John 6:24-69 – Bread from Heaven (continued)

(These bible study notes were prepared as part of a series of teachings on John’s gospel, given in Pretoria between 2008 and 2009.)

Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: `He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who 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.” “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, `I came down from heaven’?” “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: `They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 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. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

In our previous study we saw how Jesus fed the crowd, and how, because of this, they made the connection between Jesus and the Prophet spoken of in Deuteronomy 18. In Deuteronomy 18, the Lord said to Moses:

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. (vv. 18-19)

But, the crowd made the connection on a superficial basis: Moses gave us bread miraculously, and Jesus did also – perhaps he is the Prophet like Moses? If he is the prophet like Moses, then the people must ‘listen to My words which [he] speaks in My name.’ This explains their next question, speak then and tell us: what is that God requires for us to do?

What God requires is this: ‘believe in the one whom He has sent.’

They are not persuaded by Jesus’ answer – so they ask for a sign – a sign that he is the Prophet, just as the credentials of Moses were established by a sign (see Exodus 4). But Jesus is not inclined to appeal to them on that level. Instead, he proceeds to explain that the manna was in fact the sign, the sign of His body that would come from heaven, to bring eternal life to those who partake of it. To restate, in summary, the points of his explanation that we dealt with in the previous study:

(1) The bread that goes into our stomach can sustain our physical lives – up to a point – but the bread that we really need is the bread that will sustain us for eternal life. (A great number of the Israelites who ate manna in the dessert, died prematurely ‘because God was not pleased with them’ – 1 Cor. 10.)

(2) The only thing that can produce life is the Word of God. God spoke the universe into existence and every living thing that exists received its life from Him. Jesus is that Word of life, as it says at the beginning of John’s gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4)

Moses explained the principle to the Israelites, when he spoke of the life that comes through the Word of God:

Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers. Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deut. 8:1-3)

(3) Twice in its history God caused the Israelites to hunger – the first time it was for physical food in the wilderness, but the second time it was for His Word. Remember what Amos prophesied:

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land – not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it. (Amos 8:11-12)

Just as the natural hunger caused the Israelites to look to God for their food, so the spiritual hunger was intended to stimulate the yearning for Messiah. It was the spiritual hunger that Jesus came to satisfy, and by ‘eating of him’ those Israelites could gain eternal life. It is from this point that we continue this evening.

First we must understand the Father’s will from John 6:38-39:

For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

If we ask each of the three religions linked to the God of Abraham: ‘what is God’s will for man – ultimately?’ What would a Muslim answer, and what would a Jew? Jesus tells us: my Father’s will is that we should have eternal life! And he tells this crowd plainly: ‘that life comes through me, for all who believe.’ ‘And whoever comes to me,’ he says, ‘I will never drive away.’

The first mention of the food that leads to eternal life is in Genesis 2:

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Gen. 2:8-9.)

The Bible does not explain why Adam did not eat of the tree of life, but I have a suggestion: Adam was not hungry. Everything was perfect at that time: Adam did not know his need for life! Man had first to depart from God’s Word, and live apart from Him, before his soul would hunger for life. So Adam would first eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and enter into the darkness, before the light of Christ could become visible to him.

But, Adam is not permitted to gain life straight away. We see the tree of life concealed from him:

And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen. 3:22-24)

God ordained for the tree of life to be hidden until a later time, and by Jesus’ proclamation that time had now come. He states this clearly: ‘Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world’ (verses 49-51).

As the disciples had recently broken the bread to feed the crowds, so the flesh of Jesus would be broken to bring life to the world. We see this more clearly when, at the Last Supper, Jesus takes the bread and breaks it, saying: ‘This is my body which is broken for you.’ Do this in remembrance of my death until I come.’

Then follow verses 42-45. As the crowd linked Jesus to Moses through the miraculous provision of bread, so Jesus now links this crowd to Moses through their ‘grumbling’. As it says in Exodus 16:2, ‘In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses ….’

They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, `I came down from heaven’?” “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: `They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.

How is it that the Father ‘teaches us’ and draws us to the tree of life? I hinted at this earlier, in relation to Adam. It is by the word of death which the Father spoke first to Adam then through Moses and the later prophets – i.e. the verdict that ‘the penalty for sin is death.’ This verdict combined with the promise of life – again spoken to Adam, and Moses and through the later prophets – would lead all who would listen to the Father and learn from Him, to receive life through the son.

An illustration to help us understand: A man goes to the doctor and the doctor tells him, ‘you are a diabetic, you must inject yourself with insulin every day, because if you do not, you will die.’ So the patient purchases the insulin from the Pharmacy and then injects himself with insulin for the rest of his life. What caused him to save his life by injecting the insulin? It was the doctor’s diagnosis, the prospect of death, combined with the remedy available to him.

God told Adam: ‘do not eat of the tree, for on the day you eat of it you will surely die.’ Paul explains to the Romans: ‘the wages of sin is death … as all have sinned all will die’ (Rom 6:23, Rom 3:23).

What God told Adam is also found in the Law of Moses. First He says, ‘Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. I am the LORD,’ (Leviticus 18:5), but then He says: ‘Do not turn aside to the right or to the left’ (Deut. 5:22), ‘if you shall at all forget the LORD your God … you shall surely perish’ (Deut. 8:19).

If this crowd would listen to the Father and believe that Word which He spoke to Moses it would lead them to Messiah, and they would find life in Him.

Since it was by the gift of Jesus’ flesh that God’s verdict of death for sin would be fulfilled, Jesus equates his flesh with the fruit of the tree of life, the ‘real food’ (verse 55) which gives life to all who partake of it: ‘This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world … 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’ (verses 51 & 57).

While the Word spoken to Adam brought death through disobedience, the Word spoken to us in Christ brings life through obedience.

Verses 66-69 speak of the people’s response to this teaching:

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” … From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

As always, the Word of God will cause a division and separate those who believe from those who do not. This is what it is intended for. Later Jesus said: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn `a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household'” (Mat 10:34-36). (Cf. 1 Peter 2:8 – ‘They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for.’)

Then as now, many who will follow God for their stomachs, will turn away when confronted with God’s Word and the response that true faith requires.

Amen.