I AM, Part 7: I Am the Bread of Life

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

The Church of the Lookout is in the Old of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at theLookout.church.

Good morning.

Morning, everybody.

What a weekend.

Today is the precursor to Sunday.

Today is a precursor to Memorial Day, Memorial Day tomorrow.

And we do want to acknowledge that it's a special time in our nation where we together collective memory and we posture ourselves to honor those who have gone before us, who've actually laid down their lives for this nation.

Who is thankful for those men and women who have laid down their lives for our nation?

And you know, we've had a long, almost 250-year history as a as a nation, and a complicated history.

And it's a it's an interesting time as a country, figuring out how to move forward together.

But one of the things that we can still do, the scripture is very clear, Jeremiah 29 says, to pray for the land that I have sent you.

And there's a biblical precedent for every nation on earth that we are to be good citizens.

We are to pray for our nation, pray for both God's blessing and but pray that God gets to us, right?

We need to pray for the mercy of God and the grace of God over our nation.

And uh, and one of the ways we do that this weekend is just remembering those who have gone before and who've actually laid down their lives, most of whom we will never have a chance to meet or thank in person.

Um, but I just want to take a moment just to pray for us here today, pray for a nation.

Would you guys join me today as we extend honor where honor is due?

Jesus, we thank you that you have planted us here in this nation.

Some of us were born here, others of us moved here, but this is where you have us.

And we thank you, Lord God, that as we go through this weekend together, we thank you for the opportunity to honor the ones who have actually led the way and sacrificing their lives for others that they didn't know, even for future generations.

And God, while we're all in an interesting time as a nation and you know things are ramping up with politics, God, we don't want to miss an opportunity to give honor where honor is due, God.

So we thank you for the men and the women on whose shoulders we stand.

And God, may we be a people that never forget but move forward, always contending for your grace and your mercy and your blessing as we move forward as a country.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Awesome.

How many are running the Boulder Boulder tomorrow?

Sweet, just me?

Okay.

No, okay, Karen, me and Karen.

And I think Doc.

Okay, awesome, sweet.

You got the rest of you come and cheer us on tomorrow.

Down in Boulder.

Um, so uh the other interesting thing today, um is as we're in the moment of acknowledging awesome things happening this weekend.

Today's Pentecost Sunday, and uh it's it's the day on the church calendar where we uh where we are filled with thankfulness and openness for the for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

How many you're so thankful for the coming of the Holy Spirit?

We are dead without the coming of the Holy Spirit.

And so before we even jump into the word, just again with me, let's just posture our hearts.

Um, maybe you're filled with the spirit, maybe not.

Maybe you've heard of the Holy Spirit, maybe not, but we are a people where we believe that God has revealed himself as the Father and as the Son and as the Holy Spirit.

He's not just a little ghost that poofs from here to there.

He is the Spirit of God given to us to recall, to help us recall everything that Jesus did and said to comfort us and encourage us, to convict us, to open up our hearts, to make us into the image of Christ.

So together, can we just invite the Holy Spirit here?

If you haven't done so already, let's just do it together.

Holy Spirit, we invite you, we honor you in this place, and in our own words across the stream, whether it's with a whisper or a cry, God, we say we need you in this place.

That uh we we we don't have enough wisdom, we don't have enough intellect, we don't have enough strength on our own to become like Jesus.

We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are working day and night to shape us into the image of Jesus.

And so this morning, we open our hearts to you and we say, be at home here, Holy Spirit.

We welcome you, Holy Spirit.

Speak to us in a way that only you can.

Fill us with your spirit, God.

In Jesus' name, we pray.

Amen.

All right.

If you have your Bibles, let's open up John chapter six today.

Are you guys alive, ready for the word today?

So John chapter six is where we're going to be.

So if uh if you haven't been here in a few weeks, we've been in this series walking through the I am statements of Jesus.

And it's been a really fun series to look at what does Jesus say about himself.

And at the end of the day, it's not really complicated.

It's actually all pretty simple.

When Jesus came to reveal himself, he didn't really use complex metaphors.

He came to us and said things like, I am a door, I am light, I am bread, I am a vine.

I mean, it's just simple ideas.

But for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, those those those metaphors, those concepts, it actually had the potential to transform a person from the inside out.

And the same is true for us today, as we receive the words of Jesus.

It's actually not complicated, but it has the potential to change everything.

Amen.

