Flesh and Blood | Sermon 04/09/2023

All right, if you would, please turn with me and your Bibles to the

Gospel according to John, chapter 6, John, chapter 6.

We're going to be in verses 48 through 59, pretty much wrapping up the

Bread of Life discourse. The title of the sermon today, Church, is

Flesh and Blood. Flesh and Blood, starting in verse 48 of the

Gospel according to John, chapter 6. Hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true

God. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died.

This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Then the

Jews began to argue with one another, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

So Jesus said to them, 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 yourselves. He who eats 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. He who eats 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 he who eats me, he also will live because of me.

This is the bread which came down out of heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died, he who eats this bread will live forever.

These things he said in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. Thus ending the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray one more time quickly, church.

Lord, I ask that you would speak through me today, Lord. This is definitely a challenging passage, challenging words from the

Lord Jesus Christ. God, help me by your spirit to explain these adequately,

Lord, the way that you have desired for them to be known. God, please help me to speak in a way that is helpful and clear and faithful, and let it always be true.

I pray this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Church, we are in a society and culture that is desperate to reverse the process of aging in our bodies.

We're trying to escape death. If you live in a naturalistic humanist and evolutionary world, then 70 to 80 years is pretty much all you have.

The quest for the Holy Grail or fountain of youth is a search for anything but holy things today.

I saw actually in a Fortune magazine article in passing that some mega rich CEO, is what they said on the article, a mega rich CEO from California, he spends about two million dollars a year to slow the process of aging in his body alone.

Two million a year. It says in the article that he follows a strict diet.

He has this special sleep wind down ritual, a rigorous exercise regimen, takes dozens of daily supplements, and he undergoes,

I'm not even kidding, countless, almost weekly medical tests so that he can strive for the biological age of 18.

He wants to be 18 in his body forever. Unless he spends two million dollars to do that.

You see, the rare few make it even above 108, right? And they probably don't do what he does.

They don't spend two million a year to get to 108. It's just God has numbered all our days.

But this desire feeds the multi -billion dollar pharmaceutical companies.

And just this year, scientists have determined, quote, in older adults, older adults, low doses of rapamycin, an mTOR inhibitor, seem to set mTOR activity back to its youthful state.

And when they get rapamycin, their immune systems, which have already been damaged by old age, start to function better.

It reverses the age, the effects of aging. There's research to suggest that when you rejuvenate the immune system, you will make your organ systems function better, end quote.

So the article goes on to say that they have immediately started scientific trials with this medicine.

But this is what people do. And I'm not disparaging good diets or helpful medicines or supplements or exercise.

Not the case. I'm speaking of, in this world, the idolatry of self that we see.

And honestly, a fear of what's going to happen after this life.

That's a lot where it comes from, a fear of death. They ask themselves, what can

I take into my body to give me long life? What can I consume and do to give myself long life?

And they will consume whatever it takes to give themselves at least one more day.

No doubt. But what about the bread of life? When faced with the offer

Jesus makes to the Jews, and then by extension, all of us, what will we do?

What will we do? Will we consume the bread from heaven? Or will we believe him when he says it's the only thing that gives eternal life?

The bread of life. Let's see how he wraps this up, okay? Let's start in verse 48.

Jesus declares it again. Verse 48. Ego eimi ha artas tes zoes.

I am the bread of life. And if you haven't been here to understand what that means,

I urge you to, of course, watch the previous sermons on the I am statements of Jesus.

But Jesus is essentially right here making once again another claim to divinity or deity.

By saying the name of the Lord, I am, which comes from Yahweh in the

Old Testament, he's saying that he himself is Lord. It belongs to him. He is indeed the

Lord. And in Hebrew, great emphasis is made when something is declared three times.

Great emphasis is to be made when something is said three times. Holy, holy, holy.

Actually, in the song we just sang is to mean such a great and high holy. Holy, holy, holy is the

Lord. He's so greatly holy, and so you say it three times. And thus far,

Jesus has made three statements of similar content of the sovereignty of God and salvation.

We've seen that the past couple weeks. Then Jesus made three statements that those who come to him, those who come are given and they are drawn.

And he says three times that they will be raised up on the last day.

Three times. So the strong emphasis has been on a salvation given only by God, not achieved by man, and a resurrection performed only by this one

God. It is all God. It's always been God. And now in the text today, the reason

I point that out is we will see Jesus's second and third

I Am statements in this discourse. Three times. He puts a seal on what's been said about salvation and resurrection.

And Jesus three times states His divinity. And it all hinges on that.

If He is not the I Am, if He is not God, then you and I are not receiving salvation and resurrection.

Then He can't do what He's promised to do. It just can't happen.

