qualified, trying to fill that emptiness inside them. It might be work. It might be their family, their children, their husband, their wife. It might be charity work or politics trying to make this world a better place, a happier place, a fairer place, a more just place, a more compassionate place. It might be religion trying to fill that emptiness with religious work and religious effort. For some people it might be sex or drugs For many people it's money and entertainment and travel, trying to satisfy themselves, trying to bring joy and meaning and purpose to their life with bread that is physical, with this world. And Jesus is warning here that none of these things can ever fill that hunger that's inside of us. All these things, sooner or later, will leave us unsatisfied and empty. They're nothing more than a temporary and inadequate remedy for a much bigger and more radical problem. Trying to satisfy the hunger inside us with the things of this world is a bit like taking paracetamol when you have cancer. It's possible that those paracetamol tablets will alleviate just a tiny little bit some of the symptoms of that disease, but they're not going to cure the root problem, and they're not going to help for very long. And when people really start to understand this, that nothing that this world has to offer can satisfy, it is a devastating discovery. when their gods, when their idols fail them. Perhaps they lose their job. This job that has been everything to them. It has been what has given them their identity. It is what has given them purpose. It's what has given structure to their lives. And it's taken away. Or maybe it's retirement that takes that away. Or maybe their marriage breaks down. Or their children in whom they had invested all their hopes and all their dreams and all their pride. But then their children disappoint them. This world, whatever it was from this world that they were trying to fill that God-shaped hole with, it lets them down, it proves to be dust, and they go to pieces and they feel like throwing themselves off a bridge because that's where they were looking for their satisfaction. That's what they were trusting in. Or perhaps for some people, this realization doesn't come in a dramatic crisis like that, but just in a moment of honesty, in a quieter moment, they suddenly find themselves asking, is this all that life is about? Is this really all there is? You know how it is physically, sometimes you're just so frantically busy that you realize you haven't eaten for hours and hours and you didn't notice how hungry you were until you stop. And actually that's true spiritually as well, isn't it? People can be so busy, so caught up in just keeping life going and doing work and bringing up the children that they don't stop and think and realize just how unsatisfied and how unfulfilled they are. In fact, I was talking just yesterday morning to Trevor Watson, and he was telling me about a Chinese friend that he had met up with on Friday evening, and this man is not a Christian, but he was saying exactly this kind of thing. He was saying, Trevor, I feel like I'm just a hamster on a wheel running round and round and round, and I'm not going anywhere. I just feel like there is no purpose to my life. There is no point to anything. This is a man who's accomplished and qualified and healthy. Everything seems to be fine in his life, but he's conscious of this gnawing hunger, this emptiness. This existential crisis that many people are going through at the minute perhaps is making people stop and think as they realize that the standard of living that they've become accustomed to for so many years, these things that they've taken for granted, it could all be taken away. There's the threat, the specter of world war suddenly hanging over us and all our luxuries and all our privileges could be just taken away like that. And I'm sure that that is making people wonder, is this all that life is about? If all of this is taken away, is that the end of everything? And this is why Jesus said what we thought about last Sabbath evening in verse 27. This is why Jesus says, don't work for food that spoils. Don't live for the things of this world. They can't satisfy you. And the reason that they cannot satisfy is because human beings are not just physical creatures. Physical things could satisfy you if you were just a physical material being, but you're not Human beings are spiritual as well as physical. We have souls as well as bodies. Animals are perfectly happy with purely physical things. That's all they need to be happy. They just need food and drink and safety and shelter. They're not interested in anything higher than that. But we are not animals. We have been made by God and for God. And unless we're living our lives according to our maker's design, there will always be that aching hunger deep inside us. And trying to fill that hole with worldly things is like eating and eating and eating and always being hungry because the food that you're eating has no nutritional value. It's so thin and so insubstantial that it will not nourish you. It will not cure your hunger. That's what the things of this world are like. They will not satisfy. In fact, even the very best that this world has to offer will not satisfy. Think of the people who have succeeded most in the world. who've enjoyed the best of the best, who have been able to have the richest and the choicest blessings that this world can offer. All the money that they could ever want, all the fame and power and pleasure and influence, they have been able to have it all, the best of it all. They're often the people who experience this emptiness most acutely. Because they've got to the top and they've realized that there is nothing there. That's what Solomon discovered, isn't it? In the book of Ecclesiastes. There's a man who had everything that this world could offer. The very best of everything that this world could offer. And what did he say? It's meaningless. It's all meaningless. It is nothing more than a chasing after the wind. And that should warn us if we need to be warned. This world cannot satisfy. Living for the things of this world is folly. Because if the very best that this world can offer doesn't satisfy, how likely is it that what you and I are able to scrabble together is going to satisfy us? Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Only I can satisfy you. Only I can take away that gnawing emptiness. I'm the only one who can fill your life with meaning and with purpose. So come to me. Put your trust in me, Jesus says. Give yourself to me. And you'll never experience that deep emptiness ever again. Why not? Because he himself is the bread of life. And what he gives us, what he fills us with, is himself the second person of the Godhead, the mighty Son of God. There's no doubt about it. There's no question about it. It's very emphatic in the original language. He who comes to me, Jesus says literally, will never ever go hungry. He will never ever be thirsty. Jesus gives us himself. He doesn't give us a set of rules. He doesn't give us a set of ideals. He doesn't give us a set of rituals. He gives us a relationship with God himself. Jesus and Jesus alone satisfies. This is the great security, the great satisfaction that only he can provide. He himself is the bread of life. Our happiness, if we're Christians, doesn't depend on anything in this world. We could lose everything. We could lose our health. We could lose our homes. We could lose all our loved ones. We could lose our lives itself. And we would still have everything because we have Jesus Christ. Our happiness, our satisfaction is not bound up in this world or anything to do with it. And if you're a Christian this morning, can't you testify to that? It's not that when you become a Christian, your life is suddenly perfect and that you never have any kind of disappointment or dissatisfaction. We still live in a fallen world. But that horrible, deep-rooted emptiness inside of us is gone forever because now we know what life is about. Now we know why we're here, what we're for, how we're meant to live. We understand the point of it all. We may not have riches, or fame, or greatness as the world measures it. We don't care, because we have something far better than anything that the world could ever buy, and that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The lowest, newest Christian in the world has Jesus Christ. the living bread, the bread of life. And so he will never be hungry. She will never be thirsty. And it's worth asking, isn't it, if you're going through a time, you are a Christian, but you're going through a time of dissatisfaction with your life or deep unhappiness for one reason or another, it's worth asking the question, am I feeding on Jesus? Or have I pushed him out to the sidelines of my life and something else has come in and I'm relying on something else to satisfy me? And it's so easy to do that, isn't it? We're all tempted to do that all the time. The world is always pressing in upon us. It's so easy to start living as though something else is the bread of life to us instead of Jesus, and to feed on that as the bread of life instead of Christ. We still say, of course, that Jesus is the bread of life, but in reality, we are actually looking to something else to sustain us and to satisfy us. It might be something sinful. It might be pornography. It might be something neutral, like television, something that can be good or bad. It might be something that is a good thing. Something like food or family or work or sport. But the point is these things are not the bread of life and they never can be. Only Jesus can give us the kind of satisfaction that we need. Where do you go when life is hard? Do you go to the fridge? Do you go to the television? Do you go to the internet? Or do you go to Jesus Christ, the bread of life? Only Jesus satisfies. And then secondly, and much more briefly, only Jesus sustains. Only Jesus sustains. And we see this particularly in verses 38 to 40. Bread nourishes life. Bread sustains life. It's a picture of that again and again in scripture. It gives calories. It gives energy to our bodies so that they're able to keep functioning, so that we can keep putting one foot in front of the other. Bread keeps us strong and healthy. And we see in verses 38 to 40 that this is something that the bread of life does as well. Jesus sustains those who put their trust in him. Jesus gives us spiritual energy, spiritual calories. He enables us to keep going in the Christian life. And you notice how strongly Jesus puts it in these verses. He says, this is the very reason, this is the purpose of the incarnation. This is why the second person of the Godhead became a man and came into the world. It was to save a people for the Father. Not just to save them, but to save them all the way to the end. To sustain them all the way to heaven. Jesus does more you see than just make salvation possible. He brings us all the way to glory. He gives us new life and he sustains that new life forever. He sustains his people through life in this world. He supplies us every day with the grace that we need to resist sin and to keep serving God and to live the Christian life. If you're a Christian today, it's because Jesus has saved you and because Jesus is sustaining you. If you still trust in him, if you still believe God's word, it's