Come to the Table: The Bread of Heaven (Exodus 16:1-15; John 6:25-59)

Hello, friends.

This is Pastor Creighton.

Thank you for tuning in to Newsong Church's Sermon Podcast.

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Truly, truly, Jesus says, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

So let's pray.

Heavenly Father, you are a God who prepares for his pilgrim people a table in the wilderness.

You provide bread from heaven.

Bread that endures to eternal life.

So, Father, we pray.

Give us this bread always.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So last Sunday we began a three-part study together on the subject of Holy Communion, a study called Come to the Table.

Well, we saw in Acts chapter 2, in the earliest chapter of the church, the earliest church devoted themselves, it says, one to the apostles' teaching, two to the fellowship, and three to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So the question for us was why was it that the earliest church was devoted to the breaking of bread, to the Lord's Supper, to Holy Communion, to the Eucharist?

Well, we began to explore biblical answers to that question.

Last Sunday we saw that the Lord's Supper is the feast of deliverance.

Together we saw from Exodus chapter 12, the institution of the Passover, that God provides a substitute, a lamb for his people to save them from his judgment.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

And when our Lord Jesus institutes Holy Communion, he's celebrating Passover, but no longer centered on this lamb which points forward, but on his very self, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

So when we come to the Lord's table, we come to receive Jesus, who is our substitute.

Today we want to look at a second biblical answer.

Why is it that we, as New Song, would devote ourselves, like the earliest church, in the biblical pattern of breaking the bread?

And I want to offer this answer.

We devote ourselves to the breaking of the bread because this is the bread from heaven.

Our gracious God provides for us, his people, what we cannot provide for ourselves to sustain us in our wilderness pilgrimage, as it were.

What he provides for us makes the difference between life and death, and he provides it generously and at great cost.

This for us is the bread of heaven.

So in our time together, I want to propose that we begin our study in Exodus 16, and we grab a hold of the biblical truth that we see there and bring it with us into John chapter 6 to meet Jesus.

John 6 · chapter mention

And then from there, I want to ask the question: how is it that God can provide what He promises?

And then finally, I want us to land somewhere in the vicinity of 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

And that sounds like a lot, but I suspect we'll keep it to a crisp 120 minutes or so and cover what we need to.

This is important stuff.

It's important because, well, it's important if it's true what the great American philosopher Bruce Springsteen says: that everybody's got a hungry heart.

Now, we, our hearts may not hunger for that which Bruce Springsteen's heart hungers for, but certainly we know what it is to experience lack.

Certainly we know what it is to feel unsatisfied, to go looking for that which will provide true nourishment, true satisfaction.

Where is it that we go?

It's not a question of if, it's a question of where.

So, where are we going to go looking for it?

Friends, the invitation to us is to come to the table to receive the bread of heaven.

So let's turn to Exodus chapter 16.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

If you've got your order of service or your Bible, I encourage you to turn there with me.

Let's begin by asking what's happened since last Sunday's passage, Exodus chapter 12, the institution of the Passover.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

Well, towards the end of chapter 12, the people of Israel are led by God out of slavery and bondage and oppression in Egypt.

Chapter 13, led out into the wilderness in cloud and fire, the manifest glory and presence of God in their midst.

And in chapter 14, they cross the Red Sea, this miraculously parted sea that Pharaoh and his army are engulfed in.

And this means two things that God claims victory, final victory over all things that oppose him.

And it secondly means that Israel has been completely delivered.

Having passed through the waters, they will never ever be in bondage again in Egypt.

And in chapter 15, Moses sings the first song we find in the Bible that celebrates God's act of deliverance.

Your right hand, O Lord, Moses sings, glorious in power, your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.

So Israel has begun its pilgrimage of faith.

Its journey from bondage in Egypt to the promised land, from crushing oppression and death to life and flourishing in God's promised land.

And so often faith journeys begin like this, don't they?

Maybe not with a miraculous parting of an ocean or something like that.

But often faith journeys begin with excitement.

They're dramatic.

God is showing up in miraculous ways.

He's doing new and wild things around every corner.

It's nothing but further up and further in.

Here we go.

This is true of some of our personal stories of faith.

It's true for some churches as well.

We get started, dramatic things are happening, exciting things are happening.

And then something happens along the way where we find ourselves in the wilderness.

We wonder where God is, where he's gone, what's coming next.

In Exodus chapter 16, Israel is led by God away from the creature comforts of this little oasis in Elam and into the wilderness, deeper into the wilderness, where resources are scarce.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

And in less than a month, since crossing the Red Sea, it's clear that there's a problem.

There's no food.

Verses two and three.

The whole congregation of the people Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

And the people of Israel said to them, Would that we have died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, where we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full?

We had feasts back there.

You have brought us into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

So think about this for a second.

God's people Israel, who He has just rescued from Egypt a couple of weeks ago, are now saying, We would rather God's hand, glorious in power, that delivered us from Egypt, would rather have squashed us back there and then led us out into the wilderness.

At least we had full bellies back in Egypt.

See, the rear view is like that sometimes, isn't it?

Things appear rosier behind us than before us.

One commentator writes this This crisis of need creates a crisis of faith.

Do we ever feel like that?

Do we ever feel like God has stopped showing up?

A crisis of need becomes a crisis of faith.

He used to do that.

What's going on now?

Is God withholding the good stuff that we need?

Exodus 16, verses 4 and 12.

Exodus 16:4

How is it that God responds to his people?

Now, what is it that we would expect God to do in this moment?

For God to squash them, maybe.

I mean, it's what they're asking for, isn't it?

God rather responds in a pure gift.

He prepares a table, a feast, as it were, in the wilderness.

Verse 4.

The Lord said to Moses, Behold, I'm about to reign bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.

Continuing in verse twelve, I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel.

Say to them, At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread, then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.

See, God knows his people's needs, and he's even paid attention to their grumbling, and his heart is moved towards them in compassion, and not against them in wrath, though that may be what they're asking for.

So God graciously provides for his people what they cannot provide for themselves in the wilderness food, means of nourishment that will sustain them through their wilderness pilgrimage.

God provides quail, we see in verse 13, it's a small brown feathered bird that gives meat.

But more importantly, certainly in the thought life and the imagination of Israel, God provides bread from heaven, this fine flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground.

And the people ask, what is it?

Which in Hebrew is manna.

What is it?

That's what it means.

Verse 15 gives us an answer.

It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

This is more than just bread.

This is God's gift.

God's gift to sustain you, God's gift to give you life where there is lack.

It makes the difference between death in the wilderness and sustenance for the day's journey to the pilgrimage to the promised land.

Mana means that God's promise to his people will sustain them day by day, because they go out to gather this manna each and every morning until the completion of their journey.

So the narrator interjects in verse 35, which is just a little past our reading, the people of Israel ate the manna forty years till they came to the habitable, that is the promised land.

So I want us to note something.

God doesn't hear the people's grumbling and remove them from the wilderness.

Rather, God provides for his people in the midst of the wilderness.

He provides bread from heaven.

So I wonder how often in my wilderness my prayers really just amount to grumbling, asking God to remove me from this difficulty, this trial, this situation, or just squash me already.

One pastor I know puts it this way: Rather than praying, God, please increase my faith, increase my trust, increase my dependence upon you to match the difficulty of my circumstances, this trial, this wilderness of mine.

Really, our prayers often amount to, God, please diminish the difficulty of my circumstances to match my lack of faith.

See, the bread of heaven was proof for God's people.

He will provide for us what we cannot provide for ourselves in the wilderness, and so strengthen and confirm our faith, but it requires that we trust him to do so.

We trust him to stay faithful to his promise to provide for us.

So let's grab hold of this truth and walk it into our gospel.

What's going on in John chapter 6?

John 6 · chapter mention

Jesus has just fed a crowd of 5,000 plus.

And now, verse 26 tells us, people are thinking that was pretty good.

We want another free lunch.

So they go out of the city seeking Jesus, and they meet him on the other side of the sea.

So once again, let's notice this.

Once again, God's people are in the wilderness, hungry, grumbling, we're told in verse 41, and focused on their lack.

What does that remind us of?

So how does Jesus respond to these people?

Does he squash them?

See, our Lord's divine heart towards his people here in John 6 is the same as it was in Exodus 16.

He is moved towards his people in compassion and not against them in wrath.

He responds with pure gift, not simply manna, but the greater true bread from heaven that God's provision in Exodus 16 has only anticipated.

Verse 27, the Son of Man, Jesus, will give you food, and this is a promise.

Not just food that will give you, uh that will sustain you for today's journey, like manna did for your father's, but this food will endure to eternal life.

So verse 28, they ask a question What do we have to do for God to give us this food?

I mean, we're all a little performance-oriented, aren't we?

Jesus says, believe, verse 29, pestuo, have faith, trust, depend upon God, believe in him who God has sent.

In other words, believe in me.

Trust in me.

Exercise the same trust and dependence upon me that your ancestors had upon the Lord who provided for them for forty years in the wilderness.

So the crowd asks this, verse 30.

But what sign do you perform so that we have reason to believe in you?

Which is a pretty cheeky question, I think, because didn't Jesus just feed a crowd of 5,000 people?

It's a little impertinent.

You see, the fact is that they bring up manna suggests to me that they still have lunch in mind, meeting their material needs.

But Jesus directs them to their real spiritual need.

