This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at www.gracetruth.org and www.anchoringfaith.org. A
people for His glory, by His grace. Lord, this is something that
You have given us. You've given us sight to see. You've given
us ears to hear. You've given us the ability to
feast. upon Jesus, to consume all that
He is, to embrace, to see, to look, to know, to believe. And I pray, Lord, as we learn
more today from Your Word, Father, that we would be in tune. Lord,
that we would be in tune with the gospel of grace. That we
would not forget what we have learned and just move on to the
next phase of our Christian day. But Lord, that we would be settled
if not smothered by the truth of the gospel that we've already
heard just in the singing of these songs. Lord, that we would
be overcome and buried in the glory of the grace that You've
given us. So much so that we would barely
be able to move or breathe as if to dig ourselves from Your
grasp. But oh Lord, what an amazing
state, that we were utterly unable and utterly lost, and Father,
You have in turn utterly saved us and disposed of Your wrath
by placing it on Your Son Jesus. Thereby You are satisfied. May
we have ears to hear. May we rejoice this day through
your word. By your spirit, God, I pray that
we would be made aware of more and aware of the same, but the
depth of it, Lord, it cannot be measured. How deep, wide,
and far is your love for us? In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you,
church. I'm going to cover seven verses
of John 6 today. And then I'm going to go ahead and
give you sort of an update on... So as you see it, you won't be
confused at the end. I often do that. I give you a
punchline at the very closing. Okay, that's where we're going. In the end, we will have read
and talked about verses 55 through 56, but we will go back through
them and preach them completely next week as a specific sermon. Today, John 6, look at verse
52 and follow along with me. The Jews disputed among themselves
saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus
said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.
Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life,
and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true
food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and
drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father
sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds
on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that
came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and
died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus said
these things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum. Now
I want you to keep in mind that what's led us to these places,
or to this very place, is that Jesus did a mighty miracle of
feeding tens of twenties of thousands of people with a mere lunch,
a child's portion of food. They looked to continue to receive
this material blessing. They looked to make Jesus their
king. They stayed up all night and
then found a way to get to Capernaum. and finding Him there, Jesus
rebukes them. And we see now that He was teaching
in the synagogue during the season of Passover. Just like He'd been
doing time after time after time in the synagogue, in the temple,
in every town He went, He taught. They would yield to Him as teacher.
They would yield to Him as rabbi. Same word there, rabbi, teacher. They would submit to Him in such
a way that they wanted to hear what He had to say, but the way
they understood the teaching of Jesus was through the natural
mind. It had no spiritual life. They could not grasp the depth
of what He was saying even though it was simple. And so we come
to the Bible often. And we find ourselves looking
and reading and saying these words. What am I supposed to
get from this? What am I supposed to see here?
I mean, have you ever been in a place where you're reading
the Bible and you wish you had the zeal of someone else? Oh, if I could just feel what
so-and-so feels when they read Scripture. If I could just see
what so-and-so seems to see when they read Scripture. I mean,
it is all of our Journeys, right? Whether it be something you hear,
whether it be something you talk to someone about, or whether
it be someone you saw preach one day or read their works,
Palmer and the Psalms, his commentary, that's not a commentary, that's
a doxology. That'll blow your minds to read
what that man wrote about the Psalms. Thinking, you can't study this.
You have to throw it on the floor and just cry and weep and worship. Why can't I see like that? Well,
we can. The problem is that we tie our
seeing and the depths of our understanding with our feelings.
And friends, sometimes when we see the most glorious thing in
Scripture, it can fall with flat effect to our hearts. And it's
not for us to then be self-condemned because we're not experiencing
something interesting or supernatural. That is the point of the truth
of the Gospel, is that it is not about what we do with it.
It is about what God has done in it. who Christ is. And some days we see with clearer
eyes, some days our soul longs to drink of the water of Christ,
longs to eat of the bread and drink of the blood, as we'll
see this morning. But other times we awake and
face our day and think, is there any reason to live? What a wasted life. It's often our plot. Talking with my children yesterday
about abiding in Christ and following after Christ and walking with
Christ. Just briefly, you know how those short trips in the
car, they ask these questions that take several days to answer.
You're going to the grocery store and it's like, oh, this isn't
a grocery store journey question. How do you walk with Christ?
Well, that's what we're gonna talk about next week for we abide
in Him. But I thought, well, I would
just confess. I say, some days I wake up and I think, this day
is a horrible day. What will this day bring but
misery and suffering and frustration and angst? I said that. And by the end of
the day, by the Lord's grace, we're rejoicing and we're full
because we've been eating of the bread of life. One of my
children said, I'm so glad to hear you say that, because I
wake up like that often. You see, many of you would think,
oh no, I know a pastor wakes up and floats in the air, and
the Bibles are floating around him, the Spirit of God's holding
him up, and the angels are singing. Well, this morning I wake up
because I'd forgotten to dry my pants last night, so my jeans,
all of them, were wet. There was no singing. Except,
uh oh, I'm going to be a sweat pant preacher today. But I did
find one pair that was already hanging in the closet. Because
they don't dry that fast. Unless you want to shrink them.
