Turn back to John chapter 6,
if you would. The title of my message this
morning is a question. It's a question for you. A question for me. A question for anybody who might
hear this message. Are you alive? Are you alive? Not long ago I heard of a man who left a church where the gospel
of Christ is faithfully preached, and he went to one where, according
to him, we are taught how to live. Taught how to live. The problem with that is that
the true gospel has to do with Christ who is our life. There is no life, there is no
living apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is a big difference
in the natural life and the spiritual life, as we shall see in this
text. The spiritually living feed on
Christ, and the spiritually dead want something else. If you remember, after the flood, Noah sent out a dove and a raven. And after a while, the dove returned
to the ark because he could not find anything out there to live
on. But the raven didn't. because
he could simply live on all the dead things that were the consequence
of the flood. In our text, we are finding these
who have now followed the Lord Jesus Christ across the sea. They followed Him after His miracle
of the fishes and the loaves, whereby he fed many of this same
number. And they looked up, and he was
gone. And they found out he had gone
across the sea, and they took shipping, it says, and they followed
him. Look down, if you would, in verse
25. And when they had found him on
the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when comest
thou hither? And Jesus answered them and said,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, you seek me not because you saw
the miracles, they had seen them with their natural eye. You seek
me not because you saw the miracles, but because you did eat of the
loaves and were filled." You see, Christ knew their hearts,
and He confronts them with the truth of their spiritual state. flesh only desires fleshly things. The Scripture says that the natural
man receives not the things of God because of this very thing,
because they are spiritual. And he lacks the life that desires
spiritual things, and that is every one of us by birth and
by nature." Then listen to what he says in verse 27, "'Labor
not for the meat, or for the food which perisheth, but for
that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son
of Man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father sealed."
Strange as it is to us, he says, labor not for that which you
can only get by laboring, but for that which you cannot get
by laboring. That is, what a man gets by his
works perishes, and what he receives by the grace of God in Christ
endures to everlasting life. You see, he shows them and us
that everything is by grace. He says, seek after that which
is given unto you, that which the Son of Man shall give you. And He speaks using that name
or that title which identified Him as the Messiah. He who is
the Son of God is also the Son of Man, and therefore the Messiah,
who alone can give this which you cannot get any other way. Then in verse 28, he says this,
Then said they unto him, What shall we do that we might work
the works of God? And it's always this way by nature,
which always acts in self-righteous pride. We seek something to do. That's the way it was with Israel. They said to Moses, just tell
us what God wants us to do and we'll do it. But he had already
told them what God would have them to do, and they never did
it. Tell us how to live, many ask. And the law plainly shows that
we cannot live by doing, and rather it condemns us to death
and is called the ministration of death. No life by doing. Then he says in verse 29, Jesus
answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that
ye believe on him whom he hath sent. In other words, actually
what that means is that what is necessary is not the work
of men, but the work of God. And when anybody is found believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ, you can count on it, that is the
work of God. In other words, what is this
labor that is not laboring, this labor that is not works, it is
simply believing. And it's the work of God. For
by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God." Everything in salvation is the work of God. Turn over to Romans 9, and let
me read a verse out of Romans 4 while you're turning. Paul
writing says this in Romans 4 and verse 4. Now to him that worketh
is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not,
but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth
the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Let me read
you another verse out of I John 3. John, the same apostle, says,
And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the
name of his Son, Jesus Christ. This is his commandment, that
we believe on his Son. All right, look with me here
in Romans 9, beginning in verse 30. Paul sets Jew and Gentile
