Teaching Tuesday: John

Series: The Last Eyewitness
Sermon: John (9.15.24)

Happy Tuesday, all.

What’s your very favorite meal?

Most years for my birthday, Melissa makes homemade fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and sweet carrots. It’s the best. I look forward to it each autumn. My favorite meal when I still lived at home with my parents growing up was Dad’s pork chops on the grill and Mom’s corn casserole.

This past Sunday we looked at the John’s gospel, which includes Jesus saying some pretty wild stuff about food.

Let’s set the scene:

John’s writing is all focused on who Jesus was. It was really important to John that his audience knew that Jesus was not just a great prophet or miracle worker or teacher, he was the Son of God’s. He was elevated above any of the heroes of the faith that had come before him.

In one of the great mysteries of Christianity John wants us to understand that somehow Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He is an equal with God, and has been with God through all time, even before the universe was created.

Leading up to John 6:35, we have the stories of Jesus performing a couple miracles. He walked on water. Before that he fed 5,000 people with a little bit of fish and bread. As you might imagine, this has drawn some significant attention. The crowds are stalking him now, following him around to see what he’d do and say next. Much of this crowd would have just followed him off the mountain where he had multiplied bread and fish to feed them.

But Jesus knows many of these people aren’t really buying into what he’s telling them yet. In John chapter six, verse 26 he says to the crowd

“Truly truly I say to you, you’re coming to me not because you saw me perform miracles, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

In other words, you aren’t interested in the truth. You’re just hungry again!

But this is where Jesus really starts teaching them about who he is and rearranging their thoughts on what they think they really need.

What they want is more temporary, perishable food. But that’s not the main reason Jesus came, He came to show us what it means to eat of the food that lasts for an eternity. He came to show us how to never be hungry again.

John’s Gospel is full of Jesus saying these “I am” statements. He would make these metaphorical declarations and then follow them up with explanations for what it meant to consider these earthly ideas in the illuminating light of heaven. I am a door…I am a shepherd…I am the vine…I am light.

In John chapter 6, verse 35, Jesus says

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

What Jesus has to offer is not what we think we want, but what he knows we need. Something permanent, something life-giving, something everlasting.

So Jesus says “I am the bread of life that has come down from Heaven.” (6:41)

But the crowd didn’t understand. They grumbled to one another, saying “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (6:42)

They are trying to get their minds around how this man they’re seeing in person, how this very real human could make the claim that he’s the son of God, come down from Heaven; that he’s greater than Moses, who was the great hero of their faith to this point.

Jesus responds starting in verse 53:
 
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

Put yourself in the place of someone listening to Jesus talk that day. Here’s this guy you’ve seen do some pretty unbelievable stuff. You might even begin to believe they’re truly miraculous, but he also appears to just be a man. He looks the same and dresses the same as any of the other people around. He certainly doesn’t look like the savior or king you’ve been waiting for.

And now he’s saying he came down from Heaven, and to join him there one day you must eat his flesh and drink his blood.
 
Here we are all these years later and maybe it seems a little less weird to us. We’ve had about 2,000 years since Jesus to read these words and think about them and our churches have embraced what Jesus did and what he said and what it means to us.
 
But for the crowd listening to Jesus that day, this stuff was crazy talk.

Verse 52 says they “disputed” or even “battled” among themselves, saying “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” They were really struggling with the symbolism here.  

We have to remember that Jesus is talking here to a crowd that’s mostly Jewish, who would know the story of God using Moses to free their Israelite ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Which was great, but then they spent 40 years wandering in the desert, where food and water was very hard to come by.

Moses prayed to God and God provided them bread called manna which fell from the sky and they had enough to eat.

Back in this time period oral tradition was the main way that history was shared and passed down. The Jews would have been verbally telling the story of their slavery, their rescue, and their time in the desert for about 1,500 years before Jesus was born. That’s a long time, but oral tradition meant that each generation viewed it as their duty to share these important stories with the next generation, so it got passed down and preserved as a central part of the Jewish people’s identity.

Jesus knew this, and so his metaphor of bread is a direct reference to the bread God provided the Israelites wandering in the desert all those years before. God provided physical sustenance – physical food – to his people when they needed it most.

But Jesus is saying that physical sustenance is not important compared to the spiritual sustenance found in following him. Basically he’s telling them to care less about earthly comfort  and more about their hearts and minds and souls.

What Jesus is offering is not food that is eaten and forgotten about, he’s offering the only path by which the hardships and the difficulties and the death of this world are conquered, and showing us how we can have life forever in glory with God.

Every part of this passage is Jesus telling us to find our satisfaction in him. He’s not promising a life of pure happiness or saying that Christians won’t experience hurt and pain. In fact, he promises just the opposite. Earlier in the Gospel of John Jesus says “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, for I have overcome the world.” (16:33)

Jesus is saying if you choose to accept this truth, if you choose to believe in him, he will change everything.

A life lived in relationship with Jesus means nothing else in this world will truly satisfy.

A life lived in relationship with Jesus means that we understand both our moments of hurt and our moments of happiness are temporary, and we are trading them for a deep, abiding hope and trust that our future is certain, it is eternal, it is forever.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Praise God. 

Study for this coming Sunday: 1 John

Know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady