Bread of Life

Let’s open our bibles together to John chapter 6. I’ve got a large portion of Scripture to read this morning. And I need to introduce our series. Over the last few months I’ve been thinking and praying about what to do for thanksgiving and Advent. And traditionally, we speak of gratefulness and being thankful, and for Advent we focus on Love, Joy, peace and hope. But the truth is. Many times that’s a lie in our lives.

There will be thousands of people gathering for the holidays this year that will not be experiencing Thankfulness. There will be people that you will be around that aren’t going to be experiencing Love, Joy, peace and Hope. You’re going to find people feeling broken, lost, hungry, Ashamed, and just feeling disconnect from other. That was true for me many times during the holidays. I’ll never forget my most depressing holiday.

I was in college living with my best friend and his mother. And they left and surprising to me they didn’t invite me to their families festivities like they always have done before. And of course, my mother and step father didn’t do anything for the holidays. We didn’t have any family traditions either. So I sat, alone on Christmas Eve, watching all of my fiends AOL Instant Messenger away messages talk of spending time with family, Gorging themselves with Christmas cookies, and having a very merry Christmas.

While I sat in darkness, alone, hungry for food but also for connection with friends and family. And for us, this holiday season my prayer is that we would be people of love, Joy, peace and Hope. Because we would be carrying Jesus together for others, and into those family moments. So, over the next 7 weeks let’s seek to be people filled with His presence as we look at Jesus’s 7, “I Am” statements, and we’re going to begin at looking at the first one found in John 6, Where Jesus says, I am the bread of life.

Let's read the Bible together. Read John 6: 22-40 Pray God wants to be the center of your greatest desire. In the very beginning of this chapter, Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and feeds over 5,000 people. Naturally, He is drawing crowds with this free food. People are following Him because of the free food. So, He gets away from the crowds. He sends His disciples and puts them in a boat and says, “Go out in the middle of the sea,” and He goes off on a mountainside by Himself to pray, and it comes evening time.

His disciples are in the middle of the boat. He’s on the shore, and He wants to get to His disciples, and so He decides He’s going to take a stroll, and He walks on the waves. He gets to the disciples. And They’re a bit freaked out by that, but He gets into the boat with them, and they go to the other side. When they get to the other side, the crowds catch up to them, and this conversation ensues.

It’s kind of a long conversation. You all think my sermons are long, Jesus had some long conversation with people and in a sense, this is also a bit of a difficult conversation. It’s was difficult because he was talking a lot about some weird things. For instance if you keep reading, at one point Jesus begins talking about eating flesh and drinking blood and you’re probably thinking, “What does this mean?” What does it mean I am the bread of life.

Well, lets find out, Look with me in verse 26, 26 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. 27 Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal of approval on him.” 28 “What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked.

29 Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the one he has sent.” The first thing that we learned is that we’re all on a journey to find something to fulfill us. Life is a journey. But also, life is filled with many desires that we experience on this journey. These people that were seeking Jesus were seeking him because he met one of our most basic desires.

Do you know what our three basis needs are, ( Shelter, clothing and food.) And so these people are just following Jesus to meet a basic need, which is a basic desire that is within each one of us. If you didn’t know, God created us that way. He created us with desires, and needs, and cravings in our lives. Think of it since the beginning of creation. Adam was alone.

Sometimes we almost think to ourselves, “In the Garden of Eden when everything was perfect, man had no needs.” Thats not true. Man definitely had needs. Man had a need for air and for food. We find out later in Genesis 2, he had a need for companionship. It was not good for man to be alone, and so God created and wired man with cravings, with needs, and with an empty stomach to fulfill.

Here’s two key truthful thoughts: One… desires are not bad But two, In the Garden, it wasn’t that man didn’t have needs. The picture in the Garden of Eden was that man had needs that were intended to be met only by God, in a way that was designed by God. But what happens is when sin becomes our greatest desire rather than God? If you want to, turn with me to Genesis chapter 3, and find verse 6 with me.

Let’s read this, “[So] when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make ones wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” This passage is just dripping with desire. Do you seen the language? She saw.

The desires of her eyes. She’s seeing that it was good for food, which meets one of our basic, created needs, and it was delightful to the eyes. It was a desired and so she took, ate and gave to her husband. And so, for the first time in humanity, in creation. we witness the cravings of man driving him to meet his needs outside of His Creator. And so, here is what I want to say…

don’t miss the trigger of sin in this story. The trigger of sin is looking to things of this world to satisfy us apart from our Creator; it is thinking that something is good, or better than God. Now, think about it, every sin I’ve ever committed. Every sin you commit. We sin because we think it would be good. We think that it would be delightful, and we desire comfort, and to be filled.

