John 6:24-35
Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost
Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke Sunday, August 11, 2024
“Look to Jesus for Bread from Heaven”
Can you imagine anything more impressive than the miraculous manna? We read about it in our first Scripture reading, but that reading didn’t include all of the details that are helpful for getting the picture. At that time, the Israelites numbered hundreds of thousands of men. Add in women and children, and we’re talking about well over a million people, closer even to two million. This was the double the inhabitants of greater Tucson, not living in their houses with running water and refrigerators, but heading out in the barren land outside of Egypt on the way toward the Promised Land. And the problem that presents itself is obvious. No food. That’s the setting, the set up. The impressive part is that God provides a dew on the ground, and when the dew dries, it leaves behind thin flakes of bread. And all of the people are able to gather enough to feed themselves for the day. And it returns the next day and the day after that. The only day that is unusual is the Sabbath, when God has special instructions. But every day he provides, and this goes on for forty years. No wonder that incredible account would be on the minds of the people of Israel in Jesus’ day.
But before we return to those people, let’s ask again: can you imagine anything more impressive? Well, it may not seem so because of the miraculous nature of the manna, but a solid case could be made that you experience something more impressive constantly as God provides you with daily bread. Here we are in the relatively dry Sonoran Desert and yet, when you want food, dozens of grocery stores are available to you. You can walk up and down aisles with freezers and refrigerators and shelves. And there is so much food on those shelves that roughly thirty percent of it ultimately gets thrown away.
Perhaps we tend to overlook how impressive it is that God provides our daily bread in such an abundant way because we’re used to it. We know it. We expect it. We don’t always stop to think that this, too, is bread from heaven.
Bread from heaven was exactly what people had received just before the account from John 6 that serves as the basis for our sermon. If you recall what happened, you might know it as the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Five thousand men had gathered around Jesus, plus women, plus children. They had followed him to a barren place, and night was quickly falling. All that anyone brought for food was a lunch box a young man had with a few loaves of bread and a couple small fish. It wasn’t even enough for the people to have a snack, but that night they had so much more. They ate and were satisfied. Jesus even pokes at them a bit and suggests that they hadn’t just eaten, they had pigged out. And still, when all was said and done, there were twelve baskets full of food left behind. A miracle. Impressive.
So when Jesus went somewhere else, the people followed. The crowd followed. You know how Costco samples work? When the good stuff is being given away at the end of the aisles, it’s a traffic jam. Who wouldn’t stop for free food? And that was what the people saw in Jesus. They had been impressed enough before because he taught in a way that intrigued them. They came for miracles of healing. But this time they chased him to the other side of the sea because he had fed them. They had found someone who could and would give them bread. But Jesus had something even more impressive.
Here's how he responded when the crowd met him: “Amen, Amen, I tell you: You are not looking for me because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not continue to work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
What Jesus had done was supposed to be a sign. It was supposed to point to something. It was proof that God had placed on Jesus his seal of approval. It meant that he had eternal gifts to give and to offer, but those people did not see past the earthly and the material. They had food. That’s what they focused on.
And that’s no surprise. When we’re running low on energy, we get hungry. God has designed our bodies that they crave the blessings he gives. The things that we see and taste and touch, the things that we can measure and observe are truly good gifts from him, but far too often that is all we think about. That’s all we notice. That is as far as our appreciation for and searching after Jesus goes. Those people were looking for the wrong things, the less important and the less impressive. And we do the same, too. We pray that God would give us the food
we crave and the stuff that we need. We easily notice when we are lacking something physical. We can even think we’re doing the godly thing as we get caught up in political arguments or obsess over financial markets. All of these are earthly things. All of these affect us for only the here and the now. But like the crowd around Jesus, our selfish, sinful minds focus just on those things. Jesus wants to move our focus to the spiritual and to the eternal.
And what a conversation went on between Jesus and the crowd to lead in that eternal direction. He said that they should not be working for food that perishes but for food that endures to eternal life. He even alerted them to the fact that this food was given by the Son of Man, by Jesus. They asked what they needed to do, and he pointed them not to doing anything, but believing in him, the one sent by God.
And that’s when they brought up the manna. They had a history. They were descendants of the people who ate that amazing and miraculous food. They had Moses on their side. How was Jesus going to prove that they should listen to him? They asked that question as if Jesus hadn’t already proved himself. Did they so soon forget about the miraculous feeding? Did they not remember? That wasn’t the problem. The problem was they were focused on the earthly and not on the spiritual.
Jesus wasn’t about to give into their pleading for another sign after all the ones they had already ignored. Instead, he was going to teach them about himself. “My Father gives you the real bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
The Bread of God, the Bread from heaven, the real stuff. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life.” Bread was their staple. It was their go-to for hunger. It was how God fed and nourished and strengthened their physical lives. And just as they depended on physical bread for their physical lives, so they needed to depend on the heavenly Bread, the spiritual Bread, for their spiritual lives.
In the same way, if we go without earthly, physical food, we wither and die. To go without spiritual food is to wither and die spiritually. That’s much worse. Apart from the spiritual food, the Bread from heaven, the Bread of Life, we end up with nothing. All the earthly goods, earthly needs, physical blessings that we can think of can serve us right up until the time when we do die. None of them can prevent our deaths. None of them are of any use after that. And yet it is so hard to take our focus off of them. It is so hard to imagine that they are not what we should value most. And take it a step further, it is hard to admit and imagine that not only do we not deserve these things, we deserve to have them and all other blessings gone from us forever.
That’s why we come to Jesus as beggars looking for Bread from heaven. That’s why when we gather as a congregation, we confess our sins together. We confess that we deserve God’s punishment now and forever. We hunger and thirst for spiritual food and drink.
And then, “I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus is going to explore these truths with the crowd even further in his discourse. We’ll continue to meditate on his words over the next couple weeks. But let us marvel over the grace of God. To a people whose focus is on the earthly, Jesus offers the greatest spiritual gift. To people who could not possibly deserve it, he offers the Bread of Life. To people who will soon be hungry again, he offers a gift that will do away with spiritual hunger and thirst forever. He offers himself. This is why he has come. This is the message to which all his signs and miracles have pointed.
To you Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life.” To you he gives eternal food. His focus has never wavered from the spiritual needs of his people. His life has never deviated from the will of his Father. He has never put earthly or temporary or passing interests or motives above the eternal and heavenly. And he gives himself to you. He gives himself for you. He invites you to come to him for this spiritual food, for this heavenly bread. He invites you to crave most of all what he has to offer you spiritually, what he gives you for now and forever.
It’s hard to imagine something more impressive than the miraculous manna, even though feeding five thousand men with a small lunch and having basketfuls of leftovers has got to be pretty close. As impressive as those signs were, though, what they pointed to was even more impressive. They pointed to a Savior who loves and a Lord who saves. They pointed to heavenly Bread. They pointed to your Bread of Life. Come to Jesus for this heavenly food. Look to him not for food that perishes, but for the food that lasts forever.
The Text: John 6:24–35 (EHV)
24When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26Jesus answered them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: You are not looking for me because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. 27Do not continue to work for the food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28So they said to him, “What should we do to carry out the works of God?”
29Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God: that you believe in the one he sent.”
30Then they asked him, “So what miraculous sign are you going to do, that we may see it and believe you? What miraculous sign are you going to perform? 31Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
32Jesus said to them, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the real bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34“Sir,” they said to him, “give us this bread all the time!”
35“I am the Bread of Life,” Jesus told them. “The one who comes to me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.