because Jesus, the bread of life, is sustaining you. And he's going to keep sustaining you until you walk through the gates of heaven. If you're trusting Jesus today, if you're a Christian, you can be absolutely certain that you will make it to heaven. because he is sustaining you. It doesn't say anything about you. Sometimes Christians think, oh, well, I couldn't say that. That makes me sound very arrogant and proud. It's not arrogant and proud because it's nothing to do with you. It's not that you are great. It's that he is strong and that he sustains you. If you don't make it to heaven, if a single Christian drops out along the way, then that would mean that Jesus is a failure. It would mean that he's not able to do what he has told the Father that he will do. It would mean that the bread of life isn't able to nourish and to sustain his people. So when we say that we can be sure that we will get to heaven, we're not saying anything about ourselves. We're saying that all our confidence is in our Savior. Now we have a part to play, of course. We have to keep feeding on the bread of life every day. Jesus is the one who sustains us, but we need to eat the bread of life continually, just as you need to eat bread every day, you need to feed on the bread of life every day. Every single day you need to come to the Lord Jesus in faith and ask for grace. Every day you come to his word and search for guidance and cling to his promises. Every day you pray and you resist temptation and you serve and you obey. And the Lord's Supper reminds us of this so vividly. It's a picture of this feeding on Christ. This ceremony, this sacrament, is an acted parable of this passage. The Lord's Supper is a meal. And we need to feed on Christ as the bread of life every day for spiritual energy in just the same way that we need to eat food, eat meals every day for physical energy. It's a picture of constant dependence, isn't it? Verse 55, Jesus says, 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. This is how we keep going as Christians, by feeding on Christ. Are you persevering? Are you going on strongly with the Lord? Or do you feel yourself weakening? Are you conscious of your heart growing cold, that you wouldn't ever think of drifting away, stop coming to church, stop calling yourself a Christian, stop doing Christian things, but maybe in your heart you know that you've drifted and that you've become cold. That's the great danger. Maybe you're secretly giving in to some besetting sin. Your enthusiasm is waning and your service is dwindling. There's a very good chance that it's because you're not eating properly. If you see someone who's wasting away physically, that's one of the first questions that you ask. You don't need to be a doctor. You don't need to be an expert to ask that kind of question. Are you eating properly? And if you're weak spiritually, it's not because you don't have enough food. It's not because the food that you have isn't a good enough quality. It's the bread of life. It's Jesus himself. The problem is that you're not eating the food that He provides. You're not trusting Him the way that you should. You're not keeping close to Him the way that you should. You're not in fellowship with Him enough. You're not reading His Word enough. Or maybe you're reading it, but it's just going in one eye and out the other, so to speak. You're not really thinking about it. You're not chewing it over. Day by day, you're not taking it down into your soul to let it nourish you and strengthen you. I wonder if for many of us our quiet times is a bit like eating a meal and then forcing ourselves to be sick so that we vomit it all up again. Yes, we've done it, we've eaten the food, it's gone down, but it's straight back up again and it doesn't have any time to get into our system and to nourish us and strengthen us. Is that what your quiet time is like? Maybe you're not spending enough time in prayer with the Lord. Maybe you're not among Christ's people enough. Maybe you're not listening in church when his word's being preached. These are all the ways that we feed upon the bread of life, and if we're not doing it, then we're not going to be sustained. We're not gonna be healthy. not the way that we could be. Only Jesus satisfies, and only Jesus sustains. And the Lord's Supper is a sign and a seal of both of these realities. The Lord's Supper is a sign. That means it's a symbol It's a picture, it's a visual aid to remind us and to help us understand these things that we've been thinking about. As we eat and drink this ordinary bread and wine, we're meant to remember that Jesus satisfies, that he fills the hungry and the thirsty who come to him. It's a symbol that he sustains and that he nourishes us that He gives us strength. It's a sign of those things. It's a picture of those things to help us to remember them. But it's not just a sign. It's more than a sign. The Lord's Supper, like both the sacraments, is also a seal. Because as we eat and drink these physical elements in faith, we receive spiritual blessings. These realities, these spiritual realities of Jesus satisfying us and sustaining us, these realities are sealed to us. In other words, as we eat and drink in faith, Jesus actually fills us. He actually nourishes us as we sit here. Something supernatural is happening when we partake of the Lord's Supper in faith. It's not just a memorial meal. It's not just for our eyes and for our heads. It's for our hearts as well. It's for our souls. And that's why it's so important for us when we're spiritually weak, when we're struggling, when we're doubting, when we're tempted. Maybe that's exactly the time that you think you shouldn't come to the