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In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear baptized believers in Christ’s Church, we all have needs. There are voids that are dark. There are things that are missing. There are troubles that go unresolved. Since the fall of man in the garden, this is the reality that every person experiences that has ever been born here on the earth. They have needs unfulfilled. It doesn’t matter if you’re the rich and famous behind the secure walls in your mansions, or if you’re that homesteader living off the grid high up in the mountains. Everyone is working to survive, trying to maintain, and are attempting to get ahead.
That’s why Jesus was such a magnet. As He was traveling through Israel and outside of his borders, He was fulfilling the physical needs of the people. He was healing the sick. He was giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, normal mobility to the deformed, life to the dead, and freedom from demon possessions. Just the day before, Jesus was in a desolate region of the northern sea of Galilee. He was greeted there by 5,000 men along with women and children from their communities. He saw them and He had compassion on them. They were there like sheep without a shepherd.
The Scriptures tell us that He first taught the people many things about the kingdom of God. Interlaced with the teaching and the preaching, Jesus touched the lives of many people that were in need of healing. So He performed miracles. At the end of the day though, they realized that Jesus had filled their bellies, all of them, with a miracle after the blessing of only five loaves and two fish to the point of having an additional 12 baskets full of leftovers. All they had to do was sit down on the grass and receive the gift from the hands of Jesus’ stewards, the disciples.
The next day though, they wanted that gravy train to continue, so they were searching for Jesus, but He had miraculously disappeared as they were calculating the boat traffic to and from that desolate place. No one had seen him. So they went to Capernaum seeking Jesus. And when they found him, the first thing out of their mouth was, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” And so often as He does, Jesus gives the people what they need and not what they ask for. Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking Me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
The words that Jesus had spoken to them on the hillside the day before was of no value to them. They did not receive it. These words did not take root in their heads, in their hearts, so that to be grounded in the truth of who Jesus is and His purpose for coming into the world. They even overlooked all the miracles that Jesus had performed among them that were the exclamation marks to the word proclaimed. He was continuing the herald of John the Baptist, “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.” The wait is over. I am the Messiah that was promised to come into the world. Believe in me.
Believe in me and my words about the difference between the people of God and the people of this world and what makes them different. From their perspective though, all they needed was for their Messiah to be a bread king, and their tunnel vision led them to seek Jesus to provide only for their temporal needs. This thinking, though, was not isolated to this one group of people. It’s so easy to drift. It’s so easy to lose focus. It’s so easy to be consumed in the things of this world and thus seeking only the means to find remedies and relief of the things that are temporal.
Remember these people and their leaders had God’s Word through Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets. They had the first three chapters of the book of Genesis, the creation, the fall, and the promise. But it’s so easy to flip the understanding and priority of internal to temporal and objective justification to subjective merits when placing one’s own reasoning over the Word of God. This was Jesus’s point. Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give to you. For on Him God the Father has set His seal. For them, for them it was the unchangeable promise of God, through which man may be reconciled back to Him.
Jesus was redirecting their sight. He was showing them the bigger picture. He was giving them the means to see it. Life is more than time upon this rotating ball that we call the earth. They can’t see it with their own eyes and their heads, but He will give them the sight to see the eternal life to come and the means through which they will receive it. He was telling them, you can’t work for this new life. It’s beyond the abilities of your merit and your works.
The one that God has sent will secure this means of salvation for you and for you. The people were blinded by their reasoning so that they could not hear His words. Instead, they asked, “What must we do to be doing the works of God?” They were all told that it would be given to them through God’s agent. Their part would be like the encounter that they had on the hillside. Just sit there. Just sit there and receive the free gift that you did not earn through your works. Believe it. It’s called faith.
In Hebrews 11 defines it as faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, but that was not good enough. They had to contribute something to this eternal life even if they had to manipulate it. This group before Jesus had heard His words and seen His miracles, but they wanted more for they said, “Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you, what work do you perform?”
Now they were wanting to make their trust in Jesus conditional. Dr. Martin Luther’s response to their hardened heart is, the learned and the work-righteous always know better. Their love, they love God as lice love a tramp. Far from being interested in His welfare, their one concern is to feed on Him and to suck His blood. In other words, they wanted what they wanted according to their own determined conditions, and they wanted Jesus to be their source and supplier for their self-determined utopia, and they wanted it all. They wanted it all without faith.