So John chapter 6, we're we're opening up to where Jesus talks about himself as the bread of life.

John 6 · chapter mention

John chapter 6, verse 27, we'll start there.

John 6:27

Jesus says, Do not work for the food that perishes, but the food but the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

For on him God the Father has set his seal.

Then said to them, What must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in whom he has sent.

So they said to him, Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you?

What work do you perform?

Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.

Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.

And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Amen.

Amen.

So as you guys know, bread has been around for quite a bit.

It's been around for thousands of years.

Globally, it's it's the most common building block of a meal historically and globally.

And we could go through a list and um and start to whet our appetites.

We got ciabatta from our Italian friends.

They seem to have a lot of good contributions in the bread world.

We've got from our Greek friends, we have PETA.

Any PETA fans out there?

We have, if you kind of move down into Asia, we have uh non, Indian non.

Got some non-bread, got some non-fans in the room.

Um let's head down to South America for a couple stops.

If you head to Venezuela, you got Arepas.

Or you probably could say it better if you actually had the Spanish accent, arepas.

Um, Mexico, certainly, and many other places we have tortillas, right?

I promise I won't do that again.

Um in uh down in uh Brazil, one of our favorites of all time, lesser known, but probably top of the list is pau de queijo, which is uh cheese bread.

It just sounds better when you say pau de queju than cheat to give me some cheese bread, right?

That's what we do in the United States.

We eat cheese bread.

Um, but certainly if you move back to the United States, um, you know, lower on the list, but not to be left off the list, is the New York City bagel.

Um yeah, exactly.

That was a mixture of groans and and and uh and and you know.

So we have bread from all over the world that has become staples of our basic diet, but that wasn't enough.

And so one of the biggest revolutions in the bread world that uh that moved humanity forward on uh on a scale similar to landing a man on the moon was the invention of sliced bread.

And this happened uh about a hundred years ago.

Um, sadly, it happened with the uh with with the the incoming of a product called Wonder Bread.

So Wonder Bread, as you guys know, is a brand of sliced bread which originated in the United States in 1921 and is one of the first to be sold as pre-sliced bread in 1930.

And so as we usually do with great things, we thought we can make this even better by bleaching it, bleaching the flour, and we're gonna take out any good thing out of the bread.

We're gonna bleach the bread because if it looks wider, then it looks cleaner to people.

And we're gonna take out all the good nutrients out of it, and we're gonna load it with preservatives because we're convinced we can make a bread that never perishes.

So this bread, Wonder Bread, we've come to realize it's either a pathway to bread that never perishes or a pathway to type 2 diabetes, which we found that that's kind of like what's happened over time.

So, Wonder Bread, we've come to find out it's probably not the best variation of bread.

And there's an old adage that says, the whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead.

So, but not us in Boulder.

You know why?

Because we're enlightened.

We know how bread is done, right?

We're not doing that white bread.

We got organic, we got sprouted grain.

Come on.

Gluten-free, gluten-free bread.

I mean, we got a lot of different kinds of bread because we know how bread is done.

But as we said already, bread it comes in a lot of forms.

I am never one to pass up a good pastry shop, a French bakery.

Um, we stopped by one as often as I can to get French bakery.

And I always have this imagination that if I ever quit pastoring, I would drive a bread truck.

Um, because who would not want to drive a bread truck smelling fresh bread every single day?

So bread is simple, it's common, but in the context that we're looking at it, in the context that Jesus revealed himself, it is very deep.

And it's the actually the first of all the I am statements, and I would argue probably one of the most significant, it's actually repeated.

Jesus repeats this three times within John chapter six.

I am the bread of life.

And what he's doing is inviting his hearers, both the disciples and the crowds, as we'll see, into a certain level of depth to understand what he's talking about.

And so to un to really appreciate how Jesus is revealing himself, we have to look at the whole of chapter six, John chapter six.

We're not gonna read the whole thing because I love you and I care about you, and we're not gonna keep you here all day.

But you should go home and read it when you get home.

It's long, it's layered.

And at this point, the beginning of chapter six, um, Jesus is picking up a lot of steam, a lot of momentum in his ministry, from miracle to miracle.

Every time he does a miracle, crowds are growing every time.

And uh every time he heals the sick or he does something that is unexplainable, the supernatural comes in, crowds are going.

They want to be near him, they want to see what he's doing, they want to see a sign.