But friends, the same is true with all of us. There is never
a day that is perfectly in tune with the joy of the gospel. There's
never a day where we don't think and consider 1 Peter, where it
talks about our undying joy that is often inexpressible, in the
midst of great trial, great pain, great suffering. And our suffering
may be wet pants, or it may be the death of a loved one. It
may be, oh, my tire is flat, or, oh no, I forgot to do this,
or, oh, I can't remember what I'm supposed to do. which can
cause stress. Or it can be that my neighbors
or my family or those that love me the most supposedly hate me
because of the gospel. For some of our brothers and
sisters this day, they will not see the sun go down in their
natural life because of their love for Christ, they will die. Some of them will be put into
cages and shipped off to far away lands because of their faith
in Jesus. But it doesn't make our suffering any less real.
What is it that we see every day? Friends, we must be feeding
on Christ. not having fed upon Him yesterday,
or even this morning, we must be feeding upon the Word of God
every moment that we're able. And if we do not have the time,
for we have things to do, let there be enough of God's Word
with effect in our hearts this day that it might come to mind
by the power of God the Spirit, so that we may meditate on it
and not our lives. That's what we do. Because the
moment we decide to push away the table of the bread of life,
we push away the Word, we push away Christ, and we, as we spoke
last week, we find ourselves overcome by our own self-reliance. Not salvificly, but worldly. Carnally. Oh, I got this, I can
manage this. We can't manage a flat tire without
frustration. We can't manage a lost set of
keys. We can't manage a pair of wet pants. We can't manage
anything in this life without Christ. Many of us would say, well, when
is this going to end? Never, until the Lord comes back. And that is why our journey is
full of woes, but the essence of our lives is full of joy,
even when it's inexpressible. Jesus has said, I am the bread
of life. And He's established this over
and over and over and over again. So much so that His hearers have
no reason to not understand what He's saying. The leaders there, the spiritual
ones, they're coming to the place of going, well, you know, this
guy, he's the son of Joseph that we know. What does he do? And
he's leading people away. Jesus answers them divinely. Don't worry, no one can come
to me except the Father. Give Him and draw Him, bring
Him, and I will raise Him up on the last day." Don't forget
that phrase. So here in these verses that
we'll deal with today, Jesus closes this dialogue, this discourse
about the bread of life. The reason He fed these people
is to show them that no matter how miraculous their feeding,
it was temporal. so that He could show them their
minds without the rebirth of the Spirit of God, without regeneration. They could never have saving
faith. This is part of the gospel quote presentation of Jesus.
That there is no life outside of the sovereign election of
God through regeneration by the Spirit. Some people argue, and I'll say
this again, some people argue, well, that's an academic issue, an
internal issue of theology and things. No, that's the gospel
plain and simple. That's the high theology of Jesus speaking
to the masses, one of the largest crowds He preached to. And one
of the most intimate days of Israel, the Passover, when everything
pointed to Him, He gave them high doctrine. that nothing that
they did would matter, nothing that they did or believed would
come to effect if God the Father did not, according to what He'd
already told Nicodemus in John 3, birthed them anew by the Spirit
as He wishes. Beloved, that is part of the
gospel of Christ. It is not just that Jesus died
to pay for your sins. It is that Jesus satisfied the
judgment of God in the payment of your sins. He vicariously
atoned for you, beloved, but He did not, listen to this carefully,
He did not die for every person in the world. For if He did,
then God the Father cannot send any person ever into judgment. You can't pay a debt and then
get repossessed. The debt cannot be paid and then
they foreclose on the property. It's an impossibility. Except
the bank be wicked and forge documents. Beloved, nobody can
forge the document of the satisfaction of the wrath of God. There is
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He is the
bread of life. What must we do to be saved? Peter answers that very easily,
doesn't he, in Acts? Stop thinking the way you think
and believe on Christ. Believe what Jesus taught us.
Remember when He taught us? Here in Capernaum in the synagogue,
remember when He said, no one comes to Me except that the Father
draw him and give him? Remember when He said He was
the bread of life? That's the gospel. Remember that. Stop thinking
the way you're thinking. Stop coming to Me and say, what
must I do? What must I do to be doing the
works of God? Jesus says, the work of God.
Did you believe? Not only that it is what God requires of you
and commands of you, it is the work that God establishes in
His people. And we think, well, there's got
to be more to this than just faith in Jesus Christ. No, faith
alone is faith alone. And it's everything. It's everything
that Christ has done. Christ has either satisfied God's
judgment and God has purposed to save you from all of eternity
because of His everlasting love toward you. And when you trust
in this, it's because God has given you the gift of faith. What's the result of it? Our
evangelical wicked culture has ruined the truth of the gospel
of Christ. We have wrung each other by the
neck of pragmatism and drained the life out of every person
who's ever sat under the altar call of demonic influence and
self-will and volition. Every time a man stands before
another and says, will you come to Christ, will you do this work,
will you walk this aisle, will you say this prayer, now you're
saved, is the devil's pastor. And I, beloved, have been that
man. Because that's so different than
this gospel. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus in His body will pay for
your sins. And now we can say, has paid.
