This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at Gracetruth.org and AnchoringFaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. What does God want us to do? Isn't that a typical question
that we often ask ourselves? I mean, if we were honest, we
would say that it's a constant question. What does God want
from me? What is it that God desires of me? What should I
be doing so that God is happy with me? But it's not a bad question. We've already answered that question
because the people of this particular passage in John chapter 6 actually
ask it of Jesus, what must we be doing to do the work of God? Of course they weren't saying
how can they do godly work or the work that God can only do,
but they were asking what is it that God requires of us? Jesus
responds by saying this is the work of God. In other words,
this is the work of God, first and foremost in the answer to
that question, this is what God requires of you, that you believe
in the only Son whom He has sent. And then also, in the same way,
Jesus is expressing that this is the work of God that you believe.
that it is something that God is doing. And people would argue,
well, that's not what the Bible teaches. Why do we want to add
to? We don't want to add to. We understand that the question
is, what must we be doing to be doing that which God requires,
His work, the stuff He's called us to. This is the work that
God requires that you believe on the Son. And then in the same
vein, then Jesus explains what that looks like, which is that
the Father gives Him His people. So it's the work of God. It is
the work that God is even doing. As we'll see next week, there's
a lot of times when there are parallels in Scripture with traditions,
it's very easy to start making things a proof text. We start
taking the narrative and commanding it. or twisting it. We can't
twist the narrative. We can't command the narrative.
We can't say, well, this is what Jesus said, so let us say this.
Or this is what Paul did, so let us do this. Because there
are some things that people do in this world that all of us
are not allowed to do, we don't have the authority to do. For
example, my father has the statute power of arrest. statutory power
of arrest. He can, in any time, in any way,
in the state of Georgia, anywhere, put his hands on a human being
who violates the law and sees them with all authority of the
state of Georgia, under the governor. That's what a sheriff is. He
answers only to the governor of the state. But I, though I
am his son, do not have the power to just walk up to someone and
go, you're under arrest. It does not work that way, though
we're both men, we're both of the same bloodline, we both have
the same name and we favor each other to a degree. I do not have
the authority that he has. The same way we, though we are
in Christ, though we are the children of God, though we are
saved in the sense that by Christ and we find ourselves as Christ
as our life, we do not have the same authority as Christ. Therefore,
we do not go into the temple and cleanse it the way Christ
did. We do not speak to the Pharisees the way Christ did. We do not
do those things. And this is what I'm talking
about this morning, but it just, it fits very well. Well, we don't
command the narrative. We don't say, this is what happened,
so let us do likewise. That is one of the greatest atheistic
debates of our day. Well, the Old Testament, that
guy threw his daughters out to be hurt. We know what they did. He threw his daughters out that
they may be destroyed by the people in Sodom. And some people
say, well, the Bible is full of garbage. That's ridiculous.
That's not what we should do. Just because it's recorded as
history doesn't mean that it's commanded of God. We don't see
Acts chapter 2 in the day of Pentecost and we don't repeat
those things. We don't try to come to a place where we're experiencing
this mindset of, oh, now we're the apostles. There are no apostles.
And any man, woman, or child that calls himself an apostle
in this day is a liar from the devil. Now, I said that, and
I have many friends who take that title, and I will say to
them that they are mistaken, either in two ways. They're mistaken
in that they don't understand the word and they're just using
it wrongly. Maybe they're a pastor, an overseer, or a deacon, or
an elder. Or maybe they're a church planter,
or an administrator, or a missionary, but they're not an apostle. To
say anyone is an apostle today is to make Jesus Christ a liar.
to make the Word of God a liar, to make Paul a liar, to make
John a liar. Or maybe they really think they
are an apostle because they've been called by God in some far-out
way through some vision which the Bible says cannot happen.
If you have a vision and it matches with Scripture, it's unnecessary.
Why would you share it? And if you have a vision or a thought
or a dream or an idea or a voice in your head that doesn't match
with Scripture, it's the devil anyway. So why do we want to
hear it? Now what's the point in that? We don't command the
narrative of Scripture even in this way. We don't twist the
Scripture, Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. We do not twist the
Scripture. We do not practice cunning. Why? For the judgment of God is on
all those who twist the Scripture for their own benefit. The judgment
of God are on everyone who teaches wrongly the Bible. You know why? Because the Spirit of God teaches
His people. And when we study the Bible rightly in context,
He corrects our error. How many errors does James Tipton
have? I have not been able to count them all. How many wrong
things have ever come out of my mouth? Well, friends, just
in what's recorded over 3,000 teachings that I've got recorded,
I would beg to say that probably in all of them there's something
wrong. But there's a difference in a verbal typo or ignorance
and flat out wrong, error, purposeful, erroneous, heresy. And when we see John 6, we're
coming to the place where we're going to start closing out John
6 in the next two, three weeks. I told you weeks ago that it
was going to be one of the most difficult passages because herein
lies, and let me just go ahead and tell you, the doctrines of
grace are taught explicitly in John 6. Total depravity is taught
in John 6. Because he says, indeed you cannot
believe You've come, you've seen, but yet you continue to not believe. You cannot believe. You see what
Jesus says? Now people say, well, you're
imposing on the text what's not there. No. John has already given
us under the divine umption of God the Holy Spirit. He's a person.