And so we arrive at the scene at the beginning of chapter six, where 5,000 men, the crowd greeted to about 5,000 men.

Um, scholars say about 15,000 people total.

And um, and they were there just to hear him teach, just to be around to see what he would do next.

And and they noticed that the crowd was growing hungry.

And so this is kind of where we pick up.

This is the beginning of Jesus beginning uh setting up a teaching, setting up a revelation of himself.

And what's really important to understand, all of these I am statements, they're not just these concepts, these disembodied concepts up in the sky.

They are rooted in everyday situations.

And in this one in particular, we see how on the ground it is.

And so, and so the crowds are gathered around him.

Jesus notices they're hungry.

And so he uses this as an opportunity to both to teach, to train, to even test the disciples around him.

So John chapter 6, verse 5 says this.

John 6:5

Lifting up his eyes then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?

He said this to test him, for he knew what he would do.

Hold that.

Philip answered him, 200 denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to them, There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?

And so so again, as we're as we're coming into this scene, Jesus he lifts his eyes, he sees the crowd, he sees an opportunity.

So immediately he turns to his disciple Philip.

And even though Jesus knew what was about to happen, Jesus knew exactly what was gonna go on, that he was, you know, he was going to multiply bread, he turns to Philip and it says that he tests Philip with the question, Where are you going to buy bread?

What are we gonna do?

So these people can eat.

And the the thing that we have to see here about Jesus that's that's incredibly important, is that it is very common, or should say it's not uncommon for him to lead us into situations where he allows us to be tested.

He's not, and by testing us, he's not setting us up to fail, but he leads us into circumstances that uncover what we are seeing and what we are perceiving and what we are trusting.

And do you guys realize that about Jesus?

He leads us into situations that often appear over our heads, not to cause us to fail, but to show us what we actually think and believe.

And in this particular situation, he's talking to his disciple Peter and his disciple Andrew.

See, the enemy comes to us and tempts us.

The enemy tempts us, but God tests us.

The enemy of our souls comes and lures us away and purposely uh deviates, help us deviate from the plan of being able to see God.

But what God does, he allows us to walk through tests because he wants to show us where he's actually at work in our life.

There's this saying that is often a part of the church world, the enemy or God will never give us more than we can handle, which is not true, okay?

Let me just let you know.

I'm just gonna burst that bubble.

There's this saying somewhere, so someone twisted a scripture and turned this into a coffee mug.

You know, God will never give us anything more than we can handle, which is which is if you follow Jesus for any length of time, you know, He He seeks to give us more than we can handle.

He looks for situations to lead us through that are more than we can handle, but not less than what he can handle, right?

He can handle the situations.

He leads us into situations.

Now, what he won't do is tempt us beyond our level, the level that we can bear.

He won't put on a weight on us that is going to lead us into destruction, but he often leads us into situations, just like he did with Philip here, that are more than we can handle because that's where God is revealed to us.

It's only situations that are bigger than what we can do on our own.

And it's not for our shame and for our embarrassment.

We have to see about the testing of God.

This isn't because he's cruel, he's trying to prove the quality of his work.

I love what Bill Johnson said about this.

He used the illustration of it's like when you have a bike tire that has a leak in it.

And you when you go to do a patch on a bike tire, the tube, you take it out, and the first thing you have to find out where the leak is in the tube.

And so you pump up the tube and you put it underwater and you test it to see where that leak is.

All right, and that's that first test when you put that tube underwater is just to show where is the gap, right?

And it's not necessarily to, you know, to shred the tire after that, but it's to expose the gap.

But then after you pull it out, you patch that area, but then you test it again, you put it under the water the second time.

And that second test isn't to show to expose the weakness, but to show the quality of the work, the quality of transformation.

See, God tests us oftentimes both to show us places where we're actually trusting in, but then as he transforms us, he'll test us again to show us the quality of work that what he has done in our life actually has the potential to sustain and to carry us through the rest of life.

So when he tests you, it's not bad.

He wants to show you how far you've come.

And this is what he's doing in this situation.

It is a little bit of an exposure, though, for Philip, but this is all to set up who he is.

So Jesus, though, often leads us into situations where we're over our head.

And the question then becomes, how do we see and how do we interpret what we see?

So Andrew started off well.

Andrew saw two fish and five loaves, but then was immediately discouraged.

First, he said, We have this is what I have.

Okay, that's a good start, but then he transitioned to, but what am I going to do with what I have?