beside each other, the Jew having received the law. What shall
we say then that the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness,
have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which
is of faith? but Israel, which followed after
the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore, or why? Because they
sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law,
for they stumbled at that stumbling stone, As it is written, Behold,
I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense, and whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed." And that is exactly
what is taking place here in John 6. Here is Christ, that
stumbling stone, and that rock of offense to all who by nature
would gain from God and live before God by their doing. And they're finding Him just
that, the rock of offense and the stone of stumbling. And they reveal their spiritual
deadness. And like their forefathers, miss
the true meaning of what Christ says and of what God did with
their forefathers. Look again in verse 30. They
said, therefore unto him, what sign showest thou then that we
may see and believe thee? What doest thou work, our fathers,
did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, he gave them
bread from heaven to eat." You can't read this hardly without
seeing that it seems like that they are totally oblivious to
everything he's saying here. And they come back with a natural
response every time. Christ tells them the truth concerning
that very miracle and who did it and what it represented. He says in verse 32, "'Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from
heaven.'" It wasn't Moses that did that. He says, but my Father
giveth you the true bread from heaven. On the one hand, that
manna that fell in the wilderness that they were able to eat and
partake of physically, he said that bread from heaven, and there
is a great contrast with it, and the true bread from heaven. In other words, that manna, that
bread from heaven, was a picture and a type, and a picture and
a type of Christ. But he said the Father gives
the true bread from heaven. That would be like sitting down
to eat a picture of a loaf of bread. or to take and chew up
in your mouth a picture of a piece of pie. Just not the same thing. And then he tells them the truth
concerning himself as the true bread, as the true manna in verse
33. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from
heaven, and giveth life unto the world." In other words, the
bread of God, the true bread from heaven is a person. And not only is he a person,
but he is the bread of God that is Though God not eating in any
physical sense, but He's the one who satisfies God in all
His character, in all His attributes, and in everything He does. He's the bread of God. And He must be, and He is, God
incarnate, the one who comes down from heaven and the one
who does not offer, but who gives life. There's a big difference. He's
the one who is the bread of God, who comes down from heaven, and
who gives life to the world. Everything in this world is death. And everyone in this world, having
fallen and died in Adam, is dead. And so anybody in this world,
there's only one source of life for them, and that's Him who
came down from heaven and gives life. All who live in this spiritual
sense, it is because Christ who is the source of all life, gave
it to them, and all life is in him, especially eternal life." John again in his first epistle. And this is the record that God
hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life,
and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." In other
words, eternal life is only through union with the Living One. It's only by virtue of God joining
us and uniting us to Christ who is the life. But they continue
to demonstrate their deadness. Verse 34, ìThen said they unto
him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.î They still don't have a clue. They thought it would be something
like the loaves that he had multiplied across the sea. Or at the very
least, they thought it would be more like that manna that
fell for their forefathers there in the wilderness. Something
external and material. Something to sustain physical
life. But notice the plain words that
he speaks to them and to us in verse 35. And Jesus said unto them, I am
the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." Now, you'd think that we'd all
know that he has to be talking about some kind of life, some
kind of hungering, and some kind of thirsting that is altogether
different than what it takes to sustain our physical life. I am the bread of life. In other words, Christ is not
only the source of this life, but He's the satisfaction of
this life. The living soul finds in Christ
both sustenance and satisfaction. Whenever we stand accused by
the law of God, What can give us satisfaction?