The Father has drawn me to the Son. The Father has given me
to the Son. Jesus Christ on the cross. Remember
that old song as a child? When He was on the cross, I was
on His mind. We better be careful who sings that. And for a while there, I hated
that because it made me the center of it all. But it doesn't mean
that I wasn't the object of God's affection. So were you, beloved,
if you were in Christ. You were the object of God's
affection with an eternal. Trey might not have meant to
do this when he read the Scripture this morning, but he emphasized
eternal. I thought, yes, stomp the pulpit. It's an eternal love. It's an
eternal God. It's an eternal plan. That means
it never started. It never had a beginning. It
wasn't something God decided to do one day like we would,
hey, let's go to the beach. It's an eternal plan. It is fully
effectual and it is so guaranteed that it is eternal. Your hope in Christ includes
that truth. that there is eternal life, which
was an eternal plan for your sake, because of the eternal
love that God has for you in spite of you. I'm the bread of life. Jesus
says He has come down from heaven. He taught them already that physical
bread perishes. He taught them already that there
are three different types of physical bread. I didn't articulate
this very clearly in the last few weeks, but let me just review
that for you. There's three types of, quote, physical bread in
this metaphor. The type of bread that you eat
every day, which they received. And it perished. And I ate breakfast
this morning, but by 11.45, I'm going to be starving. How about you? Yep. And you're
just sitting there. What are you doing to burn calories?
At least I'm standing up. Well, why? Because our body just burns what
we consume. It's what makes our mind work
and what makes our eyes work and have energy to move and to
walk from one resting place to another. From one nap to the
next. Whatever it is that we might
be doing. This is bread that you eat every
day. It's a type of bread. It's a physical bread and it
perishes. It doesn't even last the hour. Even when you overeat,
like at a holiday, because you want to get a piece of everything.
You get a dip of everything. And you're like, oh, I'll never
eat again. Let the sun go down. You're heating
that stuff back up. We just keep eating. It perishes
though. Another type of bread that Jesus has shown us is the
kind that God gives us miracles, not only to show the sustenance
of what we need, like manna, show His providence miraculously,
but it's also a temporary bread. So there is this bread that comes
from heaven, this bread in life that God provides on a temporal
basis, but it's still divine, like this lunch. where God the
Son just kept doling out the food, and there was more than
they could handle, and each disciple took home, or not took home,
but gathered up a basket of his own. But it still perishes. And there's a third type of bread
that perishes, and this is the kind that we work for. This is
the kind that the Jews at this time were working for. They were
working for their religious bread. They were laboring in their religion.
They were there for their Passover feast. And in all of their regalia
and everything that they did, they felt satisfied that God
was satisfied with them. So much so that they said, tell
us what it is God requires, we'll walk in that manner. We can do
it. Just like the Jews here in verse
52. Thinking, how are we going to
really eat this guy? Is he calling us to be cannibals?
What's he talking about? We see it plainly, don't we?
Why? Because we've been given sight.
We also have the historical record that Christ died on the cross. The kind of work here, this bread.
They wanted to make Him king. They wanted freedom from wrong.
They wanted social justice. This is the bread that perishes,
and it is not something the church should be partaking of. Jesus says there's only one true
type of bread, and that is His flesh. That is His flesh. The flesh He gives, the bread
He gives to the life of the world, and the bread He says no man
can have unless God draws him. No man can come to God without
His flesh being given for them. No man can come to Him unless
the Father gives him and credits him. Particularly. So in this now,
we ask the question, how is Jesus the bread of life? Verse 52,
the Jews disputed among themselves. The Greek word here for dispute
is not just so they grumbled, but it means, in essence, this
stark, haughty, obstinate attitude of grumbling and disputing, not
to come to the knowledge of the truth, but to prove the error. Anyone who's teachable, we can
relate to. When people ask questions, and
this is what I... Let me tell you something I hate. Why do
I hate it? Because God hates haughtiness. I hate it when someone
comes to me, either online or in person or through email or
through a phone call, and they ask me a question with the intention
on trying to move me into a corner to catch me in a heresy. Satan
is the one who speaks through those people. Well, that's really ugly. No,
Peter did the same thing to Jesus. Hey, Jesus, I heard what you're
saying. You know you don't have to die,
right? We got you. You told us to buy swords. We've
got plenty. And Peter tries to prove it,
too, chopping off ears. He needed some training. Whack that dude
in the forehead, man. Don't aim for the ear. Are you
listening? Satan speaks. And he speaks through
human mouths. And sometimes he speaks through
God's people when we put our flesh at odds with the scripture. What does James say? James says
in chapter one that we are tempted because of what our flesh wants.
I've never been tempted to eat dog food. And I feed my dogs
every day and I never think that is delicious looking. I think
that is gross. And I have a friend back when
we were in middle school and he ate cat food for fun. He just did it so that everybody
goes, oh, that's nasty. And he was known as like the
cat food guy. So I don't know, I think he didn't
get married until he was like 38. And I wonder why. No, I'm
joking. But I'm not enticed to eat cat
food. I've never been that hungry and
that destitute. I've never been enticed to eat,
you know, rotted roadkill, and I have friends who do. A freshly
killed raccoon. Pull over, buddy! I mean, you
know, dinner time. Don't think I want that. Never
been enticed. Why? Because my flesh doesn't
want that. Krispy Kreme? Hot now? Yes. You know? Don't bring doughnuts into a
fellowship and expect me to watch you eat them. Don't bring any kind of pastry,
especially the French kind. I'll eat them. Some of you are
the salty flavor. Don't bring a pack of Lay's in
front of you. Oh yeah, can't just eat one, right? We're enticed by what our flesh
wants. The reason the enemy can speak
to us and trick us into speaking to others is because we only
speak that which we really desire in our flesh. That's why laboring
in the Word and eating of the Scripture is mandatory, for that
which is in us, in the Word of God, is greater than our flesh. Christ satisfies sufficiently. He is the only true bread. And
these people were disputing, how can this man give us his
flesh to eat? See, that is the question of
an unbeliever. Now, it doesn't mean that we
don't question what these things mean. Beloved, don't hear what
I'm not saying. It is normal, natural, and healthy
to say, what does that really mean? Help me understand what
it means to be no longer guilty of my sin, though I'm guilty
of my sin. To be justified. To be redeemed. Let's learn.
