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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
What do you do when you hear something that seems preposterous?
In the days following the resurrection of Jesus, John and the other close friends of Jesus spent considerable time reflecting on and perhaps discussing, what they had been eye witness to with Jesus. There were no media reports to read or watch. It was all in their memories, and I think those memories were cherished.
The accounts Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote of Jesus are quite similar, that’s why they are called the ‘synoptic Gospels’. But much of John’s 21 chapters are NOT found in those other Gospels. Why? Perhaps because of John’s unique relationship with Jesus? Perhaps because the Holy Spirit led John to write a more personal report, rather than philosophical or even statistical. John wants us to know Jesus like he did, and to feel loved by Jesus, as he did. So I’m spending these days with you, looking at things we only find in John’s account of Jesus.
Today we’re again in John 6, continuing were we left off yesterday, in vs. 46: “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 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.” (John 6:46-51) Now that’s a mouthful isn’t it? Can you see everyone who heard it scratching their heads and looking like they just heard something preposterous? Let’s take it one phrase at a time.
Sorcerers and some other mystics claimed to not only have a fresh word from God but some even claimed to have seen God, on occasion. While it’s true Moses, we are told, met with God ‘face to face’, (Ex. 33:11) Jesus is making it clear here that HE is the only One who has seen and known God in all His glory, in heaven. And Jesus once again states clearly that everlasting life, in heaven, with God, is ONLY possible through Jesus.
Do you see Jesus is drawing an important comparison between Himself and the manna which God provided the Hebrew slaves in the desert with Moses, for 40 years? (Exodus 16) You’ll remember it fell down from heaven like dew 6 mornings a week. The people collected as much as they wanted, and cooked it in various ways, but it was only edible for one day. No left-overs to the next day. If they tried to hold it over, it had maggots in it. God wanted to provide their ‘daily bread’ and have them TRUST God for His provision daily. But no manna fell on the seventh day, that was a day of Sabbath rest. On that sixth day, while the manna looked the same, it was a special edition…two day manna which did not spoil if held over to the seventh day. Another God miracle to prove that if the people would live as He directed them, they would be safe, well supplied with what they needed, and content as God’s people.
Do you see what Jesus said this day, as He tried to link who He is and why He came to earth, with the manna for their understanding and ours? Both the manna and Jesus were sent by God from heaven for the purpose of sustaining human beings lives! The manna was only available for the Hebrew slaves, and only while that generation wandered in the desert. It stopped the day after they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land (Joshua 5:12). Jesus came for all people, living anywhere in the world, in every generation.
The manna gave life for ONE DAY, Jesus, however, came to give eternal life, everlasting life. Those who ate the manna and lived in the desert, grew old and all of them died a normal old age death. Jesus said those who ‘eat of this bread, (Him) will not die.’ Now we understand Jesus was NOT advocating cannibalism, right? He was not inviting people to come up to Him and take a bite out of His arm or leg. But He did say very clearly “This bread is My flesh which I will give for the life of the world.” So, what did Jesus mean?
John had watched it happen… Jesus’ flesh ripped off His body by the Roman flogging, and His flesh torn by the nails during His crucifixion. Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth in the incarnation, taking on human flesh, so He could experience both the wrath of God and the hatred of sinful mankind poured out on His body in extreme brutality! As He died, He became the atonement sacrifice, so God could then extend forgiveness for sin to anyone who would fully trust in Jesus’ death, as sufficient payment for their sin. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said He would give His flesh for the life of the world. Any person in the world, is able to receive from God eternal life with Him in heaven ONLY because Jesus gave His flesh, His body, His life to pay for our sin, so God could forgive our sin. He became the sacrificial Passover Lamb, as John the Baptist had said when he first saw Jesus. (John 1:28)
But what does it mean when Jesus said “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone EATS of this bread, he will live forever.”? How do we “EAT” of Jesus’ body, His flesh?
You see that John reports the people that day had the same question: “Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, ‘How can this man gives us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52) Aren’t you glad John was there and gives us such an accurate report? I imagine in the days after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, John thought a great deal about what he heard and saw the day Jesus said these things.
“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.” (John 6:53-56) Oh my goodness, it’s only getting worse, isn’t it? This is sounding like some kind of Hollywood horror movie, not the words of Jesus, God the Son! Could it be John misquoted Jesus, or perhaps those who translated it into English have messed it all up? What could Jesus possibly mean, and why is He being so graphic?
John reports that Jesus continued: “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.” (John 6:57-59) Why would John make the observation that Jesus said these things in the Synagogue? What difference does it make where He spoke these words? Oh my friends it makes a big difference. I’m sure you’d agree even today we use certain language and say things inside a church, in a worship service or a Bible study that is often very different from what we say on the job site, or the marketplace, or at a party with friends. There is religious or spiritual language and there is street or business or sports or party language, and they are very different languages, aren’t they?