Whenever we are accused by our conscience, whenever guilt comes
over us because of our constant sinning, whenever we fall into
the great despair that we're so commonly found falling into,
what is it that will not only sustain us but satisfy us in
the midst of that? It's Christ. It's Him who is
the bread of life. It's Him who gives His life. And when we're found like old
Elijah was there under the juniper tree, so in a fit of despair
and despondency, the Spirit of God says to us like it did Him,
rise and eat. Because if you're alive in Christ,
the only thing that can sustain you, the only thing that can
satisfy you, the only thing that can help you is Christ Himself. And the amazing thing is, the
more we feed on Christ, the more we are satisfied. And yet, the
more we are satisfied, the more we want of Christ. But then he shows them and us
what the great evidence of this spiritual death is. Well, is it if a man does this
or if a woman does that? No. All the Lord's people throughout
the ages have done all those things and more. But if you look
at verse 36, he says this, "'But I said unto you that ye also
have seen me.'" That's the natural lie. They were looking at him
right then. "'That ye also have seen me,'
and believe not." That's spiritual life. And they were dead and
therefore blind. Just like when the gospel is
preached in truth, and Christ is, as Paul said to one church,
evidently set forth before you. But the dead don't see Him. And
only the living see Him. And that sight is evidenced by
their being enabled to believe on Him. You see, the proof of
deadness is the absence of believing on Christ as He is set forth
in the Word of the truth of the gospel. And that's not to say
that many can, as these did, believe on a God of their own
making, or believe on a God of their tradition, or believe in
a Messiah of their own invention, but not of Christ as He is, and
as He is all in our salvation before God. But though the many will not
believe on him, this will not make him or his work a failure,
because he came to save his people from their sins according to
the will of God." Look down in verse 37, "...all that the Father
giveth me." Now, he just said to them, you don't believe. You've
seen Me, but you don't believe. Here are these probably very
important people. They see Him, but they don't
believe on Him. But look at what He says, "...all
that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that comes
to Me I will in no wise cast out." They'll do what? They'll come to Me, He says,
every one of us. For I came down from heaven,
not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will
which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should
lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that every one which seeth the Son and believeth on
him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the
last day." He said, you don't believe, but
all that the Father has given me, given me in that covenant
of grace before the world began, given to me as my people, as
my children, as my bride, given to me to glorify me as their
shepherd and Savior. Every one of them will come to
me, and I won't cast any of them out. And not only will I save their
souls, I'll save their bodies too. I'll
raise them up. in the last day." Did they understand Him? Did
they rejoice in Him? Were they made alive by the Spirit
of God? Could they do anything to make
themselves alive? No. Verse 41, the Jews then murmured
at Him because He said, I am the bread which came down from
heaven." And they said, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph,
whose father and mother we know? How is it then that he saith,
I came down from heaven? They knew his earthly mother.
They just thought they knew his father. But his father was in heaven. Jesus therefore answered and
said unto them, murmur not among yourselves, no man can come to
me except the Father which hath sent me draw him, and I will
raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets,
and they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that
hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me." Not
that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath
seen the Father." Now, the words of men are so self-condemning. In other words, by what we say,
Or by what we don't say, we give away what we really are. And
the Lord speaks these words that reveal their state. And He does
so, I guess you'd say, by waving the flag, the red flag of sovereign
grace in their faces. If that had been preachers in our
day, they would have said, we need to deal with this very discreetly. We need to kind of slip up on
them. We won't give them this hard
stuff right in the beginning. But our Lord said, no man can
come except the Father which hath sent me. Draw him and bring
him. And believing on Christ, is the
evidence of that life that he gives. As a matter of fact, verse
47, "'Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me
hath everlasting life.'" He doesn't believe in order to
get life. But this is the evidence, the
one evidence, that he has everlasting life. He believes on Christ. And somebody says, well, that's
nothing. I've been doing that all my life.
That's nothing. That's what preachers say. Believe
in it. That's the easiest thing in the world to do. It's not
only the hardest thing in the world to do, it's utterly impossible
apart from the grace of God. Why? Because in a few minutes,
all these people and their friends, they're going to watch as their
friends walk away from Christ. They're going to be confronted
with the reality that those Pharisees, the scribes and the Pharisees,
the great preachers and lawyers of their day, they'll have nothing
to do with Him. They're going to face the reality
here of this man says he's God in the flesh. This man says he
is the one who came down from heaven. He's the One whose life,
and there isn't any life outside of Him. That He is the whole of salvation. That He is the only righteousness. That He's the only One that can
give life, that is life. And I'll tell you what, a proud
sinner will never believe on Him but by the grace and power
of God. He that believeth on me hath
everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in
the wilderness and are dead." Somebody's always saying, well,
if the Lord would just show me a miracle, I'd believe. They
ate the manna, the miraculous manna that fell in the wilderness,
he said, and they're dead. Dead physically at that hour,
but dead more so spiritually. This is the bread which cometh
down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die. This is Him who is the bread
of life. And He is not only the giver
of life, He's the food on which everlasting life lives, that
living bread for living souls. It came to my mind this morning
as I was reading again another picture. When the Passover lamb was slain,
The blood was taken and put on the outside of those houses there
in Egypt where those Israelites were in. And God said, when I
see the blood, I'll pass over you. And the death angel did
not strike on the firstborn in that house. But what happened to that land?
