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Preached in Markham Baptist Church, March 6, 2005 WHAT'S IN A NAME? - PART 2: "THE BREAD OF LIFE"
At the beginning of the movie Shrek, the big green Ogre and his sidekick Donkey find themselves setting off on an adventure together to the Kingdom of Duloc. And as they are walking Shrek complains to donkey that people really don’t understand ogres. Many people don’t realize how complex ogres are. They are in fact, says Shrek, like onions. Donkey, not being the quickest of animals says, “You mean they stink?” “No.” says Shrek, “they have layers. Onions have layers, ogres have layers.” I don’t know about ogres but I do know that when we think of Christ and His words there are layers. There is always the surface meaning, which many people in Jesus’ day seem to grasp, but there as we peel these back, there is always the deeper meaning, and when we peel it back there is even deeper meanings yet. All the layers have value, but there is a great reward in going deeper. We must keep this in mind as we think of Christ as the Bread of Life. The immediate background to this title is Jesus miraculously feeding the five thousand. His popularity has spread far and wide and great crowds of people are following Jesus. And the crowd on this occasion is hungry. How will the disciples feed such a crowd? Philip points out that they certainly don’t have the money needed to buy food. Andrew though manages to find a boy with five barley loaves and two fish. I think he means it as a mocking joke really. “Hey, Jesus here is a boy with 5 loaves and 2 small fish! Maybe if we break it down into little crumbs it will feed the 12 of us!” But Jesus is patient and He takes the bread and the fish, gives thanks for it and distributes it until all have enough to eat. And there is some left over. Now you may think – bread and fish. What a lousy picnic. But we must realize that for these people Jesus is providing a staple. Here we eat bread as a side, an appetizer, but there and then bread was not a side dish to the meal, it was the meal. Jesus is providing for people’s very real need. So the first thing we need to understand as we think of Jesus as the bread of life is that Jesus provides for us. Sometimes we think of Jesus’ ministry to our souls and in the spiritual realm and we forget that He is Lord over the physical realm and meets all of our needs. It is no mistake that He taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Now some may say, “That’s fine for you to say, Tom. You obviously are well-fed, and have not been in want. Try telling the homeless and the starving that God meets all their needs and see if you don’t come off a little trite.” That may be true, but it does not lessen the truth that God does indeed meet all our needs. The truth we must add in the face of hunger in our world is that Jesus most often meets those needs through you and me. Jesus makes provision for people through others, through you and me. And if the hungry of this world aren’t fed, it is a strong possibility that it’s not God’s fault. So Jesus calls His disciples – “How are you going to feed the people?” And the disciples bring him what they have – and He gives thanks for it and gives it to the people. Keith Green a Christian musician who died tragically in a plane accident sings a song entitled, “So you Wanna Go Back To Egypt.” It is a tongue-in-cheek look at the ancient Israelites as they traveled in the desert – sung from an Israelite point of view. One verse reads, “Well there’s nothing to do but travel And we sure travel a lot Cause it’s hard to keep your feet from moving When the sand gets so hot. And in the morning it’s manna hotcakes We snack on manna all day. And they sure had a winner last night for dinner Flaming manna soufflé.” The provision of manna, the bread from heaven, was one miracle the Jewish people would never forget. Of course not! It was their main food substance for forty years as they wandered in the desert. It appeared every morning like thin flakes of frost. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey (Exodus 16:31). It could only be kept for a day. If someone tried to keep it two days it would rot and become infested with maggots - except that which was gathered on the sixth day. The day before the Sabbath, the manna collected on that day would last all through the day and all through the Sabbath. The Israelites ate manna for 40 years. The day after the Israelites walked into the Promised Land and tasted the fruits of that God given land, the manna stopped. Now these events were celebrated by the Jewish people every year at the feast called Passover. Every year the people would remember the great gift of bread from heaven. So John makes it plain for us at the start of this whole section in verse 4 that all of this happened near the Jewish Passover Feast. This is significant! Why? Because it helps us understand the people’s mind set at the time - everyone of them is thinking of this great event in history when bread rained down from heaven and it is at this time that Jesus comes and miraculously feeds the 5,000 with bread. He provides for their every need. And the people love it. This is exactly the kind of messiah they are looking for. Someone to feed their hunger, to provide for their basic needs. They love it. They think so highly of Jesus that they seek to make him King – by force if they have to – but He slips away. And Jesus has to correct the crowd and say – you’re missing the layers. You’re looking for bread from heaven. Good. But don’t you see, the true bread from heaven, the real bread from heaven, isn’t the bread you are thinking of, it is something so much better. That bread from heaven that came from God through Moses – well after the people ate that, the people became hungry again. The true bread of heaven, says Jesus, is Jesus. He is the bread of life who has come down from heaven. You see our physical hunger is very real, but there is another hunger that must be met and that is the hunger of the soul. Our soul longs to be fed with grace and beauty and love and peace and joy and all that means for eternity. And Jesus is that