And this is this this intersects with every single one of us in this room.

You can look at your life and say, This is what I have.

But the question is, how do you interpret what it is that you have?

And a lot of us are in situations where we're looking and perceiving our life through a lens of what's plain, what's what's what's clearly seen in the natural, not through the lens of what is God trying to invite me into.

Some of us are in this room, you can't find that job that will pay you what you're worth.

You can't find any single good men.

You're thinking about your career, your boss is toxic, you dread going to work.

You're in situations that feel above your head, you don't know what to do.

You have more months than you do paycheck.

Maybe your teenager is losing it and you've ran out of ideas of what to do.

You're getting ready to graduate school.

You have no idea what you're going to do afterwards.

That feels like a heavy weight.

Maybe you're contending with a health issue and none of the treatments seem to work yet.

You're looking at something on the surface and you can't see a way through.

And God's asking, how are we going to get through this?

And he doesn't ask that question to shame us, he asks that question to invite us.

And so, but it's so easy, isn't it?

It's so easy for us to gravitate towards pessimist, pessimism, discouragement.

What am I going to do with what I have?

There are so many needs.

Why even bother?

You know, we we read this even together when we gather, we read this vision statement.

Transform the whole world with all inspiring love.

Like, really, that sounds so great.

I'm just trying to survive today.

I'm not trying to transform anything.

I'm trying to get to the end of the day without losing my mind.

Forget the world.

God, you take the world, just save me for today.

And sometimes we get into these things of like um we're we're looking at our loaves and our fishes, and and and we're we're faced with that question, the invitation, what am I gonna do with this?

But the really the the key principle here is tests reveal trust, tests reveal trust.

So all of this, as we see, is Jesus leading us into deeper, more profound levels of trusting in him.

So that's with the disciples.

With the disciples, he's having this little private side conversation.

Nobody else knows about this, right?

All the crowds are like what you gonna do?

What's the thing of the day, Jesus?

That's what we're here for.

Come on, bring it.

And so the crowds, while there's a scene happening with the disciples, the crowds have their own thought process happening.

And it's really important the whole thing that we realize the context, the layers of what's happening.

The whole scene is taking place during Passover, which is not insignificant.

Passover, as we know, is the time the Jews are celebrating the miraculous delivery of Israel from the hands of Egypt.

But then but when we look at chapter 6, there's two things that Jesus does here that are very significant when you put them together.

The first is he multiplies bread out of nowhere.

One, the second thing he does, which we didn't read, the second thing he does, which which we will read if you if you continue the chapter, is after the scene.

Number two, he seems to exercise authority over water and bring his disciples to dry land.

Does that ring a bell with anybody?

It should, um, because every Jew that's reading this would immediately recognize these are like the main signs of God leading his people through the desert out of Exodus.

And what Jesus is doing in these signs is he's positioning himself as the next, I am, I am the one that Moses prophesied.

I'm I'm a new and greater Moses.

Moses led you through the wilderness, and there was manna from heaven, led you through the water and cleared up dry land, and led you through, and and and I'm kind of like Moses, but it's a new kind of exodus.

No longer is it just a physical oppression that I'm liberating you from.

He is liberating us from a spiritual oppression.

So as we're going through this chapter, we have to keep those things in mind.

He's doing these things, and they're like, oh my gosh, this is the guy.

Let's make him king.

Now, and and he had to leave, he had to run out of there because they were about to trap him in a chair, duct tape him, and throw a crown on his head.

That's what they were about to do.

They're like, he's giving us bread.

This guy needs to be our king, right?

And uh and Jesus uh that's the thing with Jesus, you can't make him king.

He was born a king.

You can't make Jesus into anything you need him to be.

He's already a king.

And we can't control him, we can't shape him, we can't do it.

It wasn't his time.

He's not interested in doing what the crowds want.

He's not interested in performing for him.

So he sneaks away, sneaks to the other side.

The crowds go and find him over there.

And uh and and they get up to him and they say, Jesus, where have you been?

We've been looking for you, okay?

And Jesus answered them in verse 26.

He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.

For on him God the Father has set his seal.

Then they said to him, What must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them, This is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent.

So all the signs that Jesus was doing were meant to lead to a deeper, more profound relationship with Jesus, a dependence on Jesus, a belief in who he is.

And this is very important for us because yes, we believe in the in-breaking kingdom of God.

We pray for the sick, we believe in signs and wonders and miracles.

