Who Does He Think He Is?

Message: Bread of Life part 2

John 6:35-60

Theme: Who does He think He is?

Date: Feb 5, 2023

ICEBREAKERS

-Read John 6:35-60 and Matthew 11:20-24

-What exactly were the people grumbling about?

-Luke 2:19 says that “Mary kept these things (Incarnation) to herself.” Why?

-Were there any hurdles you had to overcome before you committing your life to Jesus?

-What does it mean to internalize something?

John 6:41-60

So the Jews grumbled about Him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— 46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”

BACKGROUND

6:41 Grumbling (gogguvzw / gonguzo) is speaking and complaining in low tones; murmuring. Ironically, this is the same thing their ancestors did to Moses. They were not happy with what Jesus had said, that He's the bread of life, and they were talking it over among themselves in such a way that they did not want Jesus to over hear them directly. We have all seen and heard this kind of thing happen.

ILLUS: Seeker Movement. A lot of people were born again through it but its basic premise was to make church a bit more palatable for baby boomers. In retrospect even the founders of the movement acknowledge that at some point you have to talk about Jesus. Specifically, who is He and what it means for us. One of the reasons Christians don’t do so is because of what we just read…we know that like Jesus people will reject us. It's to be expected. Some live a life fearing this reality and as a result never talk about Jesus.

Prior to this discussion, like the paparazzi, they’d tracked Him down into the middle of nowhere and although He’d given them the slip by walking across the lake, they’d found Him again. Seeking more bread, Jesus had used the opportunity to teach them that there was something much more important than biological life-everlasting life. He tells them that what they really need is the true bread. Furthermore, He makes it crystal clear that He is that true bread-The Bread of Life.

It doesn’t go over well. What are their issues?

1-They’d wanted more physical bread, but Jesus has told them that what they really need is Him. Misunderstanding about a Messianic prophecy in Dt. 18:15-18. We do the same thing today; we read too much into certain prophecies. The misunderstanding of some in the first century was that like Moses, the Messiah would provide free meals.

-6:31 (passive aggressive) “Moses fed our ancestors a daily meal”. Resentment generally results from unmet expectations. The question is-is it a realistic expectation? There’s as you recall is a misunderstanding of a messianic prophecy that the Messiah would be like Moses; falsely presuming this meant a daily meal, after all Jesus had just miraculously fed them to the point where they had leftovers.