bread. The sad thing for the crowd, and for many North Americans, and maybe for some here today is that we are often too easily satisfied with the physical. We seek to quench or at least deaden the spiritual hunger within us by filling our stomachs with food, our ears with noise and news, our eyes with entertainment, and our noses with perfumes. When all along Jesus says He is the bread of life – He is the meal who satisfies completely and fully. There is one book which I seek to read at least once every two years. It is entitled “The Pursuit of God.” by A. W. Tozer and there is a chapter in it entitled, “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing.” And Tozer states that our troubles began when God was forced off the central throne of our hearts and things were allowed to enter and take over. There is a blessedness of possessing nothing for then things do not have a chance of ruling us. That is true to an extent, for there are people who possess little yet they are still possessed by things, even though they don’t have the things, they are obsessed about possessing the things they don’t have. I know people who possess a great deal yet they too are obsessed with possessing things. So perhaps a better title would be the “Blessedness of Being Possessed by Nothing”. This is the key, isn’t it? That is what Jesus is getting at here. He says, “You are looking for physical bread, listen you’ve got the focus wrong – it’s not things – it’s Jesus you want.” How do I know if I am possessed by something? The answer is - try giving it up. How do you know if you are possessed by a TV show? Try missing your 9 o’clock Tuesday appointment on the couch and see what happens. Are you possessed by the 3rd installment of that movie sequel? Try giving it up. A sport you must play, a food you must eat, a drink you must drink, a website you have to visit, a behaviour you have indulge in? Trying giving up and see who controls who. How do you know if Jesus possesses you? Do you hunger and thirst for Him? Do you long to spend time with Him in prayer and the reading of His Word? If you miss your quiet time is your soul hungry? How is your Bible reading and prayer life? Jesus is the bread of life, my friends – please don’t ignore the hunger of your own soul. For it is a God-given gift that will lead you to the one who took bread, and gave it to the people. We come to the third layer. Jesus gives bread. Jesus is the bread. Jesus is the bread we must eat. My preaching professor said that he once tinkered with the idea of preaching a series of sermons on the things he wished Jesus hadn’t said. And the first text he would tackle would be these very verses here. And you can understand why. What Jesus says here is shocking. On the surface it speaks of cannibalism. But we know that’s not what Jesus means. So what is it? What is He saying here? Remember the context. The people are looking to Him to feed them, yes, but more, they are looking to Him to satisfy their desires. They need someone to feed them. Good! Here is the one who can do it. They need someone to be their prophet – Good! Here is the one who fits the bill. They need someone to lead them – Great! Here is a candidate – let’s make Him king. They weren’t accepting Christ – they were accepting what He could do for them! They were using Him to meet their felt needs. Juan Carlos Ortiz tells of a time when he took fresh bread and put lots of jam on it and gave it one of his children. It wasn’t long before that child was back, with the same piece of bread, but the jam had been licked off! So being an obliging father, he put more jam on the bread. And wouldn’t you know it, the child had done it again, licked off all the jam and brought back the bread. The people of Jesus’ day followed Jesus for the jam. But Jesus says I am the bread, and the life is in the bread – not the jam. You have to eat the bread if you going to have life, you can’t exist on the jam. And it is true in our day - there are people who follow Jesus for the jam that He gives. The jam is good, it is peace, it is love, it is joy, it’s all the things of the kingdom, eternal life. But my friends, that isn’t the bread. Jesus is the bread. I think of my relationship with Christ. And I think of the jam that I long for. For me I think it is acceptance, affirmation. I am a Christian and do you know how happy that makes my mother? The fact that I am a pastor! That puts her over the top! That’s the jam of following Christ for me. Or when I preach a good sermon. Oh, the compliments I receive – jam – taste so good to my ego, to my self-esteem. But what happens when I preach a sermon that is not appreciated, what happens to my relationship with Christ then? Do I turn my back on Him, do I complain and grumble like the people in our text, or like the ancient Israelites, “I don’t know why I’m following you – there isn’t any jam!” My friends, a relationship with Jesus Christ is just that – a relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s not about having my felt needs met – it’s not about the jam – thank God there is lots of jam – but if there is no jam – to God be the glory – Jesus is the bread that feeds my soul. He is the one who sustains our life. Is the one we must take in. So, His words here are very shocking. But I think He knows that, He is trying to wake us up – He is saying that we must take Him in fully, we cannot just have the jam, we must be abiding in Him, we must be living in Him, we must be living for Him. Here is the truth, behind what Jesus is saying, We can no more live the Christian life without feeding on Him anymore than a branch can survive apart from the tree. So when we come to communion we are doing something very significant. We are not just remembering our sin and the price Christ paid. But we are taking this bread and we eat it and in doing so we are saying, just as we cannot live physically without bread, we cannot live spiritually without Christ. Jesus said, “This is my body which is for you.” He is calling us to feed on Him and Him alone for He is truly the bread of life. Copyright MBC and Tom Cullen - March 2005 |
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