Jesus Is the All-sufficient Bread of Life (John 6:35–40)
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It's a beautiful song to sing about Christ our victor. But that's not what we're talking about particularly this morning. We are continuing in the gospel of John. So, if you would turn your Bibles to John chapter 6, we will be looking at Jesus, the all-sufficient bread of life.
This is the last sermon in John for now, because we'll be continuing on it in September in the Gospel of John. But it'll be the last sermon for now, and then we'll go into our summer series. And it's also the last week of Life Group, so we're celebrating that, and we're excited to be able to finish up our Life Group season and then enter into our summer book clubs and other things that are happening this summer.
And Jeff on Friday had his second knee surgery, so he still wanted to preach, so we had to force him not to. No, but he's home recovering. He had a successful surgery and is recovering. We want to pray for him to be recovering as well. And as I mentioned that, let's go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer and pray for him this morning.
Lord, we thank you for this time. We pray that you would speak through your word, by your spirit, and that we would know you in a deeper way. Lord, that you would work in our hearts and pierce us, like you say with your word, separating bone and marrow to get to the idols of our hearts and the areas that we are holding to ourselves. Help us to understand you as the bread from heaven given to the world for us all. I pray for Jeff and his recovery after a surgery, Lord, that you'd care for him as our great physician and healer, and to bring him back to us, Lord. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
So, we will be picking things up here in John chapter 6, verse 32 through 40, but I want to look a little bit at verse 25 through 34 because our passage is really inextricable from the context, much like every chapter, honestly, so far in the gospel of John. What we see here in John chapter 6 is about from 25 to 71, we see questions or grumbling from the crowd and from the Jewish leaders, and then Jesus teaching like a sermon. And at some point, they end up in this whole conversation in the synagogue in Capernaum, and some people have said they think that it just starts…that's where we are right now in verse 25. Some people have thought that they moved to the synagogue at a different place. But nonetheless, some of this teaching even may be based off of what is being read in the synagogue as Jesus is there teaching.
Today, we will kind of do what the text does in John 6, and where there's questions or grumblings, and then there's Jesus' teachings. And I want to ask some questions of our text as we move through it this morning. But what we see in John, for those who have been here this year, is there's usually a story or a sign that happens in the text, and then an explanation and teaching by Jesus which illuminates the sign or the action. And there's also a lot of connection to the Old Testament passages and stories.
You know, you see the wedding of Cana and the temple clearing, and then Jesus teaches on His glory, and the future wedding, and a raising of His temple being His body. John 3, you have Nicodemus and John the Baptist, and then He teaches on new birth and salvation, the light of the world, the sun being lifted up, and every chapter is going to be doing that. Here in John 6, it is no different.
Jesus returns from the other side of the sea, as we may remember, and He just performed multiple amazing signs. He turned some loaves of bread and fish into a meal that could feed 5,000, but probably upward to tens of thousands of people. And He then walks on water to His disciples, and He calms a storm. So these miracles and signs that Jesus just does before this is important to understanding our text.
But let's pick it up here in verse 25. When they found him on the other side of the sea, that he just walked and got on the boat, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal."
Then they said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. So they said to him, then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.
Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father 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." They said to Him, "Sir, give us this bread always."
Jeff explained this text last week and talked about how the people wanted their stomachs filled. They wanted to maybe please God or approach Him by their works, and they wanted to see a miracle, show us a sign, fill our stomachs with bread. Now, there's going to be a transition where they're talking about the bread of Moses from heaven, the manna, and Jesus is going to make it personal and talk about the bread being Himself.
Look at verse 35 in Jesus' response. 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."
So, my first question for us this morning is, how is Jesus the bread from heaven? Well, this is a remarkable place in the gospel of John. It is the first of seven I am statements here. And also the context here, there's an amazing typology or typological interplay, which just means that there's a type being Jesus, and then in the Old Testament there was manna or bread from heaven, and the type that it was looking towards as the fulfillment or the end was actually Jesus Himself. But it will help us understand what Jesus is trying to show with the metaphor of Him being the bread, a life from heaven.
