John 6:35-40 Perfect Manna Pastor Steve Cooley

Well, this morning is unprecedented and it's unprecedented because we are going backwards. And what do I mean by that? I mean, no, we're going backwards. Sorry. You know, Pastor Mike's up here preaching from an iPad.

Usually I've got, you know, this computer printed beautiful little manuscript and all that stuff. And today I hand wrote my notes. Not because there's any spiritual value in them. I'll just give you a little insight.

You know, when this opportunity came up to preach, I thought, well, I won't have any time to prepare anything. So I'll just pull up something old, something I did on a Sunday night. And, uh, you know, nobody was here anyway, and you guys won't know the difference.

Sorry, sorry. So I print this out. Thankfully, I took some other notes with me to help me study. And, and I thought, boy, that I'm glad nobody showed up for that sermon. So we redid the whole thing and we're here ready to go.

The Bread of Life and the Purpose of John 6

I would invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter six. I am actually, I'm very excited for this. I have no idea how long this is going to go. So, I mean, that's one of the beauties of computers, right?

You can always, I can pretty much tell you via AI, uh, how long, no, I can pretty much tell you how long things are going to go, but you know, this morning, I don't know. It's going to be fun. We'll find out.

Let me read our text and then I'm going to pray. And then we'll get into it. John chapter six, beginning in verse 35, 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.

But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks upon the son and believes in him should have eternal life.

And I will raise him up on the last day. Well, let's pray to our God. Father in heaven, I just would pray for the preaching of your word here today, that you would enable me to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, to preach him as he ought to be preached, that we would hear this for those who are listening.

We would hear this as the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, his words for us today, that we might know him, that we might love him, and that we might preach him. Help us all in Jesus' name and for his sake.

Amen. So as I thought about this sermon and I thought about how I might entitle it and the different things, you know, I actually thought about calling this Wonder Bread. And then I thought, that's really dumb.

But I did do some research on Wonder Bread, so I feel obligated to give you that. True, Wonder Bread was not the first sliced bread. Very true. In fact, it was invented in 1928, not Wonder Bread, but sliced bread.

And when he did this, this man Otto Rottweiler, I mean, it's not Rottweiler, probably. It looks like it should be Rottweiler, but it's not. He invented sliced bread. You know what's interesting? A lot of bakers thought, this is never going to work.

Who cares if the bread's sliced or not? So that whole saying, you know, greatest things is sliced bread. A lot of people, when sliced bread came out, didn't really think it was going to work, but it did.

Interesting fact number two, Wonder Bread was unsliced during World War II. They didn't have the time, I guess, or the machinery. Number three, Wonder Bread wasn't always enriched. You ever notice that?

Anybody ever eat Wonder Bread, by the way? My mom would get so mad at the idea of Wonder Bread. She was just like, and I think this is why. Because before it was enriched, there's a disease called pellagra.

And it was causing so much trouble, especially in the south where people ate almost exclusively white bread. And it turned out they were missing vitamin B3, and they would get symptoms like dementia, dermatitis, and other things, including death.

So the FDA, and this is what I found fun here, they got involved and they investigated this, and they called it the Flower Hearings, F-L-O-U-R. Imagine that. Experts convinced bread makers to find a way to basically add back to white bread the vitamins and nutrients that they'd taken out of it.

So we got enriched bread. And then the last one, one commercial in 1952 promised eight health benefits, eight health benefits from Wonder Bread. Protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, niacin, and energy.

And I say, why not just drink coffee? So with that said, let me read John 20 -31, because I think it serves as a fitting introduction. We know the theme, this is the purpose of the book. John 20 -31 summarizes it nicely.

These things are written, talking about the Gospel of John, that you may believe, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name.

And I thought, this is a good summary of this passage here of John chapter 6, 35 -40. It nicely summarizes it. And so this morning, I have eight perfect statements. They're not all about Jesus, but they're related to Jesus.

