WWUTT 853 I Am the Bread of Life?

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It is God who provides for all of our physical needs, and we should give praise to Him for all that He has given to us.

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He also provides for our spiritual needs in Christ Jesus, when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Thank you, Becky. Hey, we're back to our study of the Gospel of John. This week, looking at the section that goes from verses 25 through 40.

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The Apostle John wrote, When the people found Jesus on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here?

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Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

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Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the

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Son of Man will give to you, for on Him God the Father has set His seal.

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Then they said to Him, What must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered them,

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This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent. So they said to Him, Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you?

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What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it is written,

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He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly,

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I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

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For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

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They said to Him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them,

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

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But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. All that the

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Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

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For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.

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And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but I will raise it up on the last day.

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For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise

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Him up on the last day. So yesterday the people said to Jesus that the sign that was given to our fathers was bread from heaven when they were in the wilderness.

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They're asking Jesus for a sign, and God had given their fathers bread from heaven.

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So Jesus had already shown them a sign. He had divided up five loaves and two fish into feeding 5 ,000 people.

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But the people are saying, hey, we want something better than that. We want you to do that again, but this time let it be bread from heaven.

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And Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my

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Father gives you the true bread from heaven. Now the people are kind of thinking of Jesus as being a prophet.

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They're not thinking of Him as being the Son of God, which is why Jesus made the distinguishing qualifier there of Moses not being the one who gave you the bread from heaven, but my

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Father. And notice, he doesn't say, my Father gave you the bread from heaven.

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He says, my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. Because that bread that the

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Father is giving is right there in their midst. It's Jesus Christ. He is the true bread from heaven.

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When you go to the Lord's prayer in Matthew chapter six, one of the things that Jesus taught us to pray was give us this day our daily bread.

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And that actually has a double meaning. It's asking God for our regular basic needs every day.

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That's a wonderful thing to pray for. God give me those things that I need. Provide for me the things that will help me to just get through the day.

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Food in my belly, clothes on my back, shelter over my head. Give me those basic necessities.

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Asking the Lord for those things, knowing that He is the provider of everything. He gives these things to His children whom

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He loves and cares for. Also in Matthew six, Jesus says, look at the birds of the air.

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Are they neither store in barns nor are they anxious about the things that they're going to gather?

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And yet your heavenly Father provides for them. How much more valuable are you than they?

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So if we know that the Lord provides for birds and He clothes the lilies of the field, we know that God is going to provide those basic needs for us as well.

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So that's a good thing for us to pray. And therefore giving praise to God that He has given us those basic needs that we need every day.

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That's the first meaning of give us this day our daily bread. The other meaning to that is that God would provide for our spiritual needs as well.

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So God provides for those physical things that we need and He gives us the spiritual things that we need.

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That we might read the word of God and we might be able to understand it, because remember the apostle

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Paul says in first Corinthians chapter two, that the naturally minded man can't understand spiritual things.

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It takes the spirit of God to help us discern spiritual things. In Matthew chapter 13,

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Jesus gives the parable of the sower and he talks about seed being scattered, some on the path, some in rocks, some in thorns.

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But some of the seed falls in good soil. The seed is the message of the gospel.

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And in verse 23, Matthew 13, 23, Jesus says, as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.

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He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case, a hundred fold in another 60 and in another 30.

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So may we not just be hearers of the word, but we would understand the words that we hear and then we would also do the words that we hear.

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And that comes from James, don't be merely hearers of the word, do what it says.

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But we do what we understand the word is saying. So we must have the spirit of God in us that we may understand these words that are spoken.

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So again, back to the, uh, the Lord's prayer in Matthew chapter six, give us this day, our daily bread, provide those physical things that we need.

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And then also those spiritual things that we need, that we may know the word of God and we may be able to understand it and therefore apply it to our lives.

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What a privilege it is that we live in a time where we have the Bible that we can just readily access.

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Crack open the word of God, put your finger on a page, see the word of God right there before you in black and white.