Exodus 16 explains, you don't need to turn to there, but it explains the story of manna coming down from heaven. Some of our kids, I know you guys have studied that even story recently or in the past year, and it's when God feeds the Israelites in the wilderness, and there's manna from heaven that looks like dew on the ground, and they pick it up, and then He also gives them quail, and then He also gives them water, and He supplies for them. And you guys might have learned what the word manna means. Do you guys remember? Does anyone know what the word manna means? Yeah, it means what is it, which is an interesting thing. What manna means, what is it? Because the people of God did not know what it was, but only who it came from.
I mentioned the typology here. Here's some of the ways that we see this in Scripture, this contrast and comparison. Manna came from heaven as a gift from God, and Jesus came from heaven as the gift from God. The manna fell from heaven as God's provision during the wilderness wandering of Israelites, and Jesus is God's provision of the endless wilderness of wandering for our lost souls. It was sufficient. If you guys remember the story when they took the bread and ate it, it was sufficient for all of them to be filled. They didn't need any more, and it was sufficient for all of Israel, but Christ is sufficient for all the world and those who would believe in Him. The Israelites ate that manna, and we'll find later in John 6, and yet still died, whereas to eat the true manna from heaven will give eternal life. Manna from heaven is and the water from the rock, you know, also gave temporary sustenance, but Christ is going to explain himself as the living water to the Samaritan woman and the bread of life.
The Jews assume here that Jesus is still referring to the bread from heaven as the bread that He, you know, multiplied in their midst. He was like, you know, Moses did a sign. You did a sign. Both are cool little tricks. You brought heaven down or bread down. He brought bread down. Give us this bread always. Give it to us again as literally as again and again continually. And Jesus is going to try to show them, which we're going to hopefully understand even more this morning, that he is the manna from heaven.
And He came from heaven. We see it multiple times in John 6, the bread from heaven in 32. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven. And He's going to continue it in John 6. And Jesus, again, is trying to show that He is the incarnate God existing within the Trinity into eternity past. And He has come down from heaven on a rescue mission willingly, sent by the Father. Not a created being, and we'll see later they think, isn't this Jesus, the son of Joseph? Not some great guy. No, He is the manna from heaven.
So why is this sentence in verse 35, this verse, so important? I want to spend a good amount of our time here looking at it. Why is it so important? How is Jesus the bread of life? I want to look at this little phrase here. I am the bread of life. The very first two words are important. And the words in Greek, which is not important always to talk about Greek, but when you do say Greek, as one person told me, is you just say it confidently, and then people will think that you know what you're saying. But the words are important, and hopefully you'll see why, is the words are ego, I, me.
And the use of that could just say, you know, you could say, ego, I, me, Caleb, or something like that, and say it that way. But commentators pointed out that how it is used and when it is used points us back to God's answer to Moses about His name in Exodus chapter three. And what was that name? I am that I am. In the Greek Old Testament, so how it's called the Septuagint, they actually use the same phrasing in Exodus three. Ego, I, me. I am, and it says, I am the being one. I am self-existence in myself. He is explaining, Jesus is explaining Himself as the self-existent one, the uncaused first cause who has life in Himself, is how John 5 talks about it.
And in Exodus and in Isaiah and in the Old Testament, we see in the Greek Old Testament over and over this ego, I, me concept. And finally, it's one of the most striking times here in John chapter 8. And you probably know this verse in John 8, 58. Jesus says, before Abraham was, ego, I, me. I, me am, the great I am, the eternal God. And the people there, the Jews there, they want to stone Him because they recognize that this is a blasphemous claim of a man claiming to be deity. People will ask, well, did Jesus ever claim to be deity? Well, He does many, many, many times, we will actually see in the gospels, and especially in the book of John, and here is one no different.
He says, I am, but why does he say he is the bread? I am the bread. I think it's a little ironic that a guy who is celiac gluten-free is preaching the sermon, but nonetheless, is I am the bread, and bread was a staple food item in this world. I mean, it's even a staple food item for us, bread, water, whatever. Bread and water, it's important to note, is indicative of basic necessities. How do people in the first century think about it? Well, some have calculated that about 85% of a person's income went towards food and water. It's like living in Seattle. 85% of your income went towards food and water. But we really don't understand this when you don't live in a very poor area of the world. Everyone in this society knew what it was like to be hungry, to be thirsty.