Eight perfect statements so that you might know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, have eternal life. And our first perfect statement, the first one is that he is perfectly God, perfectly God.

And I think when we just look at the first two words, I am, that should instantly trigger something for you. And that something it should instantly trigger is what? And you're like, I have no idea. It should instantly trigger for you Exodus 3 -14.

In fact, I was thinking, as I thought about this message, and as I was thinking about Jesus, if I say Jesus, and then I say three, what do you think about? For a lot of you, it might be, especially if I say, give me a passage in the Bible concerning Jesus that has three in it.

And you might think John 3 -16. Or I could say Genesis 3 -15. Thank you. Genesis 3 -15. Why would you think Genesis 3 -15? Because that's the prototype, as it were, the forerunner of the gospel, where when God is pronouncing judgment on Eve for her sin, we hear about, or Satan for causing her sin, for tempting her.

We hear about Eve giving us a future Savior, a Messiah, one who would redeem us from the curse of sin. But the other one is Exodus 3 -14. In fact, I was just thinking, I go three threes that you should always think about when you think about Jesus.

God so loved the world that he gave, right? And then in Genesis 3, we have the promise of a future Redeemer. And in Exodus 3 -14, we have God telling Moses, in fact, let me read that, put it in context.

I'll read verse 13. And keep in mind Exodus, we have Israel in captivity in Egypt. You say, what does this have to do with Jesus? Well, it becomes quite evident. Verse 13 of Exodus 3, then Moses said to God, God has called Moses to be the prophet.

He's told him, you know, I want you to go to the people and, you know, you need to take charge of this. I'm going to use you. And Moses is trying to back out of it. Then Moses says to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they asked me, what is his name?

What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. God says, my name, how you should represent me is I am. What does he mean?

He means he has always existed. We said in Sunday school this morning, we are, I'm going to go, you know, geometry on you. We are rays. Who remembers what a ray is? If you weren't in Sunday school, shame on you.

Rays are lines, but they have a starting point, an origin, right? And then they go out from there. Lines though, have no starting point. And that's, you know, it's an analogy, sure. And I'm sure it falls apart.

Some mathematician can tell us what's wrong with this, but lines are eternal. So God is eternal. We are not, we have a definite starting point. And then we go forward from there. When God says, I am, he's saying, I have always been, and I always will be.

There is no time for me. Time is my creation. You exist in time. You're my creatures. I am the creator. God, the word for it is a saiety. God has always existed. God will always exist. He exists in himself.

So when Jesus, back in John, chapter six, when Jesus says, I am, this is the first of his seven, I am statements. When he says, I am, what he's saying is, shorthand, that's me. Exodus 3, 14. I am who I am.

I am God. I am self-existence. I am eternal. That's what he's saying. And by the way, the reason I read John eight is because eventually they picked up stones in John eight. Why? To stone him. Why? And they tell him later in John 10, it wasn't because of the things he did.

It was because of what he said. And what do they tell him? Because you being a man, make yourself out to be God. They understood perfectly what he was saying. And so when he says it here in John six, again, he's saying, I am God.

Now in our context here, he's just demonstrated he's God. How did he do that? He fed 5 ,000 people from, what was it? Five loaves of bread and two fishes, 5 ,000 people. And that's the minimum because that's just counting the men.

So we can probably extrapolate 20 ,000 people there at least. If they're good Southern Baptists, probably more like 30 ,000. But their response, the crowd's response was not to believe him. It was not to say, wow, this is God in the flesh, but to test him, to say, you know what, you're doing this and somehow, you know, you want to appear that you're better than Moses.

Well, let me tell you, you know, basically the crowd to him, let us tell you something, Jesus. Moses fed Israel in the wilderness for 40 years, gave them manna every day, but they wanted somebody better than Moses.

They were looking for somebody greater than Moses, somebody who was going to be king, prophet, provider. Remember he perceives in them, the desire to make him king. And that's when he withdraws from them.

