The Bread of Life: Gift, Sustenance, Reception (John 6:47–59)

Imagine a very skilled baker in your kitchen baking bread. He is an experienced baker who makes good bread, and you start to smell the aromas. You hear him open the oven, the fans getting louder, and the smell becomes stronger as it wafts through. He takes the bread out—too hot to hold with bare hands, so he uses a cloth. He slices it, steams rises, and you take some real butter and spread it over. It melts right in. You take a bite.

About three quarters of you are probably cursing me right now, realising you’re hungrier than you thought. But not everyone has that response to bread. There’s probably another quarter of you who think very differently—perhaps with something of a fear response, because eating bread like that would mean hours of agony. Others might love to eat bread but know they won’t because of the calories. Still others think about the uncomfortable afternoon of bloating or heartburn that would follow.

Our reaction to bread nowadays is very mixed. But long ago, bread wasn’t just a delicacy to be savoured or an evil to be avoided. In ancient times, bread was life—absolutely essential. People didn’t have much else to subsist on. There was always meat, of course, but meat was difficult before refrigeration. You couldn’t keep it, and the average person couldn’t afford to slaughter animals for every meal. (We recall when the Lord sent his angel to visit Abraham and he slaughtered a goat—it sounds extravagant, but he couldn’t just go to the refrigerator and pull out a shank.) For many, especially in the ancient Middle East, bread was as essential as water, shelter, and clothing. They didn’t have the luxury of thinking about bread the way we do. They had to eat bread.

Jesus referred to himself in many ways. He is the foundation—you can’t build on anything other than Christ. He called himself the Son of Man, the Son of David, the cornerstone, the vine. But in our passage, Jesus refers to himself by saying, “I am the bread of life.”

In this somewhat shocking statement, Jesus calls himself the bread and says his flesh is true food and his blood is true drink. When Jesus calls himself bread, what God intends us to do is take what we know about bread and apply that to Christ. We understand that bread is necessary for life—it is life-giving. As we eat bread, we are nourished. Bread must be eaten; it doesn’t help if you just smell it or have it in your house. And bread is satisfying—few things satisfy hunger as well as bread. We need to think of all these things when we hear Jesus referring to himself as the bread.

As usual, we need to remember that God has a purpose. He has always had a purpose. From the very beginning, he has had the same purpose. Psalm 83:18 says, “that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth.” Jesus expressed it beautifully in his high priestly prayer in John 17: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

This has been God’s will from the very beginning, and it has not changed. As such, we need to view all of life in relation to this revealed will of God. I would suggest that it is a mistake to see bread and drink as ultimate. No, bread and drink are there for us to understand something about God. God is infinite in wisdom, and he has graciously designed all that we see—all of creation—so that we would understand who he is. God has graciously designed reality so that many things point to himself, to ultimate reality. This, of course, leaves people without excuse before God. Romans teaches us that all people know there is a God, and they suppress that knowledge. They will give an account to God, and they know it.

The fact that we need bread is not just a result of the way things are. God didn’t need to create the world such that we need to consume bread and drink. No, God designed us to eat food, drink water, and sleep in order that we might understand we are dependent ultimately upon the grace and provision of God.

How else do we understand that there won’t be any marriage in heaven? Or Paul’s writing in Ephesians 5:31: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Marriage is not ultimate. This human institution, around which so much of our lives revolve and which is so important for society, is not ultimate. Paul says God created marriage so that we might understand something about Christ and the church.

God is committed to his worship and his glory. As such, God has put many things in place in this world simply so that we might begin to grasp and understand ultimate realities. Who would have thought that a lamb could rescue the souls of humanity? Well, the Israelites should have seen it. Why? Because they had been slaughtering lambs for hundreds of years. God put the sacrificial system in place so that we might understand we need a substitute.

God has given us various things in this life for us to grow up into that reality which is ultimate. In other words, we are not yet prepared for ultimate reality. We must, like a child riding a tricycle, first get that right, then move on to a bicycle, then maybe a motorbike, and ultimately a space shuttle. God is training us for ultimate reality.