It was a poor desert wasteland. And when they read verses like, if you don't work, you don't eat, they realized what that meant. That was a literal idea. Today, I mean, even if we don't make enough money to put food on the table, there's a lot of times social services or food stamps or other types of things, and people aren't walking around without food and water like they are in many places of the world.
So it wasn't just, and I think we've got to be careful not to think about it this way, it wasn't just that the people following Jesus wanted lunch, right? There was an actually intense and serious need that everyone had for just even the most basic necessities of life, for food, for clean water, for shelter. They all had known what it was like to not eat or drink for a while. They probably all knew someone who had died from malnourishment or dehydration. We just don't understand that. I mean, many of us, we've actually never skipped a meal. And I mean, like, not actually, I mean, but where we could not afford it. We could not eat. We didn't have money for food or water or have food or water because we couldn't have access to it. Many of us have not experienced that ever in our life. And they found this maybe even on a weekly experience. So Jesus is trying to communicate that He is our basic necessity.
Jesus is saying that He is food for our souls. Bread, you know, another way to just think about it is He's talking about food. He's talking about food. He's talking about our spiritual food. He is necessary for life, and I want to kind of open up that idea more and more this morning, but He is food for our souls. Jesus is the wisdom of God. The Word become flesh, and now He's explaining Himself as the bread from heaven, the bread of life from heaven. And all those who come to Him and believe will be truly satisfied.
One person said it this way, as bread is to the body, Jesus is to the soul. As bread is to the body, Jesus is to the soul. And like I mentioned, this is kind of a sermon by Jesus in John 6. And he's going to go on and explain this even further and deeper and have it even be a more difficult understanding. If you know John 6, you know what I'm talking about. But he says, I am. Then he says, the bread. But why does he say the bread of life? The bread of life.
Well, in Greek, again, there's three main words for life. I think we'll be able to understand the first two pretty easily. It is bios, which is like your biological life, right, your actual physical life. Psyche, which is like the animated body, maybe the center of your personality is a way to think about it. And then there's a word zoe, which means we know the name Zoe, and in Greek culture, Zoe captured something beyond just physical living. It involved the purposeful way that one spent their existence with and for others. It was like the quality of life. It's like saying, you're alive, but are you really living? Do you really have Zoe?
And this is what Jesus wants to be able to say to us. That is, you know, the people see Jesus and they want bios and psyche. Give us the bread. Give us the water. I want to be sustained to tomorrow. I want to be able to provide for my children. I want all the good necessary things, like all good, right? All necessary things in life. And he says, you need eternal Zoe. You need real life. You need the life of God, the one that he says is in him and the Father, and he will give to the world, right? And by the way, if you want those things like physical life and whatever, it's thrown in for eternity. And it's thrown in at the highest degree for eternity forever with me.
I don't know if you guys have seen kind of the trend that's happening these days of people trying to do like biohacking, you guys know this? Where people are like injecting stem cells and gene editing, people are talking about, can we upload my consciousness into AI? Not dangerous or anything. But the idea is that people want to live forever. And there's a guy named Brian Johnson who's famous for this, and he's spending like two to three million dollars a year trying to keep his metabolic age super low. And he's doing this, trying to sustain his bios and his psyche, if you will. And Jesus wants to point out this in this passage.
There are two kinds of food or bread. Food for our physical bodies, which like I mentioned, is necessary to sustain life. That's how God created it. But it's limited. And it does not ultimately satisfy our souls. You eat this food and you will die. You eat this food and you're going to need more, like in an hour, just like a little bit of time, right? But then there's spiritual food, which is both necessary for eternal life and it ultimately satisfies us as to never hunger or thirst again. You eat that food and you will live forever. You eat that food and you will be satisfied forever.
In Deuteronomy 8, God says, he says, and he humbled you and let you hunger, or Moses talking for God, and he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know. Nor did your fathers know that he might make you know, and many of us know this verse, that man does not live by what? Bread alone. Bread alone. But man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
You know, it's interesting that that verse is here. Jesus is saying He's not the physical bread, and He's not even providing the physical bread that man can't live by. What he is saying is he's saying he is the word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. You see that? He's not the bread alone, but he's the one that man has to live by, which is the word of God coming out of the mouth of the Lord. And he is now in the flesh. And that is how mankind will have true life. The true bread that will not run out. The bread from heaven. The food that will sustain you eternally.
