I Am No.1 The Bread of Life

Almighty God, we bring You praise. Joyous sound, the world abroad. Highest power, the world conveying.

Full of love and glory, We now worship and adore You. In our hearts, Lord, I have risen. Jesus, Lord, we worship You.

Almighty God, we bring You praise. Joyous sound, the world abroad. Highest power, the world conveying.

Full of love and glory, We now worship and adore You. In our hearts, Lord, I have risen. Jesus, Lord, we worship You.

O heavenly clarity of the Lord, How great You are to me. The strength to overcome, The strength to overcome me. To reconcile me, To reconcile me, The Lamb of God, the throne, The Lamb of God, the throne.

I gladly bow to Thee. I gladly bow to Thee. and worship you O Lord.

Verse 2 again. I will proclaim the glory of the gift of love to many sons and daughters. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, and worship you O Lord.

I lift you in praise of God. You came from heaven to earth, from the earth to the cross. You came from heaven to earth, to the shore away, from my chest away, from the pulpit away.

John chapter 6, Jesus feeds the 5,000. Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, that is the Sea of Tiberias, and a great crowd of people followed him, because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountain side, and sat down with his disciples.

The Jewish Passover feast was near. When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, Eight months wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite.

Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up, Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many? Jesus said, Make the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down about five thousand of them. 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. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.

So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, Surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world. Jesus, knowing they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

Now dropping down to verse twenty-five. When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, Rabbi, when did you get here? Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

On him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval. Then they asked him, What must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered, The work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent. So they asked him, What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers at the manor in the desert, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of heaven is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Sir, they said, from now on give us this bread.

Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me, and still you do not believe.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.

And finishing on verse 40, for my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Amen. I have your Bibles open at John chapter 6. I think you might find it helpful.

We come to the beginning of a new year, and maybe it's also a good time to examine what we achieved in the previous year. Two men were playing golf, and one said to the other, What's your biggest handicap? And his friend said, Honesty. Maybe when you come around the Lord's table, what you need to have is honesty as you try to assess where you're at.

And following this address that I bring you, we're going to come around the table and take bread and wine in remembrance of our Lord Jesus. And that is really an act of rededication. When the Roman Empire was in full force at the time of our beloved Lord, every year the battalions would gather in their respective lands where they were holding the control of the Roman Empire, imposing that control upon foreign subjugated countries.

The Sancturians would put their right fist across their chest, and they would say, And that goes for me. And the cry would be, Hail Caesar. That goes for me.

That goes for me. They would pledge themselves for the maintenance of the authority of Rome. And when we come around the Lord's table and we take bread and wine, which are in effect the emblems of our Christian faith because they speak symbolically of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, we're in effect saying, That goes for me.

I pledge my allegiance for Jesus Christ. I acknowledge that this world is really His world and that His kingdom is to penetrate every corner of this globe. And to the end of that global penetration, I pledge my life.

That goes for me. I take bread. I take wine in remembrance of Him.

So let's again turn to this 6th chapter and look at one or two of these verses in particular. As Alan has indicated during these Sunday evenings, we're going to be looking at two aspects of biblical teaching. The first Sunday evening in the month, we're looking at Jesus Christ who was a descendant of David, but we call Him David's greatest son.

And then we're going to be looking into the Old Testament and seeing what the one who anticipates the Lord Jesus, King David, what his life was like. I'll be speaking about his early years next week. But right now, we're concentrating our attention on the captain of our salvation.

And there were several times in this gospel when our Lord makes great declamatory statements. He says, I am. I am this.

I am the other. And one of the statements which we're going to be looking at more particularly this evening is when our Savior says, I am the bread of life. Now, why did Jesus use that particular title, I am? Why does He conjoin the pronoun and the verb? Because if you were to try to translate the Hebrew word for God, Jehovah, or Yahweh into the English language, the nearest you could get is those two words.

The God of the Old Testament is reputed to be the living God, the God who is, the God who eternally exists. When I was a schoolteacher, sometimes trying to teach the Bible to boys and girls who couldn't find it very easy to grasp theological truth, I would draw what was the equivalent of a human life. And I would use a line because a line has a beginning and a line has an end.

