The Gospel of John: The Way Through The Wilderness - April 13, 2025 (Myles Holmes)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Awesome.

So good to be together this morning.

So good to greet one another in the Lord.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, you can open them to John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a copy of God's Word with you, our ushers are going to be making their way down the aisle.

You can stick your hand in the air and flag one of them down.

They'd love to get a copy into your hands, which you can keep as a gift from us to you, because you are loved in this place.

I think I'm ready.

It's been a while since I experienced this, but I'm ready to share what I experienced last summer on a solo camping trip.

I've had PTSD since that day.

But if you're ready to bear with me emotionally, I'm ready to bear my soul with you of what happened.

Are you ready?

Okay, thank you.

What a kind loving church you are.

It was supposed to be a four-day reset.

Solo trip to the Algonquin.

To reflect on life, on leadership, to enjoy creation.

Not the first time that I've done something like this.

However, I had planned on this four-day trip, something that was new.

One of the days I was gonna take a day trip in the wilderness to get as deep as I could.

It would be a trip in which I woke up with the sun to go around the Nipissing River, it's called, a beautiful loop.

I'd paddle, I'd explore, see God's creation, I'd have lunch by a waterfall, catch some fish, and then return by night.

Now, some of those things happened, and that was my plan.

People had asked me as I prepared, you know, they're asking me what I'm gonna do on this trip, and I tell them, you know, I'm going around the Nipissing River.

Some people asked, you know, have you calculated how long it is?

To which I said, yes.

However, there's a footnote to that, it was all guy math.

I had looked at the map and I had grunted as though I was doing hard mental calculations, and I had confidently declared it'll be fine.

It was not fine.

I left a little later than I wanted to, and for the first three hours, went a little slower, enjoying myself.

However, by 11 a.m.

I came to realize looking at the map, knowing that this was a loop and just doing, you know, some math that maybe was a little simpler, that I was not going to make it back at this pace, that I was behind.

And so I started paddling as hard as I could.

I was pushing against river currents that were pushing against me, fighting through currents.

I was sprinting portages, doing everything I could to beat the sun, to get back home to my, well, it's not even really my home, to at least a tent.

I didn't have dinner, I had a breakfast, I had a lunch, but I was planning to be back by dinner, and by 9.30 p.m., the light was going down.

I had paddled 90 kilometers, I had portaged 10 kilometers, and I was still far away from home.

And so in that time I had to make the only decision I could.

I had only seen one other person this whole day, 16 hours of paddling.

And so I said, I'm just gonna have to sleep on a random site.

There were moments of peace, you know, in God's creation, no one's around.

There was moments of panic as I wondered what would happen as I lived in the wilderness all night.

There were moments of delusion as I thought I could make it in the dark, but was paddling straight into land.

When light went away, I found a site.

I had no fire, I had no food, I had no tent, I had nothing.

So I propped my canoe onto a rock to make, you know, a tent.

I took off my life jacket, which I did have, by the way, at this point you're probably wondering.

I did have it.

I made a pillow out of it, and I laid down for what I thought was actually gonna be a nice night because like country songs are written about this kind of thing, right?

Sleeping under the stars, and it was a clear night, but as soon as I flipped that canoe under and put my head on that life jacket and closed my eyes, I felt the drips of rain begin.

And the sky opened up and it started raining, and I did not sleep a wink.

I was huddled in a cold, damp sweater for the whole night, waiting for the sun to come up.

And all night, the only thing I could think about is this this is not home.

It was so painfully clear I was not where I was meant to be.

There were days, there were moments in that day of beauty, there were moments of distress, but at the end of the day, cold and in the dark, I was aware of this reality.

I was in the wilderness.

I was not home.

Now I asked Amber when I told her that illustration if I needed to round out that story and finish it, but you guys know because I'm here, I did eventually make it.

I did eventually make it.

But in John 6, Jesus wants to point at our life and really tell us something that I think is so relevant for that moment that we all just felt experientially together.

And the truth that he wants to tell us is this that you are in the wilderness, that your life is a wilderness, that you are on a journey, a pilgrimage, and you are not home.