But these people were not wanting to learn. They wanted to ask
questions and answer them in such a way that they would come
to the conclusion that Jesus truly was a blasphemer. Or when someone asks me a question
about the gospel and they say, you mean God has created people
for hell? The simple answer for that is,
absolutely. He's created vessels for destruction. Absolutely. The question then
doesn't lead us to, well, who's a vessel of destruction and who's
a vessel of mercy? And some people ask that question
because they're genuinely interested to understand it, but that's
not what's happening here. How can this man, how can this
man, you hear the difference. Who does this man think he is?
What is he trying to, how can he give us this flesh? This is
absurd. People say that the gospel is
absurd in the same way these men said this was absurd, because
they're judicially blind and they are operating, many, all
of us, before we were born again, operate on the foundation and
on the premise of our human nature, which is hostile to the truth
of Christ. Hostile to God, hostile. It's hostile. And we hate it. But in the mercy of Christ, we
get eyes to see. These people could not see, because
it was not their time to see, and some of them were not permitted
to see ever. Because they were thinking humanly.
Their mind was unable to comprehend. Their deepest desire was to have
the way they wanted. To have the earth that they wanted.
To have the kingdom that they wanted. To have the religion
that they wanted. To have the Messiah that they wanted. I'll
never worship a God like that. I've heard just in the last two
weeks, speaking of a sovereign God. That's not the God of my Bible,
they say, talking about God's sovereignty and suffering, salvation,
government. Someone told me that as a pastor,
I need to get more involved in politics. I'm like, why would
I step down in influence? Why would I run for public office
and skirt the influence that I have? I have complete influence
over every soul that comes in contact with me. Why? Because
I'm gonna preach the gospel and God's the one doing the work.
We're just planting seeds and plowing and watering. Same as
you. The greater call is the gospel
of grace, not social justice. Is it wrong to speak out against
injustice? No. But speak out as though we're
not speaking out. It doesn't matter. I have a shoe,
I have a pair of shoes that I recently purchased and somebody put the
wrong shoelace in there at the shoe store. And at the end of
it, it's like this long at the end. So I have to tie it into
like one of these little loop knots, some little boy scout
thing. Well, excuse me, scout thing. And I could just change it. Shoestring. What was I talking
about there? I don't even know. It doesn't matter. People want to have their own
way. We want to complain and we want
to get on the bandwagon. Oh, that's what I was talking
about. It's not important. The only time I think about that
shoestring is when I tie it and after I tie it, I'll think about
it again till the next time I wear those shoes. That's how we should
deal with politics. Okay, good. Point to what is
most eternal, deal with it, vote, do what we have to do, write
letters if we need to, but then get up and be about the Lord's
business. But these people wanted a kingdom
of this world. Their glory was the greatest
feature of their hearts, their own personal glory. Doing what
they loved was being who they were in the eyes of others. Why is this? Because they were
judicially blinded. This depravity elicited this
stupid response that we saw in Nicodemus. What am I supposed
to do to be born again? What does he ask? Enter once
again into my mother? I mean, I want to see Jesus. I want to see like a recording
of that, that Jesus go, And I don't think he did. I don't think it
frustrated him one bit. I think he knew all the well
from all of eternity who Nicodemus was and at that moment what he
was thinking. All eternity, he had all knowledge,
omniscience of Nicodemus and everything. Because the Bible
says there, the latter two verses of John 2, no one had to tell
Jesus what was in the heart of man. Now there was a man named
Nicodemus who came to Jesus by might. You see how this works?
We learn the truth about who Christ is, and that He's God,
and He has power over all things, and then we get an example of
what it looks like. And that's what Gospel of John
is doing. That's what the narrative is showing us. These theologically
rich and high doctrinal truths of Christ. And this stupid response, you
want to go back into my mother? How about the one before that?
It took 48 years, how are you going to rebuild it in three
days? What sign do you bring? He'll have zeal for his father's
house. How's that for a sign? We don't get it. No, you sure
don't. Why? Jesus says, because it has
not been granted to them to understand. They are judicially blinded. How now can he give us his flesh? What's he going to do? We're
going to take a little finger? We're going to cut his hair? We're
going to eat his hair? How's this going to work? They didn't
care. They wanted to show the stupidity of it in their own
hearts to the people around them. They wanted to show that's called
obstinance. They heavily disputed and debated
the actual meaning that Jesus was speaking of. What did He
really mean? They could not fathom the meaning in any logical term. They could not grasp. So they
became obstinate. They no more wanted to know,
but they sought the answer in order to proclaim its absurdity.
They questioned it in order that those around them would see that
they, the rulers of Israel, the teachers of Israel, thought it
absurd that Jesus would dare do something and say something
so ridiculous. They did not have faith. Because
with faith, we could hear Jesus say these words and we could
say, How's that possible? I don't know how it would be
possible, but praise the Lord Christ is the bread of life.
