Good evening, and it is good
to see you folks tonight and those who are Meeting with us
by way of the internet. We welcome you to the service
as well We're so thankful that you can be part of of our worship
service. Our governor has announced new
restrictions upon our state in various areas,
and he said he was going to announce whatever restrictions he intends
to make pertaining to churches. I think that is supposed to be
tomorrow. I understood in his words that
he would not shut us down, but that there would be some restrictions. So we'll just wait and see what
he has to say. And then if we need to make adjustments,
then we will do so accordingly. As I wrote for the article that
was in the bulletin this past Sunday, the powers that be are
ordained of God and we recognize the authority of our governor
and that he is in his position by the will of God. And as long as he doesn't infringe
upon the way we worship, the way we believe, as long as his
intention appears to be our safety, then whatever he says pertaining
to our meetings together, then we will seek to abide by that. It is certainly good to know
that all the issues of life and of death are in the hands of
our God. And for The people of the Lord, we
face many disappointments in life and oftentimes the things
pertaining to us and perhaps our health and our families and
so forth don't go the way we would want them to go, but everything
goes the way God wants it to go. And that's good. We worship the Lord who is sovereign,
over all things and we bow to Him and acknowledge His goodness
and His infinite wisdom because He sees all things even from
the beginning. And we can't even see five seconds
ahead, but He knows all things and so we rejoice in Him. And
we worship Him who governs all things according to His sovereign
will and purpose. Well, I'm going to speak to you
this evening on the subject, I am the Bread of Life, which
is sort of a continuation of Sunday night. I didn't get to
finish, didn't even get to the second part of the message Sunday
night, but I didn't feel like I did justice to the first part. The manna from heaven, Christ
being the bread of life. In fact, I had someone ask me
a few weeks ago, I received a text from someone who spoke and said,
are you ever satisfied with your messages or something to that
nature? It's kind of a hard question
to answer, really. I am satisfied in that I tell
the truth. I don't believe I can be fairly
accused. I don't think it would be fair
to accuse me of not preaching the truth of the gospel of God's
grace to sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ. But do I feel
that I do justice to the effort to preach the gospel and to expound
the word of God? Well, no, I don't. Because I have an infinite subject
and I'm a finite being. And I always feel that I'm in
waters way over my head. And that's why I always seek
God's goodness and mercy and his strength to enable me to
speak to you who, like myself, are going out into eternity. And I want to tell you the truth
as clearly and simply as I can do that. And I trust that God
will enable me to do that this evening also. Let's ask Him if
He would do that. Our great God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and Thou who art our Father, for You adopted us into Your
family, we live by the incorruptible seed of the Word of God that
liveth and abideth forever. We call upon you at this hour
seeking that you would provide for us a time of worship and
permit us, Lord, enable us to focus in upon the blessed bread
of life, the Lord Jesus Christ, whose own words have to be laid
hold of and believed, and may we rest in him who said, I am
the bread of life. That which we ask, Lord, for
ourselves is a spiritual hunger and a thirst for this bread,
for this manna from heaven, for this blessed Savior. We have a natural thirst, Lord,
for the things of the world, the things that appeal to the
flesh. We're born with that, but we're
thankful that we're born again. And you have given to us the
very nature, the life of the new man in us, Christ Jesus,
the Savior. And with his presence within,
we have a hunger for the Word of God. We have a hunger to learn. to feast upon the gospel, to
sit down at this feast of good things, as Isaiah says, a feast
of fat things that the spiritual man savors. And we ask that you
would be with us this evening as we have once again come, as
it were, to sit at the table of our God and to be fed. May we hear the Master say to
us, as he said to his disciples just shortly before he ascended,
he said to them, come and dine. And may we hear those words effectually
this evening and come to the table, come to the spiritual
banquet, come to the word of God, Come to Him who is the bread
of life, who came down from heaven and gave His life a ransom to
save His people from their sins. So enable us this evening to
worship. For Jesus' sake, we ask these
things. Amen. Well, as we get to John
chapter six, our Lord, He spends a good bit of this sixth chapter,
as you know, dealing with the subject of bread. Basically,
there are three ways that the bread is mentioned in John chapter
six. First of all, the bread is multiplied. Our Lord has been teaching, has
been preaching. And what a glorious thing it
must have been to sit under the ministry of the Lord Jesus. And of course, most of these
people here in John chapter six, they didn't believe him and they
evidenced their unbelief, and that after he had finished with
his teaching, at the end of his message, most of them left and
followed him no more. They said, this is a hard saying.