Their justification for the demand was that of Moses and the manna. Their conviction was that Moses fed their ancestors. A million people give or take a couple hundred thousand in the wilderness for forty years, and Jesus only fed five thousand men with some women and children on one afternoon. So in their mind, Moses was greater than Jesus. So again, Jesus sets them straight by placing the Word of God above reasoning so it could be the servant to the Word of God.
It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. He directs their sight to three points. The first, Moses was not the giver behind the flakes falling from heaven every morning for forty years as they wandered through the wilderness. But no, it is His Father. Secondly, the food was not the true bread from heaven. And thirdly, the Father gives. In the original language of Greek, it is in the present form, meaning the Father is doing it at that present time. He is now giving this true bread from heaven.
Jesus is offering Himself to them. Now, He takes it to the next level when He says, “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” In the epistle lesson, we see Psalm 68, 18. With the descending and ascending language being interpreted through the lenses of Jesus’ saving works. This is the whole discourse with Jesus. The people were still stuck in their temporal wants because they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Now Jesus makes His point where there can be no misunderstanding for He says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.” This is called a Hebrew parallelism. Jesus is making His point in the first section, stating it again slightly with different words in the second section, and He brings clarity to the first in all of His intent for them to hear. With one of the seven I am’s found in the Gospel of John, it’s tied to Exodus 3 with God telling Moses that His name is I Am.
Jesus was telling the people that the Person standing right before them is God in their presence. The only way to receive eternal life is to believe in Him and His words and works for them. For them. For you. Through faith in Him, they had received the free gift of forgiveness of sin, salvation, eternal life. They don’t know it yet, but the way that it will be made possible is that through Jesus’ ascent on the top of the Mount of Calvary where He will hang on the cross between heaven and earth as that perfect sacrificial lamb. It is there that He will defeat sin, death, and the power of the devil with the shedding of His blood and the giving of His life.
He did it so that each of you would receive the free gift of eternal life through His means of grace. Reasoning can even mess up the biblical understanding of free and the attitude of receiving. It’s easy to receive something at no cost to the recipient with the understanding that others sacrifice to give it, and the attitude that the other has plenty and I deserve a portion of what they possess.
Recently, I was at one of the local coffee shops meeting with a person that was attending one of our confirmation classes. As I was leaving, an older man with a long beard and a ponytail sitting at a table on the patio asked to talk to me. I said sure and I sat down at the table with him. He proceeded to tell me that he was an atheist, but his questions were for his wife who was homebound with many complications. The reason that I was there is because his wife was a Christian and he wanted to know how he could help her. He asked if I could talk to her. I said yes, just give me your address.
He asked me next, “How much is it going to cost?” My response was something like, “It costs nothing.” His head dropped. His voice quivered as he said, “Nothing is free.” I sensed that he was confessing that he and his wife were unworthy and undeserving of my time and my free assistance. The next words that came out of my mouth were, “God’s grace through Christ Jesus is free. It’s free.” He sat there attentively in his chair and he received all I told him as I shared the gospel story of Jesus and how God’s love is for him and his wife.
This morning, through faith, after confessing and kneeling and standing at your pews, you received absolution, God’s gift of forgiveness of your sins. Now, through the gift of faith, you’re sitting here and receiving God’s Word that is efficacious for the strengthening of your faith. And in a few minutes, through the gift of faith, you will come to the Lord’s table and receive from the One who is both the giver and the gift bringing nothing but the faith that he has given to you. You will receive His body and His blood for the forgiveness of your sins.
Your brothers and sisters in Christ, our Lord Jesus, upon His death on the cross, was buried, and as He foretold, He rose from the dead on the third day. After spending a short time with His disciples, Jesus ascended into heaven. Before His departure, He opened the Scriptures showing it to His disciples and to all believers that would come after them, the things of God including His promise to be with them as they journey through this wilderness of life until He returns.
He returns for His bride, His church, and all those who bear His name in order to usher them into His heavenly kingdom, where they and all believers, all believers, you and me, will live life eternal with Him. Even with all the curve balls of this world and all the times that we live without understanding of what’s going on around us, He gives to us the gift to believe. To believe in Him and to believe in His Word.
Thanks be to God. The peace that passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