This is crucially important. Sadly, for us who are so visual and physical in our natures, it’s very difficult to see and think of realities beyond what we can see, taste, and touch. We struggle to appreciate what is not right in front of our eyes. So we become obsessed with cars, fame, sex, money, a beautiful physique. We pursue particular education, like certain clothes, want to go on holiday, want adventures, want status. We’re so much like a child who thinks his tricycle is the ultimate means of transport.

We see the same blindness in the people of Jesus’ day. These crowds came together to hear Jesus by the Sea of Galilee because they heard he was healing the sick. Of course, who wouldn’t want to be healed? Who wouldn’t want to be freed from a disease-ridden body after years of suffering the affliction of disease and the fallenness of creation? But they saw this as ultimate—the man God had sent for their good. Yet John is careful to remind us in v. 2 that these healings were just a sign. They had seen good health as ultimate.

So they came to Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus told his disciples to feed these people. Of course, we know how he multiplied five loaves and two fish and divided them amongst five thousand. Think about that: five divided by five thousand doesn’t equal more than five in our experience, yet Jesus fed five thousand men from five loaves and two fish. He fed them as much as they wanted—so much that they picked up baskets full of leftovers. This wasn’t a case of modern-day “miracle workers” making one slice feed five thousand people thinly. No, this was abundance. After they had eaten their fill, there was still food left over.

They saw this as ultimate—this was the king they wanted, the king who gives food and heals diseases. So Jesus had to withdraw because he saw they were going to make him king by force. All they could see was the here and now: the bread, their diseased bodies, a nation under oppression.

Then Jesus crossed the sea on foot, and the next day the crowd followed him. Why? Had they realised this man could save their souls from destruction? No. They were hungry again. The bread from the previous day had done its job, and now they needed more. They followed Jesus and started putting pressure on him. They wanted to see another magic trick. They even appealed to Moses, saying, “If you want to be a leader in Israel, prove your credentials. Moses gave us manna, so you need to show you’re like Moses—give us bread.”

Jesus tears down their illusion by helping them see beyond the bread to ultimate reality.

Did Jesus call himself bread so that we would understand what he came to do? No. God created bread so that we might know who Christ is. Jesus told the people, “I didn’t come primarily to give bread. I came to be bread.”

There’s a real sense in which bread is a leveller. You find bread in the highest places—in palaces, on rulers’ tables, very expensive types. And you find bread in a shack. You find birds eating breadcrumbs, dogs of the street eating bread. We think of that Syrophoenician woman who came to Jesus saying, “Please heal my daughter who is demon-possessed.” Jesus said to her, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Her reply amazed Jesus with her faith: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” We’re taught to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Every person in this room needs bread—whether or not you actually eat bread, you need sustenance. And you need this bread of life, this bread of life which comes down from heaven.

Friends, don’t fall into the same trap the Israelites fell into, thinking that bread was ultimate. We’re not talking about physical bread. We’re talking about the gift of eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re talking about the gospel.

Jesus came to give himself as an atoning sacrifice for sinners. He came so that sinners might turn away from their sin—not in vain, not the way they had to do in the Old Testament. They would turn to God, who would give them freely of his Holy Spirit, and they would receive grace upon grace. Jesus came so that sinners who deserve the just judgement of God—eternal damnation from the Father—might instead not receive that damnation, but be made holy and righteous, forgiven, their slate wiped clean, freed from slavery.

Our damnation is the wages for our sin—fully earned. We must receive our wages, which is death. We earn it. It’s ours by right. But salvation, on the other hand, is a free gift. We do nothing to earn salvation. All we contribute to our salvation is a dead body, our sin. Salvation is the gift of God, and the only way we can experience it is as a gift. We receive salvation as a gift from God with no contribution of our own.

Here in this passage is the gift of God, the bread of life which comes down from heaven. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” That bread you want from Moses—what good did it really do ultimately? They died. In other words, he’s saying, “Why are you looking for more of the same? That bread didn’t do them ultimate good. Moses gave them manna, but this bread God is giving now is far greater than the manna God gave through Moses. What good is it if you’re kept alive for a day and then you’re hungry again? Only this gift of God can sustain for eternal life.”

