I Am The Bread Of Life Series

Good morning! It is great to be back. We had an excellent vacation in New Brunswick, and had no problem coming or going at all. After all these months, it was great to be home.

Before I left, we had just wrapped up a ten week series on the letter to the Philippians, which means that it is time to start something new. And I am really excited about this new series that we are beginning this week called I AM. Throughout the course of his ministry, Jesus made 7 I AM statements in the gospel of John that relate to his character, his divinity, and his mission. We are going to spend the summer studying these statements, and learning more about the nature of Jesus.

I am especially excited for this series because we will not be doing it alone! We are partnering this series with the South Range Christian Church in southern Nova Scotia. I’ll be studying each week with Josh Stevenson, who is the minister there. So essentially you’ll be getting two heads studying for the price of one, which is a great deal! And as we will both be bringing different perspectives in our sermons, I also recommend that if you want to dig further throughout the week, you should check out his sermons as well, which I can help you get connected to if you are interested.

If you’ve ever heard anyone talk about the statement “I Am” in a sermon or study before, you will know that it is a phrase that holds deep spiritual significance. If you HAVEN’T heard this before, I think you will find it really interesting, because it is not just a phrase, it is actually the name of God.

We have many names for God. In our society, we most often just refer to him as.... God. But as we know, God is just a generic term in English. When we say God, we use it as a name. But I can also use it as a description, we worship the god of Abraham. Others worship other god’s. It is a generic term.

There have been many names used to refer to our God over the generations. Elohim (Creator), Adonai (Lord), El Shaddai (Almighty), and many others. However, there is one name that God takes on himself when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush. It is a name that Jews to this day consider too holy to utter, and to use the name in Jesus’ day was considered blasphemy, as they considered using it to be taking his name in vein. Every time in your Bible that this word is used, it is translated as LORD, and usually with all capital letters. Because it was considered too holy to speak or write.

In Exodus, the NIV translates this name as “I AM Who I AM” Moses is told to tell the Israelites that “I AM” has sent him. It is a very peculiar name in Hebrew. It consists of four Letters, which translate to the English letters YHWH. It is a tricky name to translate to English. For a long time we thought that it was pronounced Jehovah, because there was no letter Y in Latin, so they replaced it with a J. However, through early Greek and Hebrew translations from the period, they have been able to determine the name was actually pronounced Yahweh.

Because Hebrew is such a peculiar language, there are multiple translations to be taken from this word, and they all are applicable. It can be taken to mean I Am, I Was, and I Will Be. The longer phrase, I AM Who I AM, can be translated as I Will Be With You, but also can be translated as I Am Without Equal.

I am telling you all of this, because as we begin this new series, I want you to fully understand the importance of these statements. With every one, Jesus not only reveals something about his character and mission, he claims to be God. Anyone who tells you that Jesus never claimed to be God does not know what they are talking about. It is why after Jesus said “Before Abraham was, I AM!”, the Jews picked up rocks to stone him to death. In that culture, he was making a clear claim: He is God.

So we’ve shifted from expository teaching in Philippians to Narrative in the Gospels, which means it is extra important for us to know where we are in the story, because this is in fact a story. We are reading John 6:25-59 this week. So let me give a little context on what was happening the previous day before our passage begins: Jesus had been preaching to a crowd near Bethsaida, and he had fed 5000 people there miraculously. They tried to make him king by force, so he fled, and his disciples had gotten into a boat and started crossing the sea of Galilee. Halfway across the sea, Jesus came to them walking on water. He got in the boat, and they came to shore in the town of Capernaum.