I don't know how I'm supposed to eat of His flesh, but I know
that the only way I'm going to live is through the flesh and
blood of Jesus. You see the difference? What does He really mean there?
What's the picture? Well, I trust in what He's saying,
but I just don't get it. That's what faith does. I trust in the Lord's teaching.
I trust in the Lord's truth. I trust in His mystery. I trust
in His wonder. This is saving faith. Many will
consider themselves a pupil of Christ when all they really want
is evidence, a sign. They want satisfaction or worse,
a refutation. Many people will consider themselves
with faith, but in fact, they display a false humility as they
dig to prove what they believe or disprove what you believe.
The faith of a true child, while curious, will not waver in the
shadows of uncertainty. It will not waver in a human
sense, against the human nature, but it will resolve. and rest
in the assurance of the faithfulness of God. Who is Jesus Christ? Who is the Christ? This Jesus
who stands and proclaims these things right here before these
people and now to your ears. This is where the faith of God's
children rests. Whether we grasp the depth of
it or not, we trust in the truth of it. Jesus Christ says He is
the way, and that His life is our life, and that His flesh
is our bread, and that His blood is our hope, and He will raise
us up again on the last day. I don't know what He means, but
boy, do I believe Him! That's why the disciples, and
you see the apostles, when they write, people thought they were
out of their minds. because they would not enter
into a logical debate on the manner which these things rest
in some mind or philosophy, but they just proclaimed it simply
in its absurdity. The gospel saves supernaturally
by the work of God. Whether you can comprehend it
or not, The Bible says you cannot comprehend it until you've been
saved. You hear that? Your salvation is not dependent
upon your comprehension. But your comprehension is proof
of your salvation. Loosely. Proof of your salvation is Christ
is alive. Proof of your salvation is that
you believe in what Christ accomplished and you trust in Him. Proof in your salvation is the
work of God in you to believe. God gives saving faith. Jesus
in verse 53 repeats and then responds. He says to them, truly,
truly, I say to you, I mean, what else do we need? These guys
are disputing and Jesus just speaks into their dispute. Get
the picture, folks. This man knows your thoughts.
At the best, you should probably leave the room and talk about
it in your own hearts. Unless you eat of the flesh of
the Son of Man and drink of His blood, you have no life in you. I mean, this is an emphatic addition
to a condition that Jesus has. First it was, eat of the bread
of life and you live. He said previously, look upon
the Son and live. And there are people who say,
well, we've got to eat of Jesus, we've got to look at Jesus, we've got
to follow Jesus, we've got to take up the cross of Jesus, and
there's a whole list of things you've got to do to be saved.
You've got to be baptized, you've got to join the church, you've
got to serve, you've got to give cold water, and visit prison,
and all that kind of stuff, and clothe the naked. There's a whole
bunch of... It's just work, work, work, work, work. That's not
the point. The point is here that Jesus is using words and
metaphors. The word in my brain just died.
Together, with the same definition, synonymously. There it is. Truly, truly, the Son of Man.
We overlook that sometimes. Here is Jesus reaffirming His
humanity. I, this human being standing
before you, you must eat of My flesh and drink of My blood.
See, He's not said anything about blood until now. You must eat
of My flesh and drink of My blood. In 1 John, what does John say
is the spirit of the Antichrist? The one who says that Jesus has
not come in the flesh. The one who likes to say, oh,
we get it. Jesus was a spiritual being.
Jesus wasn't God. Jesus wasn't man. Jesus was this,
you know, this spirit. He says that's Antichrist. The
Gnostics would argue that matter and material things are evil.
Some people would argue that even God made... I heard somebody
talking about this this weekend, I can't remember from where.
That God made Adam out of the dirt and the dirt was evil, which
is why Adam had an evil inclination. Even though the Bible says that
He made the soil and it was good. Jesus has come in the flesh. This is a vital doctrine of the
incarnation of God. And pastor after pastor, I'm
going to stop saying that, false teacher after false teacher after
false teacher in our world continue to placate to the masses of our
culture who can't grasp the absurdity of the supernatural because it
doesn't fit in line with what is observable. Biology. The laws of physics. The laws of nature that God has
established to orchestrate the order of the universe. That's
why it's called a miracle. That's why God is superlative.
He's not part of creation. He owns creation. It's like this
knife in my pocket. It's mine! And I do what I want. I want to throw it away, I can
throw it away. If I want to sharpen it, I can sharpen it. If I want
to shave my arm, I can shave my arm. If I want to run it over
with a truck, I can run it over with a truck. I do what I want
to with it. It belongs to me. I own it. God owns time. He created it. It's something that He uses. People who say that Christ did
not have to come in the flesh are antichrists. People that
say that Christ was not born of a virgin are antichrists.
People that say that it doesn't matter are antichrists. These
people have no life in them. They are not filled with the
Spirit of God because that's what Jesus says right here. The Son of Man, if you don't
eat of My human flesh and drink of My human blood, you are dead
in your sins. Now these were living people
with breath in their lungs, and their minds were working, and
their ears were working. They were alive in their humanity,
but they were dead in their spirit. Just like everybody who is not
currently now believing on Jesus Christ is dead. And the wrath
of God remains on them. The doctrine of incarnation,
the doctrine of the virgin birth, the teaching of these things
are not for us to push to the side. They are the core of Jesus'
plenary ministry, His teaching ministry, His speaking ministry.