He gave specific instructions. He said, you roast that lamb
with fire. And that night, while you're
there in your houses, and when the death angel passes over,
and when that blood is there on the outside for God Himself
to see, you eat that lamb. You eat it. You don't fix him
up. As a matter of fact, you eat
it with bitter herbs. But you eat that lamb. He says in verse 51, "...and
the living bread which came down from heaven If any man eat of
this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give
is my flesh, which I will give for the life
of the world." What does that mean? That I will
give for the life of the world. On the one hand, all distinction
is removed in that statement between Jew and Gentile. In other words, the Lord's people,
His elect, those that Christ gives Himself for, are a people
out of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. He gives His
life for the world in that sense. But there is one day coming when
there will only be one world. And those in that world will
be those that Christ gave his life for. When you see Noah acting
as that one who builds the ark at the command of God, Noah is
a picture and a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he calls him
into that ark and his family. You know who he saves by that? The world. In that ark is the world. When that flood passed, the only
thing that was in the world was what was on that ark. But what does he say? The bread
that I will give is my flesh. And if we don't know and see
and feed on how Christ is giving his flesh in this sense, then we don't live just like
these people didn't live. Verse 52, "...the Jews therefore
strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his
flesh to eat?" And I want you to notice this
next verse, because it's the clearest statement of all. Verse
53, "...then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto
you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His
blood, you have no life in you." Now, whatever that means, it's
about as unchangeable and emphatic spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ
as anything He ever said. He said on one occasion, except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. He
said, except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the
kingdom of heaven. And he says here, unless you
eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, you
have no life in you. Now, we know that he's not advocating
cannibalism here. Some have almost come to that
point by reading that. But worse than that, he also
is not advocating in any way two things that have become great
errors, one called consubstantiation, which is taught by a lot of people,
a lot of religions, and that is when they eat of the bread
and they drink of the wine in the Lord's table, that it actually
becomes in them the body and blood of Christ. nor transubstantiation, which
is the belief of all of Catholicism and other religions, and that
is in the hands of the priest. And by the special blessing and
prayer of the priest, the wafer and the wine becomes the body
and blood of Christ. No, he shed his blood and laid
down his life once. And that's all. No, this is a spiritual eating
and a spiritual drinking. This is a receiving and a feeding
on and an appropriation of the person and the work of Christ
as all our hope and all our salvation. These things represent Christ
and Him. crucified. What makes up life? Flesh and blood. But when you separate blood from
flesh, what do you have? Death. You see, one of the very first
things we read in this book over in the Old Testament is this.
He said, you don't drink any blood, you don't do anything
like that, because the life of the flesh is in the blood. And the Lord Jesus Christ in His divine person and in His sinless human flesh,
sacrifice for the sins of His people, putting all those sins
away to the full saving of their souls and the glory of God. That's the meat and the drink
of all His people. In other words, before God. That's how we live. As I said, that's how our conscience
can rest and be at peace. That's how we can face the experiences
of life. That's how we can go out to meet
God in our death and have thoughts of judgment and eternity. Christ
and Him crucified. God manifests in perfect human
flesh, shedding His blood as an atonement for sins on that
cross. That is our meat and drink. Turn over to Romans chapter 3. Paul, writing in Romans chapter
3, speaks of Christ in this way in verse 25. He speaks of Him as whom God
has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. When those Israelites sat in
their houses, and you know they could hear the cries and the
moans of sorrow, as in every household in Egypt, they watched
as the firstborn was slain that night. It was going on all around
them. What was their confidence? What
was their hope? What was their safety and security? Why did they think it wasn't
going to happen to them? Because of what God had said.
