John chapter 6, and let's begin reading here
in verse 31. Our fathers did eat manna in
the desert. As it is written, he gave them
bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from
heaven. But my Father giveth you the
true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which
cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then
said they unto him, Lord evermore give us this bread. 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. But I said unto you that ye also
have seen me, and believe not. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out." Now, our lesson this morning is on the bread of God. Now, I'm taking that text from
verse 33. where he says, the bread of God is he which cometh
down from heaven and giveth life unto the world. My pastor, Brother
Mahan, years ago, and I can say the same of Don, used to tell
me, when you are studying a text, go back. When something gets
your attention, a statement is made in the scripture and it
grabs your attention, and you begin to consider it, Go back
and find out what he says before. Find out the subject. Find out
what it is he's talking about. Find out who's talking. And find
out to whom he's talking. And then go back and study whatever
it is that got your attention. I know that religious men and
women don't do that. They grab things out of context.
They grab things out of the subject matter. And they go off the deep
end with them and try to build whole religions on them. You've heard it said for years
that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. And
they apply that to your life. They apply that to what you do,
to your personal righteousness, and to your works, and to that
type of thing. That statement has nothing whatsoever
to do with that. That statement has to do with
giving. It has to do with offerings.
And if you take your offerings and your money and you sow them
to worldly comfort, then you're going to reap the benefit. If
you get you a big easy chair and sit down in it, you're going
to reap the benefit. If you take those things and sow them to
your spiritual needs and go that direction with your support and
your sacrifices, then you benefit from that. So that whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Well, here he's talking
about the bread of God. And it's the Lord Jesus Christ
who is speaking. This is He whom it says in Hebrews
chapter 1, God who spoke in different times in various manners to our
fathers through the prophets have in these last days spoken
unto us by His Son or in Son. And He spoke in those days. He
spoke by the prophets. He spoke in figures. He spoke
in types. And now he stands before them
in the bodily form of a man and speaks to them one on one. This
is the Lord Jesus Christ who is doing the speaking. And the
subject is who he is. That's the subject. That's the
question. That's where the confusion is. Who is this man who stands
before us? Who is he? What do we say that
he is? They saw him as an important
man. They were willing to give him
the office of a prophet. They couldn't deny his miracles,
and prophets did miracles. He preached to them in truth,
cut to the bone truth, stood before them in several places
there. It talks about their acknowledging him as a prophet because of the
manner in which he preached. He didn't avoid any subject.
If it cut you to the bone, it cut you to the bone. He didn't
avoid subjects. He didn't speak for men's admiration
and for men's attention. But he spoke the truth on behalf
of God, and they recognized that. But because of different things
that he did, they were willing to receive him as a prophet. They were willing to receive
him in the context of their idea of who the Messiah was. They
were ready to physically take him and make him their king.
But he avoided them. He walked right out of their
midst. He just left their company altogether, took ship, went to
the other side of the sea, and was over there preaching. And
now here they come. And when he told them, he said,
you didn't come here because you were convinced of the Word
of God. You didn't use this as God's
testimony of who His Son would be when you saw those miracles.
You came over here because you ate of the loaves and was filled.
And you come over here to get some more of whatever, to get
more benefits. And that's why you're here. And
they become upset and confused even further. I see in this a little bit of
what I get sometimes when I preach, that men begin to think that
you're talking because there's no other way to present the gospel
except to declare it. And so when you declare the gospel
in a sense that you're not going to back up from it, it's dogmatic.