He is God fully. That no one receives Him except
that they be birthed by Him. And then we see that played out
very specifically in the latter part of John 2 and John 3. And
so when Jesus says that you cannot come to Me except the Father
bring you, draw you, and give you, that means that man is unable. They have no ability to come
to Christ, to eat of Christ, to believe on Christ salvificly
without the work of God. That's total depravity. When we see that Jesus says that
all who do come will be raised up on the last day, And it doesn't
matter who you are, it's not of the will of the flesh, not
of the will of man, nor what, it's not of blood, it's just
this. This unconditional election that
God in His sovereignty has chosen a people for Himself, for who?
For Christ will die. He will give His body as bread
to die for His people. He will save perfectly a people
that God has chosen. Election is how God saves His
people. Well, I just don't like that
word, then tear up your New Testament. Everything Paul wrote, everything
Peter wrote, and everything John wrote teaches it, so tear it
out. And Peter and Paul use it exclusively,
well not exclusively, particularly in the wording. the chosen, the
elect. That's who you are, beloved.
That's how you can sing a song like this. Oh, the great, great
love, the deep, deep love of Jesus. Not the deep, deep love
of James or the deep, deep love of Jesse. Oh, my deep, deep love
for Jesus. See, that's what we want to sing,
isn't it? Oh, my deep, deep love for Jesus. How it rang so ever
true. I got up, I looked in the mirror,
and then I put on my left shoe. And then we just, I mean, we
can just come up with some stupid hymn, and then talk about our
love for Jesus, but guess what our love for Jesus is not? Our
love for Jesus is not. Because unless our love for Jesus
is to love Him with all of our heart, that means it is not shared. There is no affection in our
heart that shares except for Christ. We don't share it with
anything, anybody, or any idea. Beloved, there are ideas in our
heads that we love with our hearts more than Christ sometimes. with all our heart, with all
of our mind. That means everything we think on, it should be for
the glory of God in our affection. Whether we're washing a dish,
or whether we're clipping our toenails, or whether we're going
to the market, or whether we're riding down the freeway, whatever
it might be, it should be always on our... Do we love Christ that
way? No. It's imperfect love. So there is no true, perfect
love for Christ in us. It is a war and strength. Oh, beloved, I don't have to
keep going. It is not about our deep, deep love for Jesus because
John teaches that we have a love for Jesus in the first place
because of the deep, deep love of Jesus for us. And Jesus' love
is perfect and it is sovereign and it is applied to those for
whom He has loved throughout the foundation of the world.
And these are tough things, but I am teaching you, the church,
I am preaching to you, the beloved, those who profess to be in Christ,
there is no agony in our soul when we see the perfection of
what God has done through His gospel. It is not for us to sit
and writhe our hands and consider how we might come to terms with
this amazing mystery called salvation. This amazing mystery called election. This amazing mystery called atonement. We don't have to come to terms
because God, in His generosity, in His mercy, in His kindness,
because of the great love with which He loves us, causes us
to be born again to a living hope. through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead. That's a quote from Paul in Ephesians
1 and 2 and Peter chapter 1 of 1 Peter. And because this is true, we
looked at limited atonement last few weeks, only those who are
given to the Son can be saved. That means Jesus paid for the
sins justly, judicially, for His people. There is no one in any possible
way in any theory of even logic of man for whom Christ died that
can stand before God and He can charge them with their sin. No
one. Not one. It's taught there. We've learned this. Go back and
listen to two weeks ago. Irresistible grace, we looked
at that last week. That means when God draws a man,
He saves a man. And the man without any effort
on his own comes to see and believes perfectly. And it is irresistible. God is no God. The very name
Elohim would be stricken from Him if He could not change you.
And if He depended upon your freedom, your choosing or your
liberty to affect His plan. He is no God at all and deserves
to be spat upon, much less not worshiped. And we also see the teaching
of the preservation of the saints, where Jesus says, I will never
cast them out. When the Father gives them to
me, they will come, and when they come, I will raise them
up, and they will never be cast out. You see? The doctrines of grace, the tulip, is in John 6, verbatim. And yet, we still find ourselves
in our culture when we teach the gospel. Just like in the
day of Jesus, we teach the gospel, and people hear that it is a
sovereign work of God, and then what do they do? Then what else
am I supposed to do? Believe on Christ. Believe that
He's telling you the truth. Trust in Him. Appropriate His
teaching by faith. And they said, but what must
we be doing? What must we be doing? You know
the irony here? I didn't mention this a few weeks
ago when I taught this. I'm going to revisit it just a tad here
in John 6 where they say, what must we be doing in order to
be doing the works of God? If you ask God that question,
what does it mean, foundationally? that you think you can do it.
Okay, what do you require of me, God? What is it that you
think I can do? They felt in their heart that
in their flesh they could do what God had called them to do.
