I was a Jr. High student from CO. We were visiting Artesia Christian College, near Carlsbad, NM. They told our group that we were going to take a desert hike – that it would be fun. So, we piled into vehicles and drove south to the Chihuahuan Desert. You know, from an air conditioned car, the desert can be beautiful! But we were going on a hike – across it. I’ve never felt closer to an old western movie than I did that day. Never before had I seen buzzards circling over my head, waiting for me to drop. Never before had I experienced this one kind of cactus – it grows only in that desert. It’s commonly called a shindagger. It grows about one foot tall, just high enough to spear you in the ankles when you step near it. We trudged on through this for 3 hours, without water, in the sun, because the snakes hang out in the shade. I was still waiting for the fun to start. Then, out of nowhere, we arrived at Sitting Bull Falls. Here were these natural, cool, clear water pools springing up out of the ground, and they all fed to a 100’ waterfall. Boy was it nice to get out of the desert heat and into that cool water!
The children of Israel were glad to get out of sandy old Egypt. As a people group, they’d been slaves for 430 yrs, and they were ready to be free. Finally, God sent the 10 plagues. They left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea and went into, you guessed it, the desert, into the Desert of Shur about 50 miles west of the Gulf of Aqaba, where you and I would learn a new definition to the word heat, because it lingers around 115 degrees.
They were on foot, over 600,000 people, carrying everything they owned. They weren’t trained to live on their own, for desert survival, for military defense. They were at the mercy of their situation, and within 3 days they realized it when they couldn’t find water and God had to provide it for them.
Exodus 16. 45 days into the desert, food was running short, and the people came to Moses and Aaron to complain. "Some backpack trip leaders you turned out to be! At least in Egypt we had bread and meat! Why have you led us out here? To kill us with starvation? Wish we could have just died in Egypt!" Well, Israel had a bad attitude. But, it was true, they needed food, and God heard their need and provided a way they could eat all they needed.
(I. Bread from Heaven)
He told them it was going to "rain bread from heaven" - that’s what God said He would do. The next morning, there was dew on the ground, and as it evaporated, there was a white, flaky stuff. It must have looked like potato spuds. Sure enough, God had “rained bread from heaven.” Everyone looked at it and said in Hebrew, "Man Hu?" (What is it?) and from that day forward they called it "manna".
It probably wasn’t long before some hungry Israelites gave it a try. Sure enough, “what is it” was good. It tasted like crackers and honey; like graham crackers (dip it in goat’s milk?) Sounds good, huh?
Really it probably didn’t matter how good it tasted. These people were hungry and needed food. They gathered it up. The sun came up, and what was left melted. But the next morning, there it was again. God had provided.
Day after day, week after week, there was the manna, without fail. Looking like spud flakes, tasting like graham crackers. God was providing. They were eating their fill. They weren’t going to starve. Get up for breakfast, what’s for breakfast? Manna. Put in a half day of work, come home for lunch. What’s for lunch? Let me guess, Manna. Have some friends over for dinner. They’ll bring something with them. What do they bring? Manna. You get the picture.
Ill – Ask Bill Stewart sometime if he’d like some pimento cheese spread. You see, when he was a student at Midwest Christian College, someone donated several cases of pimento cheese spread to the cafeteria. They used it in everything: macaroni and cheese, sandwiches, you name it, there was pimento cheese spread. After a while of eating it a lot, any food gets old. So, to this day, when you mention pimento cheese spread to Bill, he seems a little uneasy about it!
There’s only so much you can do with manna. Even though it sustained their lives, it was getting old. They would beat it, grind it, boil it, cook it, but it was still manna. In Numbers 11 you read where they finally complained to Moses. "At least when we were in Egypt, we had some variety! We had free fish, and melons, and leeks and onions and garlic. We’re sick of this manna!"