He even told them in verse 29 to believe in him. They didn't do that. He told them that his humanity, his incarnation was a greater miracle than the manna. In other words, that he had come and taken on flesh was come behold the wondrous mystery.

It was a greater wonder than God feeding Israel in the wilderness for 40 years. And their response was to ask that their temporal needs be met by him. Give us this bread forever. In other words, put us on the dole, make life easy for us.

But Jesus responds here, the beginning of our text, verse 35, by establishing the fact or by restating the fact that he is God. The Jews might accept him as prophet. They might even accept him as a priest.

They wanted him as king. They wanted him as a leader capable of freeing them from being enslaved to Rome. But the idea of God in the flesh, they utterly rejected. They would not have that. And when we think about the many times that he claimed to be God, even whether it was explicitly, as when he said, use the I am statements or implicitly when he does what only God could do, for example, forgiving sins, you know, who can forgive sins, but God, and he did it.

So that's our first perfect statement that he's perfectly God. I am. That's what that means. Don't miss that. Our second perfect statement is that Jesus is perfectly or he perfectly sustains. He perfectly sustains.

As I said, the Jews held Moses in high esteem because God supplied man into the nation of Israel while it wandered in the wilderness. Yahweh fed the Israelites. And Jesus is offering something greater, something greater, something that the unbelieving Jews and unbelievers generally do not want, which is spiritual bread, metaphorical bread.

This bread that Jesus offers is not a means of sustaining their mortal lives or keeping them alive, in other words, but he offers eternity with him. He offers forgiveness of sins through him. He wants them to trust him for their greatest need.

Again, forgiveness of sin. And when we think about what it means to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we'll talk about this a few times here today, reformers would use these three terms, knowledge, assent, trust, knowledge, assent, trust, and keep that in mind as we go through this.

Knowledge, just knowing who Jesus is, isn't enough. Assenting, saying, you know, yes, I believe he's a great teacher, or even saying, I believe that he's the son of God, that's not enough. It's trusting, depending on him as if your soul ultimately depends on him, because that's, it does.

And throughout this exchange, the audience focuses on the earthly, on the temporal, on the physical, which is the same error that we often see, you know, if we walked all the way through John 6. If you know anything about Roman Catholicism, they say what, and many of you do, having come from Roman Catholic backgrounds, that the communion wafer is the body of Christ.

The wine is the blood of Christ. And they don't mean in a metaphorical sense, they mean actual sense. But as we walk through this, you'll see that this is exactly what Jesus is doing. He's not saying, I am bread.

He doesn't offer them his blood. He is giving them symbols. And that becomes, later on in the chapter, that's where Rome goes askew and says that they actually turn the bread into flesh and the wine into blood.

And that's wrong. Now, some time ago, I think you might remember this, Pastor Mike used a phrase, laetites. It's just a word. Anybody remember that word, laetites? Does that ring any bells? No? Okay. Well, that's okay, because by the time we're done here today, you're going to have a pretty good idea, because this passage is packed with laetites.

And you say, what is that? Well, I'm glad you asked, because we're going to discuss that. And it means this. It's a, what's the word I'm looking for? A grammatical term. There it is. I knew it would come to me sooner or later.

It's a grammatical term whereby you prove a positive by ruling out a negative. So, let's see, what's a safe one? There are no safe ones. Surely, there are no safe examples, would be a true statement. But if I say something like Holden is no small village, what do I mean?

I mean, it's a big village. I mean, you know, as villages go, Holden would be pretty big, 20 ,000, right? I mean, it's not a huge city, but it is a pretty, pretty good size village. If you say, here, Jason Tatum is no poor basketball player.

What am I saying? I'm saying that he's really actually very good. And that's the idea. Okay. So, that's a laetites, and we're going to have several examples, and I'll just tell you, and I'll reiterate what a laetites is when we get there.