Verse 49 there, Your fathers ate the man in the wilderness and they died. They died.

Previously, Jesus said, Your fathers ate the man in the wilderness, and you thought the provision was from Moses.

They thought too highly of the prophet and too lowly of the Lord. Now Jesus will mention their fathers eating manna in the wilderness, that old bread from heaven, and show how it was inferior.

We've been seeing that. It was gracious that God gave manna in the wilderness, falling down from heaven, raining down so that they could eat.

But it is the grace of the true bread, which comes down from heaven, this bread of life, this

Jesus, who is going to actually satiate hunger and quench thirst forever.

Forever. It's Him. And Jesus is the true offering of God.

He says, the fathers ate the old bread and they died. They're dead. They're gone.

Buried in the ground. The sting of death still had victory over them, despite the

Jews receiving manna from heaven. And their death certifies that they need a better bread.

Okay? They ate this bread from heaven, but it didn't give them eternal life.

And their death shows they need something that will eradicate that death. They need a better bread.

So if the Jews would not receive Jesus's words, and again, this has been a long discourse in chapter 6 of the

Gospel according to John. He's said so many things thus far. And if they're not going to receive

His words, then He's going to start using parabolic or hyperbolic metaphorical language.

Okay? He's going to use that against them. Verse 50 there, it says,

This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I wonder if He pointed to Himself. He says, this is the bread which comes down from heaven.

Did He point it to Himself? Isn't it interesting?

Jesus will later say in John chapter 11, that if you believe in Him, you will never die. Death, the enemy of all men and women, can be overcome.

And I think that what is so glorious about this statement, especially verse 50, is in the process,

Jesus is purposefully, I think, minimalizing and trivializing our temporal deaths.

When your body gives way to the effects of the fall, and it dies, this process is actually so insignificant in the eyes of the

Creator and Redeemer, that it's not even worth highlighting. He says, you'll live forever. John 11, if you live and believe in Me, you will never die.

You see this? He says, you will not die. It's not even worth highlighting.

And I don't think what He's trying to demonstrate is He doesn't care for us that we have a temporal death.

In fact, He came because we have death. But it's just that He is so sure that we live on.

It's such a sure thing, it's not even worth mentioning. You will not die. And the

Bible makes it clear we live on. In fact, the believer and unbeliever live on until the judgment.

Yet that is not a great comfort for the unbeliever, because what Jesus is saying in not die or you will never die is those who believe in Him and receive eternal life will never taste the bitter darkness of eternal death.

So He minimizes our earthly death. The scriptures often call it sleeping.

That's how small it is. If you're a believer, you will never die. We're just going to call your temporal death sleeping.

That's how small it is. Because that's how powerful Jesus is.

Jesus heightens the power of the benefits that positively affect us, chiefly the eternal life

He gives to the believer. Go to verse 51.

He says, I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. It's my flesh.

Very interesting text. He will state it plainly to the

Jews once again. If you see it, I am. This is ego eimi.

I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. And He switches from the third person to the first.

This is deeply personal. This isn't some mysterious bread or simply figurative speech.

This is Jesus. This is someone real. The Holy Grail, the fountain of youth, those are myths.

But Jesus is totally flesh and blood and totally from heaven. He is real.

He has come down. And that changes everything. He came down is in the aorist form.

It's past tense. He could be talking about His coming into the world when Jesus was born.

What's called the incarnation. There was a bread that rotted and did not keep your fathers from death in the wilderness centuries ago.

But He says, I am here. They're dead. They received a bread from heaven.

But He says, I am the bread from heaven. And if you take me into yourself, you will live forever.

He says, I've come down literally, literally descended from heaven is what the image is.

The image we should be seeing. So He's showing like He has been all along in John 6 that He is not only the greater, but the greatest fulfillment of the manna in the wilderness.

He is the fulfillment. The God who gave the bread just came down like the bread.

The God who gave the bread came down just like the bread. And He can do more than what that bread could only do for a short while.

He could do more. He provides eternal sustaining opposed to temporal sustaining.

And if anyone eats this bread that is Himself, he will live forever.

Now I told you a few weeks ago, many people view this section of Scripture that we're going over today, they view it in what's called a

Eucharistic or a sacramental way. They view it in a Lord's Supper communion kind of way.

Eat my flesh, drink my blood. They think that that's what this section is about.

Now I think that is an unavoidable byproduct to the fact that Jesus did successfully make followers of Himself.

And He did institute the Lord's Supper. And so we can see images and symbolism in these verses for it.

But even though that's a natural thing because we're now believers, I don't think that that's the original intent of what

Jesus is saying. Okay, I'll explain that. I'll explain it here in a little bit even later.