This life that you and I live, when we're able to zoom out and get out of the day-to-day and the minute-to-minute grind to get out of the busyness of our calendar.

If we can zoom out from a 30,000-foot view and see our life, what we must understand is that we are on a journey to our permanent home, but we are not yet home yet.

We live in a wilderness.

This wilderness is not an eternally livable place.

You can flip a canoe over and call it a home.

You can grab a pillow and say it's comfortable.

But at the end of the day, what we know about this life is that it is temporary, it is cold, and it is lacking.

And I do believe that deep down, each of us know this to be true.

We've lived this life long enough to look at it and say, this is just not it.

Do you have the intellectual, spiritual honesty right now to be able to say that?

Like, as much as I have chased, as much as I have pursued, as much as I've actually accomplished in this life, I still don't feel like this is it.

We know it's not.

And Jesus knew that too.

It's why he came from heaven to meet us.

To tell us the truth that we're not in the wilderness.

And before we get to Jesus' message, I my my concern for us pastorally is this.

How are you coping?

How are you coping with the wilderness that we live in that is this life?

Some of us are surviving.

It's day-to-day.

This feeling of if I can just make it to tomorrow, I'm I'm gonna be fine, but but lacking this sort of eternal perspective that this is just a temporary home, that this earth is nothing but a tent foreshadowing what's to come.

Others of us maybe we are experiencing the delusion.

We, you know, we've set up our houses with such elegance and our schedules with such busyness and our lives with such productivity that we've just sort of caused ourselves to believe this delusion that we're actually in it, that we've done it.

Maybe that's the material side of it.

Maybe you're living the religious side of it.

Maybe you're looking at your life and you're saying, yeah, I've lived a pretty good life.

I've set up a pretty good wall of religion around me, I've done good things, I've come to church, I've read the Bible, like I am good.

This this home is pretty good, I'm doing all right.

It's delusion.

Some of us are coasting, others are desperate, longing for help in the wilderness, others are exhausted, burnt out, tired.

My question for you this morning is how are you coping with the wilderness that we all experience, that we all know that we're in.

We know this life is not it.

What are you doing about it?

Jesus wants to meet us this morning with a message.

It's a message about the wilderness.

A message that tells us that we are not only in wilderness, but that Jesus meets us in the wilderness and brings us home.

This is what I want you to see this morning that Jesus, he meets us in the wilderness and he brings us home.

Let's see this in the text.

Would you stand and read with me as we read John chapter 6, verses 48 to 59.

John 6:48–59

That's what God's word says.

I am the bread of life.

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

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

I am 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 life of the world is my flesh.

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this men give man give us flesh to eat?

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.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

For my flesh is true food.

My blood is true drink.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

As the living Father sent me, I and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread that the fathers ate and died.

Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can take your seat.

Jesus is teaching us three things about this wilderness that we live in.

I want you to understand them, and then we'll unpack them each one by one.

First, he shows us the desert of death that is the wilderness.

And this is sort of a diagnosis of our situation, where we currently live now.

Then he'll move on to invite us to receive the gift of God in the wilderness.

Thirdly, we're going to see in this text that he shows us the way to wholeness through the wilderness.

Notice first that he shows us the desert of death in verses 48 and 49.

Notice what he says there in verse 49.

Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness.

Now you'll remember the broader context of John chapter 6 is that it began in really a wilderness.

John 6 · chapter mention

It began in a plain where Jesus saw a crowd of 5,000 men, likely closer to 12,000 people, and Jesus multiplied a few fish and a few loaves to be able to feed this mass in a desolate wilderness that was without food.

In verse 31, notice you can flip back with me that the people who were fed by him when they met him in Capernaum, they immediately made a connection that what Jesus had done for them in that wilderness was what like God had done for them in the Exodus in the desert wilderness.

And so in verse 31, these people say to Jesus, our fathers ate manna in the wilderness.

They recognized that what Jesus was doing for them was connecting them to the spiritual heritage of their fathers and showing them that they lived in the wilderness.

Now, something very interesting happens when those words find Jesus' lips.

The Galileans could really understand that they were in a wilderness because they were in like a physical, literal wilderness.

Where Jesus fed them there was no food.

And you can understand that at times in your life too.

You ever been in times where you're like, yeah, a hundred percent this is wilderness?

Maybe it's sickness.

Maybe it's suffering.

Maybe you just lost your job.

Maybe you find yourself in a place where you just do not have the resources yourself.

And there in the wilderness, in that kind of wilderness, it's easy to see that God has to do something.

You're like, I'm parched, I got nothing.

God, you've got to show up.

We know those moments, don't we?

What's fascinating is that when Jesus tells them that they're in a wilderness, they are not in a literal physical wilderness.

Look at what verse 59 says.

It says, Jesus said these things in the synagogue.

In the synagogue.

But Jesus looks at them in verse 49 and says, Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died.

In other words, even though you are now standing in a synagogue, I want you to understand your spiritual condition is that you are in the wilderness.

Wilderness is a soul condition.

Jesus wants us to understand that we cannot mistake religious activity in our life.

We cannot mistake busyness in our life.

We cannot mistake material possession in our life for having escaped the wilderness.

He looks at us in the richest of our times.

He looks at us in the most religious of our times.

He looks at us at the highest of highs and says, even in that moment, you are in a spiritual soul wilderness.

You can decorate the campsite.

You are still in a desert.

I think the challenge for us is that as we look around, we don't really feel like we're in a wilderness.

In fact, this very room, isn't it, kind of the farthest thing away from the wilderness?

We are sheltered from the elements.

We have beautiful lighting, sound equipment.

We'll go home to a comfortable home.

Driving nice, fast, efficient vehicles, we do not feel like we are in a wilderness.

We look at our life and it is filled with busyness.

It is filled with jobs.

It's filled with relationships.

We look at our calendar, and many of us are saying, okay, you know, I'm living enough life.

I need a little less life in my life right now, right?

It's hard to understand that we are in the wilderness when life is full, and that what some of us would even say, life is good here.

That's exactly the point.

That's exactly the point that Jesus is bringing up.

You recognize that?

You see what he says in verse 49.

Your fathers ate the manna and they died.

In other words, your fathers wanted exactly what you want from me, Jesus says, and yet they still perished.

They still died.

The manna was good.

And yet those who ate it still perished in the wilderness.

The Galileans, they had a synagogue, but they were still in the wilderness.

And apart from the provision of Jesus Christ, of eternal life, they would perish even in the synagogue.

They were still in the wilderness.

So are we.

That's why after Genesis 3 and before Revelation 21, if you are reading the story of redemptive history in the pages of Scripture, do you understand that you are reading of the history of God's people in the wilderness?

From Genesis 4 to Revelation 20, this whole book is a book about God's people in the pilgrimage of wilderness living, trying to get to their home.

And there are certainly cycles, but this theme repeats over and over again in Scripture.

It begins in Genesis, where Adam and Eve are cast out of a garden where life is abounding and abundant into a desert where there's no life.

You can't grow anything, you can't sustain anything.

It is the equivalent of death.

It moves to Exodus, where the people are rescued from Egypt, but find themselves in wandering and desert living.

It moves to Numbers, where in Numbers 14, an entire generation lives in the wilderness and dies in the wilderness, even with the provision of manna.

Scripture goes on and on and on and on again, so that we even we read in Isaiah 35 this morning of the prophets who spoke of the exile like another wilderness when Israel would be taken into Babylonian captivity.

This, you know, the history of Israel we just read about in Ezra and Nehemiah as a church, that was another exile.

Jesus comes to us, and even Jesus, the Son of God, clothed in human flesh, is he immune from the wilderness?

No.

In Matthew 4, he begins in the wilderness.

He starts in the wilderness.

Matthew 4, where he's dragged into the desert and tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

We're in the wilderness, but Jesus wants us to know it.

We are in the place between rescue and salvation.

