SEVEN Miniseries: Bread of Life

You know, I think one of my prayers for myself is gonna be God just give me a spiritual palate where I just crave your bread and it tastes so good to me.

Uh because as you're bringing that up, it's like there's so many other things that just in that moment seem and taste better for us.

And always like you said, it's decaying and destroying to us mentally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually.

Um and perhaps it's a palate issue.

Yeah.

Perhaps we just don't crave the right things.

Hi, how are you, Andrew?

Pastor Jake, I am doing terrific.

Thanks for asking.

Good.

Thanks for being here with me today, man.

We are in the middle of our seventh series where we're going through the book of John together.

And what we're doing today is just kind of doing like a mini podcast episode.

We've done these for every single week we've been in this series so far, where we are just taking an opportunity to hear from the person that wrote the devo that is in our journal for this series.

And so today we are in John chapter six.

Um, this is part two of us being in John chapter six uh for this, but actually it's part three.

Uh, this is the third story uh that is in this chapter that we're kind of breaking down, starting um right here in verse 22, where Jesus talks about being the bread of life.

And so uh you wrote the Devo for us this week.

Again, just kind of walk us through what's happening here in this passage, and we'll kind of break it down for everybody watching today.

Yeah, absolutely.

And and thanks for everyone who's watching and joining us, whether it's your small group, whether you're doing this as your own personal devotional and personal edification.

Uh so glad you're joining us.

And actually, I'm gonna take this just like I would be doing my own personal devotion.

Yeah.

So I'm going away from my academic side today.

Cool.

And hopefully tap a little bit more into my relational side and just let the word speak to me.

Yeah.

Um, and so hopefully that can be a part of your impact and how you do it as well.

Too.

Uh so as we've studied in the past before, you know, Jesus feeds the 5,000.

Uh he crosses the Sea of Galilee, heads over to the other side.

Uh, where the crowd follows him, um, they want more bread.

And this is the point where Jesus gets into this disposition, right?

That the big buildup, you know, that that miracle is just preceding something even bigger.

Yeah.

Uh where he's presenting himself as a bread of life.

And so that's what he's doing in this passage here.

Sure.

Uh he's pre he's pronouncing to the people, you know, you thought you had an appetite for your physical needs.

You got appetite for your spiritual needs.

Yeah.

And what you need is not actual bread, what you need is spiritual bread.

And I'm that bread that can truly quench that appetite.

Right.

The only bread that can satisfy that innermost needs, that need for salvation.

And so he's revealing that himself to them in that capacity.

And then we see some challenges from that.

Uh, and and I don't know when we'll get to that point, but I do want to focus in on that, the challenges that people question whether or not he truly is that bread.

And he goes on to give this wonderful discourse about he's he's that bread and only he is that bread.

And by the way, he's the only one that there that's seen the father and has been with the father, uh, because he is truly the bread of life.

Um, and just such a profound and powerful statement that he gives there.

And so that's what this is, it's that tension between the audience who wants this physical bread and not the spiritual bread, and Jesus explaining to them and sharing with him that he's the spiritual bread of life that can satisfy their needs and just the disbelief of the audience in that moment, and if not disbelief, then the inability to recognize their need for something beyond their physical need in that moment.

Yeah.

Wow, so so cool.

So, and reading some through this passage and then like kind of prepping for the devo, and even just like in your own personal study, what are some of the things for you that you have taken away personally from your time in this passage, or maybe even some things that you really want people who are studying this to grasp uh while they're studying this themselves?

Absolutely.

So jokingly, I say I I think this is the biblical justification for carbohydrates.

Um, carbs, baby.

Some people do the carnivore diet.

Yeah.

I want to do the carbivore diet.

Oh, yeah.

If Jesus is the bread and breads are carbohydrates, put me on that carbivore diet.

Yeah, man.

I'm all about consuming those carbs.

Uh so you know, is Jesus saying he's carbs?

Is that what he's saying?

And are carbs therefore glorious and wonderful and divine and heavenly and from above?

It's not good for your body, but it's good for it's good for the soul, right?

It's great, and that's what he's saying.

I'm great for the soul.

Great for the soul.

Oh, yeah.

Um, I think it'd be a fetch to go that direction, uh, although I'm gonna play around with it and linger there.