Just like the rich young ruler, just like the Pharisees and the
Sadducees, the scribes. These people here in Galilee
were dressed up ready for the Feast of Passover to remember
the time when God what? What did He do? Did He give them
a plan to execute that if they executed the plan in their military
strategy that they would be saved? That if they formulated some
type of militia that they could overthrow Egypt? No, God said,
believe in Me. Smear blood on your doorpost. In the wilderness, when the Jews
were grumbling against God and against Moses, God sent serpents
to bite them so that He could kill them. Now why? Why would God just not? Why? Because Marvel stole that
one. Sorry. Why? Because God's purpose in
justice was also redemption. Not all Jews died, some were
saved, because some could believe that God was true when He said,
just look, behold at that serpent, the very thing that causes your
death, and see and believe, and you shall live. Jesus uses that
same illustration in John 3, when Nicodemus, for as the serpent
was lifted up in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted
up, that all who look and believe will have eternal life, but not
perish. So that's the context of Jesus' words there. Going
straight to Deuteronomy 6, to the days of Moses. The Passover
was through the days of Moses. The pictures of redemption that
are a sovereign work of God. And every time unbelievers get
around the work of God and they see the miracle of God. Look
at this. And in Exodus they saw the miracle after miracle after
miracle. And then they grumbled. Now what? We're going to die? We're going
to starve? At least when we were slaves
we ate well. At least when our children were
sold to other nations and to other communities, at least we
know they were fed. This freedom that you've given
us, oh God, have you brought us out here to die? And if you
know the history of the Hebrew people, God put them in the wilderness
for 40 years in order that every, this is what the Scripture teaches
us, every unbelieving generation would die before they saw the
Promised Land. See, you cannot have the promised
land without faith. And you cannot trust in oneself,
you cannot trust in yourself and trust in God by faith. These people saw the work of
Christ, they heard the Word of Christ, they knew the will of
Christ, yet they asked for proof. They asked for bread because
they wanted to live forever, and then they rejected. the truth
when He says, I'm the bread. These people thought that they
could do what God required of them, and they lived a blind,
listen to these words, and wasted life. If you've not read Luke 15 and
the stories there of the prodigal son, the lost coin, those things,
the lost sheep, you may not understand that. The Scripture uses that
illustration of the Gentiles, who is the son who took all that
he could get from the father and then went off so that he
could find what satisfied him most. And God saved him. And those
who had been with God the whole time, this is the picture of
Luke 15 of the prodigal son, it's a picture of Jews and Gentiles. When the Gentiles come back and
then they kill the fatted calf and they have a celebration,
the older brother is angry. I've obeyed you, I've served
you, I've worshipped you, and you give this bread to them? Yes. Because God would say as Jesus
did, you haven't served me, you haven't loved me, you haven't
believed in me, you haven't eaten of me. You eat of your own fleshly
work and you labor for the bread that perishes just like where
we are today, just like your fathers in the wilderness. You
labored for bread that perished in itself and would not give
you life and they died. See, our state of mind when we
come to thinking about these things, when we come to learning
the gospel, our state of mind in life is often wrapped up in
the folds of our insecurities. We're strong in what we believe,
but our insecurities are stronger. And what's crazy, when I say
wrapped up in the folds, you can't see them. Or we don't show
them to other people, do we? We just sort of fold the dirty
napkin over and set it to the place. Nobody knows the difference. You ever had a dirty linen napkin
at a restaurant? It'll ruin the environment. But there's a piece
of steak in my napkin that I didn't put there, and it's chewed on. It's gross. But that's what we
do. We revolt our insecurities. We
fold it into this napkin. We try to hide it. We think that
they're not visible. And we want to put on this air
and this, what is it? This act. Like, we're okay. We don't have failings in our
faith. Yes, we do. Yes, I do. I have
failings in my faith every day. I have a murderous war inside
of me sometimes when people hurt those I love. When people hurt
you. People talk bad about others
and take advantage of weak people. I have a murderous spirit. You'd never know it if I didn't
just tell you. It's not like I sit there in my closet and
chain myself like a monster to the floor until I've calmed down.