He says:

The first thing we must notice from this text is that Jesus is the bread of life given by God.

Friends, this is no ordinary provision. This is no ordinary bread—not bread you can buy from Woolworths or bake in your oven. You do not come to Jesus as one option among many. You can’t choose to have this today and that tomorrow. No, Jesus is the gift from heaven. He is utterly unique.

You don’t come to Jesus as a great teacher. You cannot come to him as a great prophet, as the Muslims teach, or as merely a holy man. We dare not bring him into our lives to tamp down our guilty consciences or help us feel better about ourselves. Jesus is not our therapist. He’s not our homeboy. He’s not our lucky charm. He is more precious than anything else you can imagine. Jesus is utterly unique. He is all alone. He is the bread from heaven.

This bread is not like the bread you know. This bread is special. When we come to Jesus, we receive something profound—something you cannot receive anywhere else, in any other way. You can buy comfort. You can take medicine that will improve your health. You can see a therapist about your depression. But Jesus does something utterly unique.

What does Jesus do? Jesus brings eternal life. He gives life.

Jesus told them that the bread he gave them the day before, and the manna they ate in the wilderness, could support them for a time, but ultimately they would hunger again. In the long run, no matter how much they ate, they would need more. They would perish and die in the end. These breads were given to them by God, yes, but not as ultimate—rather, to point them to the bread, Jesus Christ, the one they cannot hope to live without, the one who gives eternal life.

Jesus is the bread from heaven, and whoever eats this bread will live for ever. Indeed, Jesus goes so far as to say, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”—not just that you will not get life, but you are not living right now. You were never living to begin with.

Jesus is the bread of life who comes down from heaven, and those who eat this bread will gain eternal life.

The obvious question we must all ask ourselves is: Have you tasted this bread of life?

Do you find yourself hungering and thirsting for the things of this world? Or is your soul satisfied in Christ? The reality is that we as Christians still struggle with the flesh, but nevertheless, in your most lucid moments when you’re thinking clearly, do you savour Christ? Is he all that you want? Are you aware of the Spirit taking the things of Christ and making them yours? Do you find yourself satisfied with the bread of life? Are you continually satisfied with the bread of life? When you go away for a time and find yourself searching for other things, do you come back to the bread of life?

Only those who have eaten of this bread can know that sort of satisfaction. Until you eat this bread of life, you will continue to wander through this world looking for what cannot satisfy. You’ll think it’s round the corner—you just need a little more time, a little more money, another child, a spouse, a new job. You just need to go on that adventure and find yourself. But it’s futile. You cannot find satisfaction in this world. You were made for a purpose: to eat this bread of life. Only the bread of life can fill an aching belly. Only Jesus can fill an aching heart.

Jesus comes down as a gift from God, but as a gift that is undeserved. There is nothing you can do to work for this bread. This bread is not a wage you receive. This bread comes down to those who see themselves as unworthy beggars—those who, without the grace of a benefactor, would perish. This bread we so desperately need is a gift from heaven.

Will you receive it as such? Will you receive this bread as a gift, or are you still working? Are you slaving away with self-discipline, trying to do the work, grinding the bread of anxious toil and self-will? You cannot do it. Friends, you cannot bake your own bread. You can try. You might make something that keeps your conscience satisfied for a short time, but ultimately it’s insubstantial, unsatisfying. You cannot get it anywhere else.

It’s like two-minute noodles—tastes good, won’t sustain you. Many may remember when McDonald’s first came to this country, around the same time fax machines became widely used here. (Fax machines, for those who don’t know: you put in a picture or document, and what you get on the other side is readable but doesn’t look great—printed on weird paper.) My dad always used to joke that McDonald’s would fax their chips directly from the States. The point, of course, is that chips from McDonald’s might taste really good, but you can’t subsist on them. If you only ate chips from McDonald’s, you would not do well.

You cannot live and work for this bread. It is a gift.

This brings us to our second observation: This bread of life sustains and nourishes the people of God.

