I Am The Bread Of Life Series

Say you’ve recently met someone new. Another worker was hired on, or you started at a new school, or you got a new client for your business. You get to know a person in a few ways. One is to watch what they do. How do they behave, and how do they treat other people? You get acquainted also by listening to what they say. What kind of words come from their mouths? Are they honest, are they kind, are they helpful in their speaking?

The Gospel of John is helping us get to know Jesus. Now, we could assume that we know him pretty well already. He’s no stranger to us, for many of us have been hearing about Christ for almost as long as we’ve lived.

Yet if we’re in the Word and we have the Spirit, we’re also finding out new things about Jesus, or perhaps rediscovering things, or growing to appreciate him more. Indeed, anyone who has come to see his own weakness and sin, anyone who’s learned that this world cannot satisfy, should be learning to rest in Jesus more and more.

This Christ is revealed to us in John’s Gospel—revealed by what He does, and revealed by what He says. We see what Jesus does, like turning water into wine, healing a paralytic, and raising the dead Lazarus. These were miracles with a message, each one a revelation of some facet of Christ’s glory: like his power, his mercy, or his authority.

We learn from his signs, and we learn from his seven sayings, when Jesus says things about himself like, “I am the Light of the World. I am the Good Shepherd. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Jesus said much more than just these seven words, of course. But these sayings have a unique place in John’s Gospel, and a deep meaning. Like his signs, they reveal the Jesus who is our Saviour, who wants us to find our hope and strength in him alone.

We look at the first of his seven sayings, “I am the bread of life.” We will explore this declaration by considering three things,

I am the Bread of Life:

1) the boldness of Jesus’s claim

2) the emptiness of earthly bread

3) the fullness of life through Christ

1) the boldness of Jesus’s claim: We can’t really understand Jesus’s words in our text without seeing how they’re wrapped up in the rest of John 6. When Jesus announces that He is the ‘Bread of Life,’ He wants everyone to think about what has just happened.

In his mercy, He has fed the massive multitude gathered on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. From the most meagre of picnic lunches, Jesus has shared out enough bread and fish for the entire crowd, and everyone has been filled. It was a comforting display of the Lord’s care for his people, a reminder of how He will always provide.

The crowds are amazed, and they conclude that Jesus must be the great Prophet whom God promised. Yet their wonder is short-lived. Verse 22 says that one day later, the people are still following Christ, and they are still looking for his handouts.

Jesus rebukes the crowds in verse 26, “I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” The people have missed the point. They got their free lunch, but now they’re hungry again. They expect Christ to be something like a heavenly supermarket: an endless source of food, big portions, open seven days a week with everything they could ever want.

Yes, they’ve supposed that Jesus is the Prophet, but they won’t know for sure until He does something really big. So they ask, “What sign will you perform then, that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do?” (v 30). They’re actually looking for a better sign, because feeding the 5000 wasn’t enough. Even though Jesus has multiplied loaves and fishes, He still hasn’t given them ‘bread from heaven.’

In Israel there was the idea that when the Messiah, the long-awaited Saviour, finally came, He would prove his authority by repeating the miracle of manna. That’s what Moses had done in the desert: Moses, mediator between God and his people, had fed them for forty years. So the Christ too, would certainly give them ‘bread from heaven.’ Barely concealing their hungry expectations, the people quote Scripture to Jesus from the exodus story, “Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” (v 31).

Incredibly, the people are suggesting that Jesus has not yet equaled Moses’s miracle. They still want to see the flakes of manna falling from heaven. If He can do that, then they will believe! Like the crowds so often do during his ministry, the people are seeking a sign.