Jesus continues to say sarx here, which is flesh. And every time in the future when

Jesus mentions the Lord's Supper, He uses actually not the word sarx, but He uses soma, which means body.

He says He gives His body and blood. Not a huge proof, but it's definitely an indicator that this is possibly not about communion.

In fact, some of you are way ahead of me already. If you've been tracking with us from the beginning of chapter 6, from the beginning of the

Bread of Life discourse, then you have understood that Christ is making an intentional connection of Himself to the

Exodus. We've seen so many Exodus allusions. I talked about Exodus 15,

Exodus 16, Exodus 17. Jesus is showing that He is that manna in the desert.

That's undeniable. And so it's with that primary intent over the secondary byproduct that we ought to view this section of Scripture.

The sacramental view doesn't consider the full context and weight of Jesus' words.

Now, remember earlier, keep this in your mind. Quench thirst, satiate hunger.

You will never thirst again. You will never hunger again. He's already said that in John chapter 4.

He said that earlier in this discourse. So keep those things in mind. Never thirst again.

Never hunger again. These are the things that prime us for Jesus' intense wording here, because this is intense.

This is intense. You will live forever if you consume this bread. If you take into yourself

Jesus Christ, if the Father gives you the bread who is Jesus and you consume

Him, you will live forever. You have life without end. And He further identifies the bread from heaven.

It is Himself. And in fact, it is His flesh, He says.

It is His flesh. That is the true food. That is the food that will satiate hunger.

You see, souls are hungry things. Sounds strange.

But souls are hungry things. They go after things. They consume things.

Often things that are not good. But only God can give Himself as food to the soul.

And the dead soul doesn't want that kind of food. So that soul needs to be made alive. We saw that already.

In Jesus' own body will be the provision for an innumerable amount of souls. We are supposed to see that second clause there.

And the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

That is the second clause of verse 51. There we are supposed to see a vicarious atonement, which means a substitution.

His life given for something else. Excuse me. That's what we're supposed to see here.

He will give His life. He will give His flesh for the life of the world.

For the life of the world. It's sacrificial. He's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We saw that. And now He is the bread given for the life of the world.

Substitutionary. His life is given for something else.

And it's amazing that people don't see that. People argue against that. Do you know that? Many theologians argue against the substitutionary death that Jesus actually died in our place.

I'm telling you, many, many people do. They argue, no, He just kind of died and that applies some sort of atoning work on our behalf.

But no, I'm here telling you today that Jesus actually died in your place. He gave His life a ransom for many.

And that's what we're seeing Him allude to here. And what's amazing is when

He says the world, He means men and women of all types. Jews and Gentiles.

You see, the manna that fell from heaven was given only to what? The Hebrews.

But now this bread that has come down from heaven, Jesus Christ, is for not only the

Hebrews, the Jews, it's for everyone. Every type of people from every nation will get this bread of life.

They will get Jesus Christ's life. And so the feeding of the 5 ,000 was barely anything compared to the billions of people

He will feed with salvation over multiple millennia. But what does verse 52 say?

How did the Jews respond to His words? It says, Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying,

How can this man give us His flesh to eat? So if you remember, the

Jews were grumbling and murmuring earlier amongst themselves now they're arguing.

Quarreling is the word as to what Jesus means. They have not spoken since verse 42, so it's been about 10 verses, 11 verses, when they said,

Is this not Jesus, the son of Mary and the son of Joseph? And now they speak again.

But in between that, all those words that Jesus spoke about Himself, about the Father drawing people to Himself, about raising people again to a resurrection of new life, about giving eternal life, out of all that Jesus had just said, what do they hear?

They hear something that offends them. That's when they start talking again. How are we going to eat

His flesh? This once again goes right in line with Exodus. Remember, the people grumbled in Exodus.

But in Exodus 17, verse 2, it says this, then the people moved from grumbling, it says the people argued.

The people argued. Just like the people in the wilderness now, they argue.

And they argued with Moses. And Moses says, Why do you argue with me? In fact, he says,

Why do you test the Lord? Isn't that what they're doing now? Testing the

Lord. The Lord's in front of them and they will test Him. They're testing

God. So most scholars believe that the Jews probably didn't take his words literally.

They likely didn't believe he was trying to espouse or advocate for cannibalism or something like that.

They would have understood his words figuratively. And this word for argue in the

Greek indicates that potentially in the crowd of people, in the synagogue, you had one man who started arguing his case.

This is what Jesus means. And then they rejected. Then another man says, No, this is what he meant by eat my flesh.

Right. And so they have all this arguing back and forth. Then all of a sudden they all stop.

And with a mocking rebuke, they go, How can we eat this man's flesh? They give up.

