More than a Meal (John 6:35-50)
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jeremy_1_06-20-2025_131919: [00:00:00] There are some foods that have a deceptive serving size.
Like when you were eating Oreos, do you notice how many Oreos is a serving? It's actually only three. Not a whole row of the Oreos, as you might imagine, or peanut butter is two tablespoons, which equals about one smallish looking spoonful of peanut butter.
Way less than any of us would ever use, even just to make a sandwich. Here's my favorite one. You know when you get a ramen pack, you know that pack is actually two servings of ramen. You're only supposed to eat half of that brick of noodles that you get. I mean, that's just an absurd serving size.
Now, with most of these, we would say that's not enough, like those serving sizes are too small, and we have a similar problem happening in the story we're gonna look at today.
Now, let's recap a few things we've seen so [00:01:00] far in John chapter six that lead us to today's passage. Jesus has fed thousands of people with a kid's lunch, and as you would imagine, that's got a lot of people talking, and then those people have started following Jesus Now.
To get fed again, and Jesus is trying to move them beyond just the immediate need that he met for them into something bigger. He's trying to turn that conversation into a bigger conversation, and that's where it's not necessarily going well. Now in today's passage, we're gonna see Jesus use a food analogy, which is because they're all thinking about food.
That's why he's gonna use a food analogy. That's why they're coming to him. And if you read all of these passages together, the weeks we've been in, the weeks where we're gonna see the next couple weeks, you'll see that each of these is Jesus getting more and more intense because people are ramping up what they're bringing to him and they're not listening to him.
So he's just slowly. [00:02:00] Saying it a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger each and every time. Now, the passage we're gonna look at next week, he's gonna go further than most people can handle, and that's gonna create a whole fallout. But we're not there yet. We're just gonna see Jesus build this up from where he's been as he's trying to help people see something that they don't seem able to see yet.
So this is John chapter six, beginning in verse 35. Jesus replied, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But you haven't believed in me. Even though you have seen me. I. However, those who the father has given me will come to me and I will never reject them.
For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me not to do my own will, and this is the will of God that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them [00:03:00] up on the last day for it's my father's will that all who see his son and believe in him should have eternal life.
I will raise them up. At the last day. Now, have you ever snacked on something only to realize that you were hungrier than you thought? Like maybe you had a few potato chips and that led to a bag, or you started off with a a few spoonfuls of ice cream that led to the whole tub of ice cream? For me, it's cheese.
If I just do a little bit of cheese, I suddenly remember how much I love eating cheese. And all I wanna do is eat more cheese.
64 slices of American cheese 64 63 ha two.
Have you been up all night eating [00:04:00] cheese? I think I'm blind.
Right? Uh, evidently, Jesus's miracle was a little bit like that. He fed them, he met a need for them, but it just showed them, oh my goodness, we want more of this. We need more of this.
Except all they want is food. They're not coming to Jesus for anything else other than to get their immediate need met. Now, one of the questions this should ask you and I, as we reflect on a story like this. Is, is Jesus enough? Is Jesus enough for us? So what we often do is we add things to Jesus because Jesus by himself isn't enough, and so it's Jesus plus something else could be Jesus plus my next meal, or Jesus, plus a sense of certainty in what I believe or Jesus plus the blessings of God in my life.
How [00:05:00] about this? Jesus plus heaven for me and hell for all of the bad people. So we often add things. It's gotta be Jesus plus this other thing and then I'm okay. But anything you add to Jesus detracts from your experience with Jesus. Anything you add thinking this is gonna enhance, this is gonna be better actually will end up detracting from what you would experience.
With Jesus. Now we keep reading in verse 41. Then the people began to murmur in disagreement. You can almost just hear that because he had said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, isn't this Jesus the son of Joseph? We know his father and his mother. How can he say, I cave down from heaven?
Notice how quickly things have changed. The tone has changed. Familiarity breeds [00:06:00] contempt, as it is often said, and we see often what's happening in Christianity today, that there are so many bad versions of Christianity that if you tell someone you're a Christian, they're almost immediately turned off by that because the examples that they have seen are probably not good.
They probably don't actually look like Jesus. The authors, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay have said it like this. In North America, people don't have any sense of the true Christian message anymore because the face of that message looks so unlike the founder, Christianity is now almost impossible to explain.
Not because the concepts aren't intelligible, but because the living, moving, speaking examples of our faith don't line up with the message. I resonate so deeply with that line, Christianity is now almost impossible to explain. And then [00:07:00] we wonder why people don't want to have anything to do with us. So now people are looking at Jesus and they're going, Hey, I don't know if you're gonna give us what we thought.
Verse 43, Jesus replied, stop complaining about what I said for no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them to me and at the last day, I will raise them up. As is written in the scriptures, they will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has ever seen the Father. Only I who was sent from God have seen him. I tell you the truth. Anyone who believes has eternal life and yes, I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, but they all died. And anyone who eats the bread from heaven however, will never die.
Jesus just keeps teasing out this image of himself as the bread of life. Now, there's parallels being made here to Moses feeding the [00:08:00] Israelites manna in the wilderness, and that's being referenced here. And ironically, the way that people eventually treated Moses. Is how the people are treating Jesus here.
So you see a lot of overlap with that story. God provided manna from heaven for the Israelites. They eventually grumbled about it. And now Jesus saying, I am the ultimate bread of life from heaven. And you're seeing people grumble about it as well. By way of comparison, here's a verse we find in the ancient Israelite story in Exodus 17, three.
But tormented by thirst, they continue to argue with Moses, why did you bring us out of Egypt? Are you trying to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst? See, that's the problem. If all you follow Jesus for is what you get out of it, it'll never be enough until you learn to see the value is in [00:09:00] Jesus.
The person of Jesus is where we get the value, not in the things that that leads us to, and we can only experience Jesus on his terms. Not in the way that we want to do it, not in the way we wanna repackage him only on his terms. And this has been a struggle all throughout history as people have tried to follow God and they've realized, Hey, we want to add things to this.
We wanna modify this. This is why we create things like Christian nationalism, because it just doesn't seem enough to have Jesus. Unless we also get all these other things thrown in and we go, yeah, then it makes sense, but Jesus is better than that. But is Jesus enough for us? Anything you add to Jesus eventually detracts from your experience with him.
I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith.