The Gospel of John, Chapter 6.
That's where we're going to start today. We finished up Chapter
5 last week, and I want to refer you to that one verse in Verse
39 of Chapter 5 as we begin here in John 6. In John 5, 39, it says, search
the scriptures. And this is Jesus talking to
the Pharisees. He said, search the scriptures.
For in them you think you have eternal life, and they are they
which testify of me. And you will not come to me that
you might have life. We just read from scripture,
Brad just read to us from Exodus chapter 16 about God giving the
manna. The term manna, as we saw when
he was reading there, it means what is it? Because when the
children of Israel saw the manna, they didn't know what it was,
and so they called it manna. What is it? When Jesus spoke
to the Pharisees, they had been, their whole life through, and
even as he talked to them, they had been holding to their own
understanding of the Old Testament. But they were mistaken in their
understanding. They had imagined that by their
own obedience to what God required, they would find favor with God. But that is not possible for
us. It is not possible for us by
our obedience to find favor with God. In fact, God gave the law
to show us our sin, to show us our disobedience, to show us
our guilt before him. We have broken God's law. And
the law also shows us our sinful nature, our inner corruptions.
And so the Pharisees, not thinking themselves to be sinful, They
trusted in their own knowledge of Scripture, and they looked
in Scripture for things to do in order that they might be pleasing
to God, in order that they might justify themselves. And then
this also, since they trusted in themselves, and not in the
Lord Jesus Christ, they then compared themselves to others.
And they used what they knew about Scripture as a way to compare
themselves and find themselves to be superior to others. and
this attitude of superiority on their part, also combined
with their own inner desire to have people follow them and admire
them and be subservient to them, they searched the scriptures
and used their knowledge of scriptures as a weapon to maintain their
position, they thought, above men. and also to put other people
in bondage by that knowledge. And Jesus said, you search the
scriptures, and he even gives the command, search the scriptures,
for in them you think you have eternal life, because they did.
thought that by their own knowledge of scripture and by their personal
obedience, they could be justified before God, which is not true.
By the law, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be
justified in God's sight. And the reason that, and what
Jesus said here is, you search the scriptures for you think
you have eternal life in them, but they testify of me. Now as I hear that verse, and
as you also hear that verse, and as we read it last week,
and have heard it many times before, what comes to my mind
is a great desire that God, the Lord Jesus Christ, would enable
me to search the Scriptures, and in searching the Scriptures
to see Him there and come to Him that I might have life. That's
what He's saying here. But the problem we have is when
we read like we just did in Exodus chapter 16, we don't know where
Christ is in that text of scripture, do we? We read about manna. We read about these people brought
out of Egypt by God and led into a wilderness, a desert where
there's no food, no water, no clothes, no stores, nothing. And they're there for 40 years.
And then they begin to complain. They begin to accuse God of being
not good. And that's called murmuring against
God. They didn't believe him. They didn't believe his goodness.
And then the Lord gives them this food to eat called manna. He also gave them quail, these
birds that came in. So he gave them to eat. And that
was scripture. And Jesus said, search the scriptures
that you might find me and come to me and have life. Thankfully,
in our day, the Lord Jesus Christ has come. He has come. explained scripture. He himself
not only spoke and explained it, but fulfilled that scripture. And that's what John chapter
six is. The Lord Jesus Christ explaining to us the scripture
we just read in Exodus chapter 16. Now, the entire New Testament
explains the Old Testament. And so when we search the Scriptures,
we have to understand the Old through the New. But we can't
understand the New either unless we understand that it speaks
of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Romans chapter one, it says
that the apostle Paul says that he is a servant of Jesus Christ,
called to be an apostle, given the gospel of God, which
concerns the Lord Jesus Christ. So we know that the gospel concerns
Christ. That's what the gospel is, is
what God has said about his son, about what he did, who he is,
and what he accomplished by what he did, and where he is, and
why he did it. and his glory and all of that.