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The people during Jesus time, they weren't as privileged to have Bibles that they could carry around with. He had to go to the synagogue and somebody had to open up a scroll and they had to read to you from the word of God.

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And there were certain times that you could go in and do that. Certain times you couldn't go in and people just didn't have access to the

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Bible anytime they wanted it. So what a privilege that they or that we have it now.

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We've got the word of God more fully confirmed, the prophetic word more fully confirmed, as Peter talks about in second

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Peter chapter one. And we can read God's word whenever we want. Write it on our hearts, digest it.

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We can read passages over and over again, like in the synagogue. It wasn't like the teacher could read something, you could interrupt him and go, hey, could you say that again?

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I want to hear that again. And then could you grab that other scroll over there and cross reference that with this thing that you just said?

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It was a lot more difficult to study the word of God at that time.

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And we can do more in -depth study and and we can have multiple

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Bibles with different translations to help us understand the language even better.

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Let us not neglect this opportunity that we have to read the word of God and understand what it says.

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Jesus speaking to these people here who have asked Jesus for bread from heaven.

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Jesus is saying, my father gives you the true bread from heaven. He has provided for you physically.

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That has already been done with Jesus feeding the five thousand, splitting up the five loaves and two fish to feed thousands of people.

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And my father gives you the true bread from heaven, which is also Jesus Christ, spiritual bread who is right there before you for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

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Previously, Jesus has said, do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you.

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For on him, God the father has set his seal. And Jesus is that bread.

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He is that food which gives life to the world for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

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And the people said to him, sir, give us this bread always. They're saying that because they don't actually understand what he's saying.

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Jesus is talking about himself, but they're not connecting the dots. They don't understand these words of Jesus.

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So they say, sir, give us this bread, always still thinking that he's going to give them more bread to eat.

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This is a very similar statement to what the woman at the well said in John 4 15.

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The woman said, sir, give me this water so I will not have to be thirsty or have to come up here to draw water.

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Remember what it says that Jesus said to her, everyone who drinks of this water, the water in the well will be thirsty again.

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But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

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The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

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And even there, Jesus was talking about spiritual things. Specifically, he was talking about the Holy Spirit, the cleansing of the

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Holy Spirit that is upon every person who believes in Christ and the Holy Spirit cleanses our hearts of unrighteousness and transforms us into a person who desires

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God. But that's not what the woman understood. Jesus saying she thought he was talking about actual physical water and said to him, sir, give me this water that I will not be thirsty or have to come up here to draw water.

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And here you see the people saying the same thing as the woman, as the as the woman at the well, she wasn't on the well, she was at the well.

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They said in verse thirty four, chapter six, verse thirty four, sir, give us this bread always.

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But the difference between this group of people and the woman at the well is that the woman came to faith in Christ who was speaking to her.

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She came to understand that he was the promised Messiah. But here these people do not understand that that is the reference that Jesus is making, that he is the son of man prophesied in Daniel, chapter seven, that he is the bread of God who has come down from heaven, the fulfillment of what was talked about in Exodus, chapter 16.

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Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

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So now John, as he's writing this story here, is bringing in what we've read about Jesus and the

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Samaritan woman at the well. He's bringing that in now with the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and the people asking him for bread from heaven.

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Now we have that that these two stories are combined together now with Jesus saying that whoever believes in me will never thirst and whoever believes in me, whoever comes to me shall not hunger.

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Verse thirty six. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe.

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Jesus has said to them, you see me and you do not believe. He's not saying I've said to you that you've seen me and yet you do not believe.

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He's telling them you see me and you don't believe. He's telling them that they do not have belief.

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All that the father gives to me will come to me and whoever comes to me,

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I will never cast out. Now the people have come to him, but they've not come to him desiring

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Jesus. They've come to him looking for more bread. They want more bread and more fish, but they're not actually after Jesus.

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So when Jesus says here that whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

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The father gives me all that will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.