We are like Israel, where we can look back and see slavery in Egypt, but we are to look forward and see the promised land, the land that is flowing with milk and honey and honey.

This is the wilderness.

And all throughout scripture, the wilderness is a place of hunger, it's a place of testing, it's a place of waiting.

And ultimately the wilderness foremost is a place of death.

And Jesus is looking at you this morning and saying, listen, I want you to understand that as good as things are in your life, as much as you have surrounded yourself with the comfort of success or materialism or money or relationship or family or control or whatever that thing is, you must understand you are in a wilderness.

I recently just finished reading a it's a fiction book.

It's a book called The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

And in The Road, it's sort of this post-apocalyptic novel where a father is with his son and he's traveling through a world that has been destroyed.

It's a scorched world.

There's no beauty, there are nearly no human beings remaining.

And there is this father who's leading his son, who he so clearly loves, trying to lead his son to a world that is very clearly gone.

The world no longer remains.

Everything is covered in dust from whatever this sort of post-apocalyptic thing that happened was.

And the book, it really is, it tugs at your heartstrings and makes you feel this sort of grief and ache, not because it describes the world so well, but because you feel sort of the tension of this father longing for the son to experience something that he never will be able to experience again because the world is destroyed.

It is fully scorched.

And the book, I you know, I finished it and I told Amber, it's not a Christian book at all.

In fact, I probably it's I probably shouldn't even mention it from the pulpit, because there's if you read it, you're gonna be like, okay, our pastor's a little twisted in the head, okay?

So just I'm not even gonna talk about the title again, just forget about it, okay?

But I told Amber after reading it, my wife, I said, you know, this is probably gonna be one of the most helpful books for me that I read this.

Year because it had so many spiritual illusions to remind me that this world that we are in is not it.

Do you understand that loved one?

We are in a post-Eden world.

Things are not the way that they are meant to be.

And one of the worst things you can do is try to treat this world like it can give you what it was meant to when it was Eden before the destruction of the fall.

This world is beautiful.

But that beauty, it's always shadowed by a brokenness, isn't it?

There are moments of deep joy in this world.

We can be honest about it.

Like there are moments of immense happiness, but the sound and ring of that happiness is always broken up.

It's always interrupted too quickly, whether it's by sin or by sorrow or by suffering or by death.

This world is not it.

We'd be fools to expect a garden joy in a wilderness world.

And so Jesus meets us this morning.

He says to you and I, we're still in wilderness.

And you need to understand these are not harsh words, these are words that confront us with reality and yet support us with love and grace.

Because it is a spiritual x-ray that exposes our soul and shows us exactly where we are.

Jesus says that you're not in the wilderness.

So listen, stop, stop pretending.

Stop pretending like you can make a heaven out of this earth.

Stop settling.

This is not home.

That's the first thing I want you to see, the desert of death that is the wilderness.

But but Jesus moves on here to invite us to something greater.

What Jesus is doing is inviting us to see the gift of God in the wilderness.

This is the second point I want you to see this morning.

The gift of God in the wilderness.

What Jesus does is he meets us here and he offers us something greater.

You notice it there in verse 48.

He says, Your fathers ate manna.

What was manna?

Mana was a miraculous provision from God.

The manna reigned from heaven, we are told in the book of Exodus.

And it was to be gathered daily.

It was sustenance for God's people, so that as they wandered through the desert, even though they had no home, even though they had no source of food, they were given sustenance in the manna.

And the manna was good.

We're told in Exodus that it even tasted sweet like honey, which points you to the goodness and graciousness of God.

I mean, God could have made the manna taste like our communion crackers.

Miraculously unflavorful.

He could have.

And he still would have been good.

But he had given this temporary provision, and he had even made it taste sweet.

You could say this.

The manner that they were provided, it was McDonald's.

You know, McDonald's is great.

McDonald's is meant to get you to the next meal.

I'm speaking real practical biblical wisdom here, okay?

So listen up.

But do not feast on McDonald's.

Now I'm speaking experiential wisdom.

Do not do it.

It's not for feasting.

It is good in a pinch to get you to the next meal that actually has nutrition, but it was not made to feast on.