All right, so that's the background, searching the scriptures. Now,
I want to also take you to another scripture, too, if you want to. Look at Psalm 105, because it's
talking about the manna in Psalm 105. And in verse 40, I want
you to see this text of scripture. He says in verse 40, the people
asked Psalm 105 verse 40, the people, talking about the people
of Israel in the wilderness, they asked, and he brought quails,
and notice, satisfied them with the bread of heaven. Now that's
talking about manna, the bread of heaven. Now, we can also look,
as we will, in John chapter 6 to find out that they ate the manna. And we know they ate it for 40
years. But what's interesting is that those who ate the manna
for 40 years in the wilderness died. So that manna that they
ate, which was called here the bread of heaven, wasn't the true
bread of heaven. And what we learn in reading
scripture is that God has used what he said in the Old Testament
like a shadow of the true. We can't see the true. We can't
understand spiritual things. And so God has given us shadows
so that when we understand the shadows, which are easier for
us to understand, then we can see behind that the true and
the spiritual. And so he's saying in Psalm 140
verse 40, Psalm 105 verse 40, that the people were satisfied
with the bread of heaven. God gave it, it came from God,
therefore it came from heaven, and they ate it, and their physical
bodies were satisfied. but there was a satisfaction
that would be greater than what their physical bodies received
from eating that physical manna. And that's what John chapter
six is talking about. That's the setting for this Psalm.
Now, I also wanna take you to Psalm 36 with you also. Look at Psalm
36. And these are background to what
we're going to talk about in John six. Notice in Psalm 36
in verse five, I want to pick it up in verse 5. We'll read
from verse 5 through verse 10 of Psalm 36. And notice how God
describes his attributes. This is what God is in himself. He says, thy mercy, O Lord, is
in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Now,
we are physical, aren't we? We have bodies. We have eyes,
noses, mouths. We feel things with our hands. We smell things with our noses.
We hear with our ears. And there's a lot of ways that
we interact with and engage with the physical Earth, the world
that we live in isn't there. In fact, you could say pretty
much we spend all of our time absorbed with what our bodies
can feel and sense in this world. What we feel, what we smell,
what we see, taste. touch and the feelings that we
have in response to those things. So much so that if you want to
relax, a lot of people will just go out into the forest or go
to the ocean, or they'll find something in nature, they call
it, in creation, where they feel more connected. In fact, I've
heard scientists say, for what it's worth, not much, that if
you're outdoors, you actually are in an environment that makes
you naturally lower stress and other things like that. So my
point here is that God himself describes himself in things that
we can understand through our physical senses. But the real
thing that he's describing here cannot really be understood even
by those things. And we're gonna see this in John
6. But notice how he does this. He speaks of the heavens, the
clouds, the mountains, and he talks about man and beast being
preserved. And let's read through this. He says, thy mercy, O Lord,
is in the heavens. So we think, wow, look at the
heavens, look at the sky, look at the stars and the moon and
the planets. It's huge. It's immense. God's
mercy is in the heavens. They're higher than us. They're
greater. And he says, and thy faithfulness
reacheth to the clouds. So we know the clouds are big
and high, and thy righteousness is like the great mountains.
Thy judgments are a great deep, O Lord, thou preservest man and
beast. How excellent, notice, is thy loving kindness, O God. Therefore, the children of men
put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. And Jesus refers
in Matthew 23 as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. So
the Lord speaks of himself as gathering his people to protect
them, to care for them, in his great compassion for them. And
so we have a sense, don't we, of what these things mean, and
we use that smaller, that less important, that physical understanding
of things to extrapolate, to go beyond, to understand then
something about the nature of God himself, don't we? Creation
itself helps us to see the immensity of God, that he could create
all of this by the word of his power. We think God must be almighty. Or that creation wasn't always
there and only God was there and then he spoke. We know that
God is before all things, he's therefore eternal. Eternal and
almighty. Now use this as we go to John
chapter 6. And I even want to hold your
place here in John chapter 6 and read another account of the same
thing, the same event in John 6. Look at Matthew chapter 14.
