True Satisfaction: The Bread of Life
(John 6—Communion)
I. Christ Came To Meet Our Felt Needs
A. Jesus recognized that the crowd was needy and He met their need
B. He knows about our felt needs and came to supply them
II. Too Often We Focus Only on Our Felt Needs
A. We live as though our immediate ache is all that needs attention
B. When everything is fine, we hail Him as King
III. Christ Came To Meet Our Deepest Need
A. We want an instant answer to our problems—He came as Bread that truly satisfies
B. We want our satisfaction in this life—He came to give us eternal life
C. We want Him as King as long as He meets our felt needs—He came as the King
IV. We Can Only Have Our Deepest Needs Met By Faith
A. It begins with a work by God in us
B. It is apprehended by faith
Introduction
Please turn in your Bibles to John 6. We will read the entire chapter together.
The account we just read is familiar to most of us. We have all heard the story of how Jesus fed the 5,000 with only a small boy’s lunch many times before. And we like to hear such stories about the awesome power of God being displayed in such a miraculous way. But I believe there is a danger in focusing only on the sensational side of this story. It’s easy for us to get caught up in the miracle and lose sight of John’s big purpose in recording this event.
The reason that John records this story is to deal with the topic of experiencing satisfaction in life. This particular story reveals to us two views of satisfaction—one that focuses on momentary needs and one that is concerned with the root cause of all our dissatisfaction. The good news that John wants us to understand is that Christ is concerned about every facet of our lives. He knows and understands the longings in our hearts and He came to meet our needs. His is a ministry to the total person. The abundant life He came to offer is not just for some future life, but also for the life we now live. The lesson we are to learn from this story is that true satisfaction is only found through faith in Jesus. By partaking of the Bread of Life, we will be satisfied eternally.
Christ Came To Meet Our Felt Needs
The first thing that this story teaches us about the ministry of Jesus is that he came to meet our felt needs. To put it another way, Christ came to fulfill our immediate needs.
Jesus Recognized That the Crowd Was Needy and He Met Their Need
John begins this account by informing us that Jesus crossed to the far side of the Sea of Galilee. He tells us what Jesus did, but he does not tell us why. The other Gospel writers reveal the reason behind Jesus’ journey to the other side of the lake. He and His disciples had been so busy ministering to the needs of the multitude that they did not have time to spend with one another. So Jesus called His disciples to Himself and made preparations to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee for a retreat.
But as John points out, Jesus’ plans were frustrated. As soon as the crowds got wind of what they were going to do, they ran along the shore and met Jesus and His disciples at their destination. And although it was somewhat of an imposition, Luke tells us that when He saw the crowds approaching, He welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing (9:11). Jesus recognized that the crowd was needy. Instead of becoming indignant about their obvious intrusion, He had compassion upon them and sought to minister to them again.
As the day was drawing to a close, Jesus realized that the crowd would be experiencing another need. He recognized that they had traveled a great distance, and that they had spent a long, exhausting day listening to Him teach and receiving healing for their various ailments. Now they would feel the sensation of hunger, but they had made no provisions to meet such a demand.
We are all familiar with how Jesus met this pressing need. After testing His disciples’ faith, He accepted a lunch from a small boy—five small barley loaves and two small fish. He had His disciples assemble the crowd into manageable groups. Then He blessed the food and gave it to His disciples to distribute to all. John tells us that each one had as much as he/she needed. After all had been fed, the disciples were commanded to gather up the leftovers—and they collected enough to fill 12 personal-sized baskets. Jesus knew what the people needed and he supplied their need.
He Knows About Our Felt Needs and Came to Supply Them
The same holds true today. This is not just an account about a unique incident in history. Rather, it is a pattern for the way that Christ meets our needs in the present. When He looks at you and me, He knows all about our needs. He knows we need jobs. He knows we need food. He knows we need healing. He knows we need to feel safe. Jesus knows all about our felt needs and he came to supply them.
So why do we continue to be so needy? Let me just throw out one possible answer. I wonder if the reason why we often times live in a state of “neediness” is because we are guilty of expecting to have our needs met without ever seeking out Jesus to meet our needs. The crowd’s needs were not satisfied just because they were needy. They were satisfied because they sought Jesus.
The same holds true for us today. If we desire to have our needs met, then we must go to God and ask Him to meet our needs. We must tell Him where it hurts. We must lay ourselves bare before Him and entreat Him to move on our behalf. Don’t expect to receive anything if you have not taken the time to earnestly plead your case before God first. Remember these words from James, You do not have, because you do not ask God (4:2).
Too Often We Focus Only on Our Felt Needs
The second lesson this account has to teach us is about ourselves. Christ came to meet our immediate needs, but too often we focus only on our immediate needs.