Verse 35.

I am the bread of life.

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

And he continues in verse 48.

Again, I am the bread of life.

Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, they died.

This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If any one eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

So what's Jesus saying?

Whereas God provided for their ancestors material need of food in the wilderness, through manna, bread from heaven, now Jesus has come to be the true bread for his pilgrim people, bread that meets the true need of God's people, eternal life, in the midst of their wilderness and sin and alienation from God.

Such is the bread that will sustain God's people.

And this bread, Jesus says, is my flesh.

So just as we saw last Sunday that Jesus recenters the Passover meal upon his own substitutionary death on the cross, so here Jesus recenters one of the most important and profound provisions of God that he made to his people in the wilderness upon his own flesh, his own blood, given once for all upon the cross.

He is God's greatest provision for his people's greatest need, for our greatest need.

And just like man in the wilderness, we God's people must receive this bread of heaven by faith, by trust, by dependence on God for it to have any benefit to us.

So the God of grace provides for his hungry, grumbling pilgrim people what they cannot provide for themselves in their wilderness, bread from heaven, which we now see is Jesus Himself, his flesh and his blood, to sustain them on their pilgrimage from bondage to sin and death unto eternal life.

See, John 6 doesn't address the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, explicitly.

Jesus isn't gathering them around the table and instituting the supper, but there's no doubt that John, the author of this gospel, expects us to bring Jesus' teaching here with us to his holy table, where he takes bread and he says, This is my body, and he takes the cup and says, This is my blood.

So if we're to take John 6 with us to the table, the question for us becomes this.

How is it that Christ's flesh and blood relate to the bread and wine that we, right here at New Song, receive at the table?

Have you ever wondered that?

What does Jesus' flesh and blood have to do with this bread and wine?

This question of how, I think, can be answered in three ways.

I want us to deal with kind of three major answers given to this question of how Jesus is present or not present in the supper.

And I want us to zoom in on one particularly biblical answer.

How is it that Jesus can be present in the supper?

How is it that he can give us his flesh and his blood as our true spiritual food in the midst of our pilgrimage?

Well, one answer to this question is the answer of memorialism.

Memorialism is the doctrine believed by many Baptist churches, many non-denominational churches.

It's the church that I grew up in, affirmed memorialism.

One evangelical source puts it this way: Memorialism is a view of the Lord's Supper that sees communion as a remembrance of what Christ did on the cross.

To the memorialist, the elements of the Lord's Supper are, we might say, merely symbolic.

The bread represents Jesus' body.

The cup represents his blood.

In memorialism, the elements of communion themselves have no literal or mystical connection to Jesus' body.

So what are we saying here?

We're saying that the bread and the wine that we receive at the table don't convey to us in any real sense Jesus' flesh and blood.

They're just tokens of remembrance, tokens of faith that we receive because Jesus told us to.

But I'd like for us to consider very seriously John 6, verses 52 to 53.

John 6:52–53

See, it's the crowd that asks the question that we're all thinking, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?

And it's in verse 53 that Jesus gives an answer.

Truly, truly, I say to you, just chill out.

This is a metaphor.

It's just a symbol.

There's no real body and blood getting conveyed here.

Don't get gross.

No, Jesus actually doubles down here, doesn't he?

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.

See, this is a difficult teaching, and Jesus knows it.

In fact, he loses most of this crowd who's been following him in verse 66.

So perhaps we can conclude that there's more than mere symbolism going on here.

This is more than just a mere remembrance of Christ's body and blood given to us on the cross.

This is a receiving of his body and blood.

How does that work?

Well, one answer is an answer called transubstantiation.

This is the answer that the substance of the bread and the wine are transformed into the body and the blood of Christ through the actions of the priest.

And this is the official doctrine of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.

Here's how the catechism of the Catholic Church puts it.

Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species, the substance of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, well, the Roman Catholic Church, that by the consecration of the bread and wine, there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood.

So what we're talking about, once the elements have been consecrated, no longer are we talking about bread, no longer are we talking about wine.

It might look like bread and taste like bread and look like wine and taste like wine, but the substance of these things are the body and the blood of Christ.

So would answer a Roman Catholic.

But I want us to consider very seriously what our New Testament reading has to say, 1 Corinthians 10 17.

Because very typical of the New Testament, speaking of the blessed cup and the blessed bread, Paul teaches that because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.

For we all partake of one bread.

Paul is talking about the blessed bread and the blessed cup, and he still refers to them, well refers to this as bread, and by implication as wine.

Biblically speaking, we have to conclude that we aren't receiving mere bread and wine, but we're not receiving something less than bread and wine.

This is why our Anglican articles of faith in the 16th century read something like this: Transubstantiation cannot be proved from Holy Scripture, but is repugnant, that is unacceptable to the plain teaching of Scripture.