I mean, we all understand that we need food and water to live physically, right? We understand that. But Jesus is offering something deeper. He's offering spiritual nourishment for our souls. And so the question I want to look at next is, if Jesus is this, what does that mean for us? And maybe even more explicitly in the text, I was thinking about this. What does it mean that we shall not hunger, that we shall not thirst. I mean, is it just me? Or like when you read something like this, you're like, wait, I do hunger and thirst, right? Or if I'm even thinking more spiritually or for my soul, is am I fully satisfied in Jesus? Then why do I continue to sin? Why do I doubt? Why do I still find satisfaction in things of this world or desire them? Why do I still struggle? Like, those are real questions that you're asking yourself and wondering about.
But the beautiful thing in this text is that Jesus does not leave us wondering. He explains the metaphor to us through the rest of the chapter. And what does He say here in verse 35? How is it that you shall not hunger and that you shall never thirst? Well, he says, whoever comes to me and whoever believes in me. For a little bit of time, I was trying to focus on this, and I was like, oh, I wonder what that all means and deep parts of it. And I found this quote by Warren Wiersbe, which just really helped me. He says, to come to Jesus means to believe on him. And to believe on him means to come to him. And I was like, oh, thank you. Thank you, Warren. But they both invoke a positive response to Jesus of acceptance, of going to him. And I was like, Warren, that's great. I appreciate that. But I need more. Let's go to Charles Spurgeon. He says, faith in Christ is simply and truly described as coming to him. It's like, okay, they're saying the same things. But he goes on, and I really like what he says about this. He says, it is not an acrobatic feat. It is simply coming to Christ. It is not an exercise of profound mental faculties. It is coming to Christ. A child comes to his mother, a blind man to his home, an animal comes to the call of his master. Coming is a very simple action indeed. It seems to have only two things about it. One would come away from something and go towards something. And he tries to explain it as simple as possible, and that's because it is simple.
To come to Jesus and to believe in him is. You don't have to have a PhD and know everything about Masoretic texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls and science and theology and philosophy. You need to come to Jesus and believe in what he has done for you. And then you would see that Jesus is the one who satisfies. Jesus is the one who sustains because Jesus is the one who secures us as the bread of life.
First is that Jesus is the one who satisfies. What do you do to wind down? What satisfies your soul? What do you feel like you need to have to live? You know, what satisfies you in that way? If you just think about whatever comes to mind. And then I wanna ask you, and have you ask yourself even this, does it really? I mean, does it really? You think about the most incredible things that you've ever done, the most satisfaction and joy and happiness and excitement. Maybe some of you kids are thinking, three-day weekend at Disneyland all day, whatever it is. Whatever it is, at the end of the night when your head hits the pillow, does it actually satisfy?
One of the things that C.S. Lewis says is, if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is I was made for another world. And often what's interesting too is that what we think satisfies us is actually the thing that enslaves us. You think, you know, wine and whatever else satisfies you at the end of the day. I just need that. That's what enslaves people. You think your joy, like I just need to be with my family. I've been away for a while. My family, I love my family. They're great. They're the thing that will do it for me, that will really make me happy and satisfied. That will enslave you. Whether it's good or whether it's bad, whether it's sinful, whatever it is, the things that we look to in this world, and I appreciate this with idolatry, tend to be the things that enslave us.
In the wilderness, I mentioned the Israelites, they grumble at Moses and Aaron. They grumble at God, and they say, if only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt, rather than be out here with you guys. There, we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve us to death. You hear what they're saying? Instead of being out here with you, God, it would be better for us to be in slavery, in slave oppression and labor, because at least they gave us food. At least I knew that eight, 12, and five, I had food. And at least I understood it. At least it was familiar. I didn't have to have faith. I knew it was coming.
See, many of us are enslaved to perishing food that does not satisfy. Whether it's shopping or entertainment or whatever it is, and we are enslaved to perishing food. And instead of giving it up, or instead of focusing on not it, but God, and to go after what truly satisfies, we are okay with our familiar idols giving us dopamine hits every single day as we entertain ourselves to death. And that's the trajectory of anybody who would find their basic necessities and the things in this world as being an end in and of itself.
We're like Israel. We complain about the chains while refusing to actually leave them. Another quote that comes to mind by Augustine says, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and we are going to be restless until we rest in thee.