I have come down from heaven. It is the prophecy of God through
Isaiah that He would come. It is the prophecy of God the
Father in Genesis. The seed of the woman will crush
the head of the serpent. Do not fall prey to the wiles
of the ever so smarties of our day. They'll tell you that the
Bible is a fable and it's not necessarily true and it doesn't
have to be true. Just like these Jews and their
faithlessness. So is the unregenerate man of
all generations, of all nations, tongues and tribes. We must believe
in what Jesus is saying this day. that He came in the flesh. And He says then, unless you
eat. There's a condition here. I'm the bread of life. I came down from heaven and this
bread gives life. Eating now is required. You must
eat of this bread. This is spiritually true above
all things. It is spiritually true above
the flesh and above the will of man. We must eat of Christ. Jesus in His humanity is the
man through which God is perfectly revealed. Jesus in His human
person is the means through which God will satisfy His judgment.
Jesus in His humanity perfectly displays the fulfillment of the
law of God. His holiness, His righteousness
is manifested before us that we may behold the perfect God
of heaven in Jesus Christ, in His humanity. See that. God is revealed through the man
Jesus. God is seen and known and gives life through the man
Jesus. The light. In contrast, we see
Jesus saying, for this is the will of my Father, in verse 40,
that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him would
have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Now He's saying everyone who eats and drinks of Me will have
life, and I will raise him up on the last day, as you see in
verse 54. So now we think about this. What
is looking in comparison to eating? Nothing. We eat of Christ, we
look at Christ, we believe in Christ. It's all the same thing.
It's all faith. It's trusting in the teaching
of the gospel. It's trusting in the work of
Christ. And we see this blood. I drank
my blood. This is ridiculous. These people
are like, this man is awful. Number one, it was against the
law to drink blood as a Jew. And secondly, it was against
the law to eat meat with the blood still in it. What it means
to have kosher meat, they drain the blood completely from the
animal before they prepare it for food. It was prohibited. This phrase,
using the idea of blood rather, and this phrase in the mind of
the hearers right here in first century, waiting for the Feast
of the Passover, it always brought forth the notion of a violent
death for sacrifice. That's what it thought. That's
all the picture that these Jews could think of right here, is
that Jesus is talking about blood. When we hear about someone's
blood, we think of the violent, this is the Jew speaking, sacrifice
in the temple. And what's crazy is that's exactly
what the sacrifice in the temple pointed to, the ultimate sacrifice
of Jesus Christ. here at the Passover, they did
not understand about Jesus dying through crucifixion. They had
no bearing there. The culture will reflect this
passage as a reference to His death. They couldn't grasp what
He meant. His original listeners would
have coupled the idea of Jesus being sacrificed in the temple
And it wasn't until the middle of the second century before
people started reflecting this as part of the Eucharist. Because they had forgotten the
nature of the crucifixion. They'd forgotten the nature of
Judaism and its violent sacrifices. Friends, we think of worship
as a sterile place. Worship in the temple of God
was a bloody place. It stunk. because it was all pointed to
the picture of death. Jesus is explaining that to them
right here. My flesh and my blood are your only life. If I don't
die for you, if the Father doesn't call me to die for you, you will
perish in your sins. If you do not believe, in me,
you will perish in your sins." That's the simple thing that
Jesus is explaining. But He's explaining it to them
in the way that they should have grasped it fully. The true bread. The true bread. Eating and drinking result in
the combination of Jesus' body being sacrificed and having effect
to be received by faith alone. Faith is eating and drinking,
looking. It's believing. He says, and
if you do not believe in the work of My body and My blood,
if you do not believe in what I am and who I am and what I
came to do, if you do not have faith that I am the way to life,
if you do not have faith that the Father sent Me to do His
will, which is to save His people from their sins, then you have
no life in you. Because life is found in my person.
Life is found in my work. Life is found in my sacrifice.
The vicarious atonement of Jesus, whereby He, in place of the guilty
sinner, bleeds and dies to satisfy the wrath of God the Father,
who is the holy and just God of heaven. It's interesting if
you begin to look at the combination of the idiom flesh and blood.
I mean, when we use it in our day, we don't use it as often
as we used to. I remember as a child, I would
hear it a lot. Well, that's my flesh and blood. Does that mean
that that person's pointing over there to a pint of blood and
a chunk of flesh that belongs to them? What do we say? No,
that's my child. It's my own flesh and blood.
It's my family. It's our DNA. The flesh and blood. Well, the
Hebrew use of that idiom meant the whole person. The whole person. My flesh and my blood. Me! Jesus
is saying. You ever heard? Through blood
and tears, through sweat. Me. I have worked. Jesus is saying,
it is me. Life is found in me. The whole
me, everything that I do, the whole person, Jesus in total
is life alone. So if we refuse Him in any part,
we remain dead. And Jesus says there's no life
in us. If we refuse, listen to this, any of the teaching of
Jesus in part, we refuse Jesus in whole. You need to understand, beloved
church, listen to me, we need to be about evangelism. We need
to stop letting people have an ambiguous Savior and get away
with feeling okay because everybody says, ooh, Lord bless me that
they're believers. Oh, I believe in Jesus. That
means nothing. Please give me your testimony.