You wouldn't know, but it's there. Well, you'd kill somebody. I
don't have to kill somebody, but I could talk about them. That's murder. Right? That's what the Bible
says. Gossip is murder. Thou shalt not kill, and when
we gossip, we violate that commandment. It's a capital crime, according
to God, just like stealing, coveting, adultery, and the like. So we think about our duties,
but no matter our duties, evil is evil, it's easy. to slip into
this evil idea that we don't see is wrong of this hard-working,
exhausting life that leads us to the rabbit hole of self-reliance. Because we have Jesus over here,
right? And Jesus, we think, okay, we've
got Christ, it's all about Christ alone. It's all about Christ
alone. We know that it's about, we sing
Christ alone songs, we learn Christ alone sermons, we preach
a Christ alone gospel. Yes, but then when these things
come into our life, we then fall prey to this insecure, demonically
driven, self-reliance. And we don't throw Jesus away,
but it's sort of like we've got, okay, like a good pencil. I mean,
how many of you used to keep your pencils up in here like
that? Back in the 80s and 70s when our hair was thicker, we
could do that, but you know. Or if you had the Afro, you could
stick it in there like that. But we treat Jesus like a good
pencil or a nice pen. Well, we know we got this. We'll
just keep it in our pocket. But as I get all this worked
out, I got Jesus when I need Him. You see what I'm saying? It's like our pocket pal. It's
everything I need right there. What we call in my world the
EDC, the everyday carry. What is it? We've got our flashlight
and our firearm and our field blade. Whatever else we come
up with. Our samurai sword. You know,
I've got some friends who like to carry swords. I'm joking. They probably do. Weirdos. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to talk
about your brother. Anyway, we're all weird. But we hold
Jesus around, we carry Him around like a pocket protector, like
a pocket pal, and we say, well, we can find peace and we can
find joy while considering Jesus as sort of a hang around. We've
got Him and He's there and when things get real bad in our self-reliant
effort to walk in the manner worthy of the gospel, we just
look over and Jesus is smiling. You know, you've seen that meme,
right? And we look back and there's
Jesus. He's just a-grinning and He's giving us two thumbs up.
And hallelujah, He's rooting for us. He's going, go boy, you
got it. That's not Jesus of Scripture. That's not the Gospel. But every
one of us, whether you listen to the sermon, those of you who
aren't here today, you're listening to the sermon next week, it's
you too. It'd be funny if we called names,
wouldn't it? Oh my goodness, they called me out. But Jesus is not hanging around
with us to smile us along the path that we might feel accomplished
at times of stress. Jesus does not answer to second
fiddle. Jesus does not allocate other
means to which we could find, quote, good times. And He is
then the icing on the cake for the best of times. That's not
what Christ is. That's not who Christ is. Christ
says, I am the bread of life. Not I'm the side dish to a great
meal. Not I'm the MSG that makes it all taste so good, and then
you run to the restroom. All these things. There is no
time in life where Jesus will add. Listen to this. There is
no time, no place, no opportunity, no season where Jesus will ever,
or can He ever, add to the pleasure and to the joy of any circumstance. Now, did you hear what I said?
Let's break it down a little bit. Jesus, it is impossible
for Him to add to our joy, or to our pleasure, or to our satisfaction. We can't say, oh, this is great,
man. Oh, Jesus is here, man, it's awesome now. Because you
know what happens when Jesus comes? The great thing that we
were experiencing now is the worst thing ever. This grand banquet is a beanie
weeding barn because the bread of life just showed up. Those free crackers you get on
airplanes. You ever eaten those things like
it's the only meal you've ever had? Dude, I'm turning around,
you want them cookies? You want the cookies? I don't
know why, I just want to eat. If I'm going to die up here,
at least I'm going to be full. That's what every good thing
in life is compared to Christ. Christ does not add to that.
Nobody cares about the breath mint when the bread is there. Christ, at all times, then in
this way, is the only absolute glorious satisfaction of our
innermost being. He is able to reveal to us the
lack of anything that anything else may offer. Everything else is nothing. Jesus
Christ the Lord is so sufficiently satisfying for His people that
there is nothing, nothing in the second position. Did you
hear me? Now this may be philosophically
a little bit different for us, but this is what Jesus is pushing
toward to close out this text. And when now, when the Pharisees
say, How does He offer us His flesh to eat and everybody runs?
I want you to understand why. Because they're not satisfied
in Christ. They want Christ to add to their
satisfaction. And He's the only one on His
terms. Go back and listen to the last
three weeks. Nothing comes close to Christ.
Nothing satisfies. It's all a waste. It's all a
temporal distraction from His glory. And when our eyes are
averted ever so slightly, even across the shoulder of Jesus
the Lord, even across the shoulder, our souls begin to starve. When we affix Jesus into the
circumstance as though He is going to help us have joy in
this, our souls begin to starve. We begin to hunger. John 6, 48.
I am the bread of life. Your fathers
ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread
that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and
not die. I am the living bread that came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread,
he will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the
life of the world is my flesh." So here we are, we're closing
this text out today. The bread, as I'll show you,
is a living bread. It's alliteration, forgive me,
a lasting bread and a loving bread. That's what we see. Some
of this is recap. Some of this is just expounding
upon what we've already learned. The bread is living bread. Jesus, as we've seen, speaks
of Himself in this manner, as the one thing that can give life.