But back to talking about believing in Jesus, those who come to Jesus are those who believe, those who trust. Again, knowledge is sent to trust. You cannot come to Jesus apart from faith. And if we know anything from the Bible, we know that that's a gift from God.

Pastor Mike went over that from Ephesians 2. Not anything that you can generate yourself. So, what's the result? What is he telling us in this passage? What's the result of believing? He says it right here.

He says, I'm the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst. What does he mean? He means there's going to be no spiritual lacking in you. You're going to be satisfied.

You're not going to think, you know, I need Jesus, and I need to become a Buddhist, or and I need to become a Muslim, and I need to become whatever. He is the end of your spiritual search. He fulfills all your spiritual needs.

So, I mean, here's a funny thing. Have you ever had a bread that you ate it, and you thought, I'm no longer thirsty? I never have. But he says, you'll no longer hunger, and you'll no longer thirst. Why?

Well, this is the God-man who also offers, what, living water. If we think about the woman at the well, he says, what, if you knew who was in front of me, or in front of you, and you drank this water, you'll never thirst again.

Why? Because he is the end of your spiritual hunger, your spiritual thirst. And again, if we see, if we carry this metaphor throughout the chapter, we see that it's not the physical bread. It's not the physical wine that he's talking about.

He's talking about accepting his person, believing in him, trusting in him. What he offers is not physical satisfaction, but spiritual satisfaction. He's offering eternal life. He does not promise anything less than rest for our souls.

He is the perfect sustenance for us. So, we've seen first, perfectly God, secondly, perfectly sustaining, and third, perfectly rejected. Jesus is perfectly rejected. There's a big contrast here. You know, kind of like sometimes I wish in the Bible, words would just be bolded.

And the first word there in verse 36, but, I wish it was bolded, underlined, all caps, whatever, to just kind of underscore, because there's a big contrast to what he's talking about in verse 35. Those who believe, those who come, and those in verse 36, where he says, but I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe me.

The Jews had asked for a sign. They wanted a miracle, a miraculous work to prove that Jesus was greater than Moses. But think about what they had seen. They'd seen him feed the 5 ,000. They'd seen other miracles.

I mean, we live in a world today where we can get on the internet and just search for things. Well, in those days, the internet was called, you know, the grapevine, the rumor mill. They would have known of many of his miracles.

And when he does that, when he feeds the 5 ,000, do they think we need to believe everything that he says? No. Their argument is very similar to the arguments many make in this world today, which is, you know, if, no matter what the Bible says, they want what?

If you're talking to an agnostic or an atheist, they want proof. You know, if I could just see God, if I could just see him actually at work, because I have science and I can see science, I can believe in science, I can trust the science, I can't trust a God that I cannot see.

But here's the problem for these folks. They had seen God at work. They knew what Jesus had done. They'd heard about what Jesus had done. Did it help them? Did it save them? No, it did not. Thank you.

And again, it was so unquestionably impressive. It made such a deep impression on them that they wanted him to be king. Now, what will we say about miracles? I mean, we see miracles in the Bible where, you know, Jesus might say something like, go, your faith has made you whole, or that kind of thing, where Jesus instantly does a miracle and salvation attends the miracle.

But it doesn't always. I mean, think about this. What happened when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead? He calls Lazarus, he says, come forth, and Lazarus does. Does everybody who sees that miracle believe?

I don't think so. Certainly not everybody who heard about it, who reasonably should have believed it, thought, oh, this is the man of God. This is God in the flesh. No, because it says, the Bible says that they all the more than wanted to kill him, to put him to death.

They were worried that he was going to, the leaders, the Jewish leaders, were worried that he was going to usurp their power. So miracles sometimes convert, sometimes they don't. Getting back to the text here, Jesus blames them for not believing.

He said, but I said to you that you have seen me. In other words, they knew him, they'd seen what he had done, and yet do not believe. He doesn't give him an out. He doesn't say, not your fault. He doesn't say, you'll get a second chance later after you die.