His doctrines are too difficult. They're too narrow-minded, and
we don't believe this. And most of his disciples, most
of these students, most of these who sat at his feet, they left
him. They weren't interested in what
he had to say, but he's been preaching. He had preached for
a good bit of the time, and the people were hungry. There were
lots of people. the scripture says 5,000 men. And then in addition to that,
there were the women and the children. So it could have easily
been 15, 20, 25,000 people. We don't have any way of knowing
exactly how many, only that there were 5,000 men. And our Lord
had them all set down. After he had, one of the disciples
said, they're hungry, what are we going to do? And the Lord
said, indicated to them he would provide. And then one of the
disciples said, there's a lad here that has a couple of fish
and five barley loaves, but what are they amongst so many? And
he didn't see the glory of the one to whom he was speaking.
This is the Son of God. This is the creator. This is
the sustainer of all things. And He who could speak the world
into existence would have no difficulty feeding 5,000 men
plus women and children. These men were of little faith,
and may God forgive us of little faith as well, because we don't
believe Him as we should. But our Lord had the people,
they sat down in groups of 50 in a very orderly fashion. And
then he took the loaves and the fishes and all of a sudden the
bread was multiplied just as it came out of his hands and
basket after basket after basket was filled. And here are the
12 apostles and they distribute the food and they come back and
the master from his omnipotent hands hears a miracle going on
all the while. And here are these thousands
of people who are looking on. And it's very interesting that
later in this story, they said, why don't you show us a sign
and we'll believe you. That's the next day, that's what
they said. You show us a sign. We wanna
see a sign. Well, this was a really big sign. As he fed thousands and thousands
of people and they watched him and it must have been just mind
boggling as this food just kept multiplying, multiplying, till
finally everyone was filled. And the disciples were instructed,
gather up what's left over. that nothing be lost. And each one of the disciples
had a basket of food left over, food for the preachers. And so
the preacher's needs were met for probably a few days. But these who witnessed the miracle
and who were the participants of this miraculous feeding, They
looked at Jesus of Nazareth, seeing him as a great miracle
worker, and they said, this is that prophet that Moses spoke
of. Let's make him king. And our
Lord knew their intentions, and so he slipped away. And his disciples
left as well. And he told his disciples, get
into the ship and go to the other side. And so they did, but he
didn't go with them. And the people saw that the Lord
Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, did not get in the boat to go across
the sea with his disciples. And he was walking. walking by
the seashore and he just left. He left all those people behind
because they weren't interested in a savior. They weren't interested
in a redeemer. They were only interested in
one who would release them from Roman bondage. That's all they
were concerned about was the flesh. And he left them. He left. And then he went up
on a mountain and prayed. Well, that night, you know the
story how there was a storm at sea and the disciples were very
worried because they were in the boat and the boat is topsy-turvy
and so forth. And our Lord Jesus walked on
the water and he came to them and the sea suddenly became still. Well, then the next day, the
next day, all that crowd of people that he fed, most of them, they
came to the other side by ships and boats and whatnot, and then
they saw the Lord Jesus over there and they said, how did
you get over here? What are you doing over here?