He's the living bread that gives life. So He's alive and He's
also the bread that gives life. Just like the bread we eat gives
us sustenance to live, Jesus is the living bread that gives
eternal life. That's the comparison between manna and Jesus. Jesus is the true manna. See,
we saw in the first part of John where He's talking to Nathanael,
where Jesus is talking. I saw you when you were sitting
under the fig tree." And Jesus says, do not marvel
that I say, I saw you, because you will see greater things than
these. You will see heaven opened and angels descending and ascending
on the Son of Man Himself. That means that Jesus has proclaimed,
even in the calling of His disciples, that He is the only conduit through
which heaven and man meet. He's the only conduit through
which God is revealed. He is the only way that the fullness
of God can be seen and witnessed and understood and have intimacy
with man. The only way man can come to
God is not through experience, is not through knowledge of the
human flesh, is not through association, but is through Jesus Christ alone,
And the only way we can have that intimacy with God through
Jesus Christ alone is through the Word of God, it's reading,
it's hearing, it's teaching, and it's living as a people. If I were to fall on the floor
and wake up and tell you I had a vision, as the Word got around,
this place would change. None of you would be here. You
would go someplace where the voice of Jesus Christ would feed
you as the sheep of Christ who know His voice. But oh, I will
tell you, this place would be full. If I just decided all of a sudden
that God told me that there was a revival coming to Claxton.
God was about to bring an increase. That's a dangerous word. You know what the Bible talks
about increase for the Christian? There's nothing more to get.
So if God's going to bring an increase in a place, it's probably
an increase of judgment. Because there is no more to get.
Because the Bible says we have all things in Christ right now. All spiritual blessings are ours.
How do we know? Where are they? Right here in
this Bible. Jesus is Jacob's ladder. The vision that Jacob had of
angels climbing up and down the ladder, he didn't understand
it, but he does now. He did then. Jesus is the latter. Jesus is
the one who reveals God. Jesus is the better husband,
the better bridegroom. Like we saw at the wedding of
Cana, where He turned those ceremonial washing jars into the perfect
wine to give joy. Jesus is the true joy giver.
Those are just shadows. There is no such thing that we
can create. There is no intimacy with God that we can create in
this room if it's not through the hearing of Scripture. I want
you to hear that, church. I used to be a master of ambience.
I used to take a worship order, which usually about four or five
pages, and we'd have our times here and this and that. We'd
have cues. When I say this, this goes down, this song comes up.
And yes, I've used fog machines before. And you get enamored
with the intimacy of the atmosphere. But it's not intimacy with God.
You want to know, if the Spirit of God were to move among us
in a supernatural way today, it will only be through His Word.
It will only be through His Word. And it will not be through anything
that I have to say that adds to His Word. Jesus is the better husband.
He is the true joy giver. He is the real temple. He is
the true temple. He rebuilt the temple in three
days when He raised Himself from the dead. He is the snake of
healing. He is the food that does not perish. He is the one
who has His food doing the will of God the Father, John 4. He
is sufficiently satisfied in being the bread of life for the
people of God. He is the Word of God. He is
the work of God. He is the will of God. He is
the provider of eternal life. Jesus is the I Am. This in John's
Gospel is the first I Am statement that we see Jesus say. I am the
bread of life. He will go on to say, I am the
light of the world. I am the gate. I am the good
shepherd. I am the way and the truth and
the life. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the true vine.
You see that? Those seven statements that he
makes. Jesus is the bread of life. That gives eternal life. Not
the bread that satisfies us until the next hunger strike. Until
the next meal is needed. the bread that satisfies us even
when our physical lives are starving. There's an error in thinking when we ask the question of ourselves,
what is it that I need? You ever had somebody ask you
that question? People ask me that all the time, what do you
need? When I was a teenager, you know, what do I need? I need
a thousand dollars, I need a new set of tires, I need a car, you
know. I need a weekend off, you know,
I worked so hard. Oh yeah, what do we need? Most
of us who are adults, we need a little vacation. We need a
little extra money. Maybe we need to lose a little
weight. Maybe we need, maybe we need, maybe we need. But we
look into our cupboards and there's cans galore and our refrigerators
are full. We go, man, we need to go buy
groceries. My children are the world's worst.
They're going, there's nothing to eat. Now, when we built this kitchen,
there was nothing in the cabinets, and now they're full, so there
is something to eat. Even if it's flour and water. I mean,
a little salt. My grandma called those hoe cakes. Oh, you wanted
pancakes? Here's honey. This don't taste like... Eat
it. Okay. I want some milk. Well, I don't have any milk.
I got that powdered milk here. You know, she cleaned out a white
paintbrush. Here's your salt bread fried with honey and your
white paint. I wanted chocolate milk, raw
cocoa. Oh, it ain't sweet enough? Pinch
of sugar. What you need is something to
eat. You don't need what you like. Children, they have an
idea of what they think they need. Children, if I were to
say, what do you need today? Depending on where you were.
I need a new toy. I need a new comic book. I need
a new Xbox. I need this. I need that. I need
this. I need to get that. If you're at a restaurant, what
do you need? I need that dessert. I need that
juice or that soda. If you're at a store, I need
candy. That's really what kids are about. I need candy. Kids can become theologians in
three weeks if you offer them candy. They'll learn whatever
you want them to learn. That's what we do with Abigail.
When she's getting out of hand, here's a piece of candy. She's
looking at me. The first time that ever happened, I'm looking
out here and she's really looking at me. Sometime last year, and
she's looking at me, looking at me. And after service, I went
up to her and I said, Abigail, you were paying such good attention
because Mama said I could have some candy. if I paid attention."