They're done arguing. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? And it continues to get even more descriptive.

Brothers and sisters, it's amazing. Go to verse 53. So Jesus said to them,

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 yourselves.

Lord, Jesus doesn't retract a single thing that he just said.

And he intentionally does not bring any sort of nuance or interpretation to what he just said.

He lessens nothing. In fact, if anything, his statement becomes more robust and more intense and probably more confusing to them.

And he speaks in definite terms. You have no life in yourself unless you do this.

What does it mean to have no life? It means to be dead always.

You are dead if you don't eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. Again, Jesus is using metaphorical and hyperbolic language here.

The word for eat can also be consumed. And in other parts of the New Testament, that eating or consumption is not in a literal sense.

So this can be used in a different way. So again, he is not endorsing cannibalism.

You see, because the Son of God was there at the beginning, all things were created through him, by him and for him.

In him, all things hold together. Jesus was there when the world was created. And when only one man was made, that is

Adam, God said when that man was made, he said, by the way, everything that was created, the fruits and the plants, they're for your eating.

Those things are for your eating. And then when God made more men and women after that first man,

God specifically says that you shall not shed the blood of another man, for he is made in the image of God.

So Jesus then could not be advocating for this. He was there at the beginning. He knows what real food is, the physical food for consumption.

He's alluding to something else. OK. In fact, I think the key here is that title,

Son of Man. He's not simply a man. In fact, every time the phrase

Son of Man has been mentioned by Jesus in John's Gospel, it has been associated with something heavenly, not something earthly.

Something pointing to who He is, where He's truly from, and what He came to do.

That's often when and why He uses that phrase. He's speaking to something greater.

Don't get lost, He's saying in what I'm saying about eat my flesh and drink my blood. Don't get lost in that.

The Son of Man has come. This is something heavenly. This is something bigger. Even the

Apostle Paul affirms what Jesus is saying, and he ties it back to the

Hebrews in Exodus. In 1 Corinthians 10, it says, For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

And here it is, And all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them.

And the rock, Paul says, was Christ. The bread was Christ. So what is

Jesus saying here? What He has said all along,

He's only articulating it in another way, that the manna from heaven, the water from heaven in the

Exodus wilderness brought temporal life, but only for a brief time.

But if you want life without end, if you want eternal life, you must consume the bread of life, the

I am from heaven. You must drink the blood of the wellspring of living waters,

Jesus Christ. So look at verse 54. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

I told you the title of this sermon is flesh and blood. So flesh is again in the

Greek sarx. And if you remember my sermon from John chapter one,

I told you that that word is used when it says that the word became flesh when

Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us. Same word. This is related to that passage.

Flesh means that the Son of God left His heavenly abode and He came down and He took on flesh.

And we need that. The gospel is, that's part and parcel to the gospel that God came down and He became totally

God and totally man. Otherwise, He could not propitiate for sins. He would not be a representative of us.

So you see, we have the representative Adam then we have the representative Jesus Christ who is also a man, but He is also totally

God. And so He can take the wrath of God upon Himself. He can actually take that wrath and it can be fully spent for billions of people who would believe upon Him, upon God.

And so that's what this is pointing to. His flesh. His flesh showed

He became man. Then in John chapter two, Jesus said that His flesh was the temple. And He said what?

That the temple would be destroyed and raised in three days. And now He says

His flesh is the living bread. What else will Jesus show

His flesh is, His body is in the gospel? He'll later say that His body is a sacrifice.

He'll say that His flesh is a vine. He'll say that He is a gate. So we see all these things of taking on flesh and then that being necessary for the salvation of His people.

That's flesh. Now blood. Blood. The blood aspect of Jesus's discourse makes it all the more scandalous.

The blood. Much more scandalous because with blood, we are reminded of something else.

What is that? Right after the exodus, right after the exodus, the law was given and in Leviticus chapter 17 verse 11, it says this, for the life of the flesh is in the blood.

And I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood by the reason of the life that makes atonement.

So that was a common understanding and a common thing in the word of God. They would say the life is in the blood.

So when the blood gets drained out, there is no life. The life is gone. Now the law does say later not to consume the blood.

But again, Jesus is not making a literal command here. This is showing that He gives us

His blood and His blood gives life. That's what it's saying. God's word says the life is in the blood and you need the blood of Jesus.

And so then what does the blood of Jesus give you in consuming it? It gives you life.

The life is in the blood. He will lose His life and His blood so that you and I may have life.

His sacrificial atonement on the cross is specifically what transfers the glorious and gracious effects of His giving of His body and His blood to us.

So He must give His flesh. He must give His flesh. He must give His blood if we're going to have eternal life.

This is, as you've probably already seen, a foreshadow to the crucifixion.

