I Am the Bread of Life
Discover how Jesus sustains our spiritual hunger, offering Himself as the essential nourishment for our souls, in a world full of temporary satisfactions.
Transcript
John 6:47-58
47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Last Sunday, I was out on vacation with the family, and we went on a Disney cruise. It was an amazing time filled with lots of fun experiences. One of my highlights was enjoying all the available delicious food. There was a fully loaded breakfast and lunch buffet filled with all sorts of options ranging from every kind of breakfast meat to all-you-can-eat shrimp and crab legs and the dinners, oh my goodness, 5-course dinners that sometimes turned into 6 or 7 courses because I’d order multiple appetizers or even entrees. Steak is one of my favorite things to eat and it was available almost every meal. You bet I had steak whenever it was available, but by the end of the trip, I started feeling heavy and sluggish eating so much red meat. And by the last night of the cruise, I was ready to come back home to something that could simply sustain me without feeling bloated or heavy. I started thinking about simple meals that I grew up on like scrambled eggs and rice or road trip room temp boiled chicken and rice. Even the dull lunch that I usually pack to work consisting of chicken breast and raw vegetables with hummus sounded appealing. As delicious as steak is, my body took a toll from it, and I was ready for something simple that would fill and sustain me.
Today, we’re going to talk about something similar. We’re going to specifically talk about something that sustains our spirituality, and we get it from one of Jesus’ “I Am” statements. Last week, we kicked off our new series called “I Am Jesus” where we’re looking at the 7 “I Am” statements Jesus makes and why they are important. We talked about how “I Am” is a reference to Jesus being God and today, we’re going to look at Jesus’ first “I Am” statement, which is “I am the bread of life”. When we understand this statement, it’ll help us understand what it is that sustains our spirituality. Now, to best understand the importance of what Jesus means when he says “I am the bread of life” we have to understand the setting of the passage.
CONTEXT of John 6:
In John 6, we’re told in verse 4 that the Jewish Passover Festival was near. Now, Passover is one of the most important Jewish festivals. It’s referenced in Exodus 12 when Moses is in Egypt trying to free his people, the Israelites, from Pharoah. Pharoah was unwilling to free the Israelites, so God demonstrated his power in the form of 10 plagues. Plague after plague, Pharoah remained unwilling to free the Israelites, but the final plague changed Pharoah’s mind. The final plague was the plague of the firstborn where God came and took the life of every firstborn son in Egypt, both humans and animals. There was an exception though. God instructed Moses and the Israelites that he would pass over and spare any firstborn if they slaughtered a lamb and put the lamb’s blood on the door. That’s where we get the term Passover. After the plague of the firstborn, Pharoah recognized God’s power and finally liberated the Israelites. To this day, the Jewish people continue to celebrate Passover to remember their freedom and liberation from slavery.
Another thing we have to understand is that after the Israelites were freed, they spent 40 years wandering the desert, but God provided them with food from the heavens called manna. Every day manna would rain down from the heavens and the people were told to collect enough to sustain them. If they collected more, it rotted. Exodus 16 describes manna like this,
“It was white like coriander (cilantro) seeds and tasted like wafers made with honey”.
Manna was such an important part of the Israelite’s story that God commanded them to put some in a jar to keep as a memorial and reminder of for future generations of his providence. For the Israelites, manna was considered the bread of life because it sustained their ancestors through the desert until they reached the land God promised them.
I am the bread of life
Interestingly, before Jesus proclaimed that he is the bread of life, he performed a miracle where he fed 5,000 men who followed him. The point of the miracle was to help people make the connection that Jesus is God. As God the Israelites with manna, bread that came from the heavens, Jesus miraculously fed 5,000 men with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Jesus was the sustainer of life just like God who sustained the Israelites’ life in the desert. Unfortunately, the people who were following Jesus didn’t make the connection.
After Jesus fed the 5,000, he and his disciples crossed the sea. When the people who followed Jesus realized that Jesus was gone they went searching for him. We eventually find out that they are simply looking to get another free meal. They have failed to realize the important connection that Jesus was trying to make. They didn’t realize that Jesus was God. This causes Jesus to advise them not to just seek out what physically sustains them, but to seek what will sustain them for eternity so he tells the crowd repeatedly,
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus is the bread of life like how manna was the bread that sustained the Israelites in the desert. Jesus is the bread of life like how he fed the 5,000 with bread and fish. Now, you can have food, but in order for it to sustain you, you have to consume it. And in a controversial manner, he tells the crowd in verse 53 this.
“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”
The people who heard this were confused wondering if Jesus literally wanted them to eat his flesh and drink his blood. In Jesus' time, both were forbidden in the Jewish culture so it wasn’t to be taken literally. Rather, it was a symbolic depiction of their faith in and dependence on Jesus. Eating his flesh and drinking his blood means we depend on Jesus to sustain us. We depend on Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to sustain us. Like the food that we consume to physically sustain us, Jesus is the bread that keeps us spiritually alive. And we receive this life when we depend on him. We receive this life when we put our faith and trust in him.
The issue that the people ran into was that they placed their faith in the wrong thing. The people were looking for food to sustain them, but they had nothing to sustain their spirituality. Jesus advised them they needed something else to sustain them. Rather, they needed someone to sustain them. They needed Jesus to sustain them.
Application
So, what does this mean for us? At the core of our spirituality is believing in Jesus. Faith in Jesus is the timeless truth that Jesus invites us into. The timeless truth to be faithful in him and dependence on him, but sometimes it can feel boring and mundane so we look elsewhere to sustain us. The reality is, timeless truth sustains us. It gives us what we need. When Jesus fed the 5,000 men he took 5 barley loaves of bread and 2 fish. One interesting thing I learned was that barley was considered the cheapest grain available. It was food for those who didn’t have much money, but Jesus blessed it and fed 5,000 men with it. I think Jesus was making a statement that he gives us exactly what we need to sustain us. At the core, he is the source of life. We don’t need anything fancy, we just need Jesus. So, this morning, are you looking for something extraordinary? Something you’ve never seen before? Something so special to make you believe? I don’t doubt that God could do any of those things. But, I think God can sustain us in the ordinary things like simply trusting who he is and what he promises to do. Let’s lean into the ordinary things that we’re invited into to sustain our faith. Trust Jesus, understand what he desires of us, and obey what he desires us to do. We simply need what will sustain us and that’s Jesus. Let’s pray.