And next time I have a donut, I'll probably come back to this passage and think it's the bread of the bread of life, maybe it's the bread of life.

Just makes life better.

Uh, but but I think it really causes you to question and causes me to question, you know, which bread do I seek?

You know, I you go to the grocery store, there's all sorts of breads offer.

You can get rye bread, you can get wheat bread, you can get bread with the nuts in there, you can get bread with sesame seeds on it, uh, wonder bread, you know, you name the bread, uh, all these flavors and you know, all these companies that make them.

And it's like, what bread do I want?

Um, and I think it's like I I sit here, you know, if you think about the grocery shelf of life, it's like I got so many options to feed my to shove my mouth with.

Yeah.

So many things I can shove into my soul, uh, so many things I can shove into the sacred spaces of my mind and just allow it to be consumed by it.

What's gonna be the bread that I pick?

Yeah, you know, and I think they're they're forced with that here.

You know, even though there is a physical need here as well, too, because we know this is happening during those high holy days, and and so they're traveling, and so there really is a need for food at the same time.

Yeah, you know, they're looking at the shelf and like, man, what's the bread that matters most?

And Jesus is sitting there like, it's me.

Like come and feast, like it's me.

Right.

Uh so I think that's what it really challenges me on is what bread am I gonna pick?

You know, what bread am I gonna pick?

And you can say it's so easy to say, how can you not pick Jesus?

Right.

Um until you find yourself like at a low point, or you find yourself, you know, you're traveling there for a high holy day to go and celebrate something and not realize that something's right in front of you.

Yeah, you know, they're celebrating the the lamb's blood being put over the doorpost, let alone the Lamb of God standing right in front of you, and they're just sitting there blind to recognize, man, that's that's the carbs.

Yeah, that's the carbs I need.

That's the good carbs.

Yeah.

And man, like I feel like it's so true for for all of us when we when we're going through difficult times to forget to trust Jesus.

Not I mean, sometimes it might be like a like an actual um conscious decision to just say, I'm not gonna trust you with this, Jesus.

Like, I don't need you to take care of me in this.

I I've got it.

Some of us might experience that and probably will at some point in our walk with Jesus.

But I find at least for me, and what I think I see with most people is they just forget, you know, they forget that Jesus has got it.

You know, they forget that okay, even though I'm in the midst of this really difficult time, this financial situation, this relational situation, this work situation, anything really.

Oh, all I need is all I need is Jesus, and he's gonna give me what I need.

Yeah, you know.

Um and he's he's trying to get this point across to them here.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and I like to say they're trying to define a spiritual truth and a spiritual reality based off of their perception of what's going on in the physical realm.

Yeah.

And I know that because you know, you you look at verse 42 here, um, after he says, he literally says in verse 41 41, I am the bread that came down from heaven, uh, which is a powerful statement.

Like, you know, someone just showed up and said, Man, I'm from heaven.

Like this guy's, you know, a little bit flew off the cuckoo's nest.

Yeah, and he's referencing Moses here.

And it goes on and saying in verse 42, um, they, the crowd, says, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we knew?

Like, who's he saying he's come from heaven?

I love that little play on words calling him the you know the son of Joseph.

Yeah.

Uh, because it has that dual meaning.

Like, one, either he's the son of a man, or two, we have no clue who his father is.

Right.

It goes one way or the other, because he was born in the very uh uncertain circumstance, we'll say it like that, where they didn't know who who impregnated Mary.

Um, and so I I like that because they're trying to define a spiritual truth based off of their perception of what happened or what is occurring in the physical world.

Yeah.

And I think we do that a lot.

You know, we we look around here in this world and use that to try and define truth to who God is.

Right.

Whereas it's the other way around, right?

We should be lying with the word of God, we should be lying on God to dictate how we analyze and be what's going on here.

Yeah.

So we have to ask ourselves what's truly shaping our perception and is that misperception uh then causing us to go to bread other than Christ.

Yeah, yeah.

We do that so much, man.

I also think it's interesting that like John doesn't uh share the Christmas story in the beginning of this gospel, but we kind of see here that like we don't really need that account uh because because the purpose of John's gospel is to to communicate that Jesus is God, you know, and so he's saying it right here.

He's like he's saying, I I am from heaven, you know, I have come directly from God, I am God.