Lord's table, but that's when you most need to come to the Lord's table. Just like someone who is sick, if they can at all eat, they need to eat so that they will get stronger. And Jesus today invites us to come and to eat at his table with these gracious words of invitation and promise, I am the bread of life. Amen. Well, let's stand as we come to the Lord in prayer. Once again, let's stand for prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for how you sent Jesus from heaven to be the bread of life, to satisfy us and to sustain us. We thank you that through him that deep, knowing, insatiable hunger is taken away. We thank you that through him our lives begin to have purpose and meaning. We thank you, Lord God, that the things of this world cannot satisfy us, but that Jesus does. Thank you, Lord, that even the very best quality and greatest quantity of things that this world can offer do not satisfy. but that Jesus does, and that He offers Himself to every single person, that anyone who receives Him is satisfied. Our Father, we pray for any who are here today who are still desperately, frantically trying to stuff themselves with the things of this world to make them happy, to bring them satisfaction, to bring happiness and pleasure and meaning and comfort and joy and purpose, all these things that can only be found in Christ. Father, we pray for them in their ignorance and in their folly and in their misery. We pray that you would have mercy upon them and that you would reach down and that you would feed them with the bread of life. Our Father, we thank you that this bread sustains us. We pray that as we continue to trust in Christ and as we sit at your table especially and eat and drink in faith, we pray that you would sustain us, that you would nourish us and strengthen us for all that you call us to do. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I want to turn our attention now just for a few moments to John 6, verse 44. John 6, verse 44. Again and again in the Gospels, we see people divided into two groups by Jesus. Those who believe and those who don't. Jesus' words always bring this division. and they still do today, 2,000 years later. And we see this division here in John 6. Many of the Jews listening to Jesus are taken up with the things of this world. This life is all that they are interested in. They don't care about spiritual realities. They're not interested in faith. They couldn't care less about eternity. They don't want forgiveness. They don't want a savior from sins. They want a king. They want a political leader who will solve their problems here and now in this world. They want a nice, easy, pleasant life now, here. They don't care about the next world. And we see them grumbling in verses 41 and 42. This man, they say, is just a carpenter's son. He's not qualified to talk about these things. They're thinking in worldly, human terms. And Jesus explains this division, doesn't he, in verse 44. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. There are those who come to Jesus, in other words, who believe in his words and put their trust in him, and there are those who don't come to Jesus. And the reason anyone believes in Jesus is because the Father has chosen him and enabled him or her to believe in Jesus. God the Father has done something in you if you're a Christian. He has switched the lights on in your mind and in your soul so that you understand Jesus' words, so that you believe Jesus' words. His words make sense to you. So when Jesus says, don't live for this world, but invest your time and your money and your gifts and your energy and your life, pour all of those things into spiritual things, into eternal things, that makes sense to you. That makes sense to someone who has been drawn and taught by the Father. If that makes sense to you today, then that is because God the Father has done something in you. But those words are sheer nonsense to someone who is not a Christian. and who only really cares about this life and this world. How can it possibly make sense? What a stupid thing to say that the things of this world don't matter and that what matters is that we invest in the next life. That's just nonsense to someone who hasn't been drawn by the Father. The Lord's Supper is only for those who have been drawn to Christ by the Father and believed in Jesus. Someone who has never been born again. Someone who has never come to Christ in repentance and faith. Someone who is not feeding on the bread of life. Someone who has never tasted the bread of life. Obviously shouldn't have anything to do with the bread at this table that is just a symbol of the bread of life. But if today you do trust Jesus as your Savior, however feebly, if you really are a Christian, if you trust the Lord Jesus as your Savior, it's because the Father has drawn you. And that is a remarkably, immensely encouraging and comforting fact. It is evidence of his supernatural work in your heart. And so you should come gladly and confidently to his table. Verse 37 is the positive of verse 44, an open invitation. