The Sun’s diameter is 865,000 miles.
That’s almost four times the distance from the earth to the moon.
These numbers defy my imagination.
I’ve stood before the Grand Canyon, tall mountains, and the seemingly endless ocean and my senses are overwhelmed by the scope of our tiny planet.
But how can we comprehend this kind of vastness that is our sun?
But then, the largest known star would hold five billion of our suns.
Its diameter is 1.5 billion miles…it would swallow a lot of our entire solar system.
Yet, these are just kindergarten numbers when we are talking about the galaxy with billions of solar systems, or the Universe with trillions of galaxies.
It is helpful to start your day with thoughts like this.
David did.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
Ps 8
David didn’t have access to our cosmological data…imagine if he did.
When HE considered the heavens…he found it hard to believe that God would even notice him.
Of course, many look at the handiwork of God in the cosmos and see only stuff…a vast scope of stuff…but still stuff…just matter in various forms.
Then they look around them on the planet and they see only stuff.
Stars are made of stuff…the ground is made of stuff…I am made of stuff…I will die, and all the stuff of my life will end.
Friday, I looked at the physical remains of a beloved mom and grandmother laying in a wooden box.
As I spoke of her life, her family cried…but why…was she was only stuff?
Had electrical currents in a brain made of physical stuff stopped firing…and that’s that?
Some think so…but they don’t live consistently that way, because they can’t
Because it is not true.
Some become cynics and believe that nothing matters.
Some just become addicted to stuff…since that is really all there is…and they live for stuff.
The stuff they can buy, the things they can do with their physical bodies made of stuff.
But when we look at stuff…stars or grandmas…we see God’s handiwork.
We know it is more than stuff…matter in various forms.
When we look at God’s handiwork in creation…we are overwhelmed…by his greatness and our corresponding smallness.
We should be far less impressed with ourselves than we are.
We should be far less impressed with every other human, than we often are.
Not in a way that is dismissive of them, God values them…but in a way that seeks to bless not to impress or be to be impressed.
We should be far more impressed with the glory of God…and not just his glory revealed in the stuff he has made…but in his glory revealed in what he has done to redeem us in Christ.
Today we are in John 6…we will read select verses as we work our way through part of this long chapter.
After this, Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee 2 A huge crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was performing by healing the sick. 3 Jesus went up a mountain and sat down there with his disciples.
It’s not unreasonable that they were following him after seeing what he had done…who wouldn’t?
It was amazing.
But John adds “because” as an important qualifier.
They were following him, Because, of the signs.
That is a distinction with a very real difference.
It’s not “They saw the sign, and so they followed him because they understood what the sign signified.”
They didn’t…this missed the point of the sign.
4 Now the Passover, a Jewish festival, was nearby.
This is another bread crumb from John to guide our journey.
This reference to the Passover was not a time marker in the narrative it is a theological marker.
The Jewish Passover celebrated the exodus from Egypt.
Essential to that celebration was the sacrifice of a lamb for each household, the family then ate the lamb…whose blood had “saved” them from death.
The exodus took them from bondage to Egypt, through the red sea and God provided food and water in the desert on their long journey.
This Passover is near, John writes, and Jesus is about to miraculously feed a large crowd
That feeding is followed by Jesus’ bread of life sermon, where Jesus identifies himself as the bread that must “eaten” if people are to have eternal life.
This sermon will prove to be controversial and confusing for people… mostly because like Nick, the woman the well, the disciples, and pretty much everyone so far in John…they will miss the eternal and spiritual point because of their overly temporal and physical focus.
In John 6:5-13 Jesus feeds 5,000 men, the total number of people probably exceeded 20,000 people…if you include women and children.
It was spectacular miracle…bread and fish continued to materialize until all were fed and there were abundant leftovers.
Jesus was again fulfilling the kingdom promises of the OT where God’s people would experience God’s abundance.
This was a sign…pointing to a greater reality than a single meal.
This is not to say a meal is unimportant…hunger is a very important human condition.
And to live with hunger is a terrible thing…and many do.
So, the Lord was concerned with their physical hunger…but he did not come to make lunch.
He came to give his life so we would have eternal life.
Ministries that provide food for the hungry are God honoring as they show tangible love to people.
But if you believe the gospel, you cannot ever believe that giving food is enough…or housing, or counseling, or jobs.
We show tangible love to people because God is honored when we do…but we must share the gospel with people because that is the greatest need of every human.
The people saw greatness in Jesus in this sign, but their conclusion regarding the point of the sign was misguided…verse 14, 15.
14 When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This truly is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 Therefore, when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
They reasoned that since Moses had led the people out of slavery to Egypt…and in their minds, HE had provided food in the wilderness.
Then surely this new, great prophet, this new Moses…who had provided food in the wilderness for them…would help them escape their bondage to Rome.
Jesus knew they had misunderstood his purpose…so he left the huge crowd and slipped away by himself.