I'm not throwing this out here as opinions. What I declare to
you, I say is so. according to the Scripture. There's
no other way to preach. I can't say, well, I listened
to your opinion, now you listen to mine, and they'll take what
I say as an opinion. I can't do that. I'm charged
of God to preach these things as a declaration. They'll be
received, or they'll be rejected. But one way or the other, they're
a declaration of God. And so it is with Him. And so
they look at Him as a man, and they bring this up, and they
say, You know, you took a few fishes and loaves. It was a miracle. We acknowledge the miracle. But
Moses fed Israel for 40 years. When they needed drink, he smoked
the rock and the water came out. When they needed to cross the
sea, Moses held up the rod and the sea opened. Don't know if we want to receive
you above Moses, just because you took a few fishes and a few
loaves and fed 5,000 people. They're looking at this miracle
and comparing it with the days of Moses. They're comparing the
glory of this man with the glory of Moses, because their whole
religion was summed up around Moses and the law. And so here's
what's coming to pass here. They're looking at this miracle
that Christ did and these miracles of healings that he did, and
they're acknowledging him as a prophet, but they're not ready
to exalt him above Moses just yet. They said, Moses, he fed
Israel for 40 days in the wilderness. He gave us manna to eat. He gave
our fathers manna to eat. Now, listen to what he said. And I want you to understand
this. This people to whom he's speaking, are no different than
people and folks that we preach to today in this respect. They identified themselves with
a mixed company. What do I mean by that? I mean
that they took these men like Moses and Elijah and Isaiah and
David and Solomon and Abel and all these men of the Old Testament
whom they called their fathers, and because they were natural
sons and because this was the the testimony of the nation of
Israel, they identified themselves with all the blessings and promises
of God. Now, what happens today is somebody
comes along like Martin Luther, a Reformer, and he preaches.
And then he dies. While he was alive, they couldn't
stand him. They didn't want to be around
him. Once he died, then he became Saint Martin. And now you've
got a whole religion built on it, and they call themselves
Lutherans. Same thing with Calvin. Call themselves Calvinists. Go
on and on and on with the different names. And they identify themselves. They're mixed. And their history
is mixed with believers and unbelievers. But they don't see it that way.
They see themselves identified just like if your family was
a godly family, And your father was a preacher, and your brother
was a preacher, and you come along, well, you just slide right
in here. You see what I'm saying? That's where they were at. They
were children of Abraham, therefore they were partakers of the blessing.
They were born a Jew. They were born into the kingdom
of God. That's how they saw this thing. And they were questioning
this man's authority, and questioning his power, and comparing him
to Moses. Comparing him to Moses. And here's
the first thing the Lord told them. He said, Moses didn't give
your fathers that bread. That's not where the bread comes
from. In fact, if you go back, as I did, and read the account,
Moses didn't pray for the bread. He didn't come up with the idea
of the bread. He didn't go out and say, I've thought about this
now, so we're going to go out in the morning and gather bread.
He didn't come up with that. He didn't come up with the means
of how it was to be gathered or how it was to be fixed and
prepared, how it was to be eaten, how long it was. None of this
comes from Moses. That's what our Lord is telling
us. These miracles that you're trying to identify with this
man and then yourself with this man, this man didn't give you
that bread. He said, My Father gave you that
bread. Whoa! My Father gave you that bread. Moses didn't give you anything
except what he received. And I see these Jews bifocal
in the Scripture. They are a picture in one respect
of the children of God, but in another respect, they are a picture
of worldly religion. And in John chapter 6, they are
standing before Him confused. In darkness, in religious tradition,
they are standing before him ignorant of the promises of God. Now, they are lost. Remember what Paul said? They
need to be saved. He prayed for them. He said they need to be
saved. They are not saved. Well, what constitutes a lost
man? He is a man who does not know
where he is at. That's a lost man. He don't know where he's
at. He thinks he knows where he's at. My wife laughs at me
all the time. The other day, we drove right
into the heart of Washington, D.C., and we had one of these
little GPS things on the dash. Well, what they don't tell you
when you buy one of them is when you get on one of these little
circles, this thing goes nuts. It goes nuts. And it starts telling
you, recalculating. Well, you can't recalculate in
the middle of downtown Washington, D.C. with traffic going on. This is four or five lanes of
traffic wide going around a circle with eight roads going off of
it in downtown Washington, D.C. at rush hour. So I just pulled
off on the road and stopped and started looking around. And finally,
I just called my son. I said, where am I at? And he
told me. in relation where he was at,
and so we just went on in on his information. But a lost man
thinks he knows where he's at, and Kathy makes fun of me all
the time because a man just won't ask directions. He just won't.