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. And again, literally what Jesus says, I will never, ever, under any circumstances, cast him out. If you have trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, then you are feeding on the bread of life. And so you should come to the table and eat the bread that is a symbol of what you are already doing spiritually. If Christ didn't drive you away when you came to feed on him as the bread of life, he's not going to drive you away from the sign and the seal of his body when you come as one of his people. So come to the Lord's table and be strengthened and sustained and helped. No one can come to me unless the Father draws him. Amen. Well, let's turn to John 6 again for a few moments as we sit together at the table. John 6 verse 51. This is the verse I want us to focus on, but let me just read again verses 49 to 51. Jesus says, your fathers ate the manna 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 of the world is my flesh." Here Jesus is drawing a contrast between two breads from heaven. Verse 51, there is the living bread, and that is compared to the manna of the Old Testament, which is described in verse 49. Two breads that come down from heaven, but the manna is not the real bread from heaven, Jesus says. That is just a picture. It's a foreshadowing pointing forwards to another bread from heaven. And what is the true bread from heaven? Verse 51, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. And then Jesus contrasts the effect of the manna with the effect of the bread of life. And he says that the manna gave physical nourishment for a few years, but nothing more than that. The manna only fed the body. And the proof of that, if you need it, is in verse 49. Everyone who ate the manna in the wilderness is now dead. What a difference this living bread makes, however. Verse 51, if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And as we sit at the table, I want us to focus on the explanation for the difference between the manna and Jesus. How does this everlasting life come about? And the last part of verse 51 spells out the answer. It takes us to the very heart of Jesus' mission. It explains further for us what it means that he is the bread of life. This, the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. This word flesh is a crude word. It's a blunt word. It's a word that emphasizes the physicality the violence of what Jesus is going to do. The word flesh is a butcher's word. He's going to do something that is going to affect his flesh, his skin, his bones, his blood, his sinews, his organs, his cartilage. He doesn't save us, in other words, by giving us beautiful teaching. as some people have argued. He doesn't save us by giving us a good moral example of how we should treat our fellow human beings. He didn't come to give us moving and inspirational ideas. He came, he says, to give his flesh for us. He came down from heaven to die. And what kind of death did he come to die? He tells us that as well. Our text is very clear, isn't it, that it is a substitutionary death. He came to die in the place of others. instead of other people, literally on behalf of the world. The bread that I will give on behalf of the life of the world is my flesh. That word is always used in John in the context of sacrifice. Jesus giving up his life on behalf of others. You have it, for example, in John 10, 11, the good shepherd lays down his life on behalf of the sheep, for the sheep. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world by dying, by giving his flesh by expanding his life in our place. That's the reason he died, because he was dying in our place. He was taking the punishment that was due to you and me. His death was not an accident. It was a substitutionary death. It was a planned death. He carried our sins for us. and he bore the wrath of God for us. He gave his life as a ransom in payment for the life of the world. And it's because he died for us that we are able to feed on him today. That's why we're able to believe in him. That's why we're able to trust in him. The bread had to be broken before it could be distributed and eaten. And we feed today on the bread of life only because it was broken and given for us. If he hadn't done this, if he had come and lived and gave us all this teaching and told us about God and told us about the way to heaven, but then hadn't died on the cross for us in our place, then we couldn't have gone to heaven because he was the one that was providing that way by his death. Without his death in our place, there was no salvation, no forgiveness, no faith, nothing to believe in, no Christianity, no hope, only hell and death to look forward to. It was a substitutionary death, and it was a gracious death, wasn't it? He says, I will give. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. It was his own free choice, and he did it out of love. He did it in obedience to his father's will. No one takes it from me, he says in chapter 10. I lay it down of my own accord. Just think about that. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, freely, willingly gave His flesh to be beaten and pierced and broken and spat upon and killed in exchange for your life. If you're a Christian, He did it graciously to save you. It seems almost blasphemous to say it, but that's the gospel. Jesus came down from heaven to give his life, to give his flesh for the life of the world. And we've been feeding on Christ by faith today. In the Lord's Supper, he says to us, this bread is my body, which is for you. And as we eat and drink these elements in faith, we are sustained and strengthened. But we're leaving the table now, and it's going to be two months before we sit here again, and we're going back out into the world to be tested. perhaps to be persecuted, certainly to be tempted and buffeted by all kinds of trials. And so the good news is that we don't just feed on Christ here at the table for these few minutes every couple of months. We feed on the bread of life every day. Because Jesus says in verse 56, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I on him. We keep on feeding on Christ day by day, hour by hour. We keep on trusting in him. We keep on believing his words. And as we do that, We remain in Him, and He remains in us, and we keep going. Amen.