Manna-live! Can you relate? After several weeks, 3X a day, you wouldn’t want that stuff either. The reason we laugh about it is manna was keeping them alive! God had rescued them from slavery and was giving them bread from heaven, and rather than being thankful they were talking about the "good old days" when they were slaves back in Egypt! God had set them free as a nation, was giving them just what they needed, and they were complaining about the menu!
Ill - like a guy coming off the desert "Water, water.." "Here you go!” “Wait, this is Sam’s Choice. Do you have any Dasani? I really prefer Dasani.”
What advice would we have given them? "Shut up and be glad you have it!" How foolish to hate the thing that keeps you alive; how foolish to look back and long for the days when you were slaves!
Well, God did provide some variety, but for 38 years, the people lived because of the bread from heaven they called "What is it?" I’m sure they got tired of it, but there was a point to it: they had to have it to live! In fact, manna was so important, God had them save a jar of it for the temple just as a reminder of the whole experience.
Over 1000 years later, Jesus looks back to that bread from heaven and uses it as an illustration of how we should accept Him.
II. Jesus is the Bread of Life
John 6:51
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
Manna didn’t last forever. As soon as the Israelites ate some of the food of Canaan, the manna stopped. It hasn’t happened since. And all of those who ate that manna are long since dead.
On the other hand, Jesus pronounced Himself the Bread of life.
The people were bugging Him for some kind of sign. Bread from heaven was a big deal to them. If Jesus would do something like that, now that would be impressive! But what Jesus was telling them was even bigger! Manna was nothing! How about God coming down from heaven? How about having Bread of life, not just bread from heaven? How about "bread" that makes you live forever? That’s a bread we really need.
Jesus said He was a better "bread." The fact that God became a man and lived among us is even more wonderful than God raining bread from heaven. That really bothered them.
John 6:41-42
At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ’I came down from heaven’?"
They were offended. But Jesus doesn’t seem overly concerned about offending people who are shallow. So He goes on to say something that offended them even worse, and it’s really the heart of what we’re supposed to do about today’s teaching from Jesus.
III. We must "Eat" Him
First, you have to remember that the Jews were very careful about what they’d eat or even touch. God had given very specific commands about what ought to be eaten (Lev. 11).
-Every animal that was killed was to be drained completely of blood.
-If an animal was choked to death, it couldn’t be bled properly so it couldn’t be eaten.
-To eat any animal that wasn’t considered clean was unheard of.
With that in mind, Jesus says
John 6:51-55
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
In light of the Jewish way of thinking, that was a pretty awkward thing to say. Surely Jesus doesn’t mean what He said, does He? He could have softened it, maybe used some words that don’t sound so rugged. But in v56 He uses an even stronger word – one that means to gnaw, munch, crunch.
John 6:56
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
They called this a hard teaching. What does it mean? Here are a few suggestions about it…
1) Cannibalism, but v63 Jesus said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” Jesus never taught cannibalism. These words were stark, but they had a spiritual meaning. The people who were listening needed to listen for the spiritual lesson in them.
2) Communion, but there’s more to receiving life from Jesus than the Lord’s Supper. Misuse of these words of Jesus has resulted in all kinds of wrong ideas about the Lord’s Supper and why we observe it. Do we actually eat Jesus’ flesh and actually drink His blood? Is that the way we remain in Him and He remains in us, by just going through those motions? Or is this referring to something else? I wouldn’t sell short the importance of the Lord’s Supper, but we need to have a right understanding of it.
3) Conversion. I believe Jesus is talking about what it means to accept His death in place of mine, to figuratively take hold of His flesh and blood as the means by which I can be saved. That’s how I can remain in Him. That’s how He can remain in me. That would make this lesson from Jesus all about turning ourselves over to Him – a conversion experience – embracing the cross and all that it means to us – selling out to Jesus.
That’s why in v57 Jesus says,
John 6:57
"the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."
Jesus didn’t make a mistake when He said we need to consume Him. He knew exactly what He meant by that.