This is what the manna was, even though it tasted like heaven.

That's why McDonald's is such a good illustration, right?

It was not the milk and honey of the promised land.

And see, the danger is that because the gifts that God gives us are good and they give us joy, the danger is that we can take this temporary provision and we can try to make it something that is ultimate.

Now we don't have manna anymore, but we certainly have many good gifts that God has given us for the wilderness journey that you and I are tempted to make ultimate idols out of.

Can I press into just one?

You know, one example of this is our work.

You know, you can go through the scriptures and you can build a biblical theology of work, that work is a precious thing.

It is good.

It is good to be able to contribute to the well-being of people's lives.

I mean, I don't, I'm looking around this room.

I don't think that anyone in this room is like, you know, under a contract with a mafia or something.

Most of you guys have great jobs, and the product, the end result of your job is that you make people's lives better, easier.

Maybe like some of you guys are in healthcare, you even save lives.

Your jobs are good.

That the things that you're doing are good.

Like you're helping people.

And the result of it is good, that you provide for your family.

Work is a good thing, it is good to provide, it is biblical to provide.

The issue is that work is something that is given to us temporarily.

And even now, as we speak, your body is breaking down in a way.

I mean, some of you guys feel that.

There's I I felt the internal amen of the soul when I said that.

Because your body's breaking down, and you will not be able to work like this forever.

And your mind, I mean, some I'm not looking at anyone specifically, but some of you guys are losing your mind.

Right?

Like but speaking seriously, our mental capacity as we get older and old, like there comes a point where we just cannot work the same way that we used to.

Your work is a temporary gift, and it's an incredibly good thing that you are given in the wilderness to be able to provide for your family, and you should work hard and you should value it.

Here is the issue when you beg when you forget that everyone who has ever worked a job has died.

Do you know that?

You are sitting in the seat, you've replaced someone who is on the path to death or has died.

You are fulfilling a job.

You know, I'm a pastor in a long line of church history of pastors who have pastored churches, and most of the people I read are dead.

They pastored and then they died.

So listen, if you make an idol out of this pastoring thing, if you make an idol out of this work thing, you need to understand that it is not eternal, it's passing away.

As we speak, they ate the manna and they died.

Work is good.

But when you rely on it to find identity, when you rely on it to feel okay because you've been productive enough, when you use work to avoid rest, to avoid relationships, even to avoid obedience to the Lord, you must understand this that work cannot bring you home.

It cannot do it.

It's a wilderness gift.

It is a gift, but it is a gift given to you in the pilgrimage to heaven.

Listen, so is money.

Money is good, but it is a wilderness gift.

So is comfort.

So is ministry.

So is family.

We need to see these things as provision.

You understand that?

Jesus is looking at these things and saying, saying this, be thankful for them, but see them as provision.

They are not your fulfillment, they are not your destiny.

It is not what you live for.

This the manna, the manna was meant to stir up this hunger for something else.

That's why it was a daily provision.

Every day you had to go and gather the manna.

And it, I mean, I'm sure it eventually it kind of becomes a burden, just like work does.

Oh, great, it's Monday again.

I gotta go and do it.

And this thing that's really a provision, you start to grow sick of, but it's because you've forgotten that all that that is given to you for is to get you to where you're meant to go.

Mana was meant to point to the promised land where there was rivers of milk and honey flowing.

Not to satisfy.

Now, understanding this helps us, sets us up to understand the invitation that Jesus gives us in verse 50 and 51.

Look what he says in verse 50.

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

I am the living bread.

I'm 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.

See, what Jesus is saying here is, I have not I've given you something so much greater than provision for the wilderness.

I have given you my presence.

I've given you myself, I have met you in the wilderness.

What's so important here is for us to see this word flesh.

I'm sure as I read this passage, you you sort of saw connections to the Lord's table, to communion.

And I think it's right, looking back from the cross to this passage, we should see connections to the Lord's table.

But I want you to understand that when Jesus at the Last Supper says, This is my body, take of it and eat, he does not use the word that John uses here.

