This is a good time to be here. Looking at this particular chapter,
the whole Gospel of John is just wonderful. This particular chapter
is so very powerful, so very clear, very revealing, it's urgent. It's proving, it proves the true
people of God from from those who are not. The words of our
Lord Jesus Christ, they were spoken to a multitude. Our Lord
spoke to many, perhaps as many as a thousand or more. And look
at verse 66, John. At the end of his words, after
he said all that he did, verse 66 says, many of his disciples, or those
who appeared to be, went back and walked no more with him.
So that's how revealing this is. That's how proving this is. Everything he says here proved
his true disciples from the false, separated. That's what he said
I came to do, to come to put man at variance. But now, his
true disciples look at verse 68. Simon Peter said, Lord, to
whom shall we go? When he asked, will you also
go away? He said, to whom? Where? Why? What will we? Peter, from the depth of his
heart, is saying, you're my life. Everything you say, I hang on
it. I was dead when you found me and you gave me life. And
now you are my life. That's what he's saying. And
our Lord said this, and here's how you know if you're chosen.
This is how you know, the scripture says, give diligence to make
your calling and election sure. Well, how could you know you're
one of the elect? If you can say like Simon Peter,
I can't go. I can't leave. I don't want to. And I can't. You're my life. Your words are my life. And our Lord said in verse 70,
Have not I chosen you? That's why. That's why. Oh, may
we find that we are chosen. May we find ourselves in Christ,
chosen and found in Him. And that these words are our
life, our meat, our bread. Look at verse 26. Here's where
we begin. Verse 26, He said to a multitude
that followed Him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Our Lord said,
Verily, often. Verily means this is true, this
is firm, this is absolute. It's actually the word Amen. It's the same word as Amen. Amen, Amen. Christ is even called
the Amen. in the Revelation, isn't it?
Those of you who know that verse. He's called the Amen, the true
one. Everything he says is true. And
he said, truly, truly, I say unto you. He said this twice
throughout the Gospel of John for emphasis. Look at what he
says here in verse 26 to many. Barely, barely, I say unto you,
you seek me, not because you saw the miracles. He already
upbraided and rebuked many whom he said, you follow me because
of the miracles. Curiosity seekers. You want to
see something. You want to see something fantastic.
You want to witness a miracle. He says to this group, you sought
me not because you saw the miracles, but because you did eat of the
loaves and were filled. He had just fed 5,000 men, not
counting women and children. And he said to them, in rebuke,
he said, You're following me for what you can get out of me. Boy, isn't that so many, if not
most, professing Christians today, is it not? Many want to see something,
want to see some fantastic thing. They don't come to see Christ's
glory. Many come because they want the
benefits that come with being religious, and want the benefits.
They want religion for gain, that is, and want the blessings.
True worshippers, Paul said, true worshippers worship God
in spirit. I mean, they come to the house
of worship, the house of God, to worship God. to praise Him
from a heart that's thankful and grateful and a heart that's
received mercy and grace. They come to rejoice in the Lord
Jesus Christ. They come to seek Christ, to
see His glory, to hear His Word, to hang on His Word, the words
of life. And they have no confidence in
the flesh. They don't want anything to do with the flesh. And our Lord said, labor not,
27, labor not for the meat which perisheth. And most do that. Most are going after and hungry
and thirsting for what our Lord said, perishing things, the things
of this world. Perishing things of clay, born
but for one brief day. Pass from my heart away. May the Lord Jesus be mine. all my desire." He said, the
meat of this world, the things of this world don't satisfy meat
being something that really fills you up. Look at verse 55, "...whoso
eateth my flesh, and drinketh my..." Verse 55, he says, "...my
flesh is meat indeed, my blood is drink indeed." Do you understand?
Do you understand what he just said? You must. This is life. Our Lord said,
except you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part in
it. You don't have life. Neither hath the Son hath life.
Do you understand what that means? That his meat, his flesh, and
his blood is meat indeed, and his drink indeed. Do you understand
that? Do you hunger and thirst for that? This proves, this sets
apart the truth from the false. He said to thousands, he said,
you follow me for what you can get out of it? Or the others,
he said, you follow me because of what you see. It's all glorious
and it's just wonderful. You feel good, religion and all
that. It's just wonderful. The true disciples of Christ
want and desire and beat on Christ. And they crucify Him. Alright, much is going to be
said about bread. Our Lord spends nearly this whole
chapter talking about bread. He just said to thousands, you
follow me because of the loaves. And now he's going to tell them
what true bread is. And this will prove us. This
was so enlightening to me. As many times as I've heard this
preached from and tried to myself. Still, I learned a great deal
here. Many at one time believed in
him. That's what it says over in chapter
4, I believe it did, chapter 3. But he did not commit himself
to them. He said in verse 35, I am the
bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on me. And remember, not long
ago, we saw the difference between believing in Him, just believing
in Him, and believing on Him, casting your all on Him, like
calling on Him as one. You're desperate and you need
Him. It's like laying hold on Him, not just believing in Him,
but on Him. He said, This is the will of
him that sent me, and every one that would see of the Son, and
believeth on him, may have everlasting life. Verse 47, Barely, barely,
truly, truly, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath
everlasting life. Kind of like eating food, isn't
it? You may believe the food's good for you. You may believe
it's nutritious. You may believe that's food. You don't believe until you eat
it. And that is a sign of life. It's a sign of health. Blessed
are they, our Lord said in beginning his preaching, he said, blessed
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. What righteousness?