You didn't leave with your disciples. Now, if he had said, I walked
on the water over here, They'd be even more excited about making
him a king. But he didn't answer that. But rather, he began to speak
to them about a subject that they brought up. Now already
bread was on their minds. this vast amount of food that
he had provided for these thousands and thousands of people. So we
saw the bread that was indeed multiplied. And then we see the
bread as manna. Look at verse 31. Our fathers did eat manna. They're
the ones who brought this up first. Our fathers did eat manna
in the desert. As it is written, he gave them
bread from heaven to eat. They bring up the manna. Now,
our Lord Jesus, He is, all things are under his control. All things are according to his
purpose. And he has, on purpose, he has
multiplied the bread and the fishes in order to establish
in their minds this great principle of bread, the neediness of bread. the worth of bread, the nourishment
of bread. He's the one who started this. And then when they get to the
other side of the sea, the people having in their minds this fresh
remembrances and recall of all this vast amount of bread, then
they began to say, Our father's deity, manna, in the wilderness. So now the bread, not only is
the bread multiplied, but now the bread is referenced as being
manna. And we studied this past Lord's
day about the man as the Lord gave it in Exodus chapter 16. It was a most unusual thing that
God gave to them because when they had murmured against the
Lord, then the scripture says, and behold, God said to Moses,
behold, I will rain bread from heaven. And isn't that just like
our God merciful? Gracious. You see the children
of Israel, they represent, they're typical of all of the true Israel
of God. I'm not saying, and nobody would
ever say that all of natural Israel was spiritual Israel. There's a distinction between
the two because we read in the book of Romans chapter nine,
not all of Israel is Israel. We know that. But they did represent
the people of God, a holy nation, a chosen people. And God would
not destroy the nation. because He would be true to His
covenant He made with Abraham, even as He won't destroy us,
this spiritual nation, this holy nation, this nation given to
Christ Jesus in covenant grace, He won't destroy us, though we
deserve to be destroyed, though we deserve to perish. God made
a covenant with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior,
and with the comfort of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of all
of His elect. And God loves us. He won't destroy us. And because
He loves us, He sent living manna from heaven. And very often in
this passage of scripture, we read of this bread that's come
down from heaven. This is the real manna, the true
manna is our Lord Jesus Christ. And then thirdly, not only is
the bread multiplied and the bread manna, but the bread we
learn here is the Messiah. The bread is somebody. Look at verse 33. For the bread
of God is He. That's very important. The bread of God is He. It's
somebody. It's not a thing. Oh, now what they gathered every
morning for six days a week, and then on Friday gathered double
for the seventh day, that was a thing. But that thing that
lay on the ground, That was a picture of the person, the Lord Jesus
Christ, who came down here and humbled himself. Look at that
manna. Where is that manna? Is it out
here? Is it waist high where you can
just go out and reach? No, it's down there on the ground.
Get down. Humble yourself. And our Lord
Jesus humbled himself. Oh, how low did he stoop. He
stooped so low as to embrace our nature and then in that nature,
live and suffer and bleed and die to redeem us. And in that
nature, be raised again. And in that nature, be seated
at the right hand of God in heaven. He is Messiah. This bread is
Messiah. The bread is multiplied. That's
true. The bread is manna, that manna
that God gave them from heaven. But that manna is a picture of
Messiah, the Son of God. You'll notice what he says after
he identifies himself or identifies the fact that the bread of God
is somebody, is he, which cometh down from heaven and giveth life
unto the world. He says in verse 34, they said
unto him, Lord evermore, give us this bread. Now, what kind
of bread do you think they've got in mind? The same kind of
bread they ate the day before. In fact, he knew why they followed
him because they wanted another free meal. These people loved
living on physical charity from the hands of Jesus of Nazareth,
but they weren't interested in spiritual charity. They weren't
interested in grace. They weren't interested in righteousness. They weren't interested in being
saved by the life and death of this man, Jesus of Nazareth. So verse 35, and Jesus said unto
them, I am the bread of life. I am. He loved to use that expression,
I am. And of course, that takes us
back, those of us who are acquainted with the scriptures to any degree,
it takes us all the way back to Exodus chapter three. When
Moses saw this bush, Moses on the backside of the desert, he
sees a bush that's on fire, but it doesn't burn up. And he starts
to walk over to this unusual, unusual sight. A bush that's
on fire, but it doesn't burn up. And then a voice says, take
your shoes off. You're on the holy ground. I
bet that got his attention. He hears a voice coming out of
a burning bush. And the voice identifies himself
as being, I am. He's Jehovah, the ever existent
God. The God without beginning and
without end. He is Jehovah, God our savior. And you get to the book of John
and the spirit of God leading John what to write, leads him
to emphasize this, I am, to identify Jesus of Nazareth. Who is this
bread come down from heaven? And you can read, it's about
eight or nine times. You can read through the sixth
chapter of John. that he is spoken of as being
the bread that came down from heaven. Who is he? Who is Jesus
of Nazareth? Here's who he is. He's the I
am. There are two ways that our Lord
loved to refer to himself. He loved to refer to himself
as the son of man. He loved that. That's really
what the book of Luke is about, identifying him as the son of
man. Who is Jesus of Nazareth? He's
the son of man. Matthew shows him he's the king.
