I Am the Bread of Life

Study Notes

The True Identity of Jesus: I Am the Bread of Life

John 6

     Who is Jesus?  That’s a question often asked.  And, it’s one Jesus answered personally telling us 7 times in the Gospel of John “I am…” and then filling in the blank.   The first of those is “I am the bread of life.”

     As I read those words of Jesus in John 6 again this past week, I began to think of the work of Viktor Frankl, done while he was being held prisoner in a German concentration camp. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. While being held in a Nazi prison camp, Frankl made a decision to conduct research on the ability or inability of people to be able to endure incredible pain and persecution.  He watched those in the concentration camp who tried to endure by holding onto temporary things like remembering their homes, getting back to their jobs, showing their own physical/emotional stamina, etc. In each case, eventually their Nazi persecutors found ways to break their wills so that they would give up hope.

     But, Frankl made note of the few who were able to sustain anything the Nazis threw at them – and to do it without giving up hope.  He wrote of their remarkable resiliency in his most famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning.   This is what he wrote:  Life in a concentration camp exposes your soul’s foundation. Only a few of the prisoners were able to keep their inner liberty and inner strength. Life only has meaning in any circumstances if we have our inner being filled with something that can neither suffering, circumstances, nor death can destroy – indeed, that nothing in this world can take away.

     This matter of the filling of our inner beings is what I think Jesus talked about in John 6.  It’s what he meant when he said, “I am the bread of life. I must fill your inner being.”  Let me walk you through this profound text:

• 6:1-15 – Jesus meets people’s physical needs -- Jesus fed a huge crowd of hungry people – 5,000 families -- with five loaves of bread and two fish. This incredible miracle made the people think Jesus might be the Messiah, whom they thought would deliver them from Rome as Moses had led them out of Egypt centuries before.  In fact, the people tried to force Jesus to become their king (6:15).
• 6:16-24 – Jesus resists temporary things being made primary – Most people would have jumped at the chance to be their own people’s leader. I can imagine those closest to Jesus thinking, “This is what we after, isn’t it?  We’ll get to be in the places of influence, Jesus.  We’ll be able to change things around here!”  But, Jesus withdrew by going across the Lake in the dark to get away from these misguided crowds.  Still, the crowds wouldn’t let Jesus get away.  The crowds came looking for him.
• 6:25-59 – Jesus insists on the main thing being the main thing -- We read about a very heated dispute in these verses. Why did it happen?  The reason was, according to Jesus, the people only wanted him to give them material and temporary things rather than eternal life.  They wanted Jesus to do a miracle as big as Moses had done when Moses provided ongoing manna for the people to eat in addition to the freedom from slavery.  But Jesus said, “No, Moses did not give that manna.  God did!  And I am not Moses.  I am the bread of life.  I am the one sent to fill your soul.”

     When Jesus said this, the people complained and most refused to accept Jesus’ message.  Most of these people who, earlier had claimed they were Jesus’ followers, said, “We don’t want anything more to do with you, Jesus!”  Look at v. 66: From this time, many of his “disciples” turned back and no longer followed him. 

     Today, I don’t want you to do what those people did -- though I imagine we are all susceptible to the kind of disappointment that turned the people away from Jesus.  So, let’s take a few moments today to see what was so offensive to these people when Jesus spoke to them.  We see two very different ways to look at the world:

#1: Two Kinds of Hunger – Jesus said, “You are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill (6:26).”

     We come to an issue in these verses that has divided the church for a long time, i.e., the issue of the relationship between ministry to people’s physical needs and ministry to people’s spiritual needs.  We all know that physical hunger exists in the world today just as it did in Jesus’ day.  In fact, it may be that there are more people desperately hungry in our world than ever in history.  In spite of churches and governments engaging in “wars against hunger”, we appear to be so incapable of finding a solution. 

     Let me say right now that God cares when he sees people made in his image who are hungry.  When we read about the world before sin entered into it in Genesis 1-2, it becomes clear that God did not intend people to be hungry. There was plenty of food in the Garden of Eden.  One of the impacts of human selfishness, greed, and abuse of our world is that people in our fallen world often lack the basic necessities of life.