Jesus reminds the people that just as the bread of life comes from heaven, so the manna in the wilderness came from heaven. Yet this manna had to be collected each day. They were only allowed to collect enough for what they needed for that day. Moses told them, “Don’t collect more than you need”—in other words, “Don’t see this manna as what you need. You need to look beyond the manna to the God who gives the manna.” But of course, some still collected more, and it bred worms and stank. So they had to go out each day and work to collect food.

The Lord sustained the whole nation of Israel wonderfully for more than forty years as they wandered through the wilderness with this miraculous manna. Yet new bread was baked each day, and if it wasn’t, they would have perished.

This is a very interesting parallel to the sacrificial system. The blood of bulls and goats cannot remove sin, so they had to sacrifice again each time, because they would sin again, fall again. Each day, daily, they had to offer sacrifices for sin. The very existence of the Israelites resulted in their living in separation from God. Think of the various ways they became unclean, unfit for worship: various natural processes, just touching a piece of furniture that had been touched by someone unclean rendered them unfit to approach God. Mankind’s separation from God was painfully apparent each day.

In the same way sacrifices needed to be offered daily, manna needed to be collected and processed daily for their bodies to receive the nourishment they needed.

But this bread of heaven doesn’t sustain the same way as manna. This bread of heaven brings new life. It brings eternal life. It causes life to be created in dead hearts. Jesus promises that those who eat of this bread will never hunger again. Not only does it sustain life, not only does it give life, but it gives eternal life—not just life that will get you a few more years, but life that will sustain for all eternity.

It gives a whole new nature. It doesn’t just patch the tyre so it can be punctured again tomorrow. It changes hearts. It transforms lives. You cannot eat the bread of heaven and walk away the same person. You cannot eat the bread of life and remain unchanged. The bread from heaven gives eternal life where previously there was only death.

Jesus says those who eat this bread will never hunger and thirst again. If we go back to my original point that God created certain things to point us to our need for him, he created hunger and thirst to point to something more fundamental. He created eating and drinking to point us to our need for God. So there’s a sense in which each time you feel hunger and thirst, you ought to be reminded of your desperate need for the bread only God can provide.

When Jesus was in the wilderness tempted by the devil, and the devil told him to create bread from the rocks he saw, what was Jesus’ response? “Man shall not live by bread alone.” Friends, how did God create the world? He created by the words of his mouth. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. “Let there be plants”—the plants that make bread—and there were plants of every kind.

So fundamentally, if you drill down to what we really need, do we really need the bread? Or do we need the God who made the bread? We desperately need what only God can provide. When we eat the bread of life—the very Son of God, the Saviour for sinners—only then are we truly satisfied. Only when we partake of the bread of life are we experiencing the reality to which all other bread points.

It is for this reason Jesus can say that those who eat of this bread will never hunger again. I don’t think Jesus was saying those who eat of this bread have now received their vaccine and never think about bread again. No. Psalm 37 says, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” What are the delights, the desires of a heart who is delighted in the Lord? Surely it’s the Lord himself.

Why in the world would someone who has experienced what is most satisfying, most glorious, most wonderful, be satisfied with anything less? Those who delight themselves in the Lord will have no desire apart from him. Those who delight themselves in the Lord receive the objects of their desire—namely, the Lord himself.

I’m not saying we will never eat or drink again, being eternally satisfied. But we know where to find this bread. We always have access to this bread. Once we have tasted Christ, we will only ever want Christ, because only Christ can satisfy the hunger and thirst God has created us with. We will spend all of eternity in glory hungering and thirsting after and being satisfied by Christ.

“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!”

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

A thirsty person who drinks seawater is not blessed, because his thirst is not quenched by the salty water. He’s further dehydrated. This is a perfect picture of a sinner who looks for satisfaction in what cannot satisfy. Not only does it not satisfy, it creates an even greater yearning in his soul. But a person who hungers after Christ—such a person eats and is satisfied. When he hungers, he knows where he can receive satisfaction for that hunger.

As you eat that warm, steamy piece of bread, not only is your hunger satisfied, but you want more, don’t you? That’s the problem. But the blessing is, as Christians, we want more and we can have more. This bread is infinite. Not only can the store of bread never be exhausted, but your own capacity for enjoying this bread is never exhausted. It increases the more you eat.