Skit – 3 people up front, each with a plate and snack in front of him/her. All 3 are very hungry. Person #1 thinks really hard about the food. Person #2 touches the food – maybe smells or licks it. Person #3 devours it, then asks the other 2, “Aren’t you hungry?” “Oh yeah, very!” “Aren’t you going to eat?” “No.”
Application
Now, don’t miss the connection here. Just like the Israelites had to have manna to live in the desert, the only way to live spiritually is to take in Jesus Christ. That’s pretty hard for some people to accept.
John 6:60
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"
Here’s what’s especially hard about it: you can’t just take Jesus casually. You have to consume Him. You can’t approach Him and just understand about Him. You can’t approach Him and just have some understanding, some feelings, maybe even some brush of experience with Him. You have to consume Him. It’s hard to deny involvement with something when you actually make it part of you. If you consume Jesus, then when you get up from the table, He goes with you. If you fill yourself with Jesus, then it will affect what else will fit into your life, what you can and can’t do, how you feel.
Here’s another feature that makes this a difficult teaching:
There’s something about having your life provided for you that’s humbling. That was true of the Israelites and the manna God gave them. None of them worked for it, they simply went out and gathered it in.
Can’t you hear some Israelite lady say: “Yeah. Ben’s a good husband. He really brings home the manna!" There’s not a whole lot of prestige in being able to just gather what has been handed over to you for free.
Deuteronomy 8:15-18
He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
That’s part of what makes accepting Jesus Christ so difficult for some. They realize that to accept Jesus is to admit you need help, to admit you can’t make it on your own. So there are people who actually reject the One that would give them life. Maybe you were laughing earlier at the idea of the Israelites complaining about manna - it’s foolish to turn your nose at the very thing that would keep you alive. But isn’t it just as foolish to turn your nose at the Bread of Life, real life in Jesus when you’re living in the dead, dry, desert?
Christians are guilty of it too. Do you ever get tired of the bread of life? "I want something with a little more excitement. I want more thrills. I’m tired of the same old stuff."
You need to remember where you are. You’re at the oasis in the middle of the wilderness. You need what God gives to provide life. You need to remember where you were. You need to look around you at the people who don’t have the Bread of Life and see what it’s doing to them. Look at the broken homes, the shattered hearts, the hurt, the worry; look into the faces of people without hope or any reason to live and ask yourself if it really would be better to try something besides the Bread of Life.
Just like the manna in the desert, the only way to life today is to accept that bread from heaven, the bread of life - accepting Jesus as the sacrifice in your place, taking hold of His flesh and blood as the only means for you to live forever.
Ill - AP story from Hutchinson, KS: A ragged peddler who told a friend he didn’t have $5 to pay a debt, was found dead the next morning in his apartment here amongst littered filth - and $61,000 in bonds and currency.
The man, Ramond Mishler, 48, died of malnutrition. Police and executors confirmed the report that the money had been found in a cluttered old store building which had been converted into 2 dwelling units. Detective Ed May, who went to investigate when Mishler’s body was discovered, noticed a piece of paper sticking in a door sill. It was a $1,000 government bond. May and Patrolman Bob Adams then found $40,000 in bonds in a dresser drawer and $3,000 in currency, nearly all of it old, large size bills, in tobacco cans and a trunk. Also found were passbooks from 3 banks showing deposits of $8,890 and papers showing he had several thousand dollars in postal savings and in savings and loans deposits.
He died of malnutrition!
How foolish to have what you need and not use it even to sustain life.
How foolish for the Israelites to complain of the bread that God provided and to wish they were back as slaves in Egypt.
How foolish to reject the Bread of life.
How foolish to wish instead that we could starve to spiritual death or go back to the slavery of sin. I wish I could convince some today that they need the Bread of Life.
You’re in the middle of the desert. Jesus is what you need. He’s available. You have to have Him to live forever.