     When you read John 6:1-15, you see immediately that Jesus cares when people are hungry.   In v.5, he asks "Where can we find bread for these people to eat?"  Jesus’ question still echoes after two millennia of attempts to deal with hunger.  And Philip's assessment of the resources is equally applicable today:  "Eight months’ wages wouldn't buy enough bread for each one to get a bite."  And, Andrew's words in v. 9 express the helplessness felt by every developmental economist, every agronomist, every politician and every caring church, "What is this among so many?"  When it comes to human need, the best we can do isn't enough.

     And yet it's precisely into this situation of total human inadequacy that John's Gospel introduces us to a figure of hope.  V.11: Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

     Make note of this now:  It matters to Jesus when people are hungry and in need.  And, if he is our Lord, what matters to him should matter to us.  During much of my lifetime, churches have not seemed to be as passionate about people’s physical needs as Jesus was.  Richard Stearns of World Vision has written a book chronicling that called A Hole in the Gospel.   Jesus himself said that he had come to bring good news to the poor and the oppressed.  For us not to do so is to be out of sync with Jesus himself.  I speak about this often enough that I imagine you know that a lot of our ministry here at LAC is guided by this truth about Jesus.  Jesus and all who follow him act when people hurt.

     At the same time, we must see that Jesus gave priority to a different kind of hunger.  He said, “Whoever comes to me will never go hungry (6:35).” Jesus taught consistently that there is a kind of hunger that every human being has.  It’s a part of being human. We who are made in God’s image possess a hunger for something that cannot be taken away.  This is the hunger that Frankl said only a very few had in the Nazi concentration camps had found food to satisfy.  Jesus said that it’s even more important to have that kind of hunger filled than to have physical hunger filled. 

     You see how this played out in Jesus’ life in John 6:  Jesus did feed hungry people who come across his path. At the same time, refused to make that the main emphasis of his life and ministry. And I want Jesus’ passion to meet the physical needs of people as well as his priority of meeting the eternal needs to guide us as his people here at Lake Avenue Church.

     Some church people think that the only kind of hunger that matters is spiritual hunger so they ignore the physical needs of people.  But, others are embarrassed to talk about the spiritual needs people have so only emphasize the physical needs.  We need to learn from Jesus if we will follow him well.  When I read John 6, I see Jesus saying, “I see it when people are hungry and, because I love people, I will address that need.”  But, he also says, "Don't you realize, when I looked at a crowd of people, I don't just see a group of hungry bodies needing material help.  I see a multitude of human beings seeking in vain to fill a vacuum in their inner lives that goes far beyond their need for food.  Human beings are not just empty stomachs.  They're empty lives.”

#2:  Two Kinds of Bread -- Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life (6:27).     

     According to Jesus, there is bread that nourishes the physical body. That bread is important, of course.  We all know that.  At the same time, that kind of bread spoils.  It won’t do you any good when you are in the grave.  But there is, said Jesus, also bread that nourishes our eternal beings. Nothing can make that kind of bread spoil.  And Jesus knew that, for most people, the only thing they really think they need relates to the temporary matters, i.e., people live almost exclusively for things in this world.

   "You labor for food that perishes!” Jesus declared.  He spoke firmly and unrelentingly about that in John 6.  He knew that when our loves are consumed with temporary things, it will eventually prove to be futile.  As I said earlier, I say again: Jesus isn't saying that addressing material needs is unimportant. But He did insist upon the absolute necessity of spiritual priorities over physical ones. 

     And yet!  And yet, when we read John 6, we see that Jesus first healed people (6:2) and then fed people before he insisted on receiving him by faith into their lives.  I have tried to be guided by what Jesus did in John 6 and want you to be guided by him as well.  I believe that when a person is hurting or in in the midst of a need like hunger, it’s almost impossible for that person to listen carefully to the truth of the message about Jesus when that need goes unmet.  Jesus became human – and he knows we are material beings.  When we are in pain or starving, he knows how difficult that need is for us.  At the beginning of John 6, Jesus addressed needs like pain and hunger.  However, once he had addressed those matters, he loved people too much to stop with that.