But all signs are supposed to be signs that make you wonder.

They're never supposed to be an end of themselves.

All signs, all the breaking of the kingdom, all are invitations to a deeper dependence on the person of Jesus Himself.

Are you guys with me?

It's always an invitation to something deeper.

So when he feeds us, he wants to feed us at a deeper level.

When he heals us, it's actually an invitation because he wants to heal us at a deeper level.

When he provides for us, yes, he wants to provide something at a deeper level.

And he's increasing what he does as he breaks into our lives, he's not trying to get us dependent on the breakthrough.

He's trying to get us dependent on him and to turn our trust to him.

And it's always an invitation to something deeper.

And what was really hard for the crowd is they were really, they they they loved Jesus for the tangible things he could do for them.

So they were following him and they were working really hard to get to where he was.

They would say, Our ancestors ate bread from heaven in the wilderness.

What else are you going to do to meet our needs?

And no sign was enough for them.

And this is where Jesus comes back to them and said, Listen, you're working for the wrong thing.

You're working really hard for food that's actually going to perish.

You're exerting all this energy to come follow me, but but it's not to believe in me.

You're working because I keep your bellies full.

But there is a type of food that you need to work for that doesn't perish.

And this and they said, Well, what do we have to do?

What are the works we have to do?

What kind of work do I need to do to get this kind of food that doesn't perish?

He said, Here's the work, here's the work that you must do.

Ready?

Here's the work.

This is if you do no other work, this is the work that you must do.

Believe in the one the Father has sent.

To trust, to believe is to trust in.

He said, if you do nothing else, if you want food that never li that never perishes, you must trust in me.

And so when you combine these two things together, what he's doing with his disciples, what he's doing with the crowds, the disciples, um, the disciples were trying to be fed, but trying to understand what they could see with their eyes, and trying to make sense with their understanding of what was going on.

The people, the crowds, were they were trying to be fed by what they could get in the in the natural, just the uh the tangible food.

And Jesus is saying, there's a different kind of food.

There's a different kind of bread from heaven that you must have eyes to see and ears to hear so that you can trust me.

And and really, the the thing here is that God is training us to trust him.

God is training us to trust him.

Jesus in your life is training you to trust him.

And if you were to look at your life in the different scenarios of your life, he's training you to trust him, to put your trust, because he knows that when you trust him, you will receive food that never perishes.

Now, I wish that we could find a way to trust God without needing to trust him.

The only way to grow in trust is through going through the crucible of waiting.

The crucible of not being enough or having enough, or the right things being at your disposal.

That's the only way.

As Jesus is training his disciples, he's leading them into situations, you don't have enough, so what are you going to do?

Who are you going to trust in?

Are you going to trust in what's in your hands?

Are you going to trust in my face?

Are you going to trust in my words?

Are you going to trust in who I am?

That's the thing, is it's really funny though, because how many of you, for instance, want to be a patient person?

You're all lying to me.

How many want to be in a situation that requires us to be a patient person?

How many want how many want to be a person of peace in the room?

Of course I want to be a person of peace.

I want to be a peacemaker.

How many of you want to be in a restless situation that needs a person of peace?

How many want to journey through something that would require peace?

And it's the same thing.

I would say probably across the room, most of us want to live a supernatural life.

We want to live a life marked by the power of God.

We want to live a life that's unordinary, that is unique.

But if you want to live a supernatural life, you need to be used to being in impossible situations.

I'm going to say that again.

If you want to live a supernatural life, a life marked by the power of God, you have to get used to God letting you move through situations that are impossible.

You don't need a supernatural life if everything is possible.

If I could rule the world, which sometimes I think about, if I was running the show, I would never have to learn any lessons.

Because I know everything.

Like I would never have to teach myself anything because I know exactly what needs to happen.

But I'm not running the show.

And so because I'm not running the show, God has to lead me through situations that require new levels of trust.

As a husband, as a father, as a leader, we've had to move through seasons as a church to say, God, on the surface, this doesn't make sense what you're leading us through.

But you're, I believe that you're teaching us to measure success based on a different metric than what we see in our hands.

In my family, I have to say the same thing.

God, I can't make sense of what my kids are doing right now.

But I have to trust that they are in your hands, that you're doing something with them that I cannot see.

I trust you, even though my hands, my eyes can't see, even though you've given me nothing tangible to work with right here.