John doesn't use that word for the Passover meal.

The word that he uses there in the Greek is soma, body.

Here he uses the word in the Greek sarx, flesh.

And what it's meant to do is to turn our attention back to John chapter one, where we are we're told that the eternal word of God became flesh.

What John here is doing is not pointing so much at to the cross of Christ in this verse.

Here he's pointing us to the coming of Christ.

He came to dwell with us.

In other words, Jesus doesn't just send bread from heaven as sort of a wartime care package.

He meets us in the trenches of the desert himself.

He takes on flesh, he is the bread.

In verse 53, then, blood is introduced, and without doubt, the original readers of John would understand the significance of blood.

Ringing in their ears would be when John the Baptist said of Jesus, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

This understanding of this is the sacrificial lamb.

There will be blood spilt.

So when Jesus says that you must drink of my blood in order to inherit eternal life, they're understanding that there is sacrificial language here, even though they might not see the full picture.

In other words, what Jesus is saying is this if you want to find life, you will find it in my coming and my cross.

That's where you will find it.

And so long as you try to find it anywhere else, you are trying to squeeze life from idols, from manna, from false bread, from work, from comfort, from money, from a relationship.

You are trying to squeeze a little bit of life out of this thing.

And you know what the problem with idolatry is?

The problem with idolatry is that you can squeeze a little bit of life out of it.

Idolatry is kind of like your toothpaste tube at home right now.

Anyone, you like toothpaste tubes, they have a miraculous multiplication in them, don't they?

When you think they are done, there are strategies you can employ.

You all know them.

The first strategy, you fold it up, right?

So I'm giving you guys so much practical wisdom here.

You fold it up, and you can get like two or three more brushes, right?

With a good folding technique on your toothpaste tube, but it's not done then, because then you know you can put it on your counter and you press from the bottom to the top, and you can get like a good another week's worth out of that toothpaste, right?

Some of you guys are like gonna approach the elders like, how much are we?

Is he okay?

You know?

But it's not done then because you can even cut it open, you take your finger, and if you swish it in there.

See, the problem with our idols is that we can squeeze them, and they will provide a few drips of worth, a few drips of satisfaction, but you always need to come back and you always need to give more.

Every time you return to idolatry, idolatry, it always asks for more.

It always costs more and more and more.

Let me maybe illustrate this in my own life.

My my the idol of my story as a Christian has been people pleasing.

Neutral gear for me is to is to think, what will this action make people think of me?

Or what will not doing this make people think of me?

That's just kind of like neutral.

That's that's where my mind immediately goes to if I am not battling with the sin of people pleasing.

And the issue is that you can live in a way, especially on a on a you know, in a public job like this, you can live in a way where you get people's approval.

And you can sort of run on the hamster wheel, and if you run hard enough and work hard enough, you can get people's approval, but it's never enough, and it always costs you more and more.

And what Jesus does is he says, put the tube down, stop running on the hamster meal.

I am a feast.

Come and eat.

Come and eat.

And listen, some of you guys are in this place right now where life is so empty.

It just is.

Like you've been living the life, you've been working the job, you've been in the marriage, you've been doing the thing, but it's just like you do not feel the fulfillment, you do not feel the satisfaction.

At the end of the day, you lay down in your bed and all you feel is emptiness.

And I want you to take such courage in that, because it's in the emptiness that Jesus can meet you and offer you the way to fulfillment and the way to wholeness.

You need emptiness.

You need it.

Loved one, if you are so spiritually attuned right now to your emptiness, then you are primed in the spot, ready to meet Jesus Christ Himself.

Most of the world does not have this fine tuning that can only be given by the Holy Spirit to the emptiness that they are feeling.

They are just running the rat race trying to get the next thing.

And here you are, maybe by the Holy Spirit, this building conviction, like I just something's not right.

And here's Jesus to meet you and show you, thirdly, in this text, the way to wholeness.

The way to wholeness.

Jesus shows us how to live in the wilderness with his life.

