So last week we began a journey of discovery in John's gospel. Following our examination of Acts chapter two, verses 42 to 47, we talked about how the disciples devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching about Jesus. And the first disciples, yes, and the first disciples, the way that they did that was by an examination of Jesus' teaching about himself in order that we might collectively and individually answer Jesus's question, who do you say that I am? And what better way do we have to answer that question than by looking at Jesus's I am statements in John's gospel. So last week we began our analysis of Jesus' statements with their Old Testament backgrounds. We discovered that this declaration, it was not a mere assertion of his identity, but rather it was a direct echo of Yahweh's own declaration in the book of Exodus. God proclaims to Moses that his name is I Am Who I Am. He tells the people that his name is I Am, Yahweh. And Jesus says that Yahweh was the one who sent him. He is the one who is eternally in the state of being. He is our source and the one who causes everything else to be. It's an incredible name. He is the one who saves and besides him there is no other. And it's into this context that Jesus proclaims himself to be God. We saw in John chapter six, the same chapter that we're gonna be looking at this morning, that when Jesus walks on the water, he tells his disciples, do not be afraid, I am, ego eimi. And in his confrontation with the Pharisees, Jesus makes it abundantly clear that he means that he is God, before Abraham was. I am, ego in me. And finally, when he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, his proclamation of I am is enough that it knocks the soldiers off of their feet. Jesus claims the title of God's name and understanding Jesus' I am statements in the context of Yahweh's declaration of I am, it's vital for understanding the depth of his teaching and ministry. And it's through this lens that we approach our scripture today. So we now turn our attention to the first of Jesus' famous I Am statements in the book of John. As we shall see, each of these statements in turn paint a picture of what it means for us that Jesus is I Am. These are beautiful, artistic metaphors to help us understand the reality of Jesus' Godhood. What does it mean that Jesus is God? This morning we see Jesus proclaiming, I am the bread of life, and we'll begin by walking through this section of scripture, and then we will unpack the metaphor of Jesus' statement, and it will lead us to three conclusions. The first is that the bread of life provides for our needs. Second, the bread of life is wisdom. And finally, the bread of life is God's gift to you. So let's get started. In order to understand Jesus' teachings in John chapter six, verses 22 all the way to verse 58, we need to first understand the expectation of Jesus' crowd. Our scripture today is set against the backdrop of the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 at the beginning of chapter six, verses one through 15. So in John six, starting in verse eight, John tells us, one of his disciples, Andrew, The Simon Peter's brother said to him, to Jesus, there is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many? And Jesus said, have the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted, And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up and they filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, this indeed is the prophet who is to come into the world. So Jesus miraculously feeds more than 5,000 people. And the next day, the crowd shows up again. In fact, they have hunted Jesus down. They find him in Capernaum, and the first thing that they ask is, when did you get here? Jesus quickly turns the matter, quickly turns the conversation to the heart of the matter. They were not looking for him because they were wanting to experience God or to learn from him. Rather, they were only interested in the things that he could do for them. They wanted a show. They wanted full bellies. They wanted to see a miracle. Now I don't think that these are necessarily bad things. I think if we were in a similar situation, how many of us wouldn't do exactly the same thing? But the truth was that they were missing the point of what Jesus was trying to show them. And now they can start to unpack the lesson of Jesus's miracle. Jesus tells them that they should not work 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. Now this is in essence a claim to be a prophet sent by God. God having set his seal on Jesus as the son of man, it would be a statement of speaking on behalf of God's authority. A person's seal would have the power of being able to enable another to speak on their behalf. If a messenger showed up with a message bearing the emperor's seal, It was understood that whatever was read would be a message from the emperor himself. And the people understood this when Jesus makes this statement, and so they tap into their history of the prophets to try to validate Jesus' claim. The crowd asks, 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. Now they were right to test a prophet. Deuteronomy chapter 13 has many regulations for testing a prophet, and it was right of them to put a prophet to the test. However, what I find rather funny here is that Jesus had already given them a sign. He had given them a miraculous sign. He had