There was a situation even last year, and I've shared the story before where my wife and I were kind of going through some, kind of sorting out some health things, and and one night my wife leaned over because she wanted my take on something, and she asked, she's like, Well, so what do you think God is saying about this certain health thing we're walking through?

And uh and uh and I said, Oh, it's gonna be fine, it's fine, it's good, it's fine, everything's fine, right?

Because I didn't want to think about it really at the at the end of the day.

But then she stopped me and she said, Wait, is that what God said or is that what you're saying?

It's like, oh, you caught me, that's what I said.

And so I stopped and I waited and I prayed, and and uh, and and I I felt like what the Lord said.

He didn't tell me what was gonna happen with this health situation, but he said, You can trust me.

I can be trusted.

So I leaned over and I told her that God said we can trust him.

Now that wasn't what we wanted to hear.

I didn't want to hear that.

I wanted to hear, oh, it's gonna be great.

But he said, You can trust me.

And why would he say that to me?

Because at the end of the day, the food that does not perish, the work of God is to trust in him who is sent, who was sent to us by the Father.

That's the only food that cannot be taken away.

It's the only food that can that can nourish us because all other food goes bad.

I mean, he says, I am the bread of life.

Everyone who comes to me will never be hungry, everyone who believes in me will never thirst.

And he would go on to say, I am the bread of heaven.

He says it seven times, I am the bread of heaven.

You got the bread, the manna in the wilderness, but uh there's a new kind of bread on the scene.

I am the bread of heaven.

You have to enter into me, you have to feed on me at an entirely different level.

And it's the the the where that confronts us, where that confronts me, it's it's so possible to feed on almost everything else and to still be malnourished.

And if you've ever looked at, like even, you know, it's possible to get extremely, extremely obese and still be completely malnourished.

It's possible to actually fill, you know, to actually have fill your body, your physical body, and to become bloated and full.

But then when you go to the doctor and they run tests, they're gonna tell you, they're gonna tell you, you actually don't have enough of the things that matter inside of you.

You don't have the nutrients that your body needs to stay healthy and to stay vibrant.

And it's it's true for us too.

We can have our fill.

We can we can we can we can seek God for it, we can orient our lives for God to meet our needs, or we have goals that we're setting, and and Q2 is going to be better than Q1 and everything, and we're kind of building our lives based on these little accomplishments and these goals.

And there's nothing wrong with goals.

I have goals, we all have goals, but I'm telling you, you can meet as many goals as you want, you can accomplish as many things as you as you want.

You can check off those lists, you can get the medals and the accolades and praise God that we can excel in our life.

But at the end of the day, all of those things can make us bigger, but not actually give us what our spirits are truly hungering for.

And so, yes, we are people that dream big and shoot big, and we journey with God, but at the end of the day, he's the one that our hearts need.

Everything else is temporary.

Our nourishment, the deepest nourishment of our souls, is trusting in the one whom was sent by the Father.

And so at the end of this chapter, Jesus just keeps going, he he just keeps laying it down, and it's starting to get uncomfortable.

He and he he the crowds are there and they just keep pressing on him.

Like, so when are you gonna do another sign?

He's like, You're not doing that.

He's like, you know what?

If you want to have eternal life, you need to eat my eat my flesh and drink my blood.

And he didn't really explain himself.

Um, he just says, Listen, if you really want to understand what I'm saying, you have to feast on me.

And it was so hard for them to understand.

It was so hard for them to quantify.

It's not the Jesus that they wanted.

They wanted the Jesus, like they wanted the Jesus earlier in the chapter.

Like, do another one of those 12 baskets of loaves thing, you know, where you multiply more than enough bread.

And he said, No, you gotta feast on me.

You have to you have to feast on me.

And it was so much that the crowds just said, you know what?

This is too hard.

This is too hard for us to get it.

I don't get it.

I don't know what you mean by feast on you.

And it was too hard for them to understand it, and so they just started walking away.

So the crowd, like Manny left in that day, even his disciples, the ones that were journeying with them, went to Jesus, and they're like, This is really hard.

What you said is like it's almost impossible to understand what you're saying.

And Jesus said, Do you want to go?

And it wasn't passive aggressive, right?

But he said, Hey, do you do you want to go too?

But then they did the check, you know.

Peter did the check.

He's like, No, he's like, Where's am I gonna go?

Only you have the words of life.

Only you have words that feed me.

All the other words, they can't feed me.