I want you to see so practically here, three things that we must do to respond to the invitation that Jesus gives us that he is the bread that leads to life.

Three things I want you to see.

And the first thing is this that you must let go of false bread.

You must let go of false bread.

Look at verse 54.

See the illustration that Jesus is driving at here.

Whoever feeds on my flesh, whoever drinks my blood, has eternal life.

The invitation is to come to the banquet table that is Jesus Christ Himself and find what you are looking for in idolatry in Him.

But the first thing that you must do if you want to eat is come hungry.

That is the principle, isn't it, of eating.

Like if you want to enjoy a meal, you must be hungry for it.

And the issue for so many of us is what Jesus is diagnosing in this text, that we spend our lives feeding elsewhere.

We fill ourselves with cheap substitutes that don't give life.

And so listen, loved one, how you respond when you are hungry is so important to your spiritual health.

We understand this physically, right?

When you're hungry, how you respond, like that is the thing that leads to physical health.

Do you reach for the pack of Oreos, or do you reach for the food that will actually nourish you, sustain you?

And that's like as simple as it is for physical health.

And love, I want you to know it's the same for spiritual health.

It's as simple as that.

What do you fill your attention with?

What do you fill your heart's affection with when you feel that longing, that emptiness, that need for fulfillment?

You know what the issue is?

So many of us are just distracting ourselves with Netflix and Disney Plus and Paramount and the 15 million other streaming services.

So many just distract us from the hunger ourselves, from the hungeress and the pain by just scrolling, just scroll, scroll, scroll.

Or we just we dig our head into work.

I'll just work.

I mean, work is good, right?

Work worships God, right?

I'll just dig into work.

Jesus looks at us, he says, stop turning to the things that are so cheap, that are good, but not eternal.

What is it for you?

Achievement?

Control, comfort, distraction, approval, what is it?

Jesus looks, he says, You've got to stop feasting at that table.

Those things are good, but they will not satisfy you.

The only thing that those things can do is sink you.

They make you heavier.

They make spiritual things taste duller.

Let it go.

Let go of false bread.

Second thing you need to do is this come daily to the table.

Come daily to the table.

Do you hear that one, loved one?

Come daily to the table.

Like, why does Jesus choose manna?

Because the manna principle is that every day it falls from heaven, and every day you must go out and eat.

And the spiritual principle that Jesus is driving at here is that your walk with him, your abiding with him, is a daily thing that you must pursue.

If you're just trying to get your Sunday morning top up every week, you're not gonna live.

It is a daily pursuit.

This is what Jesus is getting at in verse 56.

You see it?

Whoever feeds on my flesh, then he specifies what drinking his blood is, abides in me and I in him.

Jesus is abiding in you.

And what you must do on the daily is come to the communion table that is abiding with him.

You must abide with him.

So listen, some of us we treat Jesus like he's far off in heaven.

Okay, if I want to meet Jesus, I better just climb this religious ladder of works.

I better I better make my way up to him.

You know, Jesus is in heaven, but spiritually, Jesus has said he is in you.

He is in you.

If you want to meet with Jesus, where do you go?

If your faith is in Jesus Christ, Christ says, I abide in you.

So what you must then do is abide in him.

You must recognize that he is with you.

So practically, what does it look like to abide in Jesus Christ on a daily basis?

Let me ask you this: are you living with an awareness of his nearness to you?

That Jesus is with you?

When anxiety stirs up in your soul, do you turn to Jesus who is with you in that moment and say, Jesus, I trust you with this?

When you face that thing that you cannot, that mountain you cannot climb, do you pray knowing that Jesus is in the room with you and hears you?

Or do you work like he's just not there?

Abiding in him means we live with an awareness of his nearness.

It means this that when you read this book, do you read it just for content, or do you read it knowing that when you open the pages of this the word, it is a living book.

It's a living voice, it's communion.

You are meeting with a living person.

And when you read these words and you interpret them and you apply them to your life, that is the voice of Jesus speaking to you.

And when you pray these words back to him and you speak to him, that is you speaking to the living God.

That's how you abide in him.

Read the word as communion.