Because that death, that judgment had fallen on this innocent victim
that God had provided in the Lamb. That blood God said, when
I see that blood which was representative of a life laid down, a substitutionary
death for sin, when I see the blood, I'll pass over you. But they couldn't see the blood,
could they? They sat there in that house.
They may have trembled a little bit. But they ate that roasted
lamb burned with fire. It couldn't be boiled in no other
way. It had to show that this one
to them was the one upon whom God's judgment had fallen. A
typical picture of the Lamb of God. And they ate. And they remembered the promise
of God. Oh, he says through faith in
his blood, faith in the one who all these Old Testament sacrifices
represented in picture, Christ crucified and whose blood was
shed. And the eating and drinking here
is simply believing. Verse 54, he says it again, Whoso
eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life. If I have a life that is from
God, if I have eternal life, it can only be satisfied with
what I find in Christ and Him crucified. For my flesh is meat indeed,
and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh
my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him, as the living Father
hath sent me. and I live by the Father, so
he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is the bread
which came down from heaven, not as your fathers did eat manna
and are dead. He that eateth of this bread
shall live forever." This eating and drinking is simply believing, trusting,
taking to your own self the blessing, the promise, the
truth of the gospel. One old writer said, he himself,
in the virtue of his sacrificial death, is the spiritual and eternal
life of men. And that unless men are enabled
to appropriate to themselves this death in its sacrificial
virtue, so as to become the very life and nourishment of their
inner man, they have no spiritual and eternal life at all. Not as if his death were the
only thing of value. But it is what gives all else
in Christ's incarnate person, life, and office their whole
value to us as sinners. He comes in God as God in the
flesh. But what if He doesn't die? We're
lost. He lives a perfect life. And
He shows Himself to be without sin. But if He doesn't die, what
happens to us? They hang Him on a cross and
He dies and suffers the death of the cross. They bury Him.
But if He doesn't rise again, what happens to us? We perish. He and all He is and all He has
done for us is our life. And the language of Scripture
is full of this. Blessed are they which do hunger
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." If
they hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall be filled because
it's God that made them to hunger. And they feed and they're filled
when they drink, when they eat, when they believe, when they
trust in Christ who has made unto us righteousness. who was
made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him. When we look to Christ, who is
the Lord? Our righteousness. He says in Isaiah 55, O everyone
that thirsteth, why do you spend money for that which doesn't
satisfy? Come and drink freely. He's talking about Christ. In Luke 4, the Lord Jesus quotes
an Old Testament passage. He said, "...it is written that
man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." Who's that? That's Christ. He's
the living Word. He's the Word that was made flesh. And every word of the Scriptures,
they all speak of Him. Christ Himself said in that last
great day of the feast, He stood up and cried and said, if any
man thirsts, if after all this religion that you've gone through
and all these feast things, if any man thirsts, let him come
unto Me and drink. In other words, if we can be
satisfied with any other than Christ, if we have no interest
in hearing His gospel, if we have no interest with being with
His church, with reading His Word, all of which center around
Him, it's because there's no like
in us. It's because we do not believe
on Him. and unbelievers can be satisfied with being told
how to live. They can be satisfied with all
the social aspects and the charitable works and the outward ceremonies
and rituals of religion because they have no need for
those things which sustain everlasting life, the things of Christ and Him
crucified. Verse 59, "...these things said
he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum, many therefore
of his disciples," that simply means learners. These were learners
of a sort, followers of him for a while. "...when they had heard
this, said, This is a hard saying."
And who can hear it? When they heard, if you don't
eat my flesh and drink my blood, when they heard that which is
spiritual, they said, this is a hard thing.