Because every one of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
speaks of this miracle we're about to read here. In Matthew
chapter 14, Matthew 14 and verse 14, notice what he says here. It says, Jesus went forth and
saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion toward
them and he healed their sick. And when it was evening, his
disciples came to him saying, this is a desert place, just
like the wilderness, right? Just like in the 40-year wilderness. He says, this is a desert place,
and the time is now past. The disciples are asking Jesus,
they say, send the multitudes away, that they may go into the
villages and buy themselves vittles, food. But Jesus said to them,
they need not depart. Give ye them to eat. Can you imagine being one of
the disciples? We're gonna read a little bit here. There's 5,000
men with women and children, at least probably 10,000 people,
a great multitude. Why were they there? Because
they had seen the miracles that Jesus did and they came to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And in coming to Him, why were
they coming? They went out into the desert
to hear Him. They came to Him because they
had a need, a need that we can describe as hunger of soul, thirst
of soul, like the children of Israel in the wilderness without
any food and they were hungry And they began to complain. So
here the setting is these people are hungry and they come to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And notice what it said at the
outset. He was moved with compassion
toward them. Now. Apply that to what we just
talked about in Psalm 36. The Lord Jesus Christ is here
among the people. He is moved with compassion. And the people see, the disciples
especially see that it is out of his compassion that he heals
these people and he's about to give them food, bread, and fish. And he's gonna do that through
the disciples with an insignificant amount of food, less than two
people could eat, enough only for a little boy's lunch. So
that we see that as God describes himself, thy mercy is in the
heavens, thy faithfulness reaches to the clouds, and the children
of men trust you because they hide under the shadow of your
wings and your judgments are like the great deep. Here, God
is revealing himself. in his compassion, and how does
he do that? Not with heavens, not with mountains,
not with the great deep, not even with the feathers of a bird,
but with the Lord Jesus Christ. The one who is here is God, and
yet he is not God only, he is also man. And he has the compassion of
a man, a perfect man with perfect compassion on a helpless people,
a diseased people, a hungry people. Now in this, I want you to get
this now. What we're seeing then in this
chapter we're about to look at here is God manifest, God known
to us, revealed to us in the nature of our own humanity, in
the nature of man. So we can't see God, can we?
God is spirit. We can't see God. How can we
know him? Could compare him to mountains
and clouds and heavens and deep and feathers and wings and things.
But those things aren't God. At best, they're shadows. The
manna in the wilderness was just a shadow of the true. What we
need to see here and know is the living God. But how can we
know him? in the Lord Jesus Christ, the
one who is both God and man, because now we can interface,
if you will, we can interact, we can engage with him, with
all that he is as man, because we understand something about
a man, don't we? Now look at Hebrews chapter two,
I want you to see this too. And we get into this, Hebrews
chapter two, we're trying to understand the significance of
what God has written here. Jesus said the scriptures are
about me, and you need to come to me that you might have life.
And here in Hebrews chapter two, he says, notice in verse 16. For verily, or truly, this is
amen, amen. Verily, he took not on him the
nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Not
just Adam, but the seed of Abraham because Christ did not come to
save all of humanity. He came to save a people given
to him by his father called the seed of Abraham. They're given
to him by promise. They're given to him to save
and he saves them and he gives them life and faith. Notice in
verse 17, wherefore, because he took on the seed of Abraham
and did not take on angels in all things, it behooved him to
be made like unto his brethren, that what? That he might be a
merciful, that's compassion. and faithful high priest in what? In things pertaining to God. And for what purpose? To make
reconciliation for the sins of the people. Now to John chapter
6. So what we see in these things
as we gather them together is that God's abundance in His mercy,
in His compassion, is presented to us in a man, the Lord Jesus
Christ, who is Himself God. So the infinite mercy of God
and the compassion of God and His judgments, and His faithfulness,
and all that He is as God, is made known to us in the man,
Christ Jesus. He is God, and yet we see Him
and know Him as man. In John 17, Jesus said, this
is eternal life. This is eternal life, that they
might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou
hast sent. That's eternal life. Do you want
eternal life? Jesus said, search the scriptures.
In them you think you have eternal life. They testify of me. You
will not come to me that you might have life. That life has
come, coming to Christ, knowing him, knowing God in him. You see that? Now, let's look
at John chapter 6 and see how the Lord himself orchestrated
and arranged all of this in order to make known himself. In John
6, it opens up in the first few verses, 14 verses, about this
event that we just read about in Matthew chapter 14. Here,
notice he says, after these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee,
which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed
him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were
diseased, just like we read in Matthew 14. And Jesus went up
into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. So he's
in a mountain with his disciples sitting. And the Passover, a
feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jesus then lifted up his
eyes, notice, Christ lifts up his eyes, he looks, in other
words, and saw a great multitude come to him in this mountain.