No one wants to be empty. Did you know to be filled means to be in it’s grip. That’s what it means to be filled. Even when we feel empty, we’re not. Because you can be filled with loneliness. That means you are in the grip of being lonely. You can be filled with hate, that means hate has a grip on you. You can be filled with feeling empty. It means you are being controlled, it’s incflueincing your mood, your decisions and your actions.

And so, we desire things, whether it be material things, or adultery, or lust or greed. We desire these things because we believe that these things will in turn fill us, and fulfill the desire that we have longing within us. But it’s not the truth. What we end up doing, when we fill our lives with desires that are not of God, and we look to this world to satisfy us apart from our creator, We end up running from the one our souls long for and need most.

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of running. I’m tired of being tired. Im tired of running away. Find being controlled by things that do not satisfy me. Now, come back with me to John chapter 6. Because watch what happens with these people following hard after Jesus. We read, that. These people were running in the right direction. They had a desire, they needed it to be filled, and they were running after Jesus.

But yet even in their running and following and seeking Jesus, they missed what Jesus was trying to teach them. So many of us do that in our faith walk every week. We follow Jesus, we do the things of Jesus. We come to church, we pray, we read our bibles, sometimes. Sometimes we show up, sometimes we dont. In verse 26 and 27 Jesus does the same thing to these people seeking him that he did a few chapters earlier with the woman at the well.

He’s confronts thier real internal desires and he’s brutally honest with them. He tells the, You didn’t seek me because you saw a miracle and I fed the 5,000, but because you ate and was filled. And then he gives them the first phrase that will completely go over their head. Look with me in verse 27” Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal of approval on him.” Did you catch it?

The key word here is eternal life. Over 12 times in this chapter Jesus says, eternal life and these people still think it’s about sustaining thier bio, thier life when Jesus is saying I’m speaking to you in Spiritual terms. It’s like being a parent and telling your teenager to shower 100 times. Just shower. Just go shower. You need to shower. It completely goes over their heads that they stink, and need a shower.

They just don’t understand it at times. In the greek there are two words for life. The first one is bio which is where we get the word biology from. The study of life. Its the study of living and breathing things on this earth. And the second word is Zoe. Which means the absolute fulness of life. Real and genuine life, Active life, and devoted to God. If you would go in your Bible and in chapter 6 alone, you would find that Jesus never says, bio, but he says Zoe over 12 times.

Jesus keeps reminding them, I am eternal life. I am the bread of life. I am the active life that is always devoted to the Father. I am the fullness of life. And You’re seeking things that does not fill your life. And the people keep pressing in with how do we get it? And look in verse 28, they ask Jesus, what can I do to get it. Can you imagine Jesus telling you I am the bread that gives real life, not just life to sustain you in this life, or your basic necessities, but eternal life, and then arguing with him about bread your ancestors had?

That’s like Alicia saying she knows how to cook something that I love to eat and me telling her about how mom used to make it. And we all know that’s a no no in marriage. You dont tell your wife mom made it better. They weren’t getting it! They were so focused on what they desired and asking what they can do to get it, that Jesus had to of been there like, people.

Are you not listening to anything I’m saying. Look, they even throw in Moses into the conversation in verse 31.. well Moses fed us in the wilderness. Jeuss is like, uhhh, no… Moses didn’t feed you. The father fed you. And then Jesus does what? He says, just as manna came down from heaven, the father sends the son down from heaven to be the bread for eternal life. Jesus tells them, I am that bread.

I am the bread of life. I am the one God the father has sent down like the manna, and is now here with you. And whoever comes to me will never go hungry or thirty again. The problem in our sinfulness, we are prone to desire the world more than we desire God. It’s true. Everyday, and even every week we can get excited over our favorite football team wining, or depressed when our team loses and our emotions can swing easily on things that do not matter in this lie.

But there is one, who does matter. and He deserves, not just our intellectual belief, but our emotional affection as well. Our desire, and our joy, and our satisfaction is found in Him. The danger is, if we’re not careful, we will fill our stomachs and gorge ourselves on stuff, and entertainment, and things in this world that don’t matter. And just like these people who were seeking and following Jesus.

We can get so caught up in our busyness and doing that we miss the point of Jesus’s teaching here, that we’re to be desiring and seeking him above all other things in this life. Jesus is trying to teach us that we need to get the taste of this world out of our mouths and begin to have a thirst and a taste for the things of God, and for Christ himself.