This is the nature of heaven, I’m convinced. We’ll spend eternity gazing upon this God. He is infinite, and we can never eat this bread and be done. No. When the bread of life is there, there is always more to enjoy, always more to have, always more strength to be gained, always more to be received.

Jesus tells us that those who eat of this bread will live for ever, not because they will be independent of God, but because they will be connected to this life-giving source. Eternal access to the bread. Eyes opened, lives changed. Jesus is that tree of life referred to in Genesis, that God had to bar Adam and Eve from after they sinned, lest they eat of the tree and live for ever. This is the tree we have access to in Christ.

But not only does this bread give life—just as the manna in the wilderness sustained the people so they might live and wander through the wilderness, so the bread of life, Jesus, sustains the church for our work here on earth as we move through the wilderness of this world.

There’s always the temptation, I think, for Christians to hunker down and wait for the end. We see the evil and wickedness in this world, the brokenness around us, and we’re tempted to despair. We’re tempted to conclude this world must be under the control of the devil, and all we need to do is endure to the end, just survive.

But family, we’re destined for much more than that. We’re not destined just to wait out the storm. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like leaven—if you’ve ever used yeast to make bread, you just need a little bit of yeast and it totally changes the whole nature of that bread.

Christians are not called to hunker down and wait for the end. Yes, this world is evil. Yes, it’s broken. Yes, we feel the suffering. Life feels futile, even for those who are faithful—maybe especially for those who are faithful. We hurt. We experience loss. We feel the loneliness, the darkness.

But God in his grace has ordained that those who were once his enemies, who eat of this bread of life, not only become his friends, but they are transformed into those who resemble him. As a result, they are given a part in the work he came to do. In this great redemption story, Christians are the means by which God accomplishes his will on earth. Christ said we will do far more than what he came to do.

Scripture teaches us that God is seeking worshippers. We know from Scripture that God will glorify his name. Christians not only have the incredible privilege of participating in this themselves—worshipping and glorifying God themselves the way we’re doing here—but we have the opportunity to be God’s co-workers. We have the opportunity to be a city on a hill that cannot be hidden, to be salt that goes into the earth and preserves and drives back the decay, that flavours.

Christians have the opportunity not only to take every thought captive, but to do battle, to go out—and the gates of hell will not prevail against us. They’re not coming against us; we’re against them. We’re pushing forwards.

Friends, do we realise what an incredible privilege we have? Is there anything in this world—anything more worthy of your energies, your time, your money, your talents, your life? Is there anything out there of more value to you than the glory of God’s name?

How can you repay someone who has given their life for you? Can you repay such a debt? Is there any tribute, any fitting response to such a debt?

Friends, those of us who have received this gift from heaven cannot repay God. But we can live lives which bring him honour. We can live lives which magnify his name, which show forth his worth to the world, which highlight his glory, and which further his cause.

Jesus tells the parable of the king who has a feast. Those he invites all give excuses—they can’t come. So he tells his servants, “Go out and invite others.” They go out, and still there is room. So he says, “Go out to the roads and compel people to come in, that my feast may be full.”

Well, family, who do you think those servants are? That’s you and I.

Have you ever had the privilege of administrating someone else’s resources? Have you ever been able to be a blessing to others with what doesn’t belong to you? That is the privilege we have. We get to spend the king’s money. We get to go out and offer what we cannot give. We can confidently say that for all those who will humble themselves, confess their sin, and put their faith in this Christ, we have the gift of eternal life. We essentially have a cheque that is signed, and all that remains is for us to fill in the name. What a privilege.

The bread of life gives life and brings life in abundance. It gives us purpose in life. The life God gives is wonderful. There is an abundance and a fulness of joy which is deeply satisfying. But of course, this life God gives us is not individualistic and self-focussed. We don’t just enjoy this on our own. The life this bread gives joins us to others. It makes us want to go out and share this gift with others. It sustains Christians for the mission of making this bread of life known.