He said to Philip, his disciple, he said, whence shall we buy
them? Where are we gonna buy bread from that these may eat?
In verse six. And this he said to prove, Philip,
for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, 200
penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them
may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother, said to Jesus, there is a lad here, a
little boy, which has five barley loaves and two small fishes.
But what are they among so many? And Jesus said, make the men
sit down. And there was much grass in the
place, so the men sat down in number about five thousand. And
Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed
to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were sat down, and
likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When they were
filled, he said to his disciples, Gather up the fragments that
remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore, they gathered them
together and filled 12 baskets with the loaves which remained
over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when
they had seen the miracle that Jesus had said, this is of a
truth, that prophet that should come into the world. Now, I want
to point out at least three things here that are evident. First
of all, the Lord Jesus Christ created this bread out of an
insignificant amount. He created the world out of nothing,
and He did that by His word. But in this count, He created
enough to feed these 5,000 men plus the women and children with
only two loaves, or two fish and five loaves. So it was creating
bread, and the Lord Jesus Christ therefore is God. And secondly,
I want you to see here is that the Lord Jesus Christ, as God
through Moses gave manna to Israel in the wilderness for 40 years,
so God gives the true bread from heaven, which is not something
that came onto the ground, But the Lord Jesus Christ himself,
he is the true bread. And as those children of Israel
lived upon that manna for 40 years, it sustained them, their
physical bodies. So every one of God's people,
God's Israel, lives in their soul by feeding by faith upon
the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. Thirdly, I would say
this, just like we live with our bodies taking bread and water
and things to eat and drink and our bodies live, we don't have
food inside of us naturally. We're dependent on food and water,
aren't we? If you go without food and water,
your body will die. So we have to have food. God
has to give us food. Therefore, we can't live out
of our own selves. We have to live by what God gives
to us. But just as our mouth has to
eat and drink in order that we might live and be satisfied in
the same way. And that's what the Lord is teaching
us here now. In the same way, we must believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, who was crucified for our life, that we might live
in our souls and find satisfaction in our conscience. with peace
and joy before God our Savior. All right? Does that make sense?
That's the outset. I mean, that's the outline here
of what's happening. But there's many details we want
to look at when we see this here. And I want you to see some of
those details. The first thing I want you to
point out here is that a great multitude followed Jesus when
they saw His miracles, which He did on them that were diseased.
There's nothing that attracts us to Christ more than seeing
He is able to meet our great need. Do you see that? These
people had a need. He could heal the diseased. They
therefore came to Him for their need. And that's why we come
to Him. We don't have it in ourselves,
do we? We don't come to Him because we're all good. We don't come
to Him because we have what we need to live. We come to Him
for the healing of our disease, which is our sin. You see, we
have to be healed, and Scripture says we're healed by His stripes.
So we come to Him that He would heal us from our sin. And that's why these people came.
And it says here in verse 3, Jesus went up into a mountain
and there he sat with his disciples. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ gives
to his people. But what is it? How does he give
to them? Well, he first comes and he lived
and he died and gave himself for his people. Boys, just go
into that door right there. If you need to go to the bathroom,
to the left there. Yeah, push the door and the light
will come on. There you go. So He had to come
in order for Him to give life to us. He had to die and then
rose again and in the resurrection He then went up to glory and
from His throne in glory He does what? He sends his spirit with
his gospel to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins to
his people. In Acts 5.31, the apostle Peter
said, God has exalted him as a prince and a savior to give
repentance and the forgiveness of sins to Israel. And that's
what he's doing there. So the Lord up in the mountain
with his disciples teaches us that he would accomplish all
that was necessary to give us life. He would be exalted by
God and from his exalted place in glory, he would send his spirit
that we might receive from him. the bread of life in the gospel,
and we would see and trust in him for that. So that's what
we see in verse three. And then in verse four, he says,
in the Passover, a feast of the Jews was nigh. It's interesting
how God combines the things from the Old Testament, brings them
forward into the new, puts them into the life of Christ, and
then shows us what they mean when he fulfills that Old Testament
shadow. In 1 Corinthians 5 and verse
7 it says, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. So the
Passover immediately, now having that information, brings into
this that what is being spoken of here is the sacrifice of Christ
for us. The Passover was near. The Lord
Jesus would be taken on the night of the last Passover. That night
when he was taken, he was with his disciples in the upper chamber,
the last supper, and then he's taken, and he's tried, and he's
crucified, and then he is laid in the grave and rises again
in justification of his people. And that's what's going on here.