fed 5,000 people using two fish and a few loaves of bread. He had already given them a sign. but Jesus refuses to give them an additional sign or miracle. And this is because the purpose for any miracle is not actually the miracle itself. The point was not the miracle, it's what the miracle pointed to. These were not magic tricks that were done for the sake of entertainment, rather the miracle was meant to highlight a truth about God. And this is true about prophecy in the Old Testament as well. The purpose of prophecy was not to tell the future. Rather, the foretelling of events was meant to help the people to understand the foretelling of God. They could and they should trust God's word and prophecy like the miracles were meant to confirm and affirm the validity of God's message. So the people then, they astutely compared Jesus' miracle with the miracle of the manna in the wilderness. However, in emphasizing the sign that was done by a potential prophet, they incorrectly state that it was Moses who was the one who provided the manna to their fathers. And Jesus corrects the crowd and he tells them that it was God who provided the manna. And that is exactly what we see when we turn to the Exodus account of this miracle. In Exodus chapter 16, four and five, God says to Moses, behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you and the people shall go out and they'll gather a portion every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily, and that is exactly what happens. Continuing in verse 14, and when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground, and when the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, what is it? For they did not know what it was, and Moses said to them, it is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat, And this is what the Lord has commanded you. Gather of it, each of you, as much as you can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent. And the people of Israel did so. They gathered some more, some less, but when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. So God is the one who provides for the people. He is the one who reigns bread from heaven, and it is more than the people need. I love the piece here in the middle that says that the people said to one another, what is it? For they did not know what it was. Manna literally translates to, what is it? So just like God named himself I Am, he provides for the people, what is it? Each person was to measure an omer of manna, it's about two liters, and it was enough that each of them was able to gather as much as they could eat. So returning to our John 6 account, I think that it is interesting that the people were looking for Jesus to be the kind of prophet that Moses was. Or rather, I should say, they were challenging whether Jesus could be the kind of prophet that Moses had been. Moses had been the leader who delivered the people from physical bondage and slavery. And if Jesus was going to be like Moses, then they expected that he would need to free them from their political oppressors and provide for their physical needs. But like we just saw, it was God who provided for their physical needs, not Moses. And the freedom that Jesus was inviting them to was far deeper than anything that they could understand or imagine. Now, an important note here regarding the crowd is that I actually don't think that they have done anything evil or wrong in wanting Jesus to dazzle them. They wanted full bellies. They wanted to see something miraculous. And this is exactly what he had done for them the day before. It was not uncommon in a Roman context for a patron to provide for their supporters' needs. The crowd wanted to follow a man who could miraculously feed a multitude, even if they didn't believe his message. Now, emperors and other politicians, they often kept people pacified with free food and entertainment. And like Roman clients, many in the crowd probably joined Jesus's entourage just because they were looking for a handout of food. People also commonly listened to famous speakers for entertainment. In an age before the internet, this was how they would be entertained. But it was not with the intention of necessarily wanting to change. These people were seeking physical sustenance rather than spiritual nourishment and that was okay because it gave Jesus an opportunity to teach them about God. Many times we find ourselves in a similar situation where we may not be able to hear what God has to say to us because we have a physical need that we're hoping to have met. It's okay to work. to care for our needs, and I believe it is an important aspect in the life of the church to care for those who are in need. But Jesus also challenges the crowd to pursue a kind of nourishment that didn't perish. They should also seek the food that endures to eternal life. Whereas the people identified bread from heaven as the manna in the wilderness, Jesus says the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And it is here that Jesus invites them into a new way of thinking and a new way of understanding God. Now there's a significant amount of discussion in verses 27 to 30 around the topic of work. Jesus tells the people not to work for the food that perishes. The crowd responds. saying, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus says, this is the work of God, that you believe in him who he has sent. The crowd