We Live as Though Our Immediate Ache Is All That Needs Attention
Like the crowd, we live as though our immediate ache is all that needs attention. Notice how John describes the crowd in v. 2: a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. They were attracted to Jesus because they saw that He had the power to relieve their immediate suffering. They sought hard after Him because they felt some type of pain—sickness, demonic influence, hunger—and they wanted Jesus to make the pain go away. Their belief was that if they could obtain a remedy for their felt needs, then everything else would fall into place. They assumed that the only needs they had were the ones that they could see with their eyes, feel in their bones, or otherwise experience through the five senses.
When Everything Is Fine, We Hail Him as King
As a result of meeting their physical needs, the people began to organize a campaign to make Jesus king. Because they felt good in their bodies and had full stomachs (and they didn’t even have to work for it), they thought they had found an easy answer to their everyday inconveniences. But Jesus would have no part of their plan. He had not come just to make sure that the crowd didn’t go to bed that night hungry. So He withdrew again to a mountain by himself (v. 15).
Can’t the same be said of our lives as well? When everything is fine, we are quick to boldly hail Jesus as King. As long as all of our felt needs are satisfied, it’s not a problem for us to exalt the name of Christ and testify (at least in a church setting) that we are His faithful followers. That’s the kind of Savior that many of us are looking for. It’s the kind of Savior many of us were promised we would receive if we chose to accept Him—a King who would make life “a heaven on earth.” But Jesus did not come to make certain that our stay here on earth is a pleasant and carefree existence. And He will have no part of our plan to hail Him as King if we are not willing to serve Him as the King He came to be.
Christ Came to Meet Our Deepest Need
This is the third lesson we learn from the story—Christ came to meet our deepest need. The easiest way to see this lesson unfold is to contrast some of our basic or earthly attitudes and actions, as portrayed for us in the attitudes and actions of the crowd, against the divine plan of our Lord.
We Want an Instant Answer to Our Problems—He Came as Bread That Truly Satisfies
We have a natural tendency to want an instant answer to our problems. We can see this most clearly in the conversation that develops between crowd and Jesus beginning with v. 25.
After realizing that Jesus is no longer around to provide food for them and meet their other physical needs, the crowd tracks Him down in Capernaum. When they caught up with Jesus on the other side of the lake, they asked Him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” They wanted to know why Jesus would leave them. They were still needy people—soon they would need to be fed again.
Jesus could see through the façade of their lives. He knew that they had not come seeking Him because they understood who He was or what He had come to accomplish for them and in them. They came only to satisfy their temporal needs. They thought Jesus was sent to provide a paradise on earth. They missed the point that Jesus had come to fill them with food that endures to eternal life (v. 27).
Things haven’t changed much. We still want an instant answer to our problems. We’re still looking for an answer that will solve all our cares with the snap of a finger, the wave of a wand, or a “quickie” prayer. We are primarily focused on the moment at hand and its circumstances, but Jesus came as Bread that truly satisfies. He came as the One who could fill the inner recesses of our being. He came to end our hunger for meaning or a sense of worth in this life. For until this need is satisfied, there is no satisfying any need in our lives. He came to meet the one need that nothing else could fill, and without such a filling, nothing else really matters.
The answer in life that we most need to find has nothing to do with money, prestige, social standing, sexual fulfillment, health or any other temporal or physical commodity. The one answer we need to discover most in life is how to experience lasting peace, hope, security, love, and meaning when everything we thought would bring us happiness and fulfillment has failed or been taken from us. The only way to satisfy that need is to receive the Bread of Life, Jesus Christ.
We Want Our Satisfaction in This Life—He Came to Give Us Eternal Life
Another earthly-minded attitude that we often exhibit is that we want our satisfaction in this life. This is illustrated in the crowd’s misunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching about the True Bread that came down from heaven.
Christ attempted to explain to the multitude that the bread of which He spoke was Himself. God the Father had sent Him down to earth to satisfy the deepest need of mankind. His mission was to conquer sin and provide the way for renewed fellowship with the Father. That’s why He states in verse 33, “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
But the only thing the crowd could hear Jesus say was “bread that gives life.” In their minds, they conceived of a special recipe of bread that, when eaten, would satisfy their physical hunger for the rest of their lives. “Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread” (v. 34). This is similar to the misconception that the woman at the well had when Jesus spoke to her about partaking of the living water that He had to offer. Upon hearing of such a drink, the woman exclaimed, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming to draw water” ( John 4:15). Both this crowd and the woman sought for an answer that would give them satisfaction in this life.
