We are considering today one of the great sermons of Christ. This message marks a turning point in the ministry of Jesus. It reveals the moment when the vast throngs of people that initially followed Him in response to His miracles, turned away and rejected Him when confronted with the truth of the gospel. It would be foolish for me to think that I can add anything new to this message. But I do hope that we can exegete the text in order to make it’s meaning more clear. Jesus was speaking to a large group of disciples, or followers, of which the 12 were included. There were, as verse 66 indicates, a large number of superficial disciples there, as well as His inner circle. And we know from studying the gospels that in most cases Jesus taught by using parables or metaphors, to illustrate spiritual principles. For reasons known only to God, He said in Matt.11:25 that He spoke in such a way as to hide things from the wise and reveal things to infants. And He does so in this sermon as well, especially by use of the metaphor of the bread of heaven.
So as we consider this sermon of Christ, we are going to break it down into 6 courses, in hopes of helping us to better digest it, as we see the picture that Christ presents, the provision of God, the predicament of the people, the principle of salvation, the proposal to believe, and the profession of faith. That’s our outline of Jesus’ sermon.
First then, the picture that Christ presents. Before we can go too far in the text we must recognize that Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He is using the picture of a physical thing to illustrate a spiritual principle. He did that also when He healed. It was not simply to provide healing, but to illustrate a spiritual principle. So when He says He is the bread of life, we must understand that He is speaking metaphorically. He obviously did not look like a loaf of bread, His body was not actually made up of bread, and people were not being told to physically eat His body. You would think it unnecessary to have to say that, but unfortunately, there are those who have misapplied certain verses in this passage as a result of misunderstanding of the nature of a metaphor.
In fact, this is the first of seven “I AM” statements of Jesus given to us in the book of John. The purpose of course is to show Christ’s correlation as the Lord who appeared to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, where God answered Moses’ question as to His name by saying “I AM Who I AM.” There are seven of these statements in the gospel of John, this being the first in vs.35, “I am the bread of life.” Then in John 8:12 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” In John 10:9, “I am the door.” In John 10:11, “I am the good shepherd.” In John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life.” John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” And 7, in John 15:1, “I am the true vine.”
Now in all those statements Jesus uses metaphors to illustrate His divine character and purpose. He was not literally a door, He was not literally a vine, not actually a light. He is speaking metaphorically in all of these statements. To say that He is bread is to use really a metonym for food, bread being the staple of man’s diet, which sustains life. Jesus is basically saying that I am the spiritual bread that gives spiritual life, which is the source of all life.
But the people continually seem to misunderstand what He is saying. They have just eaten bread that He manufactured out of His hands at the feeding of the 5000, and as a result they can’t seem to get beyond the physical aspect of bread. In fact, back in the 31st verse, we see them speaking of the manna, or bread, from heaven which Moses had given them. They wanted Jesus to give them bread which they could eat which would be for physical nourishment. We need to be careful we don’t make the same mistake. We need to understand the picture; Christ is like bread which comes down from heaven, in that He is the source and sustainer of spiritual life which is given for men. So that is the picture.
Next, let’s look at the provision of God. He is the bread of life which came down out of heaven. He came to be broken for man. Notice how many times Jesus states this in His sermon. He starts by accommodating their comment regarding manna, and clarifying it in vs. 32; “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.” But they still don’t get it. So He continues to stress that He is the bread of life which has come down out of heaven. Verse 38, “I have come down from heaven.” Verse 46, He says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the One who is from God.” He is saying He has come down out of heaven. Verse 50, “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven.” Verse 51, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven.” Verse 58, “This is the bread which came down out of heaven.”
This is the provision of God, that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son to the world, so that the world might be saved by receiving life. Jesus is emphasizing what John said in his opening remarks in chapter one, that the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The plan of God from before creation was to select a people from the face of the earth to be HIs bride, and in order to accomplish that, it was determined through the foreknowledge of God to send Jesus from heaven to man, to offer Himself as an atonement for their sins, that they might be joined to God.
So in the provision of God, the disciples were challenged to believe in the preexistence of Christ, having been in heaven, One with God, and now coming down out of heaven to mankind. And we also see the purpose of God, in sending Christ to be the provision by which man is reconciled to God.