Shows us he's the king. Therefore he writes mostly to
the Jews. Mark identifies him as being
the servant. But Luke identifies Him as being
the Son of Man. The Son of Man has come to seek
and to save that which was lost. He loves to identify Himself
with us, the people whom He came to save. And then we get to the
Gospel of John. And John presents no genealogy
or anything like that. Unlike Matthew and Luke, he doesn't
talk about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. When John begins
to write, there's no kind of introduction to get into his
subject. He just, right from the get-go,
the Gospel of John begins, In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God. and the Word was God. He starts
off with a declaration of the deity of this one, Jesus of Nazareth. He's the, I am. And throughout
this gospel, he continually uses this expression with regards
to our Lord Jesus. John chapter eight, Christ said,
I am the light of the world. Those who follow him no longer
walk in darkness. We were in darkness, but the
light of light has shined on us. He's illuminated our darkened
minds. He's the light of the world. Christ said, I am the door. By
me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved and go in and out and
find pasture. He's the door, the only door
into the kingdom of God, into the kingdom of heaven, into the
presence of God. Would you enter into the presence
of God? One door, not many doors. I don't remember exactly the
way he said it, but I was watching these golfers and two older golfers,
because this past weekend was the masters. And I was watching
these two older golfers and they were talking, and they were talking
about Arnold Palmer, who died a while back. And one of them
kind of looked up to heaven and said, well, I guess he's in the
long driving championship or something like that. He's up there. I don't know how
we're going to get there, but we'll all get there. This is
a very educated man. I don't know how we're going
to get there, but we'll get there. Well, now, wait a minute. There's
only one door to get there. There's one way. Our Lord Jesus,
here's another one of His I am's. I am the way. There isn't another way. Pick
and choose whichever way you want. I don't know how we'll
get there, but we'll get there some way. Well, wait a minute.
The Word of God that liveth and abides forever says there's one
way to God. And the Savior identifies the
way. He says, I'm the way. And if you don't know Him, you're
not in the way. You're in the broad way. that
leads to destruction. He said, I'm the way, I'm the
truth, I'm the truth. Not a truth, one of many truths. The idea of a lot of people today,
as it's always been, it doesn't matter what you believe as long
as you're sincere. As long as you mean business, somewhat
anyhow. one truth, one embodiment of
the truth, all of the truth of God, who God is and how God does
things and all of the perfections of God, all in one person, the
Lord Jesus Christ. I'm the truth, he says. That
means everything else is falsehood, everything else a lie. I'm the
way, the truth, and I'm the life. and the life. You see, he not
only gives life, he does that. But he gives life because he
is life. He didn't receive life. Life
wasn't given to him. He is life. It originates with
him. He's the eternal God. And if
you're to live, you'll have to live by his life. He'll have to give you life.
He said, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. He said, I
am the good shepherd. What does a good shepherd do?