He says, you've seen me, and yet do not believe. They are accountable. Perfect truth number four. We, that is to say believers, are perfectly given. Perfectly given. We saw in verse 36 that man is responsible.

You're responsible for unbelief, but God is sovereign in salvation. Man is responsible. God is sovereign. Look at verse 37. All that the Father gives me will come to me. All that the Father gives me will come to me.

When he says all, that verb, I'm not going to go too much into the grammar, but some of the grammar is helpful. All is neuter. So all gives us the idea of this group, of this big block, and that's right.

It's good to think of it that way. All, meaning this entire group, those chosen by God, or what we might call the elect, all of those people chosen by God will come to the Father, or will come to the Son.

The Father gives them, we can think about it this way, entrust them to the Son. Well, who are they? Who are these elect? Who are those that the Father gives to the Son? It's everyone who will ever believe.

How do we know that? Well, it says here in the text, all that the Father gives me will come to me. We could look at other passages. In because we're going to be talking about the Trinity, it's inevitable.

We have to do that in talking about this subject, and I'll be brief here, as brief as I can while I read this whole passage. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Paul writes this in verse three, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Listen, verse four, even as he chose us in him, which is to say in Christ, before the foundation of the world, listen, that we should be holy and blameless before him. This is echoes, we could go to John 17 as well, where Jesus says, you know, all that you gave me, I have kept, and that kind of language.

This is before there was any, as he says here, before the foundation of the world is timeless. It happens before creation. In love, verse five, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved in Christ.

In him, we have redemption through his blood, through his death, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Look at the wording there, his will, his purpose. This is his will and his purpose from the beginning to save a people. In him, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be, why, why, why, why?

To the praise of his glory. In him also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him and believed in Christ, were sealed with the Holy or sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

His purpose in Christ from before the foundation of the world was to choose us to have Christ die for us, live for us, die for us, be raised from the dead. Why? So that we might be adopted by him, that we might become the trophies, basically, of grace.

Back to John chapter 6. So this is done, and we could read Romans 8 as well. This is done for the sake of the elect, for the glory of the Trinity, the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit. All that the Father gives will come, which is equated with believing.

This is irresistible grace, theologians call it. The Father would not give to his eternally begotten Son something that he does not want, which would be somebody who's never going to believe in him, right?

If earthly fathers are kind to their children, would not the Heavenly Father be kind to his beloved Son? Of course he would. The Father loves the Son and gives him the souls and trusts to him all the souls of everyone who will ever be saved.

And the reality is, the end result, they all believe, every single one of them, they are caused to be born again by the Holy Spirits. Can you imagine the Father giving the Son someone he did not choose?

No. There is one will of God, as we read in Ephesians chapter 1. There is one will of God and one saving purpose of God. All that the Father gives to the Son will believe in Christ, every single one. And so some wonder, well wait a minute, am I one of the elect?

Am I one of the chosen? How do I know? How do I know that the Father chose me before the foundation of the world? How do I know, as our text says here, that I'm one that the Father gave to Christ? Because I believe.

I trust. Why? Because God has granted me faith. That's how I know that I'm one of His, one of Christ's. If the Holy Spirit has convicted you and regenerated you, then you belong to Christ. Okay, so that's 1. Perfectly God.

2. Perfectly sustaining. 3. Perfectly rejected. The Jews rejected Jesus. 4. Perfectly given. We are the gift from the Father to the Son. 5. Perfectly received. Perfectly received and we have another Leviticus here.

Jesus says, all of the Father comes to me or gives to me, gives me, will come to me. And here's the Leviticus, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. Again, we said he'll state it in the negative and what it really means is the positive.

And that verb there, cast out, ekbalo, and I thought about it and in a modern sense maybe we could think about it this way, you know, this would be like if I were Elon Musk, I might send a rocket out into space, maybe even to Mars, and so I would cast it out, right?