You see, in this story we read. They never get it. They’re willing to follow Jesus around, and get free meals and perhaps even feel connected with a large group of people. But they never realize that thier faith needs to go deeper in trusting and believing in Jesus. Isn’t that what we experience in this life and in the churches we attend today? Churches are filled with people following hard after Jesus but never truly going deeper in their faith.

Even Paul talks about this in Corinthians when he calls them, Carnal christians. They are divided, and arguing and smearing others names about each other, without realizing that they are pursing thier old life, and not after the holy life Jesus offers them. We live in a world where we get caught up in just being like these people…. Do you wanna know what they are really doing? Their just existing……….

To them, bread is just to sustain them to exist, but there is no living life within them. And many times in our world today, we find christians just coming in to churches living lives all week long trying to just exist. Don’t you want to live? To feel alive! To have purpose and meaning? Because in this life, if our greatest desire is to just exist. Our life will always be indifferent to what Jesus desires fo ryou.

IN our constant chase after being content, our eyes come set on recourses that we do not have rather than what God already is willing to give us. Are you empty this morning? Because what I want to ask is two things before we take the elements and close this service. First, What are you already filled with that leaves no room for Jesus? There’s an infinite fountain of satisfaction to be found in Christ, but often we do not come to His table or fountain because we’re already being fed by other things in this life.

Today, many of you are going to leave here and you may not be changed. You may not have room for Jesus in your life. Ya know, sometime during this Christmas season you may come across the Scripture in Luke where it says, “And laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them In the Inn.” You may not even be willing to give up what you want for what you need for real life.

Not to jut exist, but to truly live. John chapter 6 is there to urge every person to Make Christ the Center of Our Satisfaction. But to do that you must be willing to let go of all the other things that you pursue… and that might be hard for you because it’s all you’ve ever known in life. When our kids were younger we would go to Mcdonsalds and they won; ld get the same thing to eat every time.

I remember trying to get Gabriel all the time to try the hamburger, but all he ever wanted was the nuggets. And I never understood that because when I was 8, I remember when I was visiting my biological father and our Nanna took all of us great grandkids out to McDonald’s, and for the first time I ordered a big mac, and I eventually got home and got into trouble because I didn’t get a happy meal.

But I ate that entire thing and I was like wow! I was thinking about Gabe when he had his first burger he was like, why didn’t I get this before. And every time we would go, he would now get this burger and he would just dive into that thing as if it was the best thing he’s ever eaten. And then there’s me… sitting there and I take a bite out of my burger and I begin to think..

what is this? This is processed meat. This is not real meat.” And I look to my son and he thinks it’s great, he’s chowing down. And I sit there and think to myself, Why does he think this is great? Here’s why: Because at this point he has never tasted a nice, juicy filet. He’s never tasted untying different. And, he’s never tasted what a real piece of meat should taste like.

All he’s ever known as a burger has been this imitation stuff. Which leads me to my second question, When we are empty with what we imitate and put within us that is not of God, what then do we fill ourselves with? This is the reality in so many of our lives. Let me be honest here. There’s been times in my life as a pastor where I do not want to read the word of God.

And there was a time when I would just read the word just t write sermons. I’ve got this task, or I’ve got this responsibility and so I read the word of God, and I pray and I flesh out what it says, just to, on Sundays give you the people a lesson. I’m so glad God gave me grace during those moments because I know my desires could have gone down so many roads, but here was what I wasn’t doing..

I was not reading my Bible to meet with God. I was focused on doing rather than being. I was focused on the busyness of my faith, and forgetting that God just wants me to see him as the treasure and sustainer of my faith. When we taste of something better, we don’t go back to the imitation. You don’t settle for anything but the real thing, and this is how we overcome and conquer the pleasures of sin in this life.

We Believe that Christ is better. I think I said this before, or maybe this is the first time your hearing it. But Jesus is trying to teach us that we need to get the taste of this world out of our mouths and begin to have a thirst and a taste for the things of God, and for Christ himself. I want the taste Christ. Not imitation Christ. When Jesus Christ is your satisfaction, and when you believe He is all-satisfying, He will transform the way you live.

Don’t settle for processed faith. Who else knows how better to satisfy you than the Creator? Do you know how to satisfy yourself? Do I know better? No. The One who created and crafted me alone knows how to satisfy me, and He draws me. He allures me. This is astounding grace. Though I have run after all kinds of stuff and things in this world and given my love and affection to them, the Father on high in His grace and sovereign initiative has sought me and you.

And he simply offers to us something better and greater… he offers to us, His son who is the bread of life. I’m going to stop our service here… because after this we’re heading to jeans to pray for here and to anoint her. And it’s there where I would like for us to gather, for anointing, prayer and communion. So let me pray… *