We don't understand what he's saying. He's confusing us. No,
they were confused already. They were born confused. When Jesus knew in himself that
his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this
offend you? What, and if ye shall see the
Son of Man ascend up where he was before?" Now listen to this. This is where
it's at. Verse 63. It is the Spirit that
quickeneth. and the flesh profiteth nothing." It's not what you do that will
commend you to God, make you righteous. It's what God, by
His Spirit, reveals to you in Christ, he said, the words that
I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. Only a dead man would rather hear about something
that it's impossible for him to do. than to hear about Christ who
has already done it all. What he was saying was spiritual
and eternal, not natural. And he was not surprised by their
response at all. He knew that no matter what their
reason for leaving Christ was, he knew it was unbelief. self-righteous, proud unbelief. But it was never his intention
to save them. That's right. Verse 64, "'But
there are some of you that believe not, for Jesus knew from the
beginning who they were that believed not, and who should
betray him.' And he said, "'Therefore said I unto you, that no man
can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my father.'"
And what happened then? They demonstrated to their own
condemnation that they had not this life. Just as many do. Because Christ, as well as the
gospel church and the preacher, both of whom
center on Him, they had nothing to feed the
flesh. Verse 66, And from that time
many, Most of them. Many of his disciples went back,
and they walked no more with him. They departed because they had
no interest in the spiritual things of Christ. They had no
interest in his gospel. They had no interest in his righteousness,
his gift, his grace. And so, most of them went back,
and they walked with him no more. But thanks be to God, not all
of them. Not all of them. Why? Because he said, my sheep,
they hear my voice. When John sees this people in
the Revelation, he says, Who are they? He said, These are
those that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes. Verse 67, Then said Jesus unto
the twelve, Will ye also go away? Sometimes it's as if he says
that to me. Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall
we go? Thou hast the words of eternal
life. And we believe and are sure that
thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God." The food we need, we can't find
anywhere else. There's no life anywhere else.
Everything away and outside of you is death. These other people, the most
of them, they could go find something that would satisfy that flesh,
that's all they were. But those who have that life
that requires this eating the flesh and drinking the blood
of Christ, can't find that anywhere else. Those made alive by Christ, cannot
lead the living one, and they cannot survive without His living
words. They believe. They've been convinced
by God, taught by God, drawn to Christ, given faith to believe
on Christ, and they are sure of what He is and who He is. We believe and are sure that you're that
Christ. You're the promised bread. You're
life. You're salvation. What is it to live forever? It's
to be saved from that second death. Will ye also go away? If you can, you will. Jesus said on one occasion to
those Jews that had believed on him, if you continue in my
word, then are you my disciples indeed. Are we alive? Not merely if we have breath
and movement and sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste.
We can have all those things and be spiritually dead. But we have life if we must have
Christ. If we must have Christ, we already
have life. Because that never changes. Never changes, except you eat
the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood. You have no life in you. Unless, says Paul, for me to
live is Christ. If this is my life, if this is
what sustains me, if this is my hope, my everything, my salvation,
everything before God, if this is the only way I live before
God, is in this Christ crucified, then I'm alive. Why? Because I'm sure, I believe,
and I'm sure that He's that Christ. came into this world to give
His people life. God help us and keep us from
this being some mystical thing. It's not that. It's just a straightforward
hope and trust and belief in this Christ and what He's done
and nothing else. And may we live in Him. Father, this morning we give
You thanks for Him who is life. We know that apart from Him we
are nothing but death and deadness. Lord, we know that You said to
Adam of old, The day that you eat of this
tree, you'll surely die. That he did do that and that
we did do so in him and died. But thank you for the words of
Christ. That the one who eats his flesh
and drinks his blood in this spiritual and believing sense, shall never die. Bless your word to our hearts. Guide us in all things. Keep
us by your grace. For we thank you and pray in
Christ's name. Amen.