What Jesus is it that you believe? Tell me what you mean by believing
in Jesus. And if it comes, and you think
I'm being funny. I'm not being funny. I ask that
question 25 times a week. And people go, well, you know,
God is good all the time. I'm like, what does that mean?
Explain what that means. Well, you know, I don't know,
that's all I'm asking. Can you please explain it to
me? Give a reason for the hope that you have. But we've relegated
the gospel to this wicked thing that you want to know that you
know that you know that you know that you have eternal life? Yeah. Jesus says, it's all of me. My
flesh and blood. My sacrifice is the only way
you can live. The Father has sent me to die
for His people. Do you believe in the work that
I am accomplishing? That's what He's saying now,
and now back where we are, or we're not back where we are,
but where we are, we look back and go, do we believe in the
work that Jesus has accomplished? Jesus' life. Those who do not believe so are
dead already. This is the state of those who
are not believing. They're lost and utterly disposed
to the wrath of God, His justice, and they have no hope in the
world. No human within the, quote, world can live apart from Christ. He
is the true life from heaven. He comes from the One who makes
all life and sustains all life. And indeed, He is the God of
creation, the Giver of life. In verse 54, Jesus then emphasizes,
as we finish up our time today, by restating perfectly what they
thought they heard Him say. Yes, whoever feeds on My flesh
and drinks of My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up
on the last day. This reiteration is Jesus' way of saying that
faith is the point of eating and drinking. This life is permanent
and certain. I will raise him up. Feeding
on Jesus by faith is the point here. The Father gives and He
will raise them up. Those who believe have been given
by the Father. And those who believe have eaten
the body and drank the blood of Jesus. Spiritually. This is not a superlative point
that now we must do something else in order to be saved, as
some teach, sort of like some have told me recently, well,
this means that if you don't take the Lord's table, you're
not saved. Well, that's why the Lord's table is not in view here,
because it's never been practiced. But it sure does define what
the Lord's table is talking about. The body and the blood of Jesus
was shed for us. It's a part of partaking of the
faith. Wow, we get to remember and hold fast to what God has
done through Christ sufficiently. But there are some who would
say, no, we've got to take the body and the blood of Jesus or we're
lost. And that's where the Roman idea that it is transformed into
the body and the blood at the time of taking, at the time of
blessing, Because if we don't eat of Jesus' true flesh, literally,
and drink of His true blood, literally, we cannot be saved.
It's absurd. Believe, I think, I don't know
who said this, doesn't matter, believe and you
have eaten. Jesus repeats Himself here for emphasis and to tie
the bread of life discourse together with its final climax that He
and His flesh and blood give life. He gives life. This is about life everlasting,
spiritual hope, and the efficacy of the gospel. Jesus Christ as
the true bread of life, through the shedding of His blood, which
is the remission of sins for all who the Father gives Him,
they will be raised to life. In verse 55, he says, "...for
my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and
drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As a living Father
sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds
on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that
came down from heaven, not like the bread your fathers ate and
died. Whoever feeds on this bread,
whoever feeds on me, whoever believes in me, lives forever. Jesus said these things in the
synagogue as he taught at Capernaum. In closing, I will quickly restate
these. Life-giving truth is Jesus Christ. He is the way and the truth and
the life. Jesus, as the truth, establishes
this truth effectually through His obedience to the Father's
will to save people, His people, from their sins by taking their
guilt and facing certain death. Jesus is the truth. So therefore,
in that, in the gospel, which is the power of God, unto salvation,
unto eternal life, this gospel is the means through which we
live. So when we believe in the truth of Jesus' words, we are
living in the truth of His flesh, by His flesh as our bread. You
see that. Jesus keeps His own. They abide
in Me, He said. This is our sermon for next week,
verse 56. What does it mean to abide in
Christ? Well, it tells us there very
easily, whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in
Me, and I in him. We already know that that, in
its metaphor, means believes in Him and His work, His finished
work, the teaching of His mouth, of His Word. We don't have to
go find Jesus and have some priest to make His body and blood appear
before us so we might eat it and drink it. We don't have to
do all sorts of conditional things. We have to believe that Christ
is our life. The Father gives life, He says,
and then the Father sends me and those who He gives to me
because the Father sends me who is life and life is in the Father.
Then the Father has given life to me. We see that in John 5. then also those who are in Me
will live. They will be abiding. This is
the preservation of the saints. This is the truth that Christ
will hold His own. This is the truth that it is
by faith alone, period, in Christ alone, period, by which we have
eternal life. And I can hear the bells of irony
ringing in my ears. Oh, but what you're saying is,
we don't have to do anything after we're saved. We don't have
to have any good works. Who said that? Be quiet. If I'm called antinomian one
more time, I'm gonna tattoo it to my cheek. Except I'm gonna
be anti-antinomian. But that's what happens, isn't
it? That's what happens when our flesh is constantly compounding
in opposition to the gospel. It doesn't make sense in our
minds that it's just by faith. There are many things that God
will produce in our lives. Love and kindness and gentleness
and obedience. And we'll be driven to these
things because of our love for Christ, because He gave Himself
for us. We'll desire these things, but by the Spirit alone will
we walk in them. We've been made new. We no longer
are slaves to our depraved nature, but we have a new nature in Christ.
There's a lot of cool things that have come because Christ
has saved us, but these things are not the gospel. These are the things that the
Pharisees were trying to figure out. Alright? How do we eat?