Do you remember in John 4, in the conversation with the Samaritan woman, if you've been around? It's basically the same conversation as this. She wants to know, or Jesus asked for a drink. And he said, if you knew who was asking this question, he would have given you living water. And then he says, everyone who drinks of this water, this well, is going to be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give them will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Do you remember what the woman says? Give me that water. I mean, it's the same conversation, right? Give me that water because I want that water. And then when Jesus turns there, he says, I who speak to you, ego, I'm me.
It is difficult for us to comprehend, you know, a metaphor, I think, of bread and water and talk about satisfaction. It's difficult because this is the desert of the Middle East. There's no running water, no plumbing, no refrigerators and ice, like a spring of fresh, cold water that's healthy, right? Like a bread and food that will continue to nearly be supplied, that would replace 85% of your income, fill you and your household, and make sure you have no needs. No wonder these guys and the woman would say, give me that water, give me that bread.
I actually think one of the things that happens for us is we struggle with the opposite. Like, we're so concerned about our diets or not eating or drinking too much. And we have an overabundance of food and drinks and flavors and Red Dye 40 and kombucha and all these different things. And we actually need to beware of what Philippians 3 says. Where we would look and we would say that our God is our stomach, our glory is our shame because our minds are set on earthly things.
It's very interesting also in Exodus 16, there's so many connections here because when God gives them the manna, he gives them food every day and drink and quail. He gives them everything they need. And you know what he says about it? He said, I gave them manna from heaven to test them. Interesting. See, we kind of understand when we're going through trials, like I think God is testing me, he's working on me. But do you realize that your affluence is a greater test than your suffering? That your blessings and the things that you have and have been given are greater tests of your faith and your dependence upon God rather than even persecution? Because in persecution and suffering, you need God. You have nothing. Will you have everything? I mean, what do you really need? You're good. I mean, you don't even mind being here this morning. You're like, I've got to mow my lawn. You don't need Jesus, the bread of God, the only thing that can nourish our souls.
Jesus then, or coming to Jesus and believing him is what satisfies our souls. The other thing it does is that Jesus sustains us. Just as we understand water and food would sustain our physical bodies, God is the one who sustains us every moment of every day. Isaiah talks about this multiple times. Psalms talk about that. Isaiah 46 says, Even to your old age and your gray hairs, I am He, ego I me, by the way, ego I me, who will sustain you. I have made you. I will carry you. I will sustain you. I will rescue you. We need Jesus every hour, and it is He that holds us fast.
I don't think we realize the need that we have for the Lord. I mean, we live in a world which has the highest, you know, rates of depression and anxiety and suicidal ideations, and everyone is in counseling and therapy and looking and searching and whatever. Why? Well, you know why I truly believe? Why? It's because we are the first generation of the history of the world that has the most atheists and agnostics in it. The first society that does not have God or deity or anything, and they're all looking for everything in themselves. What an enslaving thought, that you would try to find satisfaction and sustenance here.
We are body and spirit, and our spirits are starving. This is why there's a massive exodus or opposite, whatever, of people running back to the church and Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and all these different things, and they're desiring the things of God and the things that are actually real and true. It's also why Christians, you hear believers, brothers and sisters, that we need prayer, and Scripture, and communion, and the assembly of God, and the fellowship of the saints. It's what we need.
Calvin compared the church to a mother and us as newborn babes who would need her for nourishment and spiritual food and nurture. I mean, how unfathomable that a child could go without nutrition for so long, and yet we are happy to miss church week after week or watch online or do other things rather than be in the assembly of God, which He commands. The Puritans would talk about people expending all their energy during the week and then come crawling into the church to hear the word preached because they needed it and the fellowship and the baptizing and the communion and worship, and then they would be sustained for another one. Our souls need to be fed, and we need daily sustenance.
It's also why, like, the history of the church. Fasting and prayer was so fundamental because one of the things that fasting would do is it would say very clearly that physical food is not your ultimate source of life. It's why the Christians have practiced it for so long, why Jesus himself, even though he's in perfect union with the Father, would spend so much time away in fasting and prayer, not praying, prayer, and because he knows how much he needed the Lord. It shows that we don't need physical nutrients nearly as much as we need spiritual nourishment. Fasting is a way of reminding ourselves that our greatest need is not food or comfort or entertainment or pleasure. Our greatest need is God Himself.
