Bread From Heaven

Peter Voorhees

The Gospel of John • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

John 6:26–40

Seek

Jesus as Lord

Bread of Life Discourse

0 ratings

· 2 views

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

I have a confession to make. There have been times where I have read the Bible and it would seem that I am more concerned about reading a particular amount or portion rather than just sitting in the text and absorbing what God has for me.

The last couple weeks, the youth group has been looking at seeing Christ in the Old Testament. My daughters were sharing with me what they were learning and I was loving it. I was talking with Malissa who is one of the youth leaders. She was sharing with the students about the account of Joseph and how he represents a type of Christ, a foreshadow of what God was going to do through Jesus.

If you can follow me here… the previous week they were discussing Issac and Ishmael. Some of the students were confused as to why God would reject Ishmael over Isaac. The students weren’t seeing it as an intellectual/theological exercise but that Ishmael was a person and why would God reject him for something he couldn’t control but was actually a consequence of others choices. (If you have ever felt rejected or unloved for no other reason than just being or existing, you would understand). The goodness and grace of God in all of this was that God was not done with Ishmael or with his descendants. In fact when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers (because of jealousy), they sold them to the Ishmaelites. God entrusted Joseph, in through whom the eventual salvation of His people would be brought, to the lineage and people of Ishmael. It is a story of grace, redemption, and goodness of God.

I’ve read this story and the book of Genesis many, many, many times and there’s so much to glean and pull from if I take time to sit, listen, and see God’s amazing intentional purposes He has laid out in His word and for our lives.

In our text this morning, Jesus cuts through the intent and desire of those who are seeking Him. The bread and the fish that Jesus had distributed to the crowds were there to lead the eye, the mind and the heart to the true gift of God to his people, then and there. They were there to open up their understanding to the fact that the new Passover, the new Exodus (leading people out of bondage, sin, hopelessness), was taking place right in front of them, and that Jesus was leading it.

Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (pp. 78–79). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

If you have your Bibles, or on your devices, would you turn to John 6:26-40. Would you stand with me while I read our text this morning? This is the word of the Lord… you may be seated.

Signs Point To The End

Signs Point to the end but they themselves are not the end.

When we have travelled to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon, we always stop by the large National Park sign and take the obligatory picture. We don’t stop there and go home, but we journey onto the attraction and feast on the awesome natural presence that it is.

The people in this time, and we in this time, are being confronted with who Jesus is. Don’t seek Jesus for what He can do for you, but seek Him for who He is.

In a recent article in Christianity Today, theologian and preacher Russell Moore writes about the article written in Vanity Fair about Jerry Falwell Jr. and his fall from prominence and resignation from Liberty University (a evangelical university founded by Religious Right founder/pastor/activist Jerry Falwell Sr.). Moore argues that Falwell Jr. was not living a hypocritical lifestyle when all of his scandalous behaviors came to public light, in fact that Falwell Jr. never considered himself a follower of Jesus. He writes..

“Some people belonged to churches so they would be seen as good people. Even if they never believed, they sang the hymns and prayed the prayers and played on the church softball teams. The adulterer would pontificate on family values, and the embezzler would teach Sunday school classes on the Ten Commandments.

In time, as always happens, politicians sought to make this kind of religion a political force—a moral majority—that could de-emphasize the less popular aspects of Christianity (Trinity, incarnation, blood atonement, carrying a cross) and emphasize the more marketable aspects (fighting for the soul of America, reclaiming the culture, saving Western civilization).

Now, though, cultural Christianity seems to have evolved to the state where many people don’t even have to pretend to belong to churches. They just need to know how to post Facebook memes about Christian values right along with profane slogans about the president of the United States.

And behind all of that, are real people—created in the image of God, destined for an eternity of glory or damnation. The consequences aren’t just societal or even just theological. They are strikingly and tragically personal.” - R. Moore, “Jerry Falwell Jr. Isn’t A Hypocrite”. Christianity Today, Jan. 27, 2022

This I am afraid is much of popular Christianity. It is an opportunity to use God as a means to a particular end that suits us.

The Kingdom of Heaven I think is going to look a little different than I think most American Christians think it is going to look. Matthew 6:9-13 (Pray like this)… Matthew 7:12 (whatever you wish others to do to you, do also to them)… Matthew 25 (giving water, food, clothing, hospitality to the stranger/immigrant/other, caring for the sick, visiting the incarcerated, giving a voice to the voiceless)… There is an active faith that in walking in it, we lose ourselves, but Jesus says, Matthew 16:24-26 “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

This belief is one in where our allegiances are aligned to who He is, not the benefits that He can bring to our advantage. Not a prop, not a stepping stool, not a means to a selfish end. But that believing in Him, Jesus in whom God sent, you take on His world view… you are allegiant to Him primarily.