How do we do the work of God? How do we do this? How do we
do that? How do we do this? The rich young ruler. What must I do to
have eternal life? Jesus says you must be absolutely
perfect. That's in a nutshell what He
says to him. You must keep all the laws. And this man, in his
arrogance, says, I have done that. So to test him, Jesus says,
then go give all your wealth to the poor. And he's like, not even gonna
happen, sorry. Why? Because he didn't love the
Lord with all of his heart, he loved his wealth. You see? But we can't take that narrative
and command it and go, if you wanna be saved, you gotta not
love your wealth. Good luck with that one. Good
luck with that one. Nothing wrong with wealth. Nothing
wrong with poverty. Nothing wrong with health, nothing
wrong with sickness. It's part of life. And God uses
it all for His glory. If there weren't both, we'd be
in bad shape, wouldn't we? But in the end, it's by faith
alone that justifies us. We are found abiding in Christ
when we believe. And that believing, that believing
is the work of God. And the fruit of that believing
is believing. As we'll see next week, what
it means to abide. And we'll begin to see, if we want to go
back to Ephesians and read all those cool things. It talks about,
we see Paul praying there in Ephesians. What a perfect text
to read this morning. He prays that we may be filled
with all the fullness of God. And in this doxology, now to
Him who is able to do far more than we could ever think or ask
for. And that Christ will be exalted in the church and through
the church forever and ever and ever. Amen. And then he begins
in chapter 4 to talk about all that God has given as He's shown
us in chapter 1, all spiritual blessings which are ours in Christ
Jesus. Now in chapter 4, We need you to walk this way. We need
you to love this way. We need you to serve this way. Because
Christ is yours and you are Christ. And you are now one man, no longer
an enemy of God. But Christ through His flesh
has made you sons and daughters of God. Now walk in this manner
and God not only is going to... He's not going to leave you to
yourself. He's going to work in you to do these things. Not
only that, but He's going to create an affection for each
other that blows the mind of the world. And not only that,
He's going to give you gifts. Teachers of the Word of God to
equip you to walk in the manner worthy and to do the work of
the ministry. And not only that, He's going to equip you to walk
in such a way that the world looks on and goes, wow, these
guys are ridiculous. But look how they live. There's
something special. There's something amazing about
them. There's a testimony there. And then he's going to go on
to tell you that because of God's redemption, that even when the
devil and the demons themselves come against the church, that
we stand firm in the gospel of grace with the sword of God,
the sword of the Spirit, which is His word. That's the book
of Ephesians. Why is it effectual that way?
Because Christ is in His flesh, the sacrifice for sins, once
and for all, whereby He saves the people of God to the uttermost,
and God will not lose one. And that's what Jesus taught
in the synagogue. And just like He taught in Luke chapter 3,
verse 4, And just like he taught here in Luke 6, I mean in John
6, and just like you'll see him teach in John 12, they finally
got to the point where they wanted to kill him each time, but they
finally got to the point where they decided he's got to go. And you know what? The straw
that broke the camel's back was not just the teaching, but the
fact that he raised Lazarus from the dead. When he said he would
raise the temple again in three days, and then they proved he
could raise the dead, They're like, this guy's too powerful,
we've got to get rid of him. They could not see it. Beloved,
you see it because of the grace of God. To the praise of His
glorious grace. That's the whole first chapter.
That's what Paul establishes at the point of the church. Verse
10 of chapter 3 of Ephesians. The manifold wisdom of God is
displayed in the church. to the powers and the principalities
of the heavenly places, to the demons and the enemies of God,
to the world of the lost. They can see it, and one day
they will behold it with open eyes, judicially. And they will
lay before Christ all of eternity and say, You are Lord, You are
Lord, You are Lord. We have the caricature of hell
as some demonic something poking people with a fire and a pitchfork.
Friends, Satan and all the fallen angels will be prostate before
the Lord. calling Him Lord forever. That is judgment. The agony,
what shall it be? The second death no man can know. Jesus uses illustrations that
made His original hearers run and sleep not. There is no level of torture
devised of humanity that could come close to the justice of
God's righteousness. But for us, beloved, without
any work of our own, God has snatched us out of that darkness
through the gospel of His Son. Let's pray. Father, Your gospel is true. The flesh of Your Son is true
food. And His blood is true drink. Thank
You so much that You brought us to the table of feasting. Father, we love You. And we're
glad to be able to say that we love You because of Your love
for us. I pray as we close our time together today that it would
not be spiritually closed. that we would continue to hear
these truths, to meditate upon them, and to pray for one another
as we go about our day. Lord, I thank You for the mercy
to permit us to assemble and to permit me to teach. I thank
You, Lord, that You looked past our sin and You put it on Your
Son, Jesus, and You killed and crucified Him. And now You are
satisfied. And Father, You promised us life
and You proved it, and You showed that Jesus was not worthy to
die in guilt, so You raised Him to life. And then by faith, we
also will be raised to life in Jesus Christ. First and foremost
and forever, spiritually, that we are now no longer condemned
because He took our place. And Father, one day then physically,
as we live forever, never changing, in the presence of You, to the
praise of Your glorious grace. Send us into the highways, into
the darkness, into the world. Let us be a beacon of light and
hope to proclaim the gospel, that You might save Your sheep
and call them to Yourself, as You give them to Your Son. In
His name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.