So the manna? The mountain, the diseased people,
the great multitude, all these speak of a spiritual thing. These
things are just to help us understand through this physical interface
what's true in a spiritual sense. The shadow is going to break
forth into the reality. In verse five, he says, when
Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw a great multitude come to
him, he said to Philip, whence shall we buy bread that these
may eat? Now, the Lord Jesus Christ here
is said to be seeing the great multitude that comes to him.
And what does that remind you of when you hear the Lord Jesus,
who is God, seeing? Well, to me, it reminds me of
what happened in Genesis chapter 22, when Abraham had gone to
the Mount Moriah with his son Isaac to offer Isaac up by the
command of God on the altar there. And he arrives there and Isaac
asks his father Abraham, he says, my father, here's the wood and
the fire for the burnt offering, but where is the lamb? And that
question was setting it up so that God could answer, and he
says, my son, God will provide himself a lamb, or the lamb for
the sacrifice. Himself provided. And so, and
then in verse 14 of Genesis 22, he says, he called the place
Jehovah-Jireh, because it means Jehovah, the Lord, sees. Here, Christ sees with His eyes
the great multitude come to Him. Because God's name is Jehovah
Jireh, it means that He sees. And He doesn't just look, like
when we see, we see something, we say, oh yeah, look at that.
No, when God sees, He sees to it also. And so Jehovah Jireh
means not only does he see the need, but he sees two and provides
the need, and the provision that he provides is himself the Lamb. God would provide himself the
Lamb. It all fits, doesn't it? The
Passover, the Lamb. God would look upon the Passover
Lamb, and he would see that blood sprinkled, and he would pass
over his people. He would not bring the destruction
upon them that they deserved, But he would see the blood of
his son and pass over them, Christ our Passover. And here the Lord
Jesus Christ as the Lord sees the needs of his people and he
sees himself as the lamb that would meet those needs when he
would give his body and shed his blood in order for their
life. And then he would give himself
not only for them, but to them, when he would give them that
gospel that would teach them, this is your life. So that his
exhortation, search the scriptures, for in them you think you have
eternal life, but they are they which testify of me, and you
will not come to me that you might have life now, is setting
it up. See, Christ is fulfilling the scripture. He's the Lamb
of God. He's the one who is our Passover
sacrifice. He's the manna, the bread sent
from heaven, the true bread, which a man eats. He doesn't
die, but lives forever. And that's what this is about
here. So he asked Philip, whence shall these buy bread? Philip
didn't know. I mean, when the Lord asks us
questions, In my own experience, when someone asks me a question,
I'm always like, well, yeah, I'm going to try to come up with
an answer. But when the Lord asks us a question, it's to show
us that we need Him to provide the answer. This is the grace
of God, isn't it? Do you have a question? Take
it to the Lord. How is He going to answer it?
He's going to give us an answer. What will His answer be? Well,
what did He answer Philip? He answered with himself, didn't
he? He himself is going to give the bread. The Lord Jesus Christ
has to give. But Philip said, 200 penny worth
of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them
may take a little. And in saying that, Philip is being used by
God to show the inability of the disciples to meet the needs
of these people. I don't know. We don't have enough
money. There's no way we could do this.
In fact, in Matthew 14, the disciples said, send them away. Let them
buy bread in the villages. No, Jesus said, you give them
to eat. They do not need to depart. They
have come to me, the bread of life, and they are not going
to go away hungry because he had compassion on them. This
is God's grace, isn't it? Just seeing, dripping here in
the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is God and man in his compassion. We see it as man. And behind
that, we see the infinite compassion and the almighty power of the
eternal God who is going to do something here that is so significant. There's nothing that compares
to this. And so one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother,
said to him, there's a lad here. which has five barley loaves
and two small fish, what are they among so many? Obviously,
they're not nearly enough for hardly a few, let alone so many. And Jesus said this, now he begins
to work. He says, make the men sit down.
These people are not going to do anything. They're in the desert
place. There's grass there. He said,
make them sit down. Now there was much grass in the
place. What does that remind us of?