It's a foreshadow to the crucifixion. If you remember, verse 40 last week said, everyone who beholds the

Son and believes in Him will have eternal life and I will myself raise

Him up on the last day. And so we have the same formula for verse 54. You see that?

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise Him up on the last day. He's said that multiple times now.

So we are to see this in the same way as those previous verses. Eating and drinking are beholding and believing.

Eating and drinking are beholding and believing. It's the same formula. And so that is to say, if you have believed on the

Son, you have eaten. If you have beheld the Son, you have drank.

And He will raise you up on the last day. Now once again, I'm just going to tell you this can't mean the

Lord's Supper or communion in primary function and not simply future illusion because then it would demonstrate that one must participate in the

Lord's Supper to have eternal life. You see how that would be a problem? If we took all these verses and I said, look, this isn't actually about Exodus or the manna from heaven.

This is Jesus trying to demonstrate the Lord's Supper later. This is demonstrating communion.

This is beforehand. This is a foreshadow. And He's prophesying essentially and He's showing that one day we're going to do this act.

If that's what we said that these verses were for, then we would have to say, He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise

Him up on the last day. That is to say, if you don't consume the wine and the bread, you will not have eternal life.

You will not be forgiven. That can't be what this means. That cannot be what this means.

He would be then adding a work to salvation.

You see, then the thief on the cross would be one cup of wine and piece of bread away from salvation.

But what does He say? He says, today you'll be with Me in paradise. That man never got to take the

Lord's Supper. And there's people, no doubt, who have turned to Christ and never got to have the

Lord's Supper. What are we saying? That they can never go to heaven because they never participated in this ordinance that Jesus gave?

No, that is not the case. Again, that's a secondary byproduct that you would read this now as a believer.

You have the lens of a believer and you would read this and go, that kind of reminds me of communion. But that's not the primary function.

It's about Jesus being the bread from heaven, from Exodus, the manna.

Later at the end of chapter 6, Jesus will explain what He meant by saying flesh and blood to the disciples.

He will say the flesh is one thing, and then He will say things are more about spirit and life.

And so the offense of the cannibalistic language is not so much about eating a person, it's about the cross.

The offense is in the coming cross, His sacrifice. That's the connection.

Let me illustrate it for you. What I'm trying to say is, this passage, if you think of the cross,

Jesus on the cross, you would be right to do so. And therefore, when you participate in the

Lord's Supper, it'd be right for you to think about the cross. It'd be right for you to think about Jesus giving

His body and His blood. So this act looks back at the cross. This verse, these verses here, look towards the cross.

So that's the explanation. You say, Pastor Wade, you're getting too technical.

Why are we hanging on this so much? I'm telling you it's because many, many people interpret all these passages in a sacramental way, that this is pointing only to this act here, the

Lord's Supper later. And I just can't see that. Again, you would be adding a work if you said you had to do this to be saved.

So anyways, let's continue forward. If you eat manna that rots and water that spoils, you will go to the grave.

But if you eat the bread from heaven that never rots and the blood that acts as living water that never spoils or runs dry, you will go to an instantly temporal grave, one that Jesus doesn't even mention, but then immediately be alive in heaven.

And then one day your body will rise again on the final day. That's the promise. I will raise

Him up on the last day. On the final day, I will raise Him up. And so the grave and death will have no effect on you when you're in Christ.

Verse 55 there, For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink, because my flesh is food of truth.

That's what this is saying. Food of truth and blood of truth. I'm sorry, drink of truth.

Food of truth, drink of truth. They are of truth. Because any other way is a false way.

If you try to consume anything else to get to heaven, it's not of truth, it's false.

You need true food and true drink, the blood and flesh of Jesus. And so are there any of us here today consuming any food of falsehood?

You see, it may taste good for now, but it won't satiate for all eternity.

Jesus, the Son of Man, is the only way to the kingdom. He is true food, true drink. And when do you typically have food and drink?

You typically have food and drink at mealtime, right? And so, Revelation actually speaks to this.

This meal that you have and will have. In fact, from the same apostle who wrote this

Gospel, the Apostle John sees an angel and the angel says this,

Right, blessed are those who are invited to the supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God.

Words of truth. So a supper where Christ is married to His bride, to His church, the people redeemed by His flesh and blood on that atoning cross, and they have true drink, true food, and true words.

They will do exactly what He stated they will do. There is no lie here. These are words of truth.

This food and drink that Jesus offers is more real than the food and drink in the wilderness wandering.

It's true. It's real. What else will eating

His flesh and drinking His blood offer? Verse 56, what other benefits are there?

He says, he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him.