Notice the purpose of God in verse 32, “It is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.” Verse 33, “The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven.” Verse 38, “I have come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” Verse 39, “This is the will of Him who sent Me.” Verse 40, “This is the will of My Father.” And again in verse 57, “As the living Father sent Me.” So you have here divine preexistence and divine purpose. The Father sending the Son and the Son’s obedience to the predetermined will of God.
Then there is the predicament of the people. This is really a two fold problem. The first predicament is that they cannot understand how Jesus can say that He has come down out of heaven. After all, they say in vs.42, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?” Don’t forget that Jesus had grown up in this area. Most of those people came from small villages, and so they would have known Him, seen Him grow up, known His brothers and His family members. Remember we said that at the wedding in Cana it was probable that one of Jesus’ family was married there that day. So He was known of prior to His ministry, and now to suddenly declare to be the Messiah, the Savior of the world, to have come down from heaven, sent from God, would have been a stretch for their imaginations. It would be a stretch for our imaginations, frankly. Imagine if I were to start saying that I had been sent down from heaven to teach you. You would probably nod appreciatively and then call the men in white coats at your earliest convenience. It wasn’t a logical conclusion for those people either, in spite of all that Jesus had done.
So how did Jesus answer that concern? Why not perform some undeniable sign? Why not call down fire from heaven? That would probably at least scare them into obeisance. Instead, Jesus tells them to stop grumbling. Notice He says do not grumble among yourselves. But what or better yet, who are they grumbling against? I would suggest that it is Jesus they are grumbling against. I think in effect they are saying, “Who does He think He is? He puts His pants on the same way we do. We know where He is from. We know HIs family. He is not better than we are.” Right there, even before they walk away at the difficult statement about eating and drinking His blood they are already turning on Him.
So Jesus says, ““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 SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me.” Now a lot of preachers want to get off the train right there and preach a series of messages on election. And I could do that as well. But Jesus is not necessarily presenting a side message here about predestination. What He is doing is deflecting their criticism. He is saying in effect; you cannot believe Me because you have not been taught of God about Me. You don’t know what the Father has said about Me, and so you cannot come to Me. That’s a soft, backhanded rebuke right there. Because they thought they knew about God. They thought they knew what the scriptures said about the Messiah. But Jesus is saying they are ignorant of both.
I find that true today. People think that they know about God. They think that they know about Christianity. But the truth is they have created a god out of their own imagination, which is subservient to their own desires. And when a preacher such as I challenge those assumptions that they hold so dear, I become the object of their grumbling. Their criticisms. But as Jesus said, a servant is not greater than his master. If Jesus suffered that criticism, then so will I.
The other predicament of the people is found in vs.52. Their predicament is characterized by grumbling and now by arguing. “Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, ‘How can this man give us His flesh to eat?’” Now here is what Jesus had said which prompted this debate. He said “I am the bread of life, I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” And the question is based in a literal interpretation of Christ’s words. How can this man give us His flesh to eat?
Notice how Jesus emphasizes this truth over and over again. Verse 53, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourself.” Vs.54, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.” Vs. 55, “For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink.” Vs. 56, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me in and I in him.”
Now it’s apparent that the Jews stumbled over this saying. From the perspective of the law, what Christ was asking them to do, even if possible, was reprehensible. It was against the law. What they were arguing about then the same thing we might argue about. In fact, I would suggest that the church has been arguing about the correct interpretation of this since the Middle Ages. One of the main arguments of the Reformation was against the doctrine of transubstantiation which was and is practiced by the Catholic church, in which they believe the elements of the Lord’s table literally become His flesh and blood, and by eating it, you receive remission of sin. However, I don’t believe that this is a statement about communion, but it has been incorrectly interpreted that way for centuries, and consequently has given rise to the view that when you eat the bread and wine of communion, you are actually eating the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.