If you wonder how he did that, just think about 20,000 people in a large open space…it wouldn’t be that hard.
The next part of the narrative is yet another sign.
With Jesus off by himself, night approaching, his disciples traveled by boat across the lake of Galilee.
They were a few miles out on to the lake when a sudden and violent storm hit, and Jesus came to them walking on the lake.
They were, of course, afraid…Mark’s gospel tells us they thought they were seeing a ghost.
Jesus said, “It is I” and they took him onboard…and immediately they were on the other side of the lake…safe and sound.
Some have, strangely, struggled with believing that Jesus could walk on water…they have tried to explain it away.
If he can turn water into wine, heal the lame, feed thousands by creating food, how could walking on water be such a stretch for people.
It is interesting to contemplate how this happened in terms of the actual physics of our world…did he change the water molecules, suspend gravity…or something entirely different?
If you had a slow-motion video of his feet…were they wet…like walking in a puddle or dry like walking on road?
“Terry, Who cares?”
I do…because it happened
These details don’t matter as to John’s primary point, but it should matter in terms of how we think about this story.
We should not be distracted by curiosity over the details and miss the main point.
On the other hand, we should also not lack the curiosity that helps us remember this is real history.
So, we have John’s theological marker…”Near the Passover”…the historical event where God freed the people from slavery in Egypt.
We have Jesus providing food in the wilderness, Jesus rescuing his people through the water…like the Red Sea crossing in Exodus.
No one was putting all this together as it happened…John is putting it together for us in his gospel.
He is saying, “Pay attention to how God has put all this together in Jesus.”
The next day, the crowds came looking for Jesus.
“Rabbi, when did you get here?” They asked.
They were really asking, “How did you get here?”
He could have told them…”I walked across the Lake”…and they would have been even more impressed…but again, impressed with the wrong things.
Miracles by themselves can be terrible distractions from what matters the most.
In fact, focus on miracles can be toxic to actual faith in Jesus.
We have seen this over and over already this gospel.
John Wimber was a nationally recognized musician who came to Christ at the age of 29 during the Jesus revolution of the 1960’s.
He became a proponent of signs and wonders(miracles) as the key to effective evangelism.
He wrote a book, I read years ago…Power Evangelism…that promoted this view.
He became an internationally known speaker and helped plant many churches.
As best I can tell he was an authentic, credible follower of Christ…but his emphasis on the miraculous…borne from a sincere desire to see God glorified…backfired in some ways.
A number of pastors he trained and sent out had moral failures.
The biblical evidence of a God-called pastor is primarily growing in Christlike character not showy charisma.
By his own admission he failed to take care of his physical health and experienced major heart issues and other illnesses…he had an imbalanced approach the spiritual and physical realities.
He was diagnosed with cancer in 1993 and struggled with depression as a result of battling the disease.
He died after a brain hemorrhage in 1997.
I met him in 1984.
I won’t belabor the point…but I was in a meeting he led with probably 1000 people, and I was probably the lone skeptic there.
What happened in the meeting included me, largely unwillingly, being led by the Spirit to stage.
There was clearly a demonstration of God’s miraculous power in the lives of many in the room.
It was unusual, and unexplainable in merely natural ways.
But the application for my life from that event was…don’t chase miracles…pursue faith and faithfulness.
Wimber, saw many healed in his lifetime, including some that night I was a part of…but he himself suffered and died without a physical healing.
This was puzzling to him and to others.
Signs point to something greater than themselves…if we chase the signs we do so at our own peril.
I don’t think Wimber did this, intentionally…but some who followed him did.
This same misguided approach goes all the way back to the earthly ministry of Jesus.
Jesus says, you are looking for me not because you saw the signs but because you had your physical desires met.
26 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you; you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
In other words, you missed what the signs signified.
27 Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal of approval on him.”
28 “What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked.
At first this sounds like they are getting…but they are not.
We will find out that they are asking… “What work can I do to get what I really want out of God?”
More food, more power, freedom from Rome!
Jesus wants them to see that the signs point to him and to their greatest need.
“You need to want what you should want…to understand your real need.”
“you need salvation, and I alone can give that.”
29 Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the one he has sent.”
What God requires is for us to place our trust in his provision…Jesus…to transfer our trust from self to him.
The miracle of the feeding of the thousands, the healings, the rescue from the storm…and even the OT Exodus…all of it was designed to point us towards putting our confidence in the provision of God–in the person of Jesus.
Our “work” is to believe Jesus is the Savior of the world…who has paid the penalty for our sins.
Again, these dull minded people…refused to be rescued from their mental ditch onto the road Jesus was trying to pave for them.
30 “What sign, then, are you going to do so that we may see and believe you?” they asked. “What are you going to perform? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”,
Do you see the hubris?
“If you want us to believe in you…you better do something bigger than Moses.”
“You gave us bread in the wilderness…big deal, Moses did that…what else you got?”
“First of all,” Jesus replies, “Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven…God did.”