Well, people all over the world want to be religious. Minnie
and I were passing by the Catholic place again today. We always
have to. And it's just cool. Parking lot's
just cool. And I said to her, how? How can people sit and listen
to that and go to that? Why? What do they find in that? I know you've seen some of that
on TV or whatever. They go through all this hocus
pocus and dominocus and they don't do anything or say anything.
People go and sit, supposedly intelligent people, wise men
of the flesh, mighty, noble, go to sit and listen to what? And we both concluded, why they
do that is it makes them feel good. And it's their righteousness. It's their religion. It's their
acceptance with God. And we go through this. They're
born in that. They need to keep up this appearance. They need to keep up their appearance. And that's how you get to heaven.
That's their righteousness. But when our Lord said, blessed
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, He's talking
about Himself. himself. Verse 64, look down here. He
said, There are some of you that believe not. Jesus knew from
the beginning who they were that believed not, because the foundation
of God standeth sure. The Lord knoweth them that are
His. How does He know? He elected them. He chose them.
That's the last thing He said, didn't He, to His disciples.
They couldn't go away, and they were following Him. They left
the work. They left the meat that perished.
They left their homes and families and their livelihood and their
boats and their nets and all that that once was everything
to them that they labored for. They left all those things they
labored for to follow Him. Why? Now they have life. Now
they have the hunger and thirst for Christ Himself. He is their
life now. And our Lord said, That's because
I've chosen you. Because I've given you life. The foundation of God's stand
is sure. So I hope through this, we all, everyone in here might
examine ourselves to see if we can be of the faith. And the
faith being Christ. The faith being we need, we want,
we need, we worship the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of crucifixion.
All right? Look at verse 30. Bates said,
show us a sign. We've already been through these
verses, but show us a sign that we might believe today. What
signs show us thou that we may see and believe thee? What dost
thou work? Remember what our Lord said about sign seekers?
Remember what he said about those that seek after signs? Isn't
that religion today? The whole world, you know, is
getting more and more Pentecostal, charismatic, aren't they? Religion.
It's true. Why? It's flesh. It's flesh. We witnessed a bunch of flesh,
didn't we, John and Irene? Tom, Ron, Tim. Flesh. That was
show. Feel good religion. My, my. Flesh, flesh, flesh. They said,
show us a sign. The only sign our Lord said that
would be given was what? Do you remember? Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly of
the whale three days and three nights, so the Son of Man must
be in the heart of Christ, crucified, buried, and risen again. This
is the sign. And this is what we want to see.
We want to see a sign. This is it. This is it. He said in verse 31, they said,
Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, manna, as it is written.
He gave them bread from heaven to eat. And our Lord said, Verily,
verily, Truly, truly, Moses gave you
not that bread. And I went back and looked it
up, and Moses himself said of the manna, this is the bread
the Lord has given you. And yet they turned it in like
everything else. The Lord's Passover had turned
into the Jews' Passover. And this bread, they said, Moses
gave us that bread. Moses didn't give you that bread. Moses gave you not that bread,
but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. The true
bread, my Father. Now, here's something significant.
He didn't say, He's your Father. He didn't. He never did here. Now's the time. If it's like false religion says, that God is the Father of all,
God loves everyone, and Christ wants to save them, now's the
time for Him to tell them, isn't it? There's thousands of people
here. Tell them. He said, My Father. Over in John 8, I was going to
take you there, but He said in John 8, He said, If God were
your Father, you would love Me. You would hear me. You would
come to me. I would be your all. If God were your father, but
he says he's not. He never did say that. Sermon
on the Mount, he did said, said your father. Who's he talking
to? His disciples. And one of the last things he
said to his disciples when he rose from the grave, he said,
go tell my disciple. that I go to my Father and your
Father." He didn't say that to everybody. He said, My Father giveth you the
true bread from heaven. And he calls himself the true
bread. Bread from heaven, true bread,
real bread. Verse 33, the bread of God. Verse
35, the bread of life and the bread of life. Verse 48, I am that bread of
life. Verse 41, I am the bread which
came down from heaven. Bread from heaven. Verse 51,
I am the living bread. He keeps talking about bread. Why so much talk about bread?