Can’t the same be said of us today? We want our satisfaction in this life. We want it all here and now. But Christ came to give us eternal life. Nowhere in the scriptures will you find the promise that following Christ will lead to bliss in this world. On the contrary, we are told by Jesus Himself to expect trials and tribulations as part of the package while living in this fallen world (John 16:33). While it’s true that He entered this world to meet our immediate, physical needs—for He is the Lord of the total person—His chief purpose in coming was to prepare us for the life to come. It is for a life beyond this world that we must set our hopes. We should not expect to have it all now—that is our hope for the future.
We Only Want Him as King as Long as He Meets Our Felt Needs—He Came as the King
A final trait portrayed by the crowd that is commonly seen in our lives concerns our attitude toward Christ when things don’t go our way. All too often we only want Him as King as long as He meets our felt needs. And when He fails to satisfy our immediate wants, we reject Him as the crowd did that day.
It is obvious that the crowd was not convinced or impressed by Jesus’ claim to be the Bread of Life that they needed more than the fulfillment of any temporal need. We read in verse 42, that they began to grumble and question the authority of Jesus on the basis that He was too familiar to them. In verse 52, they completely misunderstood Jesus’ teaching about eating His flesh because they assumed that He was referring to a literal consumption of His material body. Then the climax is recorded for us in verse 66, From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. Although these verses convey several different responses to what Jesus had to say, the bottom line attitude was the same—if Jesus was not going to meet their needs the way they expected Him to, then they would not receive Him as King.
Again, we are guilty of the same attitude. We only want Christ as king as long as He meets our felt needs. As long as everything is going “as planned” in our lives, Jesus has a right to be hailed as King. But let us experience dissatisfaction in the slightest way, and we are ready to rally a coup to overthrow him.
We only want Him as King as long as He meets our immediate needs, but we, like the crowd, fail to recognize (or in our case remember) that He is the King. He has nothing to prove to us concerning His right to be hailed as the King, just as He had nothing to prove to those who came running to Him for another bellyful. Jesus is the King! He has always been and He shall forever remain the King! We need to keep in mind that His kingdom is not of this world; therefore, the greatest benefits of His kingdom are not in this world. They are reserved for His kingdom to come.
We Can Only Have Our Deepest Needs Met by Faith
This leaves only one question to be answered: How are our core needs met? The answer is one that we have heard over and over again, which probably accounts for why we forget it so easily. We can only have our deepest needs met by faith.
It Begins with a Work by God in Us
Our deepest need—that of finding release from feelings of guilt about our failures and assurance that those failures won’t be held against us—can only be satisfied by faith, but it begins with a work by God in us.
This is a part of the gospel message that I feel has not been emphasized enough in recent days. The reason that it is not stressed in many modern evangelistic efforts is because it goes against our nature. We want to feel that we are in control of our lives. To speak of needing help to get our lives in order is an affront to our pride. And I believe that this is one of the reasons that we have seen the rise of so many cults in this century. All of them, without exception, preach a message that we are ultimately responsible for effecting our salvation. There is always some type of work that the individual must perform in order to secure his/her eternal hope.
But the gospel of Jesus Christ is the sobering truth that we cannot save ourselves. No matter how hard we try, we can never meet up to God’s standard: to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). The Bible is clear on this issue: eternal life is a gift of God, not of works so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). God is the one who must take the initiative in bringing us into a proper relationship with Himself. If He did not take the first step, it would be impossible for us to ever experience renewed fellowship with Him.
This is what Jesus meant when he said and v. 44, “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” And again in verse 65, Jesus states, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” The way to peace with God begins with the prompting of God.
It Is Apprehended Through Faith
Once God has so moved upon our hearts, then our salvation is apprehended through faith. Listen again to what Jesus says in verse 47, “I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.” And Peter’s confession in vv. 68-69 beautifully captures the idea of faith for us, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Our quest to experience lasting fulfillment in life begins with a work of God in our lives. He holds out His hand with the gift of forgiveness and eternal life in it. He stands offering us the one thing we cannot manufacture in ourselves and the very thing we long for most—whether we realize it or not. The role that we play in this great exchange is to choose to receive. We must decide to reach out and to accept what He freely offers us, or reject His gift and vainly strive to find satisfaction on our own. The way in which we receive His gift of eternal life is simply by asking and believing that we have received it. That is faith! And as the writer of Hebrews tells us, without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (11:6).
Conclusion
The story of the feeding of the 5,000 and the other incidents surrounding that event, teach us about where our focus should be as we seek to find lasting satisfaction and meaning in life. While it is true that Jesus came to meet the total needs of the total person, many of the benefits of our new life in Him will not be received in full until He establishes His eternal kingdom. Therefore, we must not set our affections on this present world, but our hope should be in the world to come. True satisfaction is found by partaking of the Bread of Life sent down by God from heaven. By receiving Christ through faith, we can experience fulfillment in this life and ultimate fulfillment in the life to come.
[Tie in Communion and give invitation to receive Christ as Lord and Savior.]