In the Synagogue, when the Jews gathered, they expected to hear religious, spiritual language. Most everything said there had spiritual significance and meaning. As you read further in John 6 you see John reports: “On hearing this, many of His followers said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it….Jesus said, “The Spirit gives life: the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spiritual, they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe…This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless the Father has enabled him.’ From this time many people turned back and no longer followed Jesus.” (John 6:60-66)
Do you see Jesus is explaining that understanding of what Jesus had said is only possible as God enables a person to think spiritually. Belief in God’s truth, faith in God is essential to understanding spiritually. The story of the Exodus of 1 million Hebrew slaves, their survival in the desert with a daily manna delivery and miraculous water provision, and eventually the arrival of their children into the Promised Land, is both a tangible, physical journey and a profound spiritual journey. Do you remember their escape from Egypt hinged on their FAITH in God, their BELIEF that if they did slaughter a lamb and put the blood on their doorposts, there really was going to be an angel of death who would ‘passover’ their homes and NOT harm them?
Over and over again for those Hebrew slaves, God invited them to trust Him, to believe the truth Moses was telling them about Him, to learn to live in a FAITH rooted relationship with God! In fact, their daily existence depended on it, as evidenced by their faith that God would provide manna tomorrow. They would wake up in the morning believing that as they stepped out of their tents with bowls in hand, they could begin picking up the manna which God most certainly had dropped from heaven during the night.
Jesus was inviting the people in the Synagogue that day to learn to live the same way… by faith in God. Only rather than living day to day for a few years in Capernaum or Nazareth or Bethsaida, Jesus was challenging them to think about eternal life, in heaven, with God, forever! And that was only possible if they trusted fully in Jesus, to provide His body and blood to pay for the sin that was keeping them and all of us out of heaven!
Now, a few months after Jesus said these preposterous things that day in the Synagogue, He was gathered with His disciples in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem, preparing to go to the cross, the next day. They were having the Passover meal together. remember? Each element of that meal pointed back to that first Passover in Egypt, and also pointed forward to the Messiah in whom they would be fulfilled. Jesus had already identified Himself both in words and miracles, as being their long awaited Messiah. Now as He took the Passover bread, He declared that it represented HIS body which would be torn, broken, sacrificed for their sin. . . and then do you remember what He said my friends? “Take and eat, all of you, this is My body, broken for you.” (Matt. 26:26 & Luke 22:19)
In that instant, I believe John remembered what Jesus had said that day in the Synagogue, which John recorded in John 6. This act of tearing bread and eating it was a MEMORIAL. It was done in REMEMBRANCE and HONOR of Jesus’s sacrificial death. It was a symbolic act. It represented our acknowledgment that Jesus died for ME. That I have placed my FULL TRUST in Jesus Christ to have taken my sin punishment upon His body, so I can be forgiven by God, and have eternal life with God in heaven! And it’s the same for you and every person in the world who has trusted in Jesus!
Now I know that in some religious traditions it is taught that when the religious leader hands out the bread in this special ceremony, by faith the person who receives it and eats it is actually eating the flesh of Jesus Christ. But that is NOT what the Bible teaches. The bread remains bread, but it SYMBOLIZES the flesh of Jesus which was torn as the wrath of God and hatred of humanity was poured out on Jesus in His crucifixion on our behalf.
And of course the same is true with the blood of Jesus. That same evening in that upper room, after Jesus had broken and served the bread, Jesus took the cup of Redemption in the Passover meal, and said “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you…drink from it, all of you. My blood is poured out for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:27,28 & Luke 22:20) Hours later, Jesus’ blood poured out from His body as they whipped Him, and jammed a crown of thorns on His head, and pounded nails into His hands and feet.
The Jewish disciples who were with Jesus in that upper room, of course remembered Moses had sprinkled the blood of sacrificed lambs on the people, calling it the blood of the Covenant God was making with them (Ex. 24:8), at Mount Sinai. Now Jesus had called this His blood of the New Covenant God was making. In this New Covenant, God promises that because Jesus has taken the full wrath of God upon Himself when He died on the cross in our place, God can forgive us of our sins IF we will place our full trust in Jesus, and then we can enter into an eternal relationship with God as His forgiven people!
As with the bread, when we take the cup in the Communion service, and drink it, it does NOT become blood. It symbolizes Jesus blood, and we receive it in HIS honor and as we take it we acknowledge that we have confessed our sin to God, and we have trusted fully in Jesus’ death to be our sin payment, and thus we have received God’s promised forgiveness for our sin and look forward to an eternity with Him.
Let’s go back to the Synagogue in Capernaum for one last observation. John records in John 6:66 that “From this time many of Jesus’ followers turned back and no longer followed Him. Jesus asked the Twelve ‘You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Simon Peter answered Jesus, ‘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.”
This moment my dear friends was more than a ‘defining moment’, this was a line of demarcation! On this day the 12 disciples stood firm, while many others left, even though the disciples did not fully understand until months later, when they were in the upper room having a last Passover with Jesus, hours before His torture and death. So here’s the question… are you and I living by faith in Jesus today? Do you now understand what Jesus said that day in Capernaum, and what He meant? Do you understand what His death accomplished? When you next receive Communion, will it have much more meaning to you?
Oh Jesus we thank You, for Your sacrifice and Your teachings. We hold tightly to Your truth. We declare You are our Savior, our Lord and our Assurance of heaven!
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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