Because this proves the true people of God. Go back to Exodus
16 with me, and let's look at this man a brief. Exodus 16.
This was such a blessing and so revealing, so very revealing. Exodus 16, amazing words. Now,
in John 6, it says they began to murmur at him. Listen to this. This is God's Word, there's no
doubt about it. They began to murmur at him because he said,
I'm the bread come down from heaven. They murmured. I read
it with me in Exodus 16. In Exodus 16, verse 2, they took
their journey from Edom, the whole congregation, and the whole
congregation of the children of Israel murmured. They started
murmuring. And they all said, Would to God
we died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt. We had
flesh pots. flesh in Egypt. That's where
we just want to die. He brought us into the wilderness
to kill us. Verse 4, So the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I will
rain bread from heaven. I will rain bread from heaven
to you. Verse 9, Moses spake unto Aaron, saying, Say unto all the congregation
of the children of Israel, Come near before the Lord. He hath
heard your murmurings." You know John 6. They began to
murmur, and right after they murmured, he said, Why do you
murmur among yourselves? No man can come unto me except
the Father which has sent him down. Is this the Word of God
or what? Amazing. Amazing. Say, I've heard
your murmuring. Come nearer to me. Come nearer.
He's heard your murmuring. Verse 10, It came to pass, as
Aaron spake unto the whole congregation, the children of Israel, they
looked toward the wilderness. Behold, the glory of the Lord appeared
in the cloud. Christ is all of this. He is
all of it. The Lord spake unto, verse 14. Go down there. So the next day, when the dew
was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there
lay a small round thing. as small as the horcrux on the
ground. It lay on the ground, a small,
round thing. In verse 15, when the children
of Israel saw it, they said one to another, What is it? Or manna, the Hebrew word. Manna. What is it? And Moses said, here's what he
said, This is the bread The bread which the Lord hath given you
to eat. This is what you're going to
eat. This is what you're going to live on all your days through
this wilderness. This is the bread that you're
going to live on. Bread from heaven. They said,
what is it? This is amazing. Manna. And it says down in verse 18,
They did meet it with an omer, that is, measure it with an omer. He that gathered much had nothing
over him. He that gathered little had no lack. They gathered every
man according to his eating. Those that were hungry, those
that had need, they gathered. Those that were hungry, those
that had need, they gathered every day. And they ate it. And they all
were filled. Nobody lacked anything. It was
perfect, filling, complete food. They didn't need anything else,
except that water out of the rock. And they gathered it. They ate it. And look down at
verse The House of Israel called the name manna, and it was like
coriander seed. It was white, it was round, a
mysterious thing. It tasted like wafers made with
honey. It was sweet to their taste. What is this? Christ said, It
is Me. I'm the true bread. I'm the true bread. I am the true bread. Well, every morning, you know,
we're told to ask the Lord, give us this day
our daily bread, our daily bread. And that man doesn't live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth
of God. That's Christ, the Word of God. My, my. This was done to prove
them. To prove them. That's what the
Lord said. I'm going to do this to prove
every one of you. Every one of you. And they did
it for 35 years. Verse 35. I don't know why I
can't find that verse. Where it says, I did this thing
to prove them. Do you see it? That's the most important verse
here, and I didn't write it down. It is there, believe me. But
anyway, so he did this to prove them, and verse 35, they did
it for 40 years, 40 years. All right, go with me to Numbers.
21, the book of Numbers 21, the closing bit. Numbers 21. Our Lord said, I am the true
bread. That holy thing, that's what
the angel said to Mary, wasn't it? When Christ was born, great
is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh,
the bread from heaven, life. The angel said to Mary, that
holy thing, It's the Son of God. They didn't know what to call
it. As John in his epistle and his gospel said, that which we
have seen, that which we have heard, that which our hands have
handled, we've looked upon, the Word of Life. That is so mysterious,
so amazing, so glorious. white, pure, holy, spotless,
the Son of God, round, complete, perfect, no beginning or end,
bread from heaven, life. He hath the Son. Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after Christ. You have life. You have
life. Is the Gospel life to you? Have
you eaten the gospel taken, the gospel in, the gospel of Christ
crucified, and believed it to the saving of your soul? Is it
sweet to you? Numbers 21. Look at this. Verse
4. Numbers 21. And they journeyed from Mount Hoare, by the way,
to compass the land of Eden. And their soul, the people, was
much discouraged by the way. And we go through this wilderness
and are much discouraged at times. The people spake against God
and against Moses and said, why have you brought us out of Egypt
to die in the wilderness? There is no bread. No bread. They had bread. What they were
saying was, well, okay, neither is there any water in our soul
loatheth this light bread. We are so tired of this manna. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. When they first came, they were
all beside themselves. They said, this is the most glorious,
wonderful thing, undeserved. We murmured, and God sent us
great from heaven. And we murmured against Him. Has it been so gracious and merciful? And this is sweet to our taste.