But my answer to that is to remind you of point one; the metaphor of bread is the means by which Jesus illustrates Himself as being offered by God to man to give life to the world. It is a picture, a symbol, the same as the door, the vine, or the light was a symbol. But the Jews miss the symbolism and are fixated on the literal, physical bread and blood, and consequently miss the truth in what Jesus is saying. And in like manner, those who misconstrue the physical eating and drinking as a means of the remission of sins are in error as well. So after hearing Jesus present the sermon, the disciples say, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”
And that leads us to the principle of salvation which Christ is declaring. Vs.61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble?” Notice that the disciples are still grumbling. They are grumbling at the dual predicament that Jesus has generated by His message. And so Jesus answers the first predicament, the one of His coming down from heaven, of His preexistence. He says in vs. 62, “What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?” He is saying, “Look guys, you have a problem with Me saying that I came down from heaven? What are you going to do when you see Me going back up into heaven? Is that going to be a problem for you too?” Of course, Jesus knew that He was going to ascend again into heaven after His resurrection. The problem for those that rejected Him now would be that they would not be there to witness the ascension. That speaks to the progressive nature of revelation, by the way. To those that are obedient to the light that they have, God will give more light. But if you reject the light God has given you, then you will not receive more. God gives progressive revelation to those that are obedient, as they are being obedient. What God had revealed to these disciples up to this point should have been enough to believe. But since they don’t believe HIs words, and the signs which accompanied His message, they would not be given more.
The answer to the second part of the predicament, that of eating flesh and blood is found in the next verse, 63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” This verse is the key to understanding the symbolism of what Jesus was preaching. Eating bread, even eating His flesh, profits nothing. He isn’t speaking of eating literal flesh and drinking literal blood. That has no benefit whatsoever. Rather, it is the Spirit who gives life. If you want spiritual life, then it must come from the Spirit of God. It cannot come from physical things, it cannot come from physical effort, but it must come from the Spirit of God. So obviously what Jesus is offering is not to eat of His physical flesh or to drink His literal blood, but spiritual life through the Spirit of God.
And what does that Spirit life look like? Is it goosebumps and chills? It is signified in animal sounds, or speaking in tongues, or writhing in convulsions? What constitutes the Spirit given life? Listen to this: “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Man! I hope you get that folks. I hope you are not duped into thinking that the Holy Spirit gives life through physical convulsions or expressions. But the word of God is Spirit and life. That principle is stated by Paul to Timothy in 2 Tim. 3:14-17 “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” The word is life from God, the scriptures are God breathed(pneuma, breath of God, inspired), able to produce salvation which is spiritual life, and able to sustain that life by training us in righteousness, so that we might be equipped to live as God would have us live. The word life there which Jesus uses is zoe in the Greek, not bios, which means organic life, but zoe which refers to the vitality of the soul, an animated, abundant life in the spirit.
So that is the principle: the Spirit gives life, and the words of Christ are spirit and they are life. Now then the fifth course; the proposal to believe. There are multiple aspects of what it means to believe in Christ. First in verse 35, He says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me.” Listen, don't get so hung up on the sovereignty of God that you neglect your responsibility in the matter. We cannot understand the predestination and election of God. That doesn’t mean we don’t accept it, it just means it’s above our pay grade. But what we do understand is our responsibility. So the first requirement is to come. Verse 37 joins those two principles together saying, “All that the Father gives Me will come, and the one who comes to me, I will not reject.” So you don’t have to worry about whether or not you were elected for salvation. If you come to Christ, He will not reject you. Period. Let God worry about God’s responsibility of divine appointment, and you just worry about your responsibility. Come to Jesus. That is the invitation of Christ. Come to Me. All come. The invitation is open to all who hear.
The second aspect of believing is to look. Notice verse 40, “This is the will of My Father that everyone who beholds the Son…” Notice the word “everyone.” There aren’t limitations here based upon our understanding of the doctrine of election. All who come, anyone who comes, I will not reject. Everyone who beholds. Not a cursory glance. I really think it’s similar to the idea found in Hebrews 12:2, “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.” The word behold in the Greek means to look at intently, to examine, to study, to gaze on. Jesus is saying, look closely at Me. Examine Me in the light of the scriptures. He can accept that kind of scrutiny, in fact He desires it, because He knows it will produce faith in Him.
There’s another phrase that’s really critical as well. Look at verse 35, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will not hunger and he who believes in Me…” He who believes in Me. Verse 40, “This is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.” Verse 47, “I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.” John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 20:31 says the same thing. The theme verse for the whole gospel of John, “These things are written that you may know that Jesus is the Christ, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing have life in His name.” Salvation is about believing. Another way to understand it would be John 1:12, “As many as received Him.” You have to come. You have to look. You have to be exposed to the truth, but you must believe.