He's going to find it or else. That's a religious thing. He's
not going to turn loose of his ideas of where he's at. These
fundamental things. He's a believer. Now, I don't
know what you're talking about, but I believe God. Well, you
can't believe and not know. We're going to get into that
in the message this morning. You have to know. It's about knowing. A revelation is about seeing
something that you never saw. It's a hearing of something you
never heard. It's a knowing. Paul said, I
know whom I have believed. He didn't say, I think I know.
He said, I know. Know you not your own selves?
Hath not Christ been in you, lest you be reprobate? Faith
is not something that you can have and not know it. You know
it. That little baby that's born
into this world, he don't know how to work on a car. He don't
know how to walk. He don't know how to do a lot
of things. But he's aware that he's alive, and he'll let you
know it. He'll cry. He breathes. He's alive. He knows
it. He knows it. I see the same thing today. I
see men and women identifying themselves with apostles and
reformers and all this kind of thing. Religion takes a few and
it stands in the light and confirmation of God as if it understood all
these things just like they did. That they were blessed just like
they were. And it quotes scriptures and
does all these things. For a pretense, he told those
Pharisees, he said, you make long prayers. A pretense of what? A pretense of knowing God. A pretense of standing there
as God's ambassador. A pretense of knowing something
they didn't know. He said for a pretense you go
out there and make long prayers in the marketplace. You give
your alms before men that you might be seen of men, honored
of men. That man of sin reveals himself,
setting in the temple of God as though he were God, showing
himself as such. And they show themselves as godly
men, righteous men, loving men, wise men. And Satan is subtle. He'll bless you to curse you.
Now, I'm telling you the truth. He'll bless you to curse you. If you want a feeling, he'll
give it to you. If you want a dream in the night,
he'll give it to you. What do you long for? He'll give
it to you. He'll bless you to curse you. He just wants you
to be satisfied and not embrace Christ. That's what he wants.
And he don't care what else you do. He don't care if you're a
Calvinist or a freewill Arminian. He don't care. As long as you
miss Christ. That's all he cares about. And
here these people were. They were religious but lost.
Blinded. Blinded. And so what's required to minister
to a lost man is nothing less than the power of God's Holy
Spirit. Man's lost. The God of this world has blinded
the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ should shine unto them. And Paul says here
in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 4 that the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal. We don't go out with the rest
of the religious world when they have a campaign against alcohol
and pornography and all these things, not because we believe
that these things ought to be so, but because we understand
that that's not what the problem is. The problem is in here, in
the heart. The heart has to be changed,
and marching up and down the street ain't going to change
it. I saw a sign at the First Baptist Church over in Taylor
this morning that says, Something like this, it says, we're called
to serve, not to sit. And my wife commented about the
sign, and I said, that's the thing about religion. They say
things that are so, that's so. We're not called to sit, we're
called to serve. But whether you sit or run, it's
not of him that runneth, is it? Ain't that what the scripture
said? So it don't matter if you sit or run. If you miss Christ,
you miss Christ. Sitting and running has nothing
to do with it. Now, once you're born of God,
once you come to see these things, sitting and running has its place
then. But sitting and running to this world doesn't mean anything.