You see, they don't need it, do they? We don't need it. We
don't need things that we think we need. Jesus doesn't give us
what we think we need. He gives us what we truly need.
There's an error in our thinking when we come to the table to
say that we need to be satisfied through this, this, that, and
this. And it's not always physical stuff. Sometimes it's emotional
needs. Sometimes it's healing. We don't need healing. Beloved,
we don't need it. We don't need our children to
be perfect. We don't need our spouses to
be godly. We don't need any of that. We
need Jesus Christ. We need eternal life. We don't
need a house. We don't need a car. We don't
need a job. We need Jesus Christ. Well, that's
the most fullest thing I've ever heard. Yes, it is. Thank you.
I take that as a high compliment. If I preach Christ and the cross
and Him crucified, then at least I'm in the company of foolishness
with Paul and with Jesus in John 6. Oh, you think you need bread? I am the bread. Oh, you think
you need me to give you something else? I'll give you something
else. My body is the bread. I mean, can you imagine the faces? Can you imagine the fathers who
were telling their children as they spent the night waiting
for Jesus, got into all these boats that somehow got there
and got over to Capernaum, and they're talking, and they're
like, Daddy, is Jesus going to give us some more food? Is He
going to give us some more bread? Is He going to give us some more fish? Oh, yes, son. This is about to be our king,
man. Remember me telling you since you were a little tiny
boy about how we were going to have a king and Messiah was coming?
This is it. Israel is about to be something
to be reckoned with. We're going to have something. And then for
Jesus to say, here I am. Daddy, I thought you said he
was going to give us some more bread. And then they take personally,
why don't this man feed us? He doesn't love us. He doesn't give
us what we need. He doesn't love us. He doesn't give us freedom
from Rome. He doesn't love us. He doesn't
bring back worship. He doesn't love us. He doesn't let us do
what we need. They didn't need any of that
stuff. They needed him. He knew what they needed, you
see. I am the bread of life. All that is wrapped up. Jesus
is not the bread that satisfies our flesh. He's the bread that
satisfies our deepest need. One that we cannot even see or
grasp until it has been revealed to us through the power of the
Spirit and regeneration. One that we will not see until we
have life through His body and His blood. Christ claims here
that He is the true manna that came from heaven. The true bread
does not leave a man lacking, leave a man wanting, or leave
a man hungry. He is alive in Christ and fully
complete. Those in the wilderness died,
as it says there. They ate of the manna and they
died. Why would Jesus talk about that?
Because He is the true, sufficient thing that they need, and they
want bread. Not only was the bread perishing,
but the very nature of what the bread did was perishing. You
see, if you know the story of the manna, the manna would fall
down from heaven and it would be on the ground the next morning.
They would pick it up and they would eat of it and by the midday
it would rot. so they could not store it away.
They had to depend upon God for every breath of their physical
need. Water, nowhere to be found, speak to the rock, hit the rock,
water would come. God would give water and bread
as He saw fit. And even though it supplied them
their nutrients to live in those 40 years, they still died. When we eat of Christ the true
manna, we never die. He satisfies our souls forever.
Those the Father gives Him have a great truth that Jesus is the
living bread of life. He's the living bread. This bread
is also a lasting bread. The bread that comes down from
heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. Anyone who eats
of the bread of life will never die. Do you understand that? What is a hundred years? In fact, I know very few people
in the whole of society that have lived to be 100 years. I
know some, even in my own family, that have lived that long, and
some that were very close, 98, 99. The woman who used to own our
house lived to 107. But they're anomalies. And every
now and then you see people in their 90s, but for the most part,
you see people, you know, when they're in their 80s, it's any
day now, statistically. It's any day now. Any day now. And I think about that and I'm
over halfway. It could be any day now. It could be any day
now for me in my 40s. It could be any day now for you
in your 50s or your 60s or 70s or your 20s or your teens. We
don't have the future ahead of us. And even if we do, we live,
and I talk to those people who are up in age, they've lived
8 to 9 decades in this world, and they say to me, James, it's
as if yesterday I was 15. I saw a guy that I went to school
with Thursday night. I have not seen him in 26 years. I have not seen his face. And
I recognized him, he recognized me. Wow! Isn't it amazing? And in that sense, right there
in that little bit of a conversation, I actually said to him, it feels
like we're still in middle school. It feels like, I mean, all the
things that we did just came back to me. The teachers, the
classrooms, the smell of the cafeteria, it's all right there.
It's like it was yesterday. And then I'm thinking, it wasn't
26, it was 32 years ago. And he goes, that's right, it
was 32 years ago. How can I say 32 years ago and
still have my teeth? That's our life. And no matter
what we accomplish in it, we are headed to the eternal. What we need is Christ. What
we need is the bread of life. What you need, beloved, is to
eat in order to live. We cannot look at bread and live. We cannot touch it. We cannot
even mix it and bake it and live. If we do not put it in our mouths
and it does not come into our bodies and our bodies assimilate
its nutrients, we will not live. How foolish is it that a man
would have a bakery and loaves of bread and die of starvation.
