The bread of life
Monday, October 2, 2017
John 6:35
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.
Jesus now takes on this argument about bread frontally. The guys weren’t getting the deeper point he was making. There was no comparison between the Bread He offered and the mana their forefathers ate in the wilderness. The mana in the wilderness was intended to satisfy physical needs. Jesus was offering bread intended to meet their spiritual needs. They weren’t getting it.
So, Jesus now makes a clear declaration “I am the bread of life.” He then goes on to point out, like he did to the woman at the well, that he is about satisfying hunger and thirst that is deepen that the physical needs of here and now.
Having made the declaration “I am the bread of life,” Jesus seems to go off on a tangent (v36-40). He addresses the fact that He is with them teaching and performing miracles and still they harbour doubts about Him. Then He goes on to say that those who are His will be drawn to Him. After that He mentions that He was doing the will of the Father. He gives assurance about the security of the believer and closes with the promises of the resurrection and eternal life.
What has all of this to do with the bread?
Jesus is not rambling here as it seems at first glance. In fact, Jesus is providing the understanding for the concept he just introduced – The Bread of Life. Because the hearers were so focused on the fulfilment of physical need Jesus had to provide the spiritual context for them to appreciate what he meant.
The bread that Moses provided met the physical needs of the wilderness wanderers for a day. The bread of life will meet your spiritual hunger for eternity. In other words, we have an eternal hunger – a need for relationship with God who created us but that relationship is broken. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “[God] has put eternity in [our] hearts…”
Jesus has come down from heaven to make it possible for the relationship with God to be reestablished. If we would believe that He is the Son of God, God Himself would draw us into a secure relationship. This is what God sent Him from heaven to do, and God will honour the faith placed in Him by granting the believer eternal life.
Wow! Jesus summed up the whole Gospel in a paragraph.
In much of the Gospel preaching today many have focused on health, wealth, success, favour, and the like. There is a focus on the meeting of the needs of the here now. Jesus was actually focused on relationship with God for eternity. He said in verse 40, “this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Let us keep eternity in view in our relationship with Jesus Christ. We go to school and we work hard to succeed and to live well. With God’s help we will. But the basis of our relationship with Christ is not to do well, it is to have life with God for eternity.
Think on these things:
- How often do you think about the prospect of eternal life?
- There is an old song by Jim Reeves (before my time) that provokes a different focus, look at some of the lyrics.
This world is not my home
I’m just a-passing through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me
From heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home
In this world anymore.
- Many doomsday prophets, both within and without the church are always predicting the end of the world, and with social media they get to spread their predictions much farther and wider today. While not giving into that hype, how do we live effectively here and now but keep eternity in view.
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that God would help us to maintain a desire to be with Him in glory even as we pursue His will and purpose for us here and now.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
