We saw in the last two weeks about a day in the life of Jesus with the feeding of the multitudes during the day and then His walking on the water that night. As God He can deal with all our crises whether from our inadequacies or from our fears.
Now we come to Day Two, the following day, as Jesus interacts with the crowds who are still thinking of the bread they had the day before. As a symbol of the basic needs of life, the crowds want more bread. Jesus wants them
“to see Him as the Bread of Life, the real foundation of all of their lives,”
and respond appropriately.
As Jesus discloses Himself as the Bread of Life, we will see how we can be nourished by this Bread in three ways:
By believing in Jesus
By being taught by God
By the sacrifice of Jesus and our appropriating it
“We are nourished by the Bread of Life by believing in Jesus.”
The crowds did not understand the miracle of the feeding the day before. They missed the point that it was about Jesus and Jesus says they should seek the real food for eternal life that He would give them.
They respond wanting to know what God wants them to do but Jesus says the only work of God for them is to believe in Jesus. This phrase regulates our entire passage. I cannot do any works on my own to earn a right standing with God. It is only by believing in Jesus. But this belief is not from my own ability either. God has to work for it to happen. We are totally dependent on Jesus and God.
Jesus then says He is the Bread of Life, the true source of our lives. Coming to Him, we will not hunger and believing in Him we will never thirst.
The promise is wide and far reaching. All who come are received by Jesus and He Himself guarantees our security until He raises us in the last day. Our standing with God did not start with our works and it does not finish with them either.
So, we behold Jesus, seeing Him accurately, come to Him, depending on Him, and believe in Him, entrusting ourselves to His care to save us completely.
“We are nourished by the Bread of Life by being taught by God.”
How can we believe? Is it within us to just figure it all out? No, we must be taught by God and drawn by Him to believe in Jesus.
The crowds did not understand and Jesus challenges them to not go on trying without God’s help. Our belief in Jesus is initiated by God the Father teaching us. We do not have the resources in ourselves and must rely on Him.
This is a challenge for all to ask God for His help in seeing Jesus, which goes against our pride. We are taught many things in life because we just don’t know. A prophecy of the Old Testament is that God’s people will be taught by Him. So, our lives in Jesus must start this way as well.
Jesus gives two possibilities: Be like the crowds’ fathers who ate manna in the wilderness but did not listen to God and die or allow God to teach us to see Jesus as the True Bread from heaven that gives life to the world and eternal life to all who believe.
“We are nourished by the Bread of Life by appropriating His sacrifice.”
Jesus goes on to say that His flesh is given for the life of the world and then says all who eat His flesh and drink His blood have eternal life. All must do this to have life in Him. What a hard statement but what does it mean?
The key here is to remember that both the wording and reference to eating and drinking was found earlier in talking about belief in Jesus (verse 35). These verses here are a graphic illustration about applying Jesus’ sacrifice to our lives.
We have sacrificial terminology that the readers would understand. The bodies of animals and their blood is given as a sacrifice. So, Jesus is pointing to His own sacrifice for the world. Our situation of disobedience to God is so serious that His sacrifice must be made. But His sacrifice is sufficient so that its effect is eternal life.
The eating His flesh and drinking His blood shows our personal reception of His sacrifice for us. It is not “out there” but now “inside” me. I have believed and taken in all that Jesus is and has done in dying for me. I am now being nourished by the Bread of Life.
Have you tasted the Bread of Life? We do so by believing in Jesus and trusting His sacrifice for us as God teaches us these truths. We depend on Him for each step. He is waiting for you to come to Him for eternal life.