The people ask Jesus, what must we do to be aligned with God’s Kingdom (John 6:28) and Jesus replies:

John 6:29 “Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.””

Maybe they were looking for a military exercise of force to demonstrate His role as messiah. Maybe they wanted Jesus to march on Jerusalem, and like Joshua, make the walls fall down as a sign of who He is and that He was taking Jerusalem back… making Jerusalem great again.

Jesus explains to them that God supplies to them those necessary elements that they need. In this case it is bread (likened to Manna in the dessert in Exodus).

Let’s contextualize this for I think it is appropriate and leaning a little deeper than just physical sustinence…

Jesus is our “Bread”

What do we long for? What do we need to sustain us? Our culture is a little different though we can derive some parallels.

What do we need…

Identity

Security

Stability

Forgiveness

Hope

Peace

These are real things that we all are dealing with. Would you agree that these are things at the root of why we engage in political and societal conversations? This is why we shun or dismiss those who don’t see things the way we do. We are threatened and when we are threatened we retreat and see the other as the enemy and react and deal with them accordingly.

Jesus says, John 6:35 “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.”

“This is another way of saying what the Prologue said: Jesus is the Word, the one who comes from the Father into the world to accomplish his purpose. And in this case the particular emphasis is on nourishment. Until they recognize who Jesus really is, they may be fed with bread and fish, but there is a deep hunger inside them which will never be satisfied.”

Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (p. 81). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

In Jesus we find our identity as His children in whom He loves (vs 35-36)

In Jesus we find our security that He will never cast us out (vs36)

In Jesus we find stability in that He will not lose anything/anyone given to Him (vs 39)

In Jesus we find forgiveness in that everyone who looks on Him and believes in Him should have eternal life. (vs 40)

In Jesus we have hope because He will raise us up on the last day (vs 40)

In Jesus we have peace because He is executing and has executed the good, right, true, and beautiful will of God and no one can thwart it!! (vs 38)

Believe on Him for His great love for you, He wants to fill you with the Holy Spirit, give you the new life in Him, where you are oriented to the things of God and sewing peace, hope, love, and truth in our community. “His will done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

Because of His great love

One of the hard lessons the children of Israel had to learn in the wilderness was that their God, YHWH, was not at their beck and call. He wasn’t obliged to them. He hadn’t decided to rescue them from Egypt because they were a great nation, more powerful and numerous than others. He certainly hadn’t discovered that they were a particularly moral or godly people. There was nothing in them, as they stood, to commend them to him. It was simply that in his loving choice he had decided to make them his own people, so that they would be the nation through whom his purposes and love would be made known to the world. This is particularly emphasized in Deuteronomy 7:7–11—which is, significantly, set in the context of Moses going through the story of how much Israel had grumbled and provoked their God in the wilderness.

English Standard Version Chapter 7

7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, 10 and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. 11 You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.

The ‘drawing’ of the father of those he has ‘given’ to the son (verse 37) takes place, it seems, in the silent secret places of the human heart. When Jesus quotes ‘they shall all be taught by God’ from Isaiah 54:13 “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the peace of your children.” , he is calling to mind one of the Old Testament’s greatest prophecies of the renewal that will come about through the great outpouring of God’s love, bringing his people back from exile. The passage goes on, soon afterwards (Isaiah 55:1; “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”), to invite everyone who is thirsty to come to the waters and drink freely—picking up what Jesus has just said in verse 35 (‘the one who believes in me shall never be thirsty’). Jesus seems to have the whole passage in mind.

Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (p. 82-83). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

‘Eternal life’ is the quality of life, sharing the inner life of Jesus, that is on offer at once to anyone who believes. ‘Eternal’ tells you what sort of life it is, as well as the fact that it goes on after death: it is the life of the age to come, the new life which God has always planned to give to his world. But the form that this eternal life will take in the end is not that of the disembodied spirit that so many people today assume is what Christians think about life after death. The eternal life that begins in the present when someone believes, and continues in the future beyond death, will eventually take the form of the resurrection life already spoken of in 5:25–29. The entire story John is telling is designed to end with Jesus pioneering the way into this newly embodied life, and the promise of the present chapter is that this life will be shared by all who taste of the living bread.

Wright, T. (2004). John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10 (pp. 83–84). Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Yield your life to Jesus today. Make Jesus King and enter into the Kingdom of heaven where the currency is hope, peace, love, acceptance, grace, forgiveness, mercy, justice, and a life that is defined by God with eternal weight and assurance.

Would you stand with me.

**Invite the staff, elders, and deacons to the front of the sanctuary to be available to pray during the last song

Related Media

Related Sermons