This is how you abide in him.

You draw strength and weakness.

Listen, you face the hard day at work.

What do you do?

Do you just sort of tense up and say, I got this?

Or do you turn to the Lord?

You turn to the Lord who loves you.

He's your father who loves when you come to him with need.

Draw strength from him in weakness.

This is what it means to abide in him.

Connected at the source, at all times, at all points of the day.

Are you connected to Jesus Christ who is in you, to his power, to his sufficiency, to his presence?

And listen, some of us, you know, we can reflect on this week and just see like it's been a Christless week.

And you know what you do right now?

You repent.

Like turn to the it is sin.

It's a command.

Abide in me.

Turn to the Lord in repentance.

That he has been with you, but you have not been with him.

That he's been committed to you, but you've not been committed to him.

And you turn to him and repent and say, Lord, Lord, I've sinned against you.

You've been so committed to me, and I haven't even thought of you.

I've forgotten you completely.

And he turns to you and he meets you like he does every single time with grace, with mercy, with compassion.

You turn to him.

The third thing we need to do is this: walk now in the power of what's coming.

Walk now in the power of what's coming.

Resurrection life is in you.

If you feed on him, verse 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me will live because of me.

He's already said it four times that he will resurrect those from death who have placed their faith in him.

Resurrection, life is in you.

You know where the proof is?

The proof is in what we celebrate next week.

It's in the fact that Jesus is now resurrected in heaven.

The Israelites, they went forward to a promised land that no one had yet tasted.

You understand that that's not your case.

You are walking forward to a promised land that has already been tasted and is being experienced by Jesus Christ right now.

He is the firstborn of the resurrection.

He has gone forward, he has defeated the wilderness, and he has come through the other side, and now is living in the promised land of resurrected life.

Jesus did it.

This is why in the Gospel of Matthew in Matthew 4, Matthew recounts how Jesus was brought out into the wilderness for 40 days.

It's not without, it's not a mistake that it was 40 days, because that's how long Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

And there Jesus faced the temptation of Satan without food and without bread.

But he endured and he conquered.

And what he did in the wilderness was really a foreshadowing of what he would do in his life when on the cross Jesus faced the ultimate wilderness.

It was the ultimate place of desolation, it was the ultimate place of isolation from God's mercy.

And there he faced the ultimate death.

But Jesus passed through death, he conquered it, he defeated it, and now he lives in you.

He lives in you.

Listen, is this a truth that spiritually you can listen to with your shoulders shrugged?

That the resurrected Christ lives in you.

Oh Lord, forgive us for apathy.

Jesus is in you.

Jesus is the guide.

You know, you and I, we in this life, we are climbing a mountain that we just cannot climb.

It is too steep for us.

But Jesus, this morning, he meets you and he has the scars on his hands of the one who has climbed the mountain we could not climb.

And he promises that in his victory, he has not stayed at the top of the mountain, but he now abides in us through his Holy Spirit, because Jesus is gonna bring you through the wilderness to partake in the victory that he experienced through the resurrection.

That's who Jesus is.

You with him this morning?

Have you met him this morning?

He doesn't hand you a map and show you the way through religious living.

He walks the road with you.

And the question for you this morning is will you walk the road with him?

Will you feast on the one who is eternal bread?

If you're gonna do that, you need to see that this life is a desert of death.

But that Jesus has given us a gift of himself that leads to the way to wholeness and helps us to sing the song that we're about to sing, the hymn of heaven.

A victory song of what is coming for us.

Would you stand with me as we pray and turn our time to respond to him and song.

Father, we are so thankful that you have sent your son to us, that you do not just send us provision from a distance, but you send us provision by coming near to us, by sending your son, who in the fullness of divinity, in the fullness of humanity, walked this earth and lived a perfectly righteous life, and died a death that we deserve to die apart from him.

Jesus, we thank you for the work that you have done.

And now, Lord, we look forward with great hope to the work that you will continue to do in us as you lead us and carry us home, as you bring us through this wilderness that we so often get distracted by and so often try to make a home from.

Amen.