And that's what's happening. Bread before them, bread forever
before them, eternal bread set before them, and they went, what? How? We're not eating of this.
We're not coming to you. We're not... This is not... Jesus,
you're so dumb. You've been outside and walking
around too long. That's what they're saying. Why? Because they're depraved. They're
utterly depraved. Only God can change their perception
by bringing them anew. We must eat in order to live.
We can't examine bread and prove it. They wanted to examine Christ
as bread. They wanted to prove Christ as
bread when it's all about just taking a bite. See, that's what
faith is. We're not talking about grabbing
hold of Jesus and gnawing off a pinky. We must consume Him by faith. How do we do that? I've said
it last week. We consume it through the Word of God. God teaches
those who are His. He teaches us high doctrine here
in John 6. Theology, the study of God, is
the gospel, John 17.3. We come and we see and we eat. This is through God's Word. This
is appropriated in the disciplines of the faith for the church as
we assemble, and it's appropriated for the lost who are His, who
will believe when we evangelize them through what? Teaching them
the Scripture, the same way we do here. And when we teach them, the Father
calls His people out of them. He draws them and He saves them.
Scripture is the daily bread for the people of God. Scripture
is the bread because Christ is the Word. And when we assemble, then we
begin to eat together, we begin to get fed together, we begin
to get in us more than we did the day before apart so that
we now are accountable in this journey of eating. Friends, how
many hours does it take for you to get into the rut of flesh
after you leave this place? Maybe I'm being generous. How
many minutes? does it take? What does it take? One stubbed
toe. One stubbed attitude. One stubbed
act of disobedience in the car. One cross word. One dumb driver. One long line at the fast food
joint. One ill thought. One cross look. So what is our hope? The faithfulness
of Jesus Christ, that's our hope. The perfection of salvation that
is God's will and purpose, that is our hope. He is our hope. So we must consume by faith the
Word of God. Therefore, in the same way, not
therefore and in doing so, we consume Christ. We are alive
because of that and we are sustained because of that. And when we
eat, we eat because we what? Desire it. There are two times we eat in
life. When what we see before us makes
us happy to taste. And when we're so hungry, we
don't care what's before us. When we're hungry, we eat. I
guess I can ask you, do you hunger for Christ? If you don't, if
you don't, something is spiritually immature in you, and something
is spiritually broken in you that in just a moment Christ
can fix. Sometimes through the preaching of His Word. Do believers
lack the hunger sometimes? Yes. You are in good company,
beloved. Do not feel that just because
you have days or weeks or seasons of waned faith and hunger of
Christ that you have been abandoned by Him. It is good to look and
say, who am I? Where do I stand? Do I have hope? And our hope then comes straight
from where? Scripture. And it points us straight to
whom? Jesus. We eat when we feel hunger. We
eat when we love the taste of that that is before us. We know
that we need Christ because we've been made alive in Him. A dead
man does not hunger. A dead man does not lust after
tasty things. A dead man is not drawn to that
which pleases and satisfies him. A dead man does not, but a living
one does. We who are alive in Christ will
hunger for Him, even when it ebbs and flows. That is why the
discipline of being here is important. Because it is through the pulpit
of the church, through the intimacy of each other, that we actually
are continually fed and encouraged and admonished, rebuked, trained,
corrected. But it's not enough, is it? No, we then must also be given
opportunity in our own lives. This should whet our appetite
to the point that our palate wants more. We want to be driven
to the Word of God. We want to eat and have a hunger
for it. The more we eat, and here's the
beauty, the more we eat of the Word, the more hungry we are. We feast upon Christ when we
behold His glory through Scripture. We feast upon Christ when we
remember the truth of His grace. We feel our spiritual hunger,
as I said, because we are alive and He is our hope. He is our
life. He is our joy. He is the bread
of life. There is no hope outside of Christ.
There is no life outside of Christ. We labor for the bread of life
when we labor to find Him most satisfying in the midst of many
alluring options. Church, you will hunger for Christ,
sometimes even when you don't know it. The lack of satisfaction
in all other ways will never be enough. You will never find
satisfaction, beloved, as a believer in anything but Jesus. and you
will try other things, you will try the world, and it will not
satisfy, so you will repent, your mind will be changed, you
will walk away from those things, and then you will come to the
spiritual things that are worldly, that are carnal. You may even
come to the place of spiritual acting, or religious walking,
or worldly justice. You may find a banner to stand
upon and say, well, this needs to be fixed in the world and
I as a warrior for God will make this my banner. No, that's not
going to satisfy either. If we feed every orphan in the
world, it will never fill us. And the irony is if they go to
bed every night with distended bellies from the indulgence,
they still will not be satisfied if we do not teach them Christ. We eat the bread of forever joy,
not temporary joy. I'm the bread that comes down
from heaven. Eat and live. We often fail to
rest on the promises of the Lord Jesus Christ when we work so
hard to get ourselves to the point of rest, to put ourselves
in a place of peace, so that we can then pick up Jesus. But that will never satisfy us.