     Jesus insisted on prioritizing our human need for spiritual bread because he knows that physical bread doesn't really satisfy a human being in an eternal way.   Our deepest need isn't for food but for God.  Jesus declared in Mt 4:4 -- "Man does not live by bread alone."  Human beings need more than food if we’re going to live well.  Do you believe that?  We aren't just animals needing only food, shelter, and money to be content.

     God has made us in His own image with aspirations that go beyond anything that mere material things can satisfy.  If our main focus is on ministering to material needs, we will find that we satisfy a person’s hunger for a moment.  But, what happened in John 6 shows what I think we all know is true, i.e., when we human beings get what we need physically, we find we’re still not satisfied. 

     We always want more.  That’s what John 6:25-59 shows us.  After Jesus fed them, they weren’t hungry for food but they still wanted more.  This fact of human fallenness is the basis for our consumerist society.  Today, we may need bread, but tomorrow we demand strawberry pie!  Next week, the pie had better have whipped cream on it…  So goes the insatiable clamoring for material things.  And, perhaps the biggest problem is -- we get so caught up in all this that we don't even notice it.

     Jean Paul Sartre was an atheist.  He had intellectual objections to religion -- yet even he had to write, "That God does not exist, I cannot deny.  But that my whole being cries out for God, I cannot forget."  Knowing that this hunger is true of all of us, Jesus, said to the crowd:

“I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.  But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever  (Jn 6:48-50).”

#3:  Two Ways to Respond to Jesus – 1) Many of his “disciples” turned back and no longer followed him… 2) We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God (6:66,69).

    How can you be sure you are filled with spiritual bread?  Jesus made the same point again and again:  Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty (6:35-36).

     In case some might have been sleeping through his sermon, Jesus made the point even more graphically and emphatically:  Very truly I tell you, 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 (6:53-54).

     After experiencing Jesus doing an unforgettable miracle of feeing 5,000 families with a few sardines and slices of bread, the crowds around Jesus wanted him to be their king!  They wanted someone who could overturn all social problems and political evils.  And, let me remind you, ultimately, Jesus will do that.  But, as that is in process, right now, there is something that he must do inside each human being. And what Jesus said is most important is something they were not interested in.  I can just hear the people as they turned away from Jesus in v.66: "Oh, you know, after He fed 5,000 families we thought he was going to do something great.  But, he's just one of those super‑spiritual types caring only about heaven and not about what people really want.  It's a pity.  A person with his gifts could have changed the world."

      But Jesus was not fazed by such thinking.  Jesus knows what is truly important.  Without any reservation, Jesus proclaimed in these verses is that your greatest need – and the greatest need of every human being – is to have your inner being filled with God. You must receive the “Bread of Life” into your life by faith.  Have you? 

     And, I think John 6 is saying that you must be as unafraid as Jesus was of telling people they must repent of living self-directed, their obsessed-by-material-things lives and must fill their inner beings with Jesus.  When you follow Jesus, you need to act when you see people with physical needs.  You need to use what resources God entrusts to you to address the needs and injustices caused by sin in this world.  But, you must also find the courage to call people to receive Jesus as their savior and Lord.  You need to find boldness to say to others that Jesus and Jesus alone – is the bread of life!

     All this is what communion symbolizes ‑‑ Jesus is the bread of life, who gave his life for us.  And, we are the spiritually starving people who receive Him into our inner beings by faith.  Each time you receive the bread, the body of Christ, and the cup, the blood of Christ, you should reaffirm that what fills your inner being is someone who is eternal. I want you to reaffirm in today’s communion service that your life is no longer your own but your life belongs to the one who loves you and gave his life for you.

    As we prepare to go to communion, I leave you with the confession of the Apostle Peter.  Take time to confess what he confessed as you receive the bread and cup today:

     Jesus said, “What about you?  Will you leave too?” 

     Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God (6:67-69).”