I don't understand this, but you feed me at such an internal level.

And guys, I just believe that it's the invitation for us, and it's it's the invitation always before us following Jesus.

Our heads won't always understand, our eyes won't always see.

We don't always get what we want in the tangible right now.

But Jesus is saying, listen, will you will you surrender to me?

Will you surrender?

Will you feast on me?

And just like bread has to be broken open and cracked open in order to be consumed, Jesus is saying, listen, where this is all going is I have to be broken open.

His actual body would be broken open for us so that we could enter into the life, the brokenness of Jesus, which would lead to the nourishment of the entire world.

And if we're honest though, some of us, it's hard to trust that there's enough bread to go around.

Jesus, as he multiplied the loaves, though, he multiplied not just enough.

There was 12 baskets left.

And we know that that meant several different things.

It was, first of all, abundance, more than enough.

He didn't just do enough for the crowds.

There's 12 baskets of bread left at the end of the day.

But the 12 baskets also represented the tribes of Israel.

It represented the blessing and the restoration and the provision that I'm always what what I'm doing in your life is actually always gonna be more than you can ask, think, or imagine.

But he has to, we have to be trained into trust.

We have to be trained to trust that there's always fresh bread, that the bread of Jesus is always fresh.

And this interesting story, and I'm gonna have the worship team come up.

Um, back in World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve during the bombing raids of World War II in England and Wales.

Okay, so traumatized after experiencing the terror of the bombings and abandonment, these children were rescued and sent to refugee camps where they received food and shelter.

But even though they were once, again, safe and well cared for, is not it was not unusual for them to be unable to sleep at night.

They were afraid that it would wake, wake up and find themselves homeless and hungry again.

So these kids that were traumatized, they go to a refugee camp and they have everything they need.

But internally, they can't sleep because they're so afraid that tomorrow it's going to change and that food is not going to be there again.

So nothing the adults did seem to reassure them until one night someone thought to send one of the children to bed with a loaf of bread, and it worked.

Sleeping with bread, holding on to it, the children were able to fall asleep.

And if they awoke frightened in the night, the bread, the bread reminded them, I ate today and I will eat again tomorrow.

And so today, you know, if there's an invitation for us here today, there's probably several invitations, it's it's to trust in him, to trust that when we trust in Jesus, when we lean into Jesus, even beyond what we can see, what we can understand, when we listen for his voice, when we read his word, when we spend time with Jesus, when we listen to his spirit and submit to him, he nourishes us from the inside out.

And some of us are in those impossible situations.

We're actually moving through things that we're wondering, God, where are you in this situation?

Give me eyes to see and ears to hear what the heck you're doing in my life right now.

And I'm just telling you, in every situation, God is teaching us, He's training us, He's training us to keep our eyes on Him, to trust in His voice.

And today, I I believe that that's a word for some of you here today.

You came in, just as we said during worship, you came in.

There were specific things that you're walking through, and you're just wondering, God, is this going to be enough for me?

And He's and He's He's inviting you closer.

He's saying, Would you eat my flesh?

Would you drink my blood?

Would you would you feast on me?

Would you do the work of trusting and believing in me?

I had a sense that you there's even somewhere here, someone here today that you're you're really stuck um in a financial situation, like you've been investing your money somewhere, and it's almost like uh and you keep investing money in this particular thing or place, hoping that one of these days it's going to break through and it's gonna turn into that investment you've always dreamed of.

But it's like you just you're afraid of it not working out, so you just keep putting money in it, but you know it's to the point where it's actually gambling.

I just had a sense that there's somebody in this room that's like there's something happening in your life that almost feels like gambling, or you're investing even financially into something that you feel stuck and you know that it's going south, but you're not sure what to do.

And I just I just I I had a sense this morning that first of all, if if that's you and you're feeling stuck, I feel like the Lord is gonna provide a way out.

He's gonna help you provide a way out.

But secondly, he's teaching you to not trust in your own doing to get you the provision that you need and what you dream of.

He's actually, this is all an invitation to trust him and to trust his voice and to see him on a whole new level.

And that might be somebody here today.

And if that's you have to service, come and talk to me.

I'd love to pray for you.

But there's probably several other people in this room here today that we're just learning to trust.

And it doesn't have to be a heavy thing either.

It doesn't mean when we're walking through hard things that this is always just this heaviness.

When Jesus went over to his disciple Philip and said, Hey, how do you think we're gonna buy food for everybody?