Family, we’ve had the privilege, most of us, of having tasted the bread of life. It is now our privilege to go out and make this bread known—to invite starving sinners from the highways and byways into this feasting hall of the king. We invite sinners into this feast not only by telling them about the bread, but by ourselves smelling like the bread, by ourselves being well satisfied with the bread. The bread sustains us in our walk through this world.

I trust it’s been made plain just how incredible the bread of heaven is and how much we all truly need it. But the question remains: How do we obtain it? How do we consume this bread? How do we eat this bread of life? How do we get to share in the meal of the bread?

This is the crucially important question. Many people are fully prepared to acknowledge that Christ is amazing, profound, that he transformed the world. The world would not be the same—history would not be the same—without Christ. There are many people out there, big names—Jordan Peterson and Donald Trump, for example—who are fully prepared to acknowledge that Jesus is exemplary.

But the question is: How does a man or woman come to partake of Christ? How does one go from seeing Jesus as exemplary to experiencing him as a life-giving Saviour? This is the most important question anyone can ask today.

So what? So what that Jesus is such an amazing loaf of bread? How does that make a difference in my own life?

It’s a question I trust you’re all asking yourselves. Of course, we know that Jesus says no-one can come to the Father unless the Father draws him, unless the Father who sent him draws him.

So how did you end up here? Think about it. Did you have to be here? Is the Father drawing you today? Is he calling you to himself? Surely you would be a fool to conclude otherwise. Believers and unbelievers alike—the Father is drawing you. I stand here today as an ambassador of God, and I declare to you that God is calling you today.

Will you come? Will you respond? Or will you, like presumptuous Israel, put such questions aside? Will you rest complacent? “That’s for another day. I’ve got exams tomorrow.”

How does a person come to obtain this bread? Read with me from v. 51:

Naturally, the people took this literally and thought, “How can we eat his flesh and drink his blood?” They were still thinking in the flesh, much like Nicodemus, who came to Jesus. Jesus told him, “You must be born again,” and he said, “How can a man enter again into his mother’s womb and be born?”

That is the question. This is the crux of the matter.

Bread was given so that we might know Christ. Jesus came not to give bread, but to be bread. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus came and lived righteously, perfectly satisfying the Father. The wages for sin is death, and we have earned it. But Christ did not earn those wages. Christ should not have died, and yet he died anyway, because he gave up his life willingly, in order that those who are dead in their trespasses and sins may themselves be drawn to him by the Father and believe in the sacrifice of himself on the cross—believing that his sacrifice is sufficient to cancel their record of debt and to clothe them with robes of righteousness.

When you believe that, though you are a sinner, though you have rebelled against a holy God—when you believe that Jesus, the perfect Son of God, came to this earth to live a perfect life on your behalf, to die in your place—then it is that you sit down at this banquet table of God. Then it is that you eat of the bread of life.

When you believe that Jesus is a saviour for sinners like you, then you receive his flesh and drink his blood. As a result, though your body should waste away because of sin, though you should starve on this earth, you will be raised up on the last day.

This is all my hope and plea: that Jesus lived and died for me.

This is what we remember each time we eat the Lord’s Supper. We’re reminded of our right to eat of this bread. We remember that Jesus gave himself so that we may never hunger again, may never experience death.

But sometimes these things are difficult to hear. Sometimes when you’re going through the midst of suffering, when you need more money, when you’re uncomfortable, when you’re afflicted by disease and the fallenness of our world, when you’re feeling the effect of loss—it’s hard to hear that those are not the most important things in the world.

Because of the blinding nature of our sin, we want a Saviour who would give us these things, don’t we? Eternity feels far off. I need my needs met now. We want a Saviour who gives us physical bread, full bank accounts, nice cars, and smiles on our faces.

So Jesus asks his disciples the question that I ask you today in closing: Do you want to go away as well?

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

It is this Holy One of God that I declare to you today. It is this bread of life that I offer. He has the words of eternal life. There is nowhere else that sinful men, women, and children can go.

So, friends, come and bow before him. Believe in his name. Eat this bread and be satisfied in Christ.

AMEN