You can sit or run or stand still or jump. It doesn't make any
difference. You still miss Christ unless you hear the gospel. What's required to minister to
lost men is nothing less than the power of God's Holy Spirit.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They're not in natural
things, not in protests, not in rallies, not in strict moral
laws with severe punishments, not in isolation from this world. In traveling across the country,
especially way up into Canada, I got up there where gas stations
were a hundred miles apart, fishing one time. And clear out in the
middle of some place, there's this seminary. And they go way
out there to get away from the world. They go way out there
where there's no contact with civilization, and somehow in
that they think there's some kind of a holiness out there,
some kind of a peace. He said, Our weapons are not
of these things. They're not natural, but mighty
through God. Now, that's where it has to be. It has to be with God. If I stand
up here alone, I can accomplish nothing. You sit down and you
talk to friends over there in Genoa, and you talk to them and
you read the Scriptures to them, but if you talk without God,
you're just talking. I'm just talking. But boy, if
he speaks. And that's what Paul said, the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty through
God. So we'd be sure, we'd be sure
before we enter into these things, that these weapons that we've
chosen are in line with the means of God. He's going to bless the
preaching of the gospel. He's going to bless the testimony
of the righteous. He's going to bless that. But
there's a lot of things out here men and women are doing. He ain't
going to bless. He's just not going to bless. And you can go
down there until the sun don't shine anymore, and they're still
not going to bless you. They are mighty through God. And here
is what they do. Here is what these weapons do.
They cast down the imaginations. That is what Paul said. Cast
them down. These imaginations of righteousness and holiness
and streets of gold and all those things that religion talks about,
it casts down those imaginations. Every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God and brings every thought
to the obedience of Christ. Now, that's what spiritual weapons
do. It conquers the man, conquers his mind, conquers his heart,
creates in him a new man, and brings him to Christ. You can't
do that. I can't do that. But, boy, he
can, and I've seen him do it. It's an acknowledging to see
the glory of God in Christ, His preeminence in all things. What's created in the believer
is a new man, new thoughts, new concepts, new affections, new
understanding. It's Christ in you. He rules
the roost. He rules. If you don't want to
rule, He rules. If you don't rule, He's not in
you. He rules. There are no ifs, ands, and buts. You can't find any place in here
where it tells you to let Him rule. He rules. Now, when he
comes in, he takes down the old man, and he spills his goods,
and he sets up his reign, and he reigns. I don't have to stand
up here every week and tell you to be gracious. If he comes in
and sets up his kingdom in your heart, you can't help but be
gracious. You can't help but love. You can't help but want to be
at peace. It's a new man, new concepts,
new affections. A new understanding. It's Christ
in you. His glory outshines yours. We don't like to admit it, but
our whole life, we really live for ourselves, don't we? I want
my wife to be comfortable, but first thing, I want me to be
comfortable. We live for ourselves. We just do. That's the truth.
Whether you admit it or whether you don't, it's the truth. We
live for ourselves. We worry about our own health,
our own comfort, our own everything. But when Christ comes in, his
glory outshines mine. It outshines anything this world
can produce. The way he takes away the lust of the world, the way he
takes away our desires for the world is to show us something
better. We see that glory of God in his
face, and it turns us. Paul wanted all kinds of things,
but he didn't want anything more than this. He wanted to awake
with his likeness. Once you see Christ in his glory
and his true person, you see the love of God in him, you see
the justice of God in him, you see the honor of God in him,
you see all these things in him without limit, perfections of
character, who despite what he had to do, did it anyway. Without
fear. Wouldn't that be something? And seeing that in him, it says
we're changed. Like looking into a mirror, we're
changed day by day. Changed. Changed. Changed. And
our desire over time becomes one. We just want to be like
him. That's what the believer wants. Wants to be like him. In Romans chapter 1, the heathen
is a man that God describes as one without understanding. That's what he says. He talks
about all these things that he did. He didn't want to know God. The little bit he knew about
God, he didn't want that. He didn't desire to retain any
knowledge of God. All these things God gave him
over. Well, here's his condition. He's without understanding. Romans
chapter 3, verse 31. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 19, This is talking about the power
of God in the preaching of the gospel, the preaching of the
cross. I Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 19. He says, I will destroy the wisdom
of the wise. Now listen, I'll bring to nothing
the understanding of the prudent. He's going to show you where
your understanding is. It's nothing. He's going to expose
it for what it is, total, absolute foolishness, unfounded, no foundation
in it whatsoever. Bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. He's going to expose it for what
it is. And then in Ephesians 4, 17, Paul says the Gentiles,
he said, don't walk as other men walk. How do they walk? He said they walk in the vanity
of their mind. walk in the vanity of your mind,
having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life
of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the
blindness of their heart." Faith is a discovery. It finds the
treasure in the field. It discovers it, like discovering
a treasure in this book. To men, it's just grass, it's
just a field. But to the believer, he buys
the whole book because he found a treasure in it. And he buys
it all, cover to cover. And as he begins to leap through
the pages, he finds that treasure. He finds it on every page. He
finds it in every story, in every illustration. He finds it in
every commandment. He finds it in creation. He finds
it in providence. And he especially finds it in
salvation. It's a discovery. It discovers
the preeminence of Christ in all things. They're all that
wow, all these things. Man, wasn't there something?