I don't think he was trying to like put this heavy yoke on side of Philip and just say, like, hey, this is this is a huge deal, right?

What are you gonna do to figure this out?

It was an invitation and to a playfulness with God to open up to kingdom imagination.

And guys, listen, as we feast on the bread of life, as we turn to Jesus as the one who never runs out, the one who is always more than enough, I believe that God will continue to open up kingdom imagination, that everywhere we go, not only is he training us to see things at a new level, but he's creating abundance that is actually going to be good for the world through our lives.

So this morning, let's do this.

Just across the room.

Just close your eyes for a moment.

We're going to receive communion together.

I am going to ask the elders to come up front.

We're going to form three lines towards the front.

But as you're as you're sitting in your seat here today, maybe this message hits you in a few different ways.

As we receive communion, though, as we as we receive the bread, the body broken for us.

I just want you in your mind to recall anything that feels impossible to you in your life.

Anything that feels mysterious, anything that feels, I don't know what's going to happen here.

I want you to kind of hold it out front in your mind today.

And maybe even just need to confess it just with a soft voice before the Lord.

Even confess where you're in need of God in your life.

I am the bread of life.

Your fathers ate the man in the wilderness and they died.

This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that no so that one may eat of it and not die.

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 give for the bread that I will give for the life of this world is my flesh.

So, God, we come to you today, and we acknowledge the places where we have questions.

We acknowledge the places where there's mystery in our lives.

But we've, so many of us, we've heard the words of life.

And we know, God, where else would we go from you?

Because you alone carry the words of life.

And so today, we choose to trust you, we choose to lean into you.

And God, I pray for the ones here who have not even taken the step of placing trust in you.

And there's been a barrier of am I going to give myself to Jesus or am I going to make him prove myself, prove himself again and again?

And if that's you, if you have not put your trust in Jesus, I just want you wherever you're sitting and you feel your heart move towards it.

I just want you to invite Jesus, and just in your own words, wherever you're sitting, you can invite Jesus to come into your heart.

You can invite Jesus to show you the bread that never perishes.

It's possible you can receive it right now.

There's nothing you need to do but invite him to give you the bread that never perishes.

And Jesus, together as a people, God, we feast on you.

And as we receive communion today, we pray that you would nourish us from the inside out.

We thank you for what you did on the cross that we could not do for ourselves.

We bless you, Jesus.

Amen.

So I'm going to invite you.

Let's stand together across the room.

And we're going to have a line on the side here, a line in the middle, a line over on the right side.

And as you come to uh, as you come to the elders, they're going to say, the bread of life, the body broken for you.

Okay?

And as you receive the bread and you receive the cup, you can take it back to your seats, and then we'll just receive communion together as we as we leave this place.

So you can come to the lines now.

We do have gluten-free in the center here.

The bread of heaven is body broken tree.

The bread of heaven is body broken tree.

The bread of heaven is body broken.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

The bread of heaven is body broken for you.

Okay.

Let's stand together.

This is Paul's writing to the Corinthians.

He said, For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was portrayed, took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread together.

In the same way he took the cup also after supper, saying, This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together and receive the blood of Christ.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So, Father, we thank you that you sent your son.

And today, Jesus, we thank you that your body was, that you were willing to let your body be broken like a loaf of bread, broken in half for us as you went to the cross, as you shed your blood.

You did not do that in vain, but you did that for the nourishment, for the well-being of the entire world, for all those who would put their trust in you, then it's and I just pray that today as we leave this place, God, that we would feast on you.

And God, that we as a community, as we leave this place, we would be full in our spirits, full before you, full hearts, full minds, full spirits before you, God.

We thank you to lighten the load, God, that you can be a God who is trusted with every step that we take, every decision we make, everywhere we go, God, we look to you, Jesus, because you are the bread of life.

And it's in Jesus' name.

Everybody said together.

Come on, amen.

Somebody chop the name of Jesus in this place.

So this morning, guys, as we leave, I just do want to invite you to you don't have to rush out.

Feel free to stick around, hang out as we're in this place.

If you need prayer over anything in your body, if you need healing in your body, we want a chance to pray for you.

We're gonna have a few people up front that are ready to pray for you.

If you have kids, go run and get them from the kids' ministry, bring them back up.

And guys, have a happy Memorial Day weekend.

Go in the in the peace and the power of God.

Love you guys.