There's a time when you're born. There's a time when you will die. But you cannot use a straight line to delineate, to describe the life of God because there is no beginning in Him.

There is no end. And so I used the circle. A circle, properly drawn, has no indication of a starting point or a finishing point.

And when Jesus says, I am, He is, in effect, imputing to Himself the same characteristic as you would expect of Almighty God. Born in Bethlehem as a little baby, but He existed before He was born in Bethlehem. He is God manifest in the flesh.

And here in this 6th chapter of John's Gospel, He says, I am the eternally existing One. And if you want to know something of my function, something of the reason for which I have come into this world, then remember this. I am the bread of life.

I have come to give you spiritual nourishment. I love classical music and I have a series of records which all start with the words essential. The essential opera.

The essential Mozart. The essential Beethoven. What I bring to you this evening in terms of the address is the essential Jesus Christ.

Essential that is for you. Essential for me. Because our beloved Lord says, I am the living bread, verse 51, that comes 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. And if you want another rendering of that, then go to the 35th verse.

Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry. Why did Jesus at this particular point start to speak in this chapter about bread? Well, he did so because earlier on in the record as Alan read it to us, you find our Savior engaged in feeding.

My wife and I had our first difference of opinion at about half past twelve last night. In other words, the beginning of the new year. When we got home from our watch night service, she was reading through the paper I'd chosen, which happened to be the Times.

And she threw it away on the floor that is in disgust because the insert gave a review of the best restaurants in London. And there was not one restaurant recommended that had a price less than fifty pounds for one person for one meal. And she said, the Guardian would never have carried that article.

What you find developing in John's Gospel and the sixth chapter is an argument about food. You see, here are five thousand men and women, and boys and girls, perhaps a great crowd of around twenty thousand. I don't know.

They only numbered the men. And our Lord feeds them. They've been listening to what He has to say.

The hours have gone by. They need some sustenance. And in a remarkable fashion, Jesus takes a handful of loaves and fishes.

By divine multiplication, He satisfies the requirements of all the people who are gathered around. Wonderful. And so enchanted are the audience that they want to make Jesus king.

It's a knee-jerk reaction. They haven't thought it through, but here is a man who can feed them, and so in the popularity of that moment, they want to make Jesus the king of the Jews. Surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world, verse fourteen.

Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make Him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by Himself. Then twenty-four hours passes, and as happens with mortals in the twentieth century, so it was then in the first century, they had a rethink. And they came to Jesus the following day, and when they found Him, verse twenty-five, they start to question Him, and He says, I know why you've come.

You haven't really come because you've worked out the significance of these signs and miracles that I've done. You've come for the basic reason that I put food in your belly. You're concerned for looking after me, looking me out simply for what you can get out of me.

But Jesus says that's not a valid reason. Do not work, says Jesus, for food that spoils, verse twenty-seven, but for food that endures to eternal life. You see, Jesus did not come into the world as a great philanthropist.

He did not come into the world as a great social benefactor. It's right and proper. It's our duty to support Teerfund, and Oxfam, and the like, and to bring food to those who don't have it, especially in the twentieth century.

One of the disgraces of modern man is that there are people on our planet who do not have sufficient food in their stomachs because there is enough resource in our world to meet the basic human rights and needs of all mankind. But that's not primarily the reason why Jesus came into the world. He came to give a food that lasts.

And so he says, don't work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life. The sort of food which when you've eaten, you will find it to be so satisfying that there is none other bread that you require. Now we have an expression, don't we? It's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Didn't come from the Lord Jesus. What our Lord Jesus said is that there is a commodity, there is a spiritual food which is so vital for you that if you go through this world and never receive it, your eternal destination is in jeopardy. Now in those days people were quite sick.

And there's a common denominator that flows through to the twentieth century likewise. You see here's a woman and the scenario is different and yet in one sense in principle it's the same. You meet her in the earlier chapters of John's Gospel, it's not bread they're talking about, it's water.