And they're like, But didn't you like aren't you Joseph's kid?

Like the without having that full account, like John is pointing to that story of like uh and Jesus is can basically confirming it with his words of like I I came miraculously, you know, I am like Joseph may have raised me, you know, in my as a boy, but like I am the son of God, I've I've come directly from heaven.

It's it's so cool just like seeing things like this, where again the book of John does not have that story, but we could easily cross cross-reference that over, you know, to see like there's a connection here that even without that story, we can see instances where Jesus, Jesus' um immaculate conception, you know, is is is uh proven in other texts.

It's it's it's really, really cool.

So yeah, I think it I think it you're hit in the nail on the head, it's so easy for us to pick other bread than Jesus.

It's so easy for us to go to to other sources of life that we think are going to satisfy.

But the but the reality is all those other sources of life are actually sources of death.

Yeah, you know, and that's how we got in this mess in the first place.

And I love it, you know, Jesus is a bread that never expires.

He doesn't go sour, he doesn't go rotten, it doesn't get moldy.

You know, like at verse 49 where it says, Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness.

That manna was good for one day.

You know, the next day it became extraordinarily just uh nasty, gross, uh, to use regular language.

Yeah.

Um, and then we think of the Lord's Prayer, right?

Uh, our Father art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in seven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Yeah.

Uh so that daily bread that we get, and God's always a fresh bread.

You know, He doesn't rot, He doesn't go mold.

Uh it's something that's new and fresh every single day.

His mercies are new every morning.

That's fresh bread for us every single morning.

Right.

Uh so it's not a bread that goes bad.

I say that because for this audience, you think of even that bread that they would have gotten um that day that Jesus performed that miracle, um, that bread already would have been rotten by this point.

Sure.

Because it's not natural preservatives back then.

Right.

Um, and so they're looking for fresh bread.

Right.

That's what they're looking for.

Yeah.

We need some fresh bread.

All that leftovers that you stuffed into there at this point in time, it's probably not fresh anymore, God.

Jesus.

Well, we need is some fresh bread.

Right.

And I reminded, man, he's that fresh bread, that mana from heaven.

Every single day it's fresh and it's new.

Yeah.

Ooh, this is this is another thing that that comes.

You you were talking, and it made me think of this.

Um they're showing up asking for fresh bread, they're asking for him to provide for them again, but they're forgetting what he had already done.

How often do we feel like we need fresh, like the fresh bread in the sense of show up in Jesus, show up in my life right now, give me what I want instead of Jesus, I remember how good you are, regardless of what's going on.

You know, like just having him, just beginning to be in relationship with him is better than anything that he can provide for us in this world.

It's better than any any relation, uh other relationship, it's better than any amount of money, it's better than any amount of God showing up in the midst of an emergency, it's better than your health.

It's like all these things that we're asking God to show up in miraculously com pales in comparison to just being in right relationship with him and recognizing that he sees us and that he loves us.

Um and he will show up, like like he does he does show up and and provide for us and protect us in all those ways.

But the the reality is we just like I think we stop being thankful for Jesus sometimes because we just either forget or we want him to make our circumstances better rather than make our eternity better.

You know, or even if we do put it in, you know, you can even talk about now, you know, the the spiritual spectrum of maturity.

Um perhaps that bread that you're trying to eat is too mature for you.

And you gotta eat something more mature because your palate's more refined now.

Right.

Yeah.

You can even bring in that conversation as well, too.

It's something that just clicked into my head right now.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, a lot a lot of a lot of fun insights that you get out of this passage right here.

And there's so many like theological statements that he makes here and things we could pull apart.

Um that this is a very rich passage.

It's also very it's probably one of the more longer stints of scripture or longer passages.

He got long-winded here for sure.

That we're gonna study in this in this study, but it's it's good stuff, man.

Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today.

And guys, thank you so much for watching.

We're praying for you.

Hopefully, you enjoy this time.

Uh, digging into John chapter six here.

If you have any questions uh just about how to go about reading your Bible, or if you need any encouragement at all, we're always here for you.

You can leave a comment down below or reach out to us at here at the church.

Gotta carve up.

Oh, yeah.

Getting your word.

Andrew, thanks so much for wanting us today, man.

Thank you.