And why is that?

Because it overthrows the nature of the sacrament.

That is, it steps outside biblical bounds and turns the supper into something that it's not.

It's not that these elements are getting transformed into something different.

It's that Christ is conveying his very self to us through these elements and in these elements.

So where do we land, biblically speaking?

If memorialism falls short, a transubstantiation, we might say, goes too far, where is it that we land biblically?

And here's where I want to give the answer of real presence of Christ in the sacrament.

This is where Lutherans land and the Reformed tradition lands, where we as an Anglican church land.

Jesus Christ, his true body and his true blood, is present to us in the sacrament.

And not merely in a symbolically or metaphorical way, but in a real and substantial way, in receiving the blessed bread and wine, we receive Christ's true flesh and blood as our spiritual food, just as he promised us, which for us is nourishment for our pilgrim journey in the wilderness.

Well, we might say, but how is that the case?

How does Christ convey himself to us?

And this is where theological camps start to develop.

Those who might take after the church reformer Martin Luther would say that Christ's glorified humanity, united to his divinity, is ubiquitous.

It's made present wherever the word is proclaimed and the sacraments are administered.

Christ's body and blood are mystically united to the sacrament and are present in, with, and under the bread and the wine.

And I want to say this that this is a very biblically grounded understanding of Holy Communion.

It takes seriously what we learn in John chapter 6, that we are actually receiving Christ's body and blood as our bread from heaven and our spiritual food.

John 6 · chapter mention

It does leave me with a few questions, though.

And I find those questions are answered by another reformer named John Calvin.

Calvin would say this, that Christ's true body and blood are present to us in the sacrament, not through Christ's ubiquitous human nature, but through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

See, in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is the agent of koinania, this communion, this fellowship that we share with God through Christ.

First Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14, which we concluded our service with through the summer, says this the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship, which is koinania of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.

The Holy Spirit is the means by which we commune with God in Christ.

And whenever we talk about koinania, we cannot help but talk about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

So thus we can say with our Anglican Articles of Faith that the body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper and a heavenly and spiritual, which isn't like an ambiguous, nebulous, you know, spirituality is kind of trendy kind of way.

It's talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Okay, Pastor.

So what you're saying is we're not really eating Christ's body and blood because this sacrament is the work of the Holy Spirit.

No.

I'm saying when we come to the table, we really truly are receiving Christ's body and blood as our spiritual food because of the work of the Holy Spirit.

So Luther and Calvin and their respective traditions might disagree on the specific how of the Lord's Supper, how Christ is present, but they certainly agree on the what of the Lord's Supper, and that's this.

So we land somewhere in a glorious mystery.

Here's a short poem credited to Queen Elizabeth in the midst of the English Reformation.

This is about communion.

Twas Christ, the Word, that spake it.

And as the Word did make it, so I believe and take it.

We don't have to comprehend what's happening at the table, to apprehend Christ's promise for us.

Christ is promising his very self, his body and his blood to be our nourishment, our bread from heaven, to sustain us in our spiritual pilgrimage from bondage to sin and death into eternal life.

And friends, this is hugely important.

Because of his work in the sacrament, the God of grace provides for us, his pilgrim people, right here at New Song.

And wherever we gather around the table, he provides for us what we cannot provide for ourselves.

Jesus, our spiritual food and drink to sustain us in our wilderness journey.

It's Jesus who gives himself to nourish our souls and give us life as we journey from sin and death into eternity.

So we don't have a disinterested and distanced God who throws us into the wilderness and says, Good luck, don't screw this up.

I'll see you on the other side.

No, we have a gracious God who meets his people in the wilderness, who provides for their needs, who gives us his very self to sustain us for the journey.

So a saving faith that depends upon our gracious God for eternal life cannot be indifferent towards his table.

We cannot have a take it or leave it attitude about Christ's supper.

This is God's means of feeding his people and sustaining us, strengthening our faith, nourishing it in and through and by Christ's very self.

This, friends, is our bread from heaven.

And refusing it would be as crazy as the Israelites refusing manna in the wilderness.

But through this supper, we are assured that God has not changed his gracious heart towards us.

Even if at the beginning of our journey seemed dramatic and exciting, we know that God has not stopped showing up.

He comes to us in the table.

He gives to us his very self, the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus to nourish us.

So when you come to the table today, come ready not to receive something like Jesus or something that reminds us of Jesus, but something, but pardon me, but come to the table ready to receive Jesus Himself, as He gives Himself to you and for you to sustain you and nourish you unto eternal life.

Friends, God has spread a table for you in the midst of your wilderness pilgrimage.

He offers you true food and true drink.

So come to the table.

Amen.

Thank you for listening today.

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May God bless you and keep you today and every day.