This is wonderful. This is the most wonderful food
we've ever tasted. They couldn't get enough of it.
They wanted to get more, you know, to gather every day. And
it was just filling. They were filled. They were satisfied
with it. And now, after 40 years, they
said, We don't want to see more. Just like the people in John
6. They went away. The Lord kept saying, I'm the
bread. He said, you come to me, though,
because your belly, God is your belly, and you want your belly
filled. Paul said this, and I, going by the Catholic building,
and I'm looking out my window this morning, where I study up
in the attic, and my neighbors are all Still there. It's nothing
to them. And honestly, my heart went out
to them thinking, I have no hunger. I don't need Christ. Paul said, I say even weeping
that their God is their belly. Oh, my. So the Lord sent fiery
serpents. All right. Here's the moral of
the story, if you haven't already heard it, seen it. Light bread? Is this a light thing? Or is
the gospel a heavy burden? A light thing? They said this
no longer satisfies us. This no longer fills us. This
is no longer sweet to us. We need something more. This proves. Did anybody find
that verse? Verse 4 of Exodus 16, that's
what it said. The Lord said, I did this to
prove you. I'm sending this bread to prove
you. Yeah, that's it. I may prove
you whether you believe me or not. Well, they said, many of them
said, this no longer satisfies us. This no longer fills us.
This is no longer sweet to us. We're no longer amazed by this.
You see what's going on here? Oh dear, anyone who wants and
needs anything other than Christ hath not life. That's what our Lord said. I
mean, lustful. Anyone who's not satisfied with
the gospel and wants something other than, in addition to, something
more than, doesn't have life. Christ is life. Anyone who's
not filled with wonder, filled with wonder and amazement, filled
with love and praise, anyone who's no longer amazed by this
bread from heaven, Anyone who is no longer filled
with wonder and amazement, whose words like mercy and love and
grace and pardon and peace and justification, say, are no longer
sweet to them, then their life is pooled. And so our Lord said back in
our text, He said, I am the bread of God. which giveth life to
the world. I am the bread of God. But he
said to many, you believe not. You believe not because it's
not me you want. Oh my, here's great comfort,
people, if you can say from your heart that you want and need the Lord
Jesus Christ. You desire Him. You need Him. That you need the gospel. That
you need to hear. That the gospel is indeed sweet
to you. That you find all you need in
the gospel. And you don't need anything else. You don't really need anything
else. that your desire, your heartfelt
desire like Paul is. Paul said, Oh, that I might know
Him. Oh, that I might win Christ and
be found in Him. Can you say that? Oh, there's great comfort if
the Gospel satisfies you. If you're satisfied. If you keep
coming. If you keep coming. Those people
were tired of going out and gathering in this manner. If you keep coming
and coming and gathering, because it's something you need, and
it's not light to you, oh, it's a wonderful burden. You must
have it. You must have life. You must
have life. If that says, you must have life,
you must be chosen. If you can say like Simon Peter,
we believe. No, he said, I'm sure. That thou
art with Christ, the Son of the living God. To whom shall we
go? Where shall we go? We're not
going anywhere. You're our life. If you can say that, then Christ
says to you, I've chosen you. I've chosen you. This bread proves
it. I still love bread today more
than the day, the first time I started eating it. I ate bread
with every meal. When Mindy and I first got married,
she fixed a meal and there was no bread. My mother always fixed
bread with everybody. Cornbread, biscuits, toast, something. Mindy didn't fix any bread and
I ate it. How was it? Good. Next meal,
no bread. How was it? It was good. Until
finally I said, honey, I've got to have some bread. And to this
day, I eat bread with every meal. I know, I know, gluten and all
that. I know, I know. But what I'm
saying here, this is an illustration of someone who first really hungers
and thirsts after the Lord Jesus Christ, and lays hold of Him,
and eats Him like a cup to have this, and finds Him sweet to
their taste, and all they need, and it fills their longing, fills
their soul with with love, and they will hunger after Him to
the day they die. That's life. It proves it. If
you can die in the faith, if you can die loving this gospel
and not wanting anything else, we're not going, Peter said,
we're not going anywhere. You have life. It proves it. Thank you very much.