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He's saying to them that you have not been brought to me by my father. And again, this is contrasting these extra disciples who have come looking for more bread to eat versus the twelve whom

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Jesus showed himself to walking on the water, showing that he was the son of God.

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Those twelve God had given to Jesus and he does not cast them out.

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He welcomes them to himself. He is continuing to grow them and feed them with the word, the spiritual sustenance that he provides.

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But these others are not part of his flock. They are not given to him by the father.

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And so when he says those who have been given by the father will come to me and I will never cast out.

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But these he is casting out. He's not he's not like condemning them.

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He's not like with a wave of his hand saying, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.

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That's not necessarily what Jesus is saying here. This is certainly not a last judgment dismissal of these people, but their hearts are not for Christ and the words that he is saying to them are going to drive them away.

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That's ultimately what we get to at the end of this chapter. Is the people saying this teaching is hard and who can understand it?

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And Jesus knows the words that he is saying to them are not feeding them and are going to push them away.

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But the words that he's saying is feeding the twelve or the words are are feeding the twelve who are there with Jesus.

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So it's not like he's saying these words for nothing for the twelve are growing in a knowledge of who he is as he continues to teach these things.

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Jesus goes on in verse thirty nine, and this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but I will raise it up on the last day.

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The will of God is that everyone who is going to believe in Jesus will come to him and those who come to him will never be lost.

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This is another one of those passages that speaks to the doctrine of eternal security that those who believe in Jesus Christ will never not believe in Jesus Christ.

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They will always be in his love. They will they will always know the sun and the sun will always hold them to himself and they will never be lost.

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Those that the father brings to me, I will never lose. I will not lose.

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I will lose nothing of all that he has given to me, but I will raise it up on the last day.

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And this goes back again also to what we read in verse twenty nine. Jesus answered them. This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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Jesus is adding to that statement now saying that all who do believe in me will be raised on the last day.

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They will have eternal life. Verse forty four. This is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

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And that goes back to John three sixteen for God so loved the world that he gave his only son and whoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life.

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And of course, the statement that we have there in John three sixteen is that people from everywhere in the world will know

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Jesus and will be saved. Not just the Jews who it is that's come to Jesus here in this part of the story in John chapter six, they have come seeking more bread, but Jesus has come not just for Jews, but also

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Gentiles. And we'll get to that later on as we continue in these discourses of Jesus that John is written.

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Jesus saying, I have other sheep that are not of this fold and I go to them and they will come to me.

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That's in John chapter ten where we get there. Jesus talks about being the good shepherd. Here we have a reference to him being the bread from heaven and we'll continue to learn more about what this means next week when we pick up again in verse forty one.

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Let's conclude with prayer. Our heavenly father, your name is great.

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It is amazing. It is above everything else. It is a privilege for us to be able to call upon your name.

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You have promised us a kingdom through your son, Jesus Christ. And Lord, we ask that the

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Lord Jesus come quickly, that this kingdom would would reach its final culmination, that we would be able to see all things consummated through Jesus Christ as you are working even now to reconcile all things to yourself.

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Lord, let them be reconciled. May we be in your presence. May we come into your kingdom and deliver us.

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Keep us steadfast until the end that we may come into your kingdom on the last day. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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And we ask that you would indeed give us today our daily bread. These words that we have read would feed and nourish our hearts as we grow all the more in the spirit and in the mind of Christ.

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Forgive us our sins and help us to forgive those who have sinned against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, the schemes of Satan.

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May you also give us wisdom and words to speak to others who have been ensnared by Satan that we might be able to know how to speak into their situation, convict them of the sin that they continue to live in, in rebellion against God, and they would recognize that they need a

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Savior and so grant them repentance that they may escape from this snare of the devil and so worship

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God and come to Christ. Help us to know those who need to hear the gospel and be able to speak rightly to them that they may know the truth and be set free from the bonds of sin and death.

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Thank you for setting us free in the Lord Christ and continue to provide for our spiritual needs in the words that we have read.

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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

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Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.