Jesus is thirsty give me a drink. Hey, you talking to me? I'm a Samaritan, you're a Jew I'm a woman, you're a man I'm just an ordinary person, you're a rabbi. And Jesus said look, if you knew lady who was asking you for a drink and appreciated that he had resources far greater than this particular well that he could give you living water, you would be asking him to supply you with a drink.

Oh says this lady, and immediately her mind twigs to this thought if he's got living water, that means I wouldn't have to leave my village a few miles away and come to this well every day probably three times a day. The fatigue the domestic chore of doing this would no longer be necessary. Sir give me this water.

And you see, she was boxed in with that same dullness, that same literalistic approach as these people who are talking to Jesus in the sixth chapter. Jesus was not referring to natural water nor is he referring to natural bread. Man cannot live by bread alone.

True, he can't live without it. They need bread in Rwanda. They need bread in Bosnia and Serbia.

But man cannot live by bread alone. He is to live by an even greater nourishment. And Jesus said that the only one who can distribute that which man requires desperately is himself.

He's got a monopoly on the delivery round. On him. Verse 27.

Do not work for food that spoils but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you. Now you see, they've followed him to some degree but as I say, they've had second thoughts. There's people coming to the tab and immediately they go along with the speaker and then they leave it and the hours pass by.

A couple of days it's gobbled into history and they no longer have that first inclination to make Jesus king. And so these guys, they come to the Lord Jesus and they say, hey but you're not the only one who delivers bread. What about Moses? Now look Jesus, no disrespect but I mean you've done it once with 5,000 plus people but Moses, I mean well bless my soul, he was delivering bread for 40 years.

Six days a week. And if you tot up the aggregate of the people that he fed, well 5,000 is a very small number. And incidentally Jesus, Moses he got his bread from heaven.

We saw where you got your bread from, that little kid. A handful of loaves. Now I put it to you in a colloquial fashion but I've got the evidence of the Bible to substantiate the comments that I'm making.

And Jesus takes apart their argument and he starts to speak to them from the 27th through to the 32nd verse about what he's really referring to and what they most desperately need. You see Moses says our Lord Jesus yes he brought bread to this world but he was not the agency for doing the baking. It was Father God in heaven who caused the supply in Moses' day.

But the bread that Moses gave was bread that satisfied just the physical needs of the Hebrews. What Moses was doing in effect our Lord Jesus is implying is suggesting that a time will come when someone will miraculously bring from heaven itself a nourishment which will not only meet the needs of people in time but also eternally. And Jesus said that's where I outpace Moses.

You see the bread of God verse 33 is not an it it is a him it is not a thing it is a person. The bread of God is not baked in bakeries on this earth. It comes from the celestial realm and it comes as a result of God himself the Father sending his son into the world.

For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Well how do you take this bread? I mean this really was the thing that our Lord Jesus was trying to make clear in his day and the question is relevant now. How do you masticate the teaching of Jesus? How do you benefit from the life of Jesus? You see when our Savior speaks about bread he does so deliberately because there is a sense in which bread symbolizes what he has come to do in terms of meeting the needs of ordinary people.

You can't live without bread. Bread is the staple diet of kings and the staple diet of paupers. Bread or rice is necessary over here in the west and also in the east.

Bread is made available or should be made available to the whole of mankind. Be without bread. Be without the stuff of life and life itself will not be maintained for very long.

And Jesus is saying be without me. Pass through this world ignorant of me. Pass by where the bread that I have available is on show and don't stop to partake of it and as a result you will not only damage your soul you will risk losing it.

You see young people in a moment and I wish it was a real loaf and not just a slice of bread though because of the way that we handle our communion service here with such numbers we have to break little pieces of bread and put it on a tray for all to participate with a modicum of speed. But if I had a loaf and I could then just break that loaf apart and send the two portions of that loaf around this auditorium, around this sanctuary as you broke a piece from that same loaf you would in effect be saying if you are a Christian the reason I know I am a Christian is because Jesus Christ's own body was broken on the cross. That's what he's saying.

