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spent1203
Jesus,
True and Living Bread
Text:
John 6:41-51
Date: Pentecost XII
8/31/03 S-SPLINE 1.03 CRACK
On the last extended vacation weekend of the summer
the citizenry of the United States pauses ostensibly to recognize
and celebrate the accomplishments and value of workers and labor
to the progress and success of our nation. At least this was the
original idea. And this is good, right and salutary because that’s
the way things are in the world. The Book of Ecclesiastes says,
“Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink
and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the
sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is
his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions
and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his
toil—this is the gift of God” [Eccl. 5:18-19 (ESV)]. Yet, the Preacher
says, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2). For life,
as God originally intended it, is more and has a spiritual side
to it.
Amid the recent controversies concerning what place
“religion” ought to play in the public square, Christians acknowledge
the reign of God also in society, what Martin Luther called “the
kingdom of the left hand.” But we do so not in the sense of forcing
any religious beliefs on anyone, but by simply acknowledging that
the one, true God is hidden behind the masks of the work-a-day world,
the ultimate source of life and health and daily bread which he
gives, as the catechism says, “to everyone without our prayers,
even to all evil people.”
But now, on this weekend dedicated in our nation to
the praise of human labor and work, you have come here. For only
here do we encounter another world, another kingdom—the “kingdom
of the right hand” of God, that is, the kingdom centered not in
our work or labor or accomplishments but in God’s work, God’s accomplishments.
In this kingdom we hear the Lord Jesus Christ say, “Do not labor
for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal
life, which the Son of Man will give to you.” Whereas in the kingdom
of the left hand, everything appears to depend on our labor and
work, in the kingdom of the right hand everything depends on faith
that simply receives from God that which cannot be attained on our
own power. Yet it is the same God who lives and reigns in both kingdoms.
The main theme of this entire chapter is found when
the people asked Jesus, “What must we do, to be doing the works
of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe
in him whom he has sent” [John 6:27-29 (ESV)], that is, the very
gift of faith and believing are God’s work in us. Using the images
of labor and food and eating, death and life, Jesus speaks about
who he is, why he has come into the world—his Person and his Mission—and
what faith is all about.
We enter our text amid the grumbling of the crowds.
John tells us that Jesus’ audience grumbled to themselves because
he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were
grumbling because they didn’t get it, or, at least, what they got
out of his words was offensive to them.
Remember that this chapter began with the feeding of
the 5,000 in the wilderness. It’s funny how many these days point
to this as one example for the church of the power of Jesus available
to grow the church—funny because the account ended with quite opposite
results: “perceiving that they were about to come and take him by
force to make him king,” he “withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”
They didn’t “get it.”
By evening his disciples got into a boat heading back
to Capernaum. It was only the next day that the crowds also got
into boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they finally
caught up to him, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are
seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your
fill of the loaves.” That’s when he said, “Do not labor for the
food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”
But the people were still thinking about physical bread
for their bodies as when God gave their forefathers manna in the
wilderness so many centuries before. It was then that Jesus again
tried to lift their eyes to spiritual realities when he said, “it
was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father
gives you the true bread from heaven.” And then he identified this
true bread, saying, “I am the bread of life.”
Nevertheless, the people chipped away at Jesus’ words,
refusing to hear and to believe to the point that many finally turned
away and not only stopped following him but began actively to seek
to kill him. Perceiving their unbelief, Jesus said, “No one can
come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…. 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.”
So first is the issue of who Jesus really is and why
he came, and, second, that salvation is only by way of God-given
faith in him.
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