The other aspect of this too, which is hurting us and not sustaining us, is that we are filling ourselves with food that does not satisfy and does not sustain us. Are you anything like me? I won't throw my wife under the bus, but it's also her, is where you'd eat dinner, right? Or actually, it doesn't matter if you're eating or not, but you're hungry, and you're like, that bag of Himalayan pink salt popcorn from Costco, and you get the bag, right? And you just start eating the popcorn, and eating the popcorn, eating the popcorn, and then pretty soon, you're like, I've ate a lot of this popcorn, right? Like, probably more than any human ever. And you're eating, because it's massive. I mean, you could just keep going. And you eat it, and you eat it, and then you realize, I'm hungry. Right? You're like, when's dinner? Is it now? And you're eating stuff that does not fill you, and you realize actually how hungry you really are.
What happens when we are hungry, but we don't eat the right thing? Well, it doesn't fill us. What happens when we're thirsty but we drink salt water? See, that's the issue with so many of us is we're seeking the wrong things to satisfy us and the wrong things to daily sustain us. We become obese on the things of the world and we starve our souls. And Jesus wants to show us that He is the bread of life.
And he's the bread of life who will never, he says, you will never hunger and thirst, though? How does that work? How can Jesus say that whoever comes and believes in him will never hunger or thirst? And it is because of this. We will not hunger or thirst in this way because Christ is the one who secures us. Amen, because of God's plan for salvation, salvation ultimately rests on God's work and not ours, then we actually can be fully satisfied and fully sustained because Jesus is the one who secures us.
Jesus is not saying, right, or else we'd be just like the guys in this story. He's not saying that we'll never hunger and thirst again. We missed the point, just like these guys are missing the point. In fact, He actually says the opposite. We'll be hungry for His namesake. We'll be persecuted for His namesake. We'll be imprisoned and killed. And even spiritually, we'll have seasons of dry doubt and struggle and difficulty, maybe even falling into sin. But Jesus is saying that we are satisfied and sustained because our salvation is secure in Christ. It is not attained by us. It is not earned by us. It is not secured by us. And we do not raise ourselves on the last day. And therefore, we do not need to hunger and thirst in the same way.
What does he say here in verse 36? He says, 37, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.
This, in John 5, 19 through 30, there's so many parallels and so many connections, we don't have time. But one of the amazing things that he talks about here is that, we see it in verse 37, is that the Father gives people to the Son. The Father gives them, they will come to me. Later in John 10, he says, my Father who has given them to me is greater than all. Ephesians 1 says that He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. He predestined us for adoption, which means your salvation did not begin with you and you choosing Christ. It actually began in the eternal decree and purposes of God.
We see that Christ receives Him in verse 37, "...whoever comes to Me, I will not cast out." John 1 says, to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Christ secures them. What does he say in verse 39? I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me. No one will snatch them out of my hand is how he says it again in John 10. 2 Timothy 1, he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me, which is what we sang about with Christ being the victor. He has won the battle. And then it says, on the last day, he will raise them.
How many of those things did you do? The Father gives them. Christ receives them. Christ secures them. Christ raises them. He does all these things, and the question we ask is not, what can I do to earn this, to have this? What standard of living or being good enough to Jesus or any of these types of things? The question is, was Christ successful on His mission? Did He accomplish the will of the Father? Those are the questions that we look to. Those are the questions of the assurance of salvation. When we look and we see what Christ has actually accomplished on the cross, giving us all His righteousness and taking away all of our sin and putting them on Himself on the cross. And then He's going to raise us up on the last day. This is why we are secure. This is why if you have come to Jesus and you have believed in him, that he will hold you until the last day, that he is assured of your salvation because nothing, no height nor depth nor demons nor anything you do in principalities in the world and anything can take that away from you.
Therefore, what should we make of this in our responses? Well, we actually, I'm pulling these responses from chapter 6. We see in verse 41 here, the first response is grumbling and skepticism. John 6, 41 says, So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven?
The Jews, just like they did in Exodus 16, they grumble as their forefathers over the manna from God, standing in their midst this time. They grumble over the manna of God. The other thing they do, which is just so interesting, is they presume that they think that Jesus is just an ordinary man, nothing special. We've been asking this question a lot in this series, is who is Jesus? You've got to do something with him because he is a historical figure, one of the most attested historical figures in history, if not the most. And what do you do with him? Who is he?