You know, this guy just happened to be there. Just happened to
be. He just happened to preach on
what I needed to hear. He just happened to speak to
a heart that needed to hear. All these things just, no, they
didn't just happen. They were arranged. They were
arranged. You see what I'm saying? The
believer discovers, it's a discovery, faith discovers that all these
things were by the hand of God. They were by the hand of God.
It discovers his accomplishments in his life and death. It discovers
his sufficiency to save to the uttermost. It discovers the glory
of God in his faith. How God can be just and still
justify guilty sinners. It's a discovery. To a religious
man, Christ is just a part of his faith, just a part of his
understanding, a part of his hope. To the believer, Christ
is all. He's all. Take away Christ and
he's nothing. Is that where your hope is? You take away Christ, I've got
nothing. I put all my eggs in one basket.
It's Christ or nothing. It's Christ or hell. And he's all because it pleased
the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. Now, watch
this. They made a comparison of the
bread that Jesus fed them with the bread that God gave by Moses. Our fathers ate bread. Moses
called down the bread from heaven. Moses fed our fathers in the
desert. And Christ says, first of all, Moses didn't give you
that bread from heaven. And listen to this, this accusation,
this statement they made was concerning their fathers. He
gave our fathers bread. Listen, Christ applies it not
the way they said it, but the way they meant it. Now, what's
the wording here in the Scripture? He says over here in John chapter
6, I said unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven,
but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. That's what they were saying.
They weren't talking about Moses gave that bread to their fathers.
They were saying when he gave that bread to their fathers,
he gave it to us. They were falsely connecting
themselves with the miracle of grace upon their father. That's
what men and women do today. He said, My Father giveth you
the true bread from heaven. Moses didn't ask for it. He didn't
command it. He didn't come up with the terms
and conditions of it. This manna was altogether of
God. And it was given not for the
preservation of this bunch of rebels who would ultimately perish
in the wilderness. Look over there, I think it's
verse 58. Look over there in the book of
John. See what it says there. Your fathers did eat manna and
are dead." You see that? They are dead. If Moses were here and Moses
did give you the bread and you did eat it, it wouldn't do you
any good. It wouldn't do your fathers any good. They all died
and their carcasses fell in the wilderness. Your fathers ate
that manna and they are dead. Verse 32, But my Father giveth
you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he which
cometh down from heaven and giveth life. unto the world, not just
for that little nation, not just for your blood kinsmen, but to
every tribe, kindred, nation, tongue under heaven. He gave
you that bread. I'm out of time. I'm just going
to close. He is the bread. Christ is all. He's the bread. And no matter
if you talk about the manna or you talk about the water, over
in the Corinthians, Paul said, and that rock was Christ. That
cloud, you baptize into that cloud, into that sea, that bread,
all these, it's all Christ. It's all Christ. It's all Christ. And that's what a man has to
come to see. He has to come to Christ. That's what this book,
that's what preaching, that's what the cross, that's what all
these things are about. They're about Christ.