” Second and more importantly, I am the bread of God. ”
32 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you; Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Does this sound familiar?
Remember the woman at the well, “Sir, give me this water…so I don’t have to keep making this trip.”
Like her, they miss the point. Jesus is the point.
What comes next is, again, confusing to them…and to many since then.
35 “I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them.
What follows is mostly an exposition of that single statement.
They said, “Give us this bread always” or “from now on”
Jesus responds with.
“No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
This doesn’t mean we don’t need to continually depend on Jesus it means that the core problem, the emptiness, our lostness, has been permanently met when we follow Jesus.
This is the first of seven “I am’s” in John.
I am the bread of life…the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and truth and life, the true vine.
All these are metaphorical descriptions of the reality of who Jesus is.
Jesus said…I am the bread of life.
36 But as I told you, you’ve seen me, and yet you do not believe.
They are curious about Jesus, they have been fed by him, and they have political hopes in him…but they have not come to the place of saving faith in him.
Now, let’s look at verse 37 and 47 placed side by side.
37 Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.
47 “Truly I tell you, anyone who believes has eternal life.
*God is 100 percent sovereign, and we are 100 percent responsible to choose.
*John is not bothered by this tension…neither should we be.
The technical term for this is “compatibilism”…human freedom is compatible with divine sovereignty…and vise versa.
Charles Spurgeon famously replied when asked how he reconciled these two truths, “I never reconcile friends.”
God’s sovereignty and our responsibility…are in fact friends in scripture.
If you like to get into the theological weeds on this that’s fine…just don’t think you will be able to understand more of it than you actually can.
There will always be mystery in it.
And by all means, if you do gain some understanding of how this works together…you should become humbler through that understanding.
Because to truly grow in understanding the sovereignty of God will, if nothing else, lead to great humility.
The trend of people believing they have great insight into God’s sovereignty and becoming arrogant and combative…is both tragic and ridiculous.
If you are arrogant about your theological knowledge…then I can assure you, you do not have good biblical theology.
On the other hand, If you have little interest in getting into the theological weeds…that’s also fine.
If you are content to know that God is sovereign, and you are responsible to choose, and the two facts are friends not foes…you will be just fine.
Rely fully on God…trust alone Jesus to save and keep you.
Make the decision to believe in Jesus…choose to follow him and keep following him.
If you do those things…You are good to go.
No deeper insight or greater information is needed.
In verses 41-47 As Jesus continues to make it clear who he is, the leaders continue to oppose him.
“How can he say he is the bread of heaven; we know his mom and dad…”
Here again, their focus on only physical realities blinds them to greater spiritual ones.
Yes, Jesus is the biological son of Mary, and his Joseph was his dad AND yes, Jesus is the bread of life that came down from heaven…he is both.
He is God incarnate…that’s how John started this gospel.
I’ll finish our passage for today, reading verses 48-58
48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, 55 because my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the manna your ancestors ate—and they died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
Clearly Jesus is not proposing cannibalism…they knew this.
That were dull, but not that dull…they understood a figure of speech.
They didn’t, however, know what he did mean by all this.
Jesus repeats again and again, “I am the bread of life.”
He is what the Exodus provision of Manna, bread from heaven pointed forward to.
They ate that bread…it was real food, but they still died…it was just physical food.
Jesus is the living bread from heaven and if anyone eats it (believes in him) they will live forever.
He is the “real” food…he is a real man, who will die on a real cross, and raise from the dead in a real resurrected body.
People who put their faith…their confidence in Jesus will experience real, eternal life.
There are some who believe Jesus is talking about what we call “The Lord’s Supper” or “Communion”
Some call it the Eucharist, or a Sacrament.
Jesus is not talking about gaining eternal life through the eating and drinking of physical elements.
He is talking about faith in him alone in him to experience eternal life.
So, John 6 is not about the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Supper is about what is described in John 6.
Carson, D. A.. The Gospel according to John (The Pillar New Testament Commentary (PNTC)) (p. 280). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
When we take Communion we remember and celebrate the provision of God in Jesus Christ.
We are not saved, we receive no grace in the act of remembering…we are saved by believing in Jesus, God’s provision for our salvation.
What we do in communion is tune our hearts, minds, bodies…to be more grateful, to be amazed and impressed by the goodness of God.
Our application today is worship.
Our application today is gratitude and amazement.
The outcome of worship and gratitude and amazement in our lives is humility, and patience and love towards one another.
So, we began with amazement with massive stars in the masterpiece of God’s handiwork in the cosmos.
We end with amazement at God’s work to redeem us in Christ Jesus.
So, if you believe in Christ as Lord and savior.
You have transfered trust from self to him.
This will show up in your beliefs and behaviors…it will change how you live your life.
It will show up in your relationships…it will change how you relate to others.
So, as we take communion…you will have time to:
-Repent of sins towards God.
Say “yes” to him…and no to sin…or do not take communion.
Repent of sins towards others.
Make things right with them…or do not take communion.