I Am The Living Bread Series

It Can Get Personal

Message one of five

I Am the Living Bread

March 04, 2012

Michael Wiley

Introduction:

Fill in the blank on the top of your note sheet:

God is ________________ --- what ever you’re thinking right now.

When many people in the world think of God, they think of an impersonal kill joy. A God who is real, but a God who is aloof, and distant. A God who is sitting up on His royal throne watching our every move, waiting to pounce on us when we fail.

Listen, if you don’t get anything else out of this series, I want you to get this. The God who may seem distant and unapproachable, came to earth as the great I AM. God the father, came to us as God the son, to have a personal relationship with us, in real time, in real space, and today, He invites you to come to Him, in Relationship.

Transition:

Jesus described Himself many times in Scripture as the Great I Am. In that He was saying, “I am God.” In the flesh, here on earth to call you into a personal relationship with me.

In our Scripture today, John chapter 6, He says, “I am the Living Bread.”

Before we look at that, let’s look back.

Manna From the Sky

I want to look back for a moment, because a part of Israel’s history is brought up in John 6-- The feeding of the Israelites with manna from the sky.

Just for review, God had used Moses and Aaron to bring the Israelites out of 300 years of bondage in Egypt. The trek from Egypt to the land he had promises them crossed what the Bible refers to as the wilderness. He brings them into the wilderness (approximately 1 million people) on foot, where there was no food and water supply to take care of them. They begin to whine and complain to Moses. At least we had food in Egypt – they said.

How many of you know that bondage can be comfortable. The Israelites were a free people now, but when a little trouble came up. They forgot about the slavery part, and could only remember their daily rations of food. The two go together in thought because when you’re a slave, you work for your master, he feeds you so you can work for your master. That’s all you get is food.

So God fed them with manna that would fall early every morning. Manna, was a small wafer of bread that was sweet like honey. They would collect it each morning and then what was left would disappear off the ground.

Now turn with me to the gospel of John chapter 6

John 6 begins with the miraculous feeding of the 5000 people on the banks of the sea of Galilee.

At the time, the people were following a miracle worker. That is all they thought He was.

Verse 5 says, “John 6:5 (ESV)

5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”

The first point I want to bring out is that:

Jesus Cares about Your Needs

He saw the people and He knew they were hungry. He then tests His Apostle Phillip by asking him where they were going to get enough food to feed them. Phillip says, well we don’t have the money to feed them but there is a little boy here with five loaves of bread and two small fish.

Jesus has every one sit down, He takes the five loaves of bread and two fish, and feeds the 5000 people. When all was said and done, the Apostles picked up twelve baskets of leftovers. So not only did Jesus supply their needs, but also He supplied an over abundance.

Listen, Jesus knows your every need and wants to supply your needs in abundance.

Jesus knew the people were following Him out of wrong motives. Verse 2 tells us they were following Him because they saw the signs He was performing on the sick. They were following Him, not out of belief, but out of curiosity, kind of like a circus act, or a sideshow… What is He going to do next? Let’s follow Him and see what He does.

Today we would call these people SEEKERS. A seeker is a person that is checking out Christ—checking out the Christian faith --- hasn’t really committed yet, but comes Sunday morning to see what’s going on. There may be some here today that fit this description. I’m so glad you are here.

Bottom line is this. No matter why you are here --- Christ cares for you. He knows your need; He wants to supply your need.