It is so ironic that the Jews are sitting here, presumably the leaders in the Jewish synagogue, and they're presuming that they know Jesus' Father whilst denying their own. They're like, we know your dad. You're not special. And he says, and Jesus is like, do you? Because the Father and the Son's will are one. Do you know him?
The Jews grumble, they do this, and Romans 1 says that no one has an excuse to reject God because God has made himself known to all people. And therefore, all people are held responsible for how they would respond to the gospel. They can choose to grumble, reject, and believe something else and be skeptics, or they can choose to come and believe. The Bible says, whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has eternal life. And if you would this morning but submit to him as your Lord and your Savior, you will not come into judgment but pass from death unto life. And it's on us. It's on us to believe in the Son. And I would urge you and beg that you would not be satisfied or sustained by God's common grace and his stuff here on earth. All the good things that you can think of here on earth are his. They are but echoes that you hear of a full choir, shadows of a mountain. They're looking through a hazy mirror instead of turning around and seeing the full thing. He will make known the paths of life, and in His presence there is fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's what the Lord our God offers.
The other response is to come and believe. I love how he says it here in verse 40. Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. We're reminded here even of John 3. If you remember, it says, "...as Moses lifted up the serpent, so the Son of Man will be lifted up, and all those who look to him by faith will live." And the part here, the connection is Christ says, then I will lift you up eternally on the last day.
But the second response to come and believe, we see it here in John 6 at the very end. And in John 6 at the very end, when all this is talked about with the bread of life dialogue, the disciples say, this is a hard saying, who can listen to it? So Jesus turns to the 12 and he says, do you want to go away as well? Because all these other people have abandoned me. Everyone's left now because I've said these things. And I've said I'm the riddle of life. And Simon Peter answers him in 68 and says, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal Zoe. Eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. Amen.
See, the response is the same, to come and believe here or to grumble and be skeptics. But some of you who are believers here this morning, you're like, yes, I pray that people would come and believe. But you also need to hear today that the call to come and believe is both a call for you and it is a call for those who do not know the Lord.
Have you come to the Lord and believed in Him? And do you continually come and believe in the Son? Do you continually return to Him? As Martin Luther wrote, all of life is repentance, which is that turning. It's like turning away from one thing to another idea. And so have you come and do you continue to repent? Repent to the Lord and come to Jesus and fall at His feet and repent of your sins because He is the only thing that can satisfy us, that can sustain us, and to secure us for eternity.
Let's pray. Father, we come before You this morning and I pray that You would show us Your grace, that You would sustain us by Your Spirit and the Word, and that we would not look to lesser means and lesser idols here on earth, Lord, but we would see you as our basic necessity. Please, God, be with us and work in our hearts, Lord, and help us to not be eating lesser food here, worthless food here on earth. May God turn to you and come and believe. And I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
Explicitly Mentioned References:
John 6:25-71 (Main passage - extensively discussed throughout)
John 6:32-40 (Primary focus passage)
John 6:25-34 (Context passage)
John 6:35 (Key verse - "I am the bread of life")
John 6:41 (Grumbling of the Jews)
John 6:68 (Peter's response)
Exodus 16 (Manna from heaven story)
Exodus 3 (God's name - "I am that I am")
John 8:58 ("Before Abraham was, I am")
Deuteronomy 8 (Man does not live by bread alone)
John 4 (Woman at the well - living water)
John 3 (Moses lifting up the serpent; new birth)
John 5:19-30 (Jesus doing the Father's will)
John 10 (No one can snatch them from my hand)
Philippians 3 (God is their stomach)
Isaiah 46 (God sustains to old age)
Ephesians 1 (Chosen before the foundation of the world)
John 1 (To all who received him)
2 Timothy 1 (Able to guard what has been entrusted)
Romans 1 (No one has an excuse)
Alluded to or Paraphrased:
Psalm 16:11 (In His presence is fullness of joy)
2 Thessalonians 3:10 (If you don't work, you don't eat)
Hebrews 4:12 (Word separating bone and marrow)
Matthew 4:4 (Man shall not live by bread alone)