Well, it reminds me of the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green
pastures. He leaves me beside the still
water. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ is the great shepherd
of our souls. And he causes, he tells his disciples,
you do this. Tell the people, tell the men,
sit down. Because the shepherd is going
to give you food. And so the men sat down, a number
about 5,000, verse 11, and Jesus took the loaves. And what did
he do? First thing he did, when he had
given thanks. The Lord Jesus Christ, who is
God the Son, gives thanks to his Father. What does he thank
him for? Is he talking about this bread
that he's breaking? Oh, it certainly included that.
But what did he see here? How long ago did the Lord Jesus
Christ see this need of these people? Did it just come to him? I mean, he's up on the mountain
and all of a sudden, oh, look, these people are coming. Look,
there's a great multitude. They have nothing to eat. I better
make some bread. No, He is God. Known unto God
are all His works from the foundation of the world. There was never
a time, never a time in time, nor a time in eternity, if you
could talk that way, when the Lord Jesus Christ did not already
know the need of His people and that He Himself would provide
that need out of Himself. So it has really come to this
time like the climax in a long drama. First God gave them the
physical miracle of making this bread out of nothing. Then he's
going to use this miracle to expound that he himself is the
bread. So we're going to see this, and
this is the way God works. First He gives the physical,
then He gives the spiritual. First there was Adam, and then
there was Christ. First there's the earthly, and
then there's the heavenly. First the shadow, then the reality
and the substance. First the promise of God, then
Christ the fulfillment. First God gave the law and all
of our sin and helplessness to keep God's law was made evident,
painfully evident, and even today it's painfully made evident to
us day by day. We completely fail all the time. And then, after the law, God
gave the Lord Jesus Christ, and by Him we learn grace and truth,
the fulfillment of the law. This is the way God's law should
be fulfilled. This is the way the sacrifices
should be made in the Lord Jesus Christ. the glory of God in creation,
then the glory of God in the stoop of humility in love and
grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. First, our fall in sin, then
our resurrection in the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal salvation. First, Christ came in weakness,
then Christ rose in power. First, our need by our offense
to God, by our sins, and then God's provision in the Lamb of
God. And so first here, the Lord Jesus
Christ was set up from everlasting, and then he shows himself to
the people here in this miracle of breaking the bread in order
that he might lay open the scriptures that talk about himself and then
tell them, if you come to me, then you will have everlasting
life. That's what he's saying here.
And so he says, he goes on in John chapter six. It says, he
had given thanks. He gave thanks to his father.
He knew why he came. He knew his father's will. He
knew the people he came to give bread to. It wasn't just 5,000
men with women and children. Look at verse 33. He says in
verse 33, for the bread of God is He which cometh down from
heaven and giveth life unto the world." That's a much broader
scope, isn't it, than 5,000 men plus the women and children?
And that's a much greater meal than the two small fish and the
five barley loaves even created into bread. Here, the Lord Jesus
Christ is giving his life for the life of the world. Now, the world here doesn't include
everybody because not everybody gets given life, does it? If
he gave his life for the world, Do you think he actually accomplished
what he came to do? Do you think he would give himself
and not actually accomplish by the gift, the offering of himself
to God, the result of his sacrifice? Can Christ waste his life? Can God give his son and not
save those for whom he gave his son? In Romans chapter 8, it
says, Who is He that condemneth? It is Christ that died. How can
anyone for whom Christ died therefore be condemned? It can't happen. God Himself uses the argument,
if Christ died for us, we cannot be condemned. And so the life
of the world here includes all those who are given life by the
Lord Jesus Christ through His death. That's what he's saying,
I came down from heaven to give life to the world. So much more,
a greater multitude than the 5,000 with the men and women
and children. And so we see in this, look at,
keep going on here. He says, he gave thanks, and
we know now that this is him giving thanks to his father,
that he could give himself as a sacrifice for his people, for
their life. Then he distributed to the disciples,
and the disciples to them that were set down, and likewise of
the fish as much as they would." So God's purpose is that first
he sends his son. Christ takes the sins of his
people. With those sins made his, he
dies under the wrath of God for those sins. Having fully died
and put away the penalty and the sins for which he died, he
rose again justified his people, and then he says he gave the
fragments, he gave the broken bread to his disciples because
then he said to his disciples, now you go and you preach this
gospel. This gospel that tells of my sacrificial substitutionary
death by which I save my people from their sins. You go and you
preach this good news to the diseased multitude. that they
might come to me, that they might have life. So the disciples go
and they take the bread, just like the apostles went with the
gospel to preach it throughout the world, according to what
Christ told them to do. And notice, everyone took as
much as they wanted, as much as they wanted. They were all
filled, which is what we read in Psalm 105, verse 40. They
were satisfied with the bread of heaven. Now here the people are satisfied
with the bread Jesus gives, but this is showing that all those
to whom Christ gives himself to know him and to believe on
him, they're satisfied with the bread of heaven. Look at verse
35. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh
to me shall never hunger. That's satisfied, isn't it? He
that believeth on me shall never thirst. Now what does that mean? Does that mean that you're never
going to get hungry again physically? No. Does it mean that sin won't
be a problem with you anymore? That you just live above sin?