He gives his life for the sheep. He said in John 10, 36, I am
the Son of God. He asserted his own divinity,
his eternality. He set forth the plurality of
the persons of the Godhead and the unity of the divine persons. He said, I am the resurrection
and the life, Martha. Those who believe me will never
die. He that liveth and believeth will never die. We live first
and then we believe. That's the order. He said, I'm the vine and we're
the branches. He told Pilate, he said, I am
king. And he says right here, I am the
bread of life. And if any man eats of this bread, He shall live forever. If you eat of this bread, what
does it mean to eat of this bread? To receive Him, to be nourished by Him. You know,
that manna that God gave them, it was a miraculous thing, obviously,
but every nutrient and every vitamin that this body needs,
a body made by God so he knows exactly what the body needs.
Everything the Israelites needed daily was in that manna. And I'm telling you, everything
you need as a sinner going out into eternity. Everything
you need is in the Lord Jesus Christ. He that cometh to me,
he says, shall never hunger. He that believeth in me shall
never thirst. We feed on him. See, and all
of you know this, of course, behind so many symbols and types
and pictures of the Old Testament is to be found our Lord Jesus.
And He sets forth Himself as bread. That is so simple. That isn't deep, it isn't overwhelming
as far as above our ability to comprehend, at least on a natural
level, we understand what bread is. And we understand hunger to a
degree. Now we've never been hungry that
I know of. I mean, as far as like starving
to death, even though after three, four hours, we'll say I'm starving
to death. We're not really starving after
three, four hours. After a few days, you'd be starving. But we do have a hunger. for the Son of God, for this
great I am, for the manna from heaven, for the bread come down
from heaven. We have a hunger for him. And we feast on him. You see, this manna, the manna
was a free gift from God. Back in Exodus chapter 16, we
learned that. There was no charge for the manna,
there was no fee. It wasn't, okay, we're gonna
give you bread, but you gotta pay for it. No, there wasn't
any charge for it. There wasn't a wage to be earned
or a prize to be won or a reward to be sought. God just gave it
as a gift. Right there it is, every morning. You hungry? Yeah, there it is
right there. Well, it doesn't look like much.
It looks mighty little. Now, don't despise a day of small
things. Our Lord Jesus was little. He
was a little baby coming this way. I don't, that can't be the
Savior. He's so little. Well, Simeon
looked in his face and said, I've seen God's salvation. What it said, some expensive
things can come in little packages. And here's the God man, here's
God over all, blessed forever in a little package. You feast on him, you'll live
forever. That manna was so strange and
mysterious. In fact, the word manna means,
what is it? What is it? What is that? They
went out in the morning and looked and the ground's covered with
it. What is that? What is it? And they looked at
Jesus of Nazareth and they said, who is he? Who is he? Somebody said, well, he's the
Savior. The Savior? I know his daddy
Joseph, and I know his mama Mary, and I know his brothers and sisters.
Don't tell me he's the Savior, he's the Messiah. Don't tell
me he's the one come down from heaven. Who is he? Well, he's
your judge too. And he's your sovereign. And
he's your Lord. And some people by the grace
of God are brought to see and realize and believe that he's
the Lord. Lord, remember me when you come
into your kingdom. That's what that thief said. That man was just pure white
and round. Well, doesn't that speak to us
of the purity of the Lord Jesus? without sin, without blemish, no gall found
in His mouth. His hands are clean, His heart
is pure. And like that man around had
no beginning and no ending, that's Him, that's our Savior. No beginning,
no end. So He is born in Bethlehem's
manger. And I was talking about, he was
a little baby. It's even said in Micah about
Bethlehem, it's just a little place. But our Lord Jesus, his
existence didn't begin in Bethlehem's manger. He's the eternal God. Without beginning, without ending. And I'll tell you something,
he was bread, or the bread from heaven, the manna, It was only
for the Israelites. It was for a particular people.
And that's who Christ is for. He's for a particular people.
For a particular people. God's Israel. We say, well, can God's Israel
be identified in this world? Can we know who they are? Well,
yeah, in this way they can be identified. They're hungry. They're
hungry for this bread, for this bread that came down from heaven,
for this one who is the Son of God, for this one who is the
Savior. They're hungry for Him, for Him. Are you hungry? Are you hungry? Well, come and
dine then, come and eat. And I'll tell you something,
that manna that came down from heaven, it came right to where
the Israelites were. That's amazing. They open up their tent door
in the morning. Oh, just see them stretching.