So the bread is living, the bread is lasting, and in closing we
see that this bread is loving. Jesus does what He does because
He loves the Father and He has a love for His people. That is
the motivator, listen to what I'm saying, of the work of God. Why would God love me? And the answer to that is, I
have no idea. Because my election was unconditional. It had nothing to do with who
I was, or what I would do, or what I wouldn't do, or my talents,
or the lack thereof. It had nothing to do with me.
It had everything to do with God and His eternal love. And
it is not something that we can grasp. But God's love is effectual
in the redemption of Christ. It is a loving bread. Christ,
the flesh of Jesus, is the cost. It's the cost of God saving His
people. Now, do not hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying
that God is ultimately motivated by His love for us, but He's
ultimately motivated by His love for Himself, and His love for
us is bound into His love for Himself, because through the
redemption of His people, He then gets all the glory, and
all the honor, and all the wealth, and all the praise, to the praise of His glorious
grace. which is due Him and is owed to Him and is His forevermore,
so that in His love for us it is because of His love for Him.
And if that sounds maniacal, It's because you've not imagined,
not imagined, because you've not understood who God is. He is worthy of such praise. No man, woman, or child that
has lived or ever will live is worthy of that type of glory.
No man, woman, or child in any capacity is worthy to be loved. and is worthy to be praised,
so that any man, woman, or child in this world, throughout all
of history, who says, please worship and praise me, are asking
for something that does not belong to them. But it belongs to God
forever. And if you still think that maniacal
because it's His, how dare He ask for what is due Him, then
whenever any of us would ever ask for worship and for glory,
when would we die in order to receive it? Christ died for sinners. What a cost. This bread that I give is my
flesh. This bread that I give for the life of the world is
my flesh. The Father gives the bread. It
is the bread of heaven. It is God's bread. And now Jesus says, I give this
bread. I'm giving this bread. This is my flesh. I give this
flesh. Some people say, well, what in
the world? Where are we going here? What is this? The same
word that we see in John 1, 14. Sarks. In the Greek, flesh. In the beginning
was the Word, the Word was God, the Word was with God. Verse
14, the Word became flesh. God became flesh. So the love of God eternally
is that He would become a man and live. He would obey as a
human being. Satisfy the holiness of God.
and He would die as a human being and satisfy the wrath of God. Jesus Christ gave Himself vicariously
for the life of His people. For the life of the world, it
says. Why don't we just say that Christ died and He saved everybody? Because that's silly. Jesus has
already said He doesn't save everybody, only those for whom
the Father who the Father gives. Why the word world there? Well,
because just like in John 3, it baffled Nicodemus to hear
Jesus say, the world. God loves the world. The world
came to Atlanta in 1996. The world came to Atlanta. How many of you don't understand
that? That means many nations and many tribes and many tongues
of all the nations that participate in the World Olympics came to
Atlanta and competed. The world, that was their logo,
that was their slogan. The world came to Atlanta. Does that mean every person in
the world came to Atlanta? Six billion people came to Atlanta.
I mean, five billion live there already. I mean, you know, no. It means that the world was represented,
and that was just a saying. God has people in every nation,
every tongue, and every tribe. Israel are those who are the
sons of promise. Those who are in Christ. Every
nation, every tongue, every tribe. The pure context here disallows
universalism. Universalism is wicked. Those who believe it are dead
in their sins. Jesus gave himself vicariously
for the life of his people who are the world. This is the love
of God on display. For God loved the world in this
way, that He gave His only begotten Son. God put forth, Paul would
say, His Son Jesus as propitiation to satisfy His wrath and judgment. The gift then of faith, the gift
of eating, this is what God does for us. lets us hear and brings
us alive that our ears might hear and appropriate this bread
as our own ability to live, as the substance of our living and
our eternity and our hope, because He's gifted us faith, He's gifted
us a new mind, He's gifted us through the hearing by the Spirit
to live. And it's effectual because He
gifted us His Son, who gave His flesh for us. Jesus died for
His people. Are you His people? Do you believe
by faith that Jesus saves through His death? Let's pray. Father, as we consider
this text, we know that there is a lot that is continuing to
Be taught to us as we expound a little more and as we dig a
little deeper, just to slow down. It's not deeper, Father. You
know what I'm trying to say, but Lord, we need Your help to
continue to understand it. We need Your help to appropriate
by faith these truths. We need Your help to resist the
flesh and its enticement. to resist a man-centered religion
and its enticement, and to trust in the trueness of Christ as
the Lamb of God who took away our sins, as the Bread of Life
who gives us life eternal. Father, in Him was life, and
the life was the light of men. So, Lord, we know that Christ
is our only way to You. That is His claim. We know that
Christ is forever lasting. And we know that Christ
in love obeyed your will to die so that we might be saved. Let
us rejoice in that. Forevermore, hold us and keep
us. Help us to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Help us
to run to Christ by faith. when we sin, when we doubt, and
when we fail. In Jesus' name. 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