No, it doesn't mean that. Does it mean then that if you
once believe on Christ, you don't have to think about Him anymore
because you're so satisfied, you just go away, you just forget
about Him? No, it doesn't mean that either. What it means is
that having seen in the Lord Jesus Christ all of your salvation
accomplished by Him alone, and knowing that in His life and
in His death, God gives you life because of Him, Therefore, you
have no need to go to anywhere else to get bread. You have no
other Savior. You're completely satisfied with
Him and you keep coming to Him alone for all of your life and
all of your salvation. That's what He's saying here.
All right. So he says here, verse 13, when
they had gathered them together, they filled the fragments, 12
baskets, with what was left over. Now I want to read a text of
scripture in Ephesians to show you what this is talking about
here. In Ephesians chapter 3, it says, now unto him, in verse
20, Ephesians 3.20, unto him that is able to do exceeding
abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the
power that worketh in us. Unto him be glory in the church
by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." He's
saying here, that God is able to give us so much more than
we could ask or think. And so the people here, they're
satisfied with Christ and yet there's leftovers. There's leftovers
because we can never empty the river of God's mercy. We can
never empty the eternal love of God. We take it all in and
yet there is an abundance. And notice how Jesus tells them
what to do. He said, In verse 12, when they
were filled, he said to the disciples, gather up the fragments that
remain that nothing be lost. What he's saying here is that
all that Christ did of all that he did, nothing will go to waste. It will accomplish everything
he designed it to accomplish. God doesn't waste his word. He
accomplishes by his word whatever he intends by it. Does His Word
come to us and reveal Christ to us? And in that revelation
of Christ to our souls, does He give us life? That's His Word. That's the power of His Word.
And yet, does His Word go out throughout all the world and
many hear it and don't believe it? Is God's word somehow failing
to accomplish what He intends? No. That also is God accomplishing
His will. Because the gospel comes to us,
it's either a saver of life to life or of death to death. It
accomplishes whatever He intends by it. And so whatever Christ
does, He accomplishes His will. And that's what we see here.
Now this is all set up as I am trying to lead us into the rest
of the chapter, which is the exposition, the explanation of
this by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, when He explains what
He did in this miracle, what He means in Scripture, when He
Himself is the bread of life. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for sending your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be the Savior
of your people. Thank you for giving To Him all
those you would save. And thank you that He didn't
fail in one thing that you gave Him to do, but He accomplished
everything in His life and in His death and in His resurrection.
Therefore He is exalted to the highest place and given authority
and power over everything. to give life to whom he will,
and to justify all of his people in his own righteousness. And
thank you, Lord, that you've given us this promise that all
who come to him have life in Him, will not be cast out, but
will be raised up at the last day, and that we will live upon
Him. Thank you that He lives in us and we live in Him by this
life He's given for us, so that we see the great love of our
Savior and the love of our God and our Father, the love of the
Son of God for us. What great grace that you would
come to us who are as these people in a desert place, diseased,
hungry, thirsty, unable to produce anything of all of their needs,
and yet you saw and in compassion came and provided and gave them
everything in yourself. Lord Jesus, we pray that you
would give us this eternal life, that we might know you and believe
you and come to you and have this life in knowing you. And
we pray that you would continue this life, that we would be filled
and abundantly satisfied with your goodness, as you've said
in the Psalms. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.