This bread is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world. A Christian is a man and a Christian is a woman who has benefited by the tearing of Jesus's own body. Why did he die? He died because of the sins that I have committed.

He knew no sin and on the cross he offered a sinless life to the Father but at the moment of his death he accepted voluntarily the consequences of your sin and my sin and the punishment of God upon sin hit him and is deflected from you. Now that does not apply automatically. It requires you to accept what he has done.

I could have given you a Christmas present. It might have been the most expensive present. It might have been the most appropriate present but if it is still sitting under your tree if you've never opened it if you've never examined it if you've never worn it assuming it is clothing if you've never eaten it assuming it is food then it would not benefit you one iota.

Thus the death of Christ the bread of Christ the blood of Christ the wine which we will take symbolizing the blood of Christ it will not benefit you one little bit unless you consume it unless you accept it unless you say Lord Jesus when you died on the cross of Calvary I believe that you are dying for me therefore I participate in the benefits of your death. And that's what communion is all about. Now if you don't eat you die.

I'll give you a month looking at some of you maybe six weeks because we've just gone through Christmas but there is a limit to your endurance without physical bread. There is a limit to you having an opportunity to be saved. The limit is this side of eternity and you responding to what Jesus Christ offers in terms of salvation.

Yes I appreciate the essential Beethoven you may not, I do, it's a question of choice. You can have your Cliff Richard I have him as well actually, I think he's a rather nice guy. You might have some of your pop music, I've got no argument but what I will say is this Jesus is the one essential without which eternal life can never be entered into.

So three times he tells these men and women who come to him on the pages of this sixth chapter of John's gospel, I am the bread of life I am the bread of life I am the bread of life, I have come to give my life for the world so that you might be spiritually nourished and on death move into heaven to enjoy the presence of my father forever. There's only one agency there's only one person who dispenses this quality bread, not Moses not Hovis not even Mother's pride only the Lord Jesus you say can I have it? Yes. How much did it cost? What must I do? It doesn't cost anything there is nothing that you can do to merit it he gives it he offers it freely let not conscience let you linger nor the fitness fondly dream all the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him this he gives you you say you want it the very desire came from him and he offers it to you right now why did the beloved Christ come into the world? to tell you I the eternal existent one have come to offer the bread of life and without receiving this you cannot know my father, you cannot be destined for heaven you cannot have hell averted and the wrath of God deflected from you you see how we need him the essential Jesus let's sing in preparation for a time of communion that lovely hymn my Jesus I love thee 119 let's stand please all the measures of sin I resign my gracious Savior my Savior above the ever I love thee my Jesus is now my Jesus I love thee my Jesus is now is now my Jesus is now my Jesus I believe I pinched this hymn from the Catholic Church, modified the verses just a little bit to make them suitably Protestant.

The tune is wonderful and the sentiments expressed are marvellous. We do belong to God through our Lord Jesus. We are His.

We'll listen to it once more and then start to sing it as our brothers bring this bread and wine to you. Emblems not because you're a member of Worthington, but because you trust Jesus Christ as your Saviour. If you're not too sure, then let the emblems slip by.

If you'd like to make this the moment of your commitment, then it could be. As you say, yes, Lord, I believe that you died on the cross for me, that your blood was shed for my sins. As I take this bread and wine, I'm saying, in effect, that goes for me.

I've put my trust, my confidence in Jesus, the captain of my salvation. Pour this bread. We thank you, take our hearts.

We love you, take our lives. O Father, we are yours. As we stand at the table of bread.

Lord, for us, love we never had. We long for Him in whose name we are led. We are yours.

We are yours. This bread we thank you, take our hearts. We love you, take our lives.

This bread we love you, take our lives. O Father, we are yours. We are yours.

As we stand at the table of bread. Spirit filled, yet hungry, we await your Father. From you, our gifts and good, we are yours.

We are yours. Pour this bread. We thank you, take our hearts.

We love you, take our lives. O Father, we are yours. We thank you, take our hearts.

We love you, take our lives. We are yours. Lift up His praise.

Behold the King. Lift up your voice. Behold the King.

I love. I bless. Amen.