So not only will the one who consumes Christ's body and blood have life in themself, eternal life and future resurrection, they will abide in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ will abide in them.

This word can also mean reside or remain. He will reside and remain in you and you will reside and remain in Him.

When you consume what Christ is offering, you become then one with Him. And His dwelling becomes your dwelling.

You'll get to live where He gets to live. His heavenly inheritance becomes your heavenly inheritance.

His righteousness is applied to your account and becomes your righteousness in salvation.

His perseverance will become yours and He will cause you to remain steadfast.

You see, the benefits are limitless with the Son of God. When you abide in Him and He abides in you, you will be able to live this life.

Of course, with trials, but He'll get you through them. He'll help you through this life when

He abides in you and you in Him. You identify yourself now in Christ.

That's where that word Christian comes from. That means you're in Christ. And so when someone asks you, who are you?

More than your personality, more than anything that is specific about you in your individuality, more than all that, you are in Christ.

You are identified in Christ. In Him, your life finds meaning and value, okay?

Now, if you're sitting here today and you feel like your life has no meaning and no purpose and tomorrow you're going to go to work and it's futile and you'll come home and you'll work for the weekend and you'll have some time off and you'll go back to work and if that's your life and if you think that that's all that it is, then either you don't know

Jesus or you don't remember who you are. Because if you are a believer, you abide in Him and He abides in you and that changes things.

That means you're identified with Christ and this life has meaning. That nothing is futile.

That tomorrow you'll work unto the Lord, tomorrow you'll serve and worship God and every day is a gift every day you get to worship the living

God. Every day has meaning. Everything you do can either bring glory to yourself or glory to God.

So you got to remember who you are. In this Gospel, Gospel of John, it says the

Father abides in the Son, says the Spirit abides upon Jesus and believers abide in Christ and He in them.

It's a new existence. It's a change. It's a transformation. This becomes an integral part of Paul in his theology.

In Galatians 2, verse 20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer

I who live, but Christ lives in me. That's the abiding. In the life which

I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave

Himself up for me. That's abiding. That's abiding.

That's remaining in the other. You see, abiding isn't simply merely my heart's with you, right?

My heart goes with you. I'll always be with you. It's not that.

He is the abiding and remaining God. Him and us and we in Him. And notice that it's a mutual abiding.

And on the last day, many will go to Jesus and say,

Lord, Lord. Lord, Lord, didn't we do all these things in Your name? Didn't we cast out demons in Your name?

Didn't we do all these works and wonders in Your name? And what He will say, I never knew you.

Depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness. So there are some people, apparently in this world, who are doing things in the name of Jesus, and they're going to come to Him and say,

Lord, Lord, and He's going to say, I never knew you. And what I'm trying to get at is, these are people who think they abide in Jesus, and He's going to say,

I don't abide in you. You think you're in Me? You're not in Me, and I'm not in you.

And that's the most unsettling thought. That's a scary thought. But He gives us the remedy.

For this mutual abiding, He says, take this bread of life, take this living water, believe in Him.

Believe in Him. Verse 57 there, As the living

Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he will live because of Me.

So the Father is living. He's the Father of life. All life comes from God.

And John said the Son has that too. It says in John 1, In the

Son was the light and life of all men. All life came into being by Him.

Jesus may even be referring to, once again, the incarnation, the virgin birth here. The Father sent the bread.

He sent Jesus. He sent the meal to us. If one eats Jesus, your life will be regenerated in a spiritual and physical sense.

It's that same power that resulted in the resurrection of Jesus. Then our

Lord finishes in verse 58, the discourse. He says,

This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the Father's ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever.

Jesus is summarizing things right here. In fact, He's repeated Himself quite a bit in chapter 6.

He brings this discourse full circle. He reproduced bread for the 5 ,000.

And then the Jews brought up the man in the wilderness. They were the ones who brought it up. The Jews wanted a sign that of equal or greater proportion to what

Moses did. Look, if you are who you say you are, Jesus, then do something right now that's greater than what

Moses did in giving manna in the wilderness. Do something greater. And this is all that He has said.

He demonstrates He's greater than Moses. And what He will perform will be infinitely more life -giving than what happened in the desert so long ago.

So, this He says of Himself, this is the bread which came down out of heaven.

There will be no death with this bread, only life and life forever. And you know, when

I finished reading this passage, I couldn't help but think of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28.

You know what those talk about? Those sections lay out the blessings of obedience for Israel and the curses of disobedience for Israel.

And He specifically says, if you don't obey Me in these things, if you break this agreement,

I will strike you down, send you to your enemies, you will lose everything, and you will be so desperate and starving that you will eat the flesh of your children and family.

That's what those passages say. This old covenant was impossible to live by.

Impossible to live by. Thank God for this new covenant, this promise in Christ.

But that's what He says. You're going to be so destitute, you're going to resort to having to consume one another that will turn to cannibalism.

And the Lord calls such an act a curse. It's evidence of a curse. But here's the thing, in the new covenant,

Jesus will drink a cup of curses. Jesus will consume a wrathful, cursed meal that will lead to His death so that you and I could consume the benefits of all that the cross has accomplished.

Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, He said, let this cup pass from me, but not what

I will, but what you will. Showing His functional subordination in His humanity.

We've talked about that before. But this cup, this cup of wrath, the cross points to a curse.

The giving of His body and His blood will result in then covenantal blessings untold for us.

Him becoming a curse and taking on the curse of sin and taking the curse into Himself will result in the removal of your curse.

And the curse of Adam, the curse of the fall, the curse of your own sin, it will be removed.

The Jews' bread and water did not give them eternal life. They did not forgive sins. The curse was still present.

Galatians says, for as many are the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by them all, all the things written in the book of the law to perform them.

You have to perform them all, otherwise you're cursed.

Christ, He says, in Christ redeemed us from the curse of law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree in order that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to all people so that we would receive the promise of the

Spirit through faith. And so Jesus has come to remove the curse as far as the curse is found.

In fact, once again, Revelation, which the apostle John wrote and recorded, it'll later say that Jesus removed the curse and there's this river that flows from the mountain of God.

It streams up to Him. And on the side of the river of life, there's trees of life showing the abundance of eternal life that He gives.

Now, the curse is gone. He will give this eternal life to myriads and myriads, and He reversed the curse and He is reversing the curse.

He reversed it and He's reversing it. So the last thing says, verse 59, these things

He did in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum. Actually, if you remember at the beginning of this chapter in verse four, it said that the

Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread was near. It's amazing to me that He said these things around the

Passover and what's happening right now. We're around the time of the Passover. We're saying these things.

We're looking at these things at a similar time that He said these things. And so it's amazing that when the people's minds are already on the exodus, they're already on bread,

Jesus would give this sermon about Himself. It could be that the reading of the day in synagogue was

Exodus 16 and He exposited Himself, preached about Himself through that book in the synagogue in Capernaum that day.

He is what we've always needed and what we've always been looking for. They thought they were coming to question a prophet, a king or a rabbi, but it was

God. It was God. When the Jews came across the Sea of Galilee to speak to Him and question

Him, they didn't know it, but they were speaking to God Himself. And it's what

God has said that forces them now to respond. They're going to have to respond one way or the other.

So let's wrap this up, church. There's something that I've been alluding to this whole time.

Something that I've spoken to through this whole scriptural text. Something that I think

Jesus has been alluding to this whole time. We would be mistaken if we thought that the flesh and blood were only spiritual or metaphorical things and not pointing to something bigger.

I've already said it and that something bigger is the old rugged cross. That's what

Jesus is pointing to here. And the life He will give as a result of giving

His flesh and His blood is not merely a spiritual or metaphorical life.

He will actually give you physical new life because He rose physically.

So that when your body dies and goes in the ground, you will go and be with the Lord instantaneously and you wait for the final day of resurrection and your body will come out of the grave and you will live forevermore with your

Savior. And that's the promise that He gives. You will live forever. And so it's not just this spiritual metaphorical thing.

He's speaking of something that is actually going to happen. He's going to give His flesh and His blood and He's going to give it to you and then you're going to rise again.

He will raise us up on the last day. And on the day of His death, the governor

Pilate said to the people, then what shall I do with Jesus who is called

Christ? All the people said crucify Him. Crucify Him. And Pilate said why?

What evil has He done? But they kept shouting all the more saying crucify Him. Crucify Him. It says that they stripped

Him down. They put a scarlet robe on Him and they twisted a crown of thorns and they placed it on His head.

They put a reed in His hand and they knelt down before Him mocking Him saying,

Hail King of the Jews. And after they did that, they looked upon Jesus Christ, the

Savior, and they ripped the reed out of His hand and they started beating

Him over and over with this reed. And while one guy was beating

Him with this reed, several others it says were spitting in His face. And after they had mocked

Him, they took the scarlet robe off Him. They took His garments and they cast lots for them naked, virtually naked, scourged with a cat of nine tails.

They laid Him on His stomach and they whipped His back with a cat of nine tails.

Then they turned Him over and they got His chest to His legs. Everything was torn up. Everything was so bloody.

He was marred beyond recognition. He didn't even look like a man anymore. Then they pierced

His hands and His feet and He was nailed to the cross and they rose

Him up with a piece of rope and several men. And He sat down into that divot in the ground and Jesus was raised just like Moses' pole was raised.