Honey, you got the coffee going? Well, we're going to have breakfast.
Just open up that tent and say, it's right there. It's just right
there. And you just get down, you get
down and get it. You're going to have to get off
your high horse now. You humble yourself before the
mighty God. But He came down to where we
are. That's what He did. He came down to this earth, to
this world. sin and sorrow. And this manna had to be gathered
and eaten personally. Tell you what, when it comes
to eating, it may look like I'm eating for two people, but I'm
really only eating for one. I can only, I can only eat for
myself. And I'm telling all of you and
those of you who are watching on the internet, you must eat
yourself. You must feed upon Christ yourself. Nobody else can feed upon Him
for you. No one can believe for you. There
is no salvation by proxy. The gospel is the power of God
and the salvation to everyone that believe it, to everyone
that believe it. Do you believe? Throughout John six, our Lord
emphasizes, and this would be an interesting study for you,
just go through every time he uses some form of the word come,
him that cometh to me. Go through and look at this.
You come to him out of your need. I was reading just today. I sat at the house. I've got
a little office at the house. I sat at the house reading. I was reading something written
by Charles Wesley, who was a great hymn writer. And he said he had
his window open facing the sea, and he was enjoying the breeze,
and he said the breeze picked up. He said all of a sudden,
he said he could see back out on the ocean was a storm was
brewing, and the waves were picking up, and the wind was, but he
said it felt so refreshing to him, but he said in through the
window flew this little bird. and flew right in his lap. He didn't want to be out there
in the storm of the sea. It flew right in his window.
It said it colored right up to Charles Wesley. He said, I cherished that. He
said it was a precious moment to me. He said, I held that little
fellow till the winds had subsided. And he said, then I took him
in my hands and put him out and he just flew away as if to thank
me for being a refuge for him. And he sat down and wrote these
words, Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly. while the raging billows roll,
while the tempest still is high, oh, hide me, oh, my Savior, oh,
hide me, till the storm of life is past. That's us, we just fly
into the arms of the Savior. And I'll tell you, all who come
to Christ Finding him a safe refuge. I'll tell you something else
about this bread from heaven, the manna. It met a daily need. Every day. Every day. Except, of course, on Friday,
and they'd get a double portion to do them on Saturday. Every
day. we need to feed on Christ Jesus
every day. And I wonder if that isn't what
the Savior meant in his instructive prayer to us. Give us this day
our daily bread. Our nourishment is found on feeding
on Christ every day. And, of course, the manna was
baked, put into the fire. Oh, and that speaks of our Lord's
substitutionary death when He entered into the wrath of God
for us. He absorbed the wrath of God. All of the hell that we would
have had to endure, He took it all. There wasn't any hell left for
us. There's no judgment left for the people of God. And the manna then was, you know,
the Lord told Moses to tell Aaron to put that manna in a cup and
put it in the Ark of the Covenant and keep it. Put it up. And I tell you what, God has
put his Son up on high. He's lifting him up to his own
right hand as a reward of his obedience unto death, even the
death of the cross. And the scripture says that all
who gathered of the manna had sufficient. Some gathered more,
some gathered less. But at the end of the day, those
who gathered more didn't have anything left over. And those
who gathered less, they didn't need any more. The Lord gives
us exactly the rate that we need. Because we're all in various
stages of spiritual growth. And He gives us day by day as
He deems necessary. And He feeds me. He feeds you. Feed me with the living bread.
That's what we pray for the Lord to do. Our Father, bless the
Word of God tonight. And I trust that we've been fed
spiritually that we've eaten again of the manna from heaven,
but today's bread, though we have fed on it, will not suffice
for tomorrow. Help us to feed again tomorrow.
Give us a spiritual appetite for the Lord Jesus Christ. In
his name I pray, amen.