09 - John 6:32-33

’Verily, verily I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.’ -John 6:32-33. The children of Israel had the singular privilege of gathering and eating daily food which had been miraculously supplied. There is a greater and more interesting display of the perfections of God in the elaborate processes by which he ordinarily supplies man with food. What can be more marvellous, more improbable we might say, than that seeds thrown away over the ground and left to be covered by the earth, should die and get new life, and extract food from the surrounding soil, and get strength to lift themselves into daylight, and there enter into intimate relations with the sun, moon, and stars, with light and heat, darkness and cold, with the distant seas through the clouds, with rain and dew, and go through many magical transformations, and finally, having been dealt with by man’s skill and force, by the sickle, the flail, the mill, the kneading trough, the oven, should become fitted for the palate, the digestive powers, the innumerable physiological necessities of man? When the bread is laid upon your table, it is as though all the ministries of nature, the powers of the universe, clapped their hands and exclaimed, "We have schemed and consulted, and watched and toiled, and fought and suffered, and have won for you this fruit of our cooperation and devotion; and now we go to bring you forward that which is behind." But man, the blindest of the blind, the deafest of the deaf, hears not a word of all this, gives not a thought to the wonderful series of transformations that culminated in the loaf; with indifference, perhaps with contempt, with vexation, and a sense of injustice, he eats it and lets it give him life. Life? well, what he calls life; his physical powers are recruited. Nature, with groans and with a downcast countenance, retraces her steps, wondering how long her pains will be thrown away upon this sinner, this rebel. This which we have called a greater and more interesting display of the perfections of God, is so to one who knows and loves God, and is led by the Spirit of God; but to the carnal, to men under the influence of their fleshly and depraved nature, the immediate and miraculous production of anything speaks a thousand fold more strongly of the presence and power of God. In the recovery of a lost world nature is impotent; she could not keep from falling, much less can she recover; she could not defend from blindness, much less can she restore the sight. The words above, stamped with Christ’s verily, verily, signify this: ’Moses gave you bread from heaven, in a sense, an inferior sense; but it did not give you life, did not enable you to live for ever, did not take away the evil of your nature; your fathers (whom you resemble) left their carcasses in the wilderness; my Father giveth you, in me, the true bread from heaven, the bread of God, which giveth life unto the world. And all that Moses gave to you, all whereby you were made to differ from other nations, the words, the commandments which he brought to you from Mount Sinai, the Mosaic institutions, circumcision, the temple, the altar, the ceremonial and moral law, have these given you life? They are and have been "a ministration of condemnation," bringing out the evidence of your deep depravity, your utter inability to serve God acceptably, your absolute need of an atoning Messiah. In the Scriptures you think you have eternal life; but it is only as they testify of me that they point you out the way of life; and this way you will not pursue; you will not come unto me that you might have life. I am the bread of life, the bread which giveth true life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.’

Man knows not the life from whence he has fallen, and is therefore incapable of knowing the greatness of his fall. This is the radical cause of his inability to understand the word of God. The same incompetency to understand which was manifested by the Jews of Capernaum in connection with this discourse of Christ, is common to men who read the Bible with unchanged hearts. The life from which man has fallen, and to which Christ would restore him, is a life of intimate union and fellowship with God, a life of the most perfect amity between the creature and the Creator, between the believer and his Redeemer, in which all the resources of the Godhead wait perpetually upon the needs of the reconciled sinner. Man knows himself in his relations to the world; knows himself as a physical, moral, intellectual being; and does not dream that there is a life far above all this, a spiritual life with God, a heavenly life. The Jews tried to interpret Christ’s words by the only experiences they had, the experiences of the lower life, and could make nothing of them. If only they had deeply felt this inability, and attributed the darkness not to his words but to their own thoughts, they would have come to Him and partaken of the life from heaven.

These Jews wished to attach themselves to Christ in such a sense that he should ever be ready to exert his miraculous power in their behalf, and they would thus be secured against hunger and thirst all their days, and be as well off as the rich man who said to his soul. Soul, take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry, thou hast much goods laid up for many days. We have but to carry over this idea into the higher life, and we see what Christ means by engaging to secure the believer against hunger and thirst. He does not take away the appetite; but he satisfies it and shows us that he always will satisfy it, and that his own inexhaustible fulness is ours; of his wisdom and knowledge, of his grace and advocacy, of his strength and guidance, of his holiness and truth we may always avail ourselves without stint. He himself is our bread of life. The Giver gives himself. All things are yours; for Christ is yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.