Going back to the metaphor of the bread, go to verse 50, and from verse 50 on is really the proposal to believe unto salvation from Jesus. “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven so that one may eat,” Believing is eating. Taking in, receiving, appropriating. Verse 51, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” Verse 57, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.” Again, verse 58, the end of the verse, “He who eats this bread will live forever.” Eating the bread is a powerful metaphor that everyone should understand as believing or receiving who Jesus is and what He came to do. You have to take Christ in. It’s not enough to just believe He existed. It’s not enough to just come to church and listen. You have to eat. You have to appropriate. That’s what it means to believe. You have to receive Christ. That’s our responsibility.
You not only have to believe in Him as living bread, you have to believe in Him as dying, which is represented by blood. Verse 51, “I am the living bread. I came down out of heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” There He’s talking about giving up His life so that we might have life. But listen to what He says in verse 53, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourself.” 54, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.” Verse 55, “For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink.” Verse 56, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me in and I in him.”
Blood is simply a metonym for His death, as it is throughout the New Testament. You must believe in Jesus as the preexistent Son of God who came into the world and is the source of spiritual life, eternal life, and you must believe in His sacrificial death in order to be saved. As bread, He gives life. As blood, He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Blood, then, speaks of His death by which He makes a sacrifice for our sin.
That brings us to the last point, the profession of faith. When the disciples hear the words that Jesus says, they do not accept it. They say this is too difficult for us to accept. Vs.66, “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.” So Jesus turns to the 12 and says, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” And Simon Peter, speaking on behalf of the 12 gives the quintessential profession of faith in vs.68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”
What a great profession! First of all, note that even though it was a difficult statement, Peter recognizes that there is no where else to go because these are the words of eternal life. I find that so many people today are seeking for a more palatable gospel. And so when you speak of judgement, of sin, of the wrath of God, of repentance, of obedience, they don’t like the sound of those types of doctrine. So they turn away. They walk away, looking for something more palatable, something that is more appealing to the flesh. A taste of religion but still able to satisfy the lusts of the flesh. But the fact is, that the truth is life, and anything less than the truth is a lie. It’s like taking your prescription if you are seriously ill. You have to take it all, if it is going to have the desired cure. I will admit, there are some difficult things in the gospel. It’s not easy to renounce the world, to give up sinful habits that you enjoy. It’s not easy to let go of the pursuit of fame or wealth in exchange for life in the Spirit. But it’s the way of life. And if you don’t accept it all, then it’s not going to be effective. There is no half truth and no half gospel.
And notice also that Peter capitalizes on what Jesus said earlier in vs.63 which says, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Peter reiterates that in his profession; “You have the words of eternal life.” He believes the word of Christ. Secondly, he believes in Christ. And what exactly does He believe? He believes and has come to know that Jesus is the Holy One of God. That’s a tremendous statement of faith. That is saving faith. That is faith whereby God imputes righteousness to our account.
Peter and the disciples don’t know everything yet. But the gospel is progressive. God is willing to take the faith of a child and develop it to mature faith. But we start with what light we have been shown. And as we are obedient in faith to that light, then He will show us more light. Sometimes we have to believe what we don’t understand in order to gain understanding. In due time, Peter and the apostles would see everything clearly. But for now, they understand enough. They understand that Jesus is holy, that He is from God, that He preexisted with God, and that God had sent Him to earth so that we might have eternal life. They believed that He was the source of life, and that His word was the bread of heaven by which life is sustained.
Listen, Jesus spoke this sermon 2000 years ago, but today I believe God has spoken to you through His word, and as a result, God has given you a proposal; to believe in Christ, to receive Him as your Savior and Lord. I trust that you have made a profession of your faith in response to that proposal; That He is the Holy One of God, that He is the source of life, even eternal life, and that believing in Him, you will trust Him for the salvation of your soul. That is only made possible by the fact that Jesus offered Himself as our substitute, bearing our sins upon the cross, so that God might transfer our sins to Him, and Christ’s righteousness to us. If you believe that, and receive that, then you have eternal life. Note that vs.54, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, HAS eternal life. Not will have, but has now. It is the present reality of your salvation. Eternal life begins today if you receive Him today. I trust that today is the day of your salvation.
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