I would accelerate it, I would, you know, toss it. And the idea here is I will never cast out means I will never remove you from myself, okay? And the reality is the opposite, meaning he will keep us close.

He will hold us fast. We could sing that this morning, right? Jesus wants us to understand that he will grasp us securely. What does he say in John 10, 28? That nothing will and no one will take us from his hand.

Paul in chapter 8 of Romans would write about the love of God for those who are in Christ Jesus, and what does he say? That nothing can separate us, nothing created, nothing, you know, nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ, nothing in the universe.

Believers are loved perfectly and permanently by the Father, Son, and Spirit. Notice also that in this verse, verse 37, we've gone from all this big group to whoever, individuals. The Father gives the group and then Jesus says of the individuals of every believer, I will keep him.

I will hold him. My question is then, does that not comfort you? Are you not comforted by that idea? I am. You have the promise of the second person of the Trinity to hold you with an everlasting grip.

Simply put, the believer can never be lost because the Creator will not permit it to happen. He will not permit it to happen. Okay, truth, perfect statement number six, perfectly obedient, perfectly obedient, and this one's a little tricky, and I'll ask for your patience here.

Verse 38 starts with a purpose clause, four. In other words, he's going to explain the purpose why he came down from heaven, and he asserts again his divinity. If we just think about it this way, what mortal being could say, I have come down from heaven?

No one could. You have to be God to come down from heaven. That's an astonishing claim, and he's already said it in verse 33 in this whole discussion with the Jews, and he claims it seven times total in this whole pericope, and this helps us to make sense of things that he came down from heaven without this understanding that Jesus is truly God.

We would have the impression that there might be two wills of God. Look at the text again. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Are they different? Does Jesus have a different plan or will than the Father?

That'd be frightening. What does that lead to? If they have separate wills, there's ultimately the possibility, the necessity of having two gods. So how are we to understand this? If you were in Sunday school while I was going through the Trinity, you would know this.

Here's the idea. The Father, Son, and Spirit, I'll make this rather quick. The Father, Son, and Spirit in eternity past, did they take a vote on this plan of salvation? Did the Father say, here's my plan, and the Son and the Spirit go, okay.

No. There's one will of God because there's one essence. There's one purpose of God because they are one. So what does it mean when he says that? We even think about the Garden of Gethsemane when he prays, what?

Not my will, but your will be done. How can he say that? Because he's speaking in his humanity, in his humanity. Jesus has, he is one person with two natures, and each nature has a will. There's one divine nature, so there's one divine will.

Jesus is truly divine, thus having the divine will, and he's truly human, so he has a human will. So when he says, I've come down from heaven, I've taken on human flesh, I've become a man in addition to remaining God, never ceasing to be God, not to do my own will, my own human will, but the will of him who sent me.

I'm here to do the Father's will. That's what it means. So when we think about obedience, when we think about submission, the man Christ Jesus is obedient. The man Christ Jesus is submissive. The God Jesus, the God second person of the Trinity, cannot be obedient.

He wrote the law. He cannot submit because if he was submitting, that would mean there's a difference in the wills. There is one divine will. There's no disagreements. There can't be a disagreement. Okay, let's go to the seventh.

Perfectly God, perfectly sustaining, perfectly sustained, perfectly rejected, perfectly given, perfectly received, perfectly obedient, and that's his humanity, not his deity. His deity cannot be obedient because he wrote the law.

Seventh one is perfectly aligned, perfectly aligned. The Father sent the Son, as we said, to redeem the elect. Someone had to pay the price for the sin of all the elect, and only a perfect substitute could redeem another.

If someone, if a man lived a perfect life, fully obeying the law, could he be the redeemer? And the answer is no, because we need someone who's truly God and or truly man and truly God to have sufficient value to redeem all that the Father chose.

There had to be a God-man, and every single believer will be granted eternal life because Jesus is that God-man. So, in verse 39, we have another Leititis, and this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me.