says, then what sign do you do? What work do you perform? And the concept of works was actually a central idea in Jewish ethics. Jewish tradition, it never isolated works from faith. You practiced your beliefs. You were to live out the covenant. But here, Jesus redefines the term work, rather than disparaging it. Rather than laboring for actual food, they should work for what the Son of Man would give them. Jesus' hearers, invited by him to work for eternal life, wish to know how Jesus defines work. And in contrast to their tradition, in which faith was often simply one work among many, Jesus defines the work essential for eternal life as faith in him. This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. And when the crowd asks Jesus to give to them the bread of God who comes down from heaven, Jesus tells 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. The bread of life is Jesus Himself. He is the one who has come down from heaven to do the Father's will, and those who believe in the Son, who put their whole trust onto Jesus, will have eternal life. So as we have seen, the crowd has come hoping for more of what they had experienced the day before in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000. Jesus, he challenges their expectations by encouraging them to work for food that endures to eternal life, which is given by the Son of Man. He is the one who comes down from heaven and who himself gives life to the world. This is because he himself is the bread of life. Those who come to him, who believe in him, will not hunger or thirst, but will have eternal life. So now we've explored the passage a little bit itself. And now we're gonna begin to unpack what Jesus means when he says, I am the bread of life. Now the first thing that we shall see is that this is a claim of provision and sustenance. It's probably the most basic metaphorical function of comparing Jesus with bread. It's the suggestion that the bread sustains life. Just as bread sustains life, so too Christ sustains our life. And this idea shows up throughout John's gospel. John 3.16, probably one of the most famous Bible verses ever. What does it say? For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. The same idea is echoed later in John 3.36. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. John 10.10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I come that they may have life and have it abundantly. The Son sustains life. The Son provides eternal life, abundant life, and like bread, Jesus is the sustainer. And this makes sense because bread, like water, is a primary necessity. It is less about understanding the importance of bread and much more about being embraced by the hungry and the thirsty. And here Jesus is inviting his audience as the hungry and the thirsty to respond with faith rather than contemplation. The bread is meant to be consumed. It is meant to be ingested. And in doing so, it gives life. Now this is one of the I am statements, right? And that appears in the text. Can we pull up the Greek text? Perfect. Jesus says, ego eimi, we talked about this last week, haartas teis zoes, I am the bread of life. I am the bread of life, and this is once again a claim of divinity, because in Greek, you actually don't need the first person pronoun. You could have just very simply said, and that would have meant, I am the bread of life. But when you put in that first person pronoun of ego, it's him saying, I am God, the bread of life. We can understand. that the provision and sustenance of God the Father is being found in Jesus himself. And so we can understand this to mean that Jesus provides not only for us in eternity, but he also provides for us in our day-to-day. It is not as if Jesus' abundant life and eternal life, it only begins after we die. We can and we should also trust him in our day-to-day needs. He is tapping into the claims of God the Father's provision and saying, this is found in me. But it also looks forward to the final restoration of all things. In the book of Exodus chapter 24, Starting in verse nine, we find this. Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement and sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank. This is a really cool account. And it's not one that I feel like we talk about enough. This is right after Moses and the elders of the people, they are consecrated before God. And right before Moses goes up onto the mountain, the Mount Sinai, and gets the stone tablets from God, Moses and the elders, they go up onto the mountain and they see God and they eat with God. and this heavenly banquet where the people of God eat with God face to face, it becomes a prototype for the restoration that the world awaits. just as Moses and the elders eat with God, so too we await the final restoration of all things when we too will eat together with God. And this is exactly what scripture declares. Isaiah chapter 25, six to eight, on this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well-refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all people, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. The feast of God. We see this in Revelation chapter 19, starting in verse six. Then I heard what seems to be the voice of a great multitude like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder crying out, hallelujah for the Lord our God, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this down, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. Jesus, as the bread of life, he represents God's provision. He provides for our needs in the here and now, and as the bread of life, we await the final restoration of all things, when we will see God face to face, and we will eat together at his great feast. But Jesus as the bread of life, it doesn't only represent the provision and sustenance of our needs. Bread was also a common symbol for divine wisdom in Jewish tradition. In a second century BC book called Syrac, we're gonna get into some weird texts here, the author describes wisdom personified as a woman. And he describes how wisdom will feed the one who fears the Lord with the bread of learning and give them the water of understanding to drink. The author writes of this personified wisdom that those who eat of me will hunger still, those who drink of me will thirst for more. Sounds a lot like what we read in John 6 with a little bit of a twist. the law itself could also be understood as comparing God's word with bread. We see this in Deuteronomy chapter eight where Moses writes, he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you know, and Jesus quoted this, that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Jewish tradition also emphasized that wisdom descended from heaven, that the law was from heaven, that this wisdom was like bread. So going back to our chapter 6 passage this morning, in chapter 6 verse 35, Jesus employs language that alludes directly to this divine wisdom that we've talked about. He says, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." Jesus' audience, they would have been familiar with the writings that we examined from the Book of Wisdom, and they would have understood that what Jesus was claiming is that He, Jesus, is greater than wisdom. He is the perfection of wisdom. For wisdom promised that those who would eat and drink from her, they would hunger and thirst for more. Jesus emphasizes instead that the one who comes to and believes in him will never hunger or thirst for anything else ever again. When one follows Jesus, one gets all that is available. And Jesus as the bread of life, it is an invitation to come and partake of Jesus's wisdom, surpassing all other sources of knowledge. And finally this morning, Jesus as the bread of life is a gift for you. Now, like we've already discussed, God was the one who gave the Israelites manna in the wilderness. He gave it as a gift mediated by the prophet Moses. However, that gift was temporary. In fact, if any of the manna was left over on the ground, by the next morning, it would spoil and it would be covered in worms. Jesus is the mediator of God's ultimate gift. He surpasses Moses, offering himself as the bread of life. And more than just the mediator, he is the gift himself. The gift of God sent down from heaven. It was not simply a solution to a problem. It wasn't just about physical provision. It was a person. The person of Jesus Christ given to and for you. The crowds, they wanted an earthly deliverer like Moses. Someone who could supply food and then bring them political freedom. Jesus sought to turn their attention from the physical food that they were seeking to the spiritual food that he is. And in the same way, that offer, it's being extended to you. Last week, I said that my hope for you was that you would grow in your experience of Christ. that you would come to know him just a little bit deeper. And I'll be totally honest, that is my hope for this entire series. That in looking at the I am statements of Jesus, that we would grow deeper, not just in our knowledge of him, but that we might trust and experience that God is good. that he loves you, that he is for you, that he has a plan for you. Knowledge about God is great. However, it is in the experience of God that we are changed and equipped to change the world. It is out of the abundance of our encounter with God that we live and we serve. We experience God's love, we live in that love, and then moved by that love, We love others and we serve as Christ served. Christ has been given for you and to you as the bread of life. He is our sustenance and our provision in our current situations and our hope and our assurance of God's final restoration. He is the perfect and full display of wisdom and he is not just the mediator of God's gift, the gift of heaven eternal light itself. is a person. It is the person of Jesus. Let's pray. Holy God, we thank you so very much that you are a God of presence, that in the person of your Son, Jesus Christ, that you have drawn near to us. You do not simply tell us that you are, I am, ego, a me, but you tell us that you, like God, sustain. You provide for our needs in the here and now, and you have set the table for us in the future. I pray that you would help us to experience you as the true source, the perfect source of wisdom. Lord God, you tell us that you have made yourself available to us in the person of Jesus Christ. You are the gift, you are the bread of life, come down for us, and I just pray that you would help us to experience you this morning, that we would meet with you, that we would know you, and that out of that experience that you would equip us to love our families, to love our neighbors, to love our coworkers, to love strangers that we meet, Lord God. We pray all this in the holy name of your Son, Jesus Christ, amen.