And crucifixion has as much to do with asphyxiation as being nailed to a cross.

In fact, that's what would happen is in the position that they were in being nailed to a cross, they would asphyxiate.

They would no longer be able to breathe. And so in the position that Jesus was in on the cross, every time

He had to take a breath, He had to kind of push upward to take a breath and He'd come down.

And each time He'd have to push upward to take a breath, the nail would drive further up His legs. His body was a living sacrifice.

His blood was poured out. And beyond the physical act of scourging and spitting and being beat with reeds and being, it says earlier, that He was beat with fists and being nailed to a cross, besides all that, besides all the physical, there is no description of what it means to take the wrath of God upon His body.

We don't even know what that's like. We can't even comprehend that. What kind of wrath would it take?

The wrath that would afford you and I an eternity in hell, that was placed upon Jesus.

And what is that like for the Son of God who's always lived in perfect harmony and perfection and communion and coexistence with the

Father and the Spirit? What would that be like to have the wrath poured out on Him that was meant for us?

We don't even know. We don't have an adequate description. And then

Jesus yelled, it is finished. The wrath was spent. It was done that day.

It says that He uttered a loud cry. He breathed His last. And it says

He yielded up His Spirit only after it was complete. You see that? Jesus still had to yield up His own

Spirit. They couldn't kill Him without Him giving His life. He yielded up His own

Spirit and it was done. And it was complete. And He died there like a common criminal.

Lifeless, hanging, and they knew. The clouds came.

The earth started shaking. Darkness fell upon Golgotha, which is called the place of the skull where He was crucified.

It was dark. Everything started shaking. And they knew. They knew this was not a regular man.

This was no regular man. And He gave

His flesh and His blood for us. They took His body off the cross. They buried it in the new tomb.

The resurrection, what we celebrate today, is the certification and official seal and guarantee that what

He did on the cross accomplished all that He promised it would. And so I suppose after hearing the

Bread of Life discourse, everyone has to ask themselves some things. Is Jesus as real to you as bread?

Is Jesus as real to you as the bread you eat? Is Jesus as real as the flesh and blood you see in yourself and you see in others?

Is He as useful to you as food? He should be more useful to you than even food.

He is the greatest provision. Is Jesus as nourishing? Is He as satisfying to you?

Is He as useful to you as your own flesh and blood, your own life? He should be more useful.

Will you trust Him? And what He's given you over the things of this world?

Or is He an afterthought? Is this just another day to come and get dressed up and take pictures and post something on social media?

Or is this a day to turn to the living God? Is this a day to turn to Christ for salvation?

This is the day of salvation. If you didn't have

Christ today, would you consider things just indifferently? It doesn't matter.

Or I can turn to Him at the very end. But what does Jesus even show us to pray?

He says, give us this day our daily bread. And so there's this daily participation and daily partaking in this daily bread, the word of God.

But I would also say that applies to Him. Do you daily partake in Jesus Christ or is

He an afterthought? Is it Easter and Christmas? Or are you daily partaking in the

Son of God? Is He your everything? And so we should not be fooled.

There are two groups in this world. There are those who have partaken of Christ, the bread of life, who are eternally satisfied.

And then there are those who have only themselves. They are their own bread.

The life, this life is their bread and they look for satisfaction in the temporal things of this life.

And if the temporal is all that satisfies you, get it now while you can. If the temporal is all that satisfies you, you should get it now while you can.

Maybe you should spend $2 ,000 ,000 a year to get it as long as you can because then that's all you'll get. But if you turn to Christ, if you receive

Him unto you, unto yourself, you will never die. You will live forever. And this is no scare tactic.

These are the words of God. If you truly want the eternal and the eternal one, then look no further than the flesh and blood that was nailed to the cross and the flesh and blood that rose again.

Look to the empty tomb today and you will join the one who left it.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus, Holy Spirit, you are the one true and living

God. And besides you, there is no other. Lord, we praise you.

We thank you for this day. We thank you for the reminder of the resurrection. God, we thank you for your word that is sharper than any two -edged sword that it's living and active.

And it pierces through all our preconceived ideas and notions and it exposes things all the way down to bone and marrow.

So Lord, we thank you for your word today, for the word that has gone out. We thank you for the reminder that Jesus is the

Christ, that he's risen from the grave. And it's as simple as that.

That he will raise us up on the last day, that we will never die. We will have eternal life.

He said eternal life. He said never die. Over and over and over in this discourse.

And God, we believe it by faith. We believe it. We hold to it. It's our only hope in this life.

And so Jesus, we thank you for what this has meant for us, that you gave your body, you gave your blood, and you rose again.