What is the True Bread From Heaven?

Tom:

Dave, I hope our listeners understand—we talk about a lot of different subjects, but I certainly don’t want to get away from the main part of our program.  I don’t even want to use the word, program.  The main part of what we do, which is encouraging people with regard to the gospel of Jesus Christ, with regard to salvation.  We start off saying if we want to know how to please God, we have to get to know him, and we only do that by accepting the gospel, which is our only hope for salvation.

Dave:

Jesus said, “No man cometh to the Father but by me.”  This gospel John is fantastic, all about our Lord Jesus Christ.

Tom:

We are presently in John chapter 6, and we are picking up with verse 28.  Then said they unto him, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?”  “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”  Wow! They were looking for something to do, Dave.

Dave:

That was Jesus, I mean, the way he speaks as no man ever spoke.  He is God.  What can we do that we might work the works of God?  God doesn’t need you to do any work for him and there is no work that you can do to gain acceptance with God.  And, Jesus said, “This is the work of God.”  You want to know the work of God?  He’s going to work in your hearts to cause you to believe on him whom he hath sent.  They don’t get it.  Maybe, kind of, when he says, “Believe on him whom he hath sent.”  But he has not talked to them about the Father now, but God and well, you’re a man sent by God, okay, you are a prophet.  And then, they are very hungry, Tom, they are getting hungrier by the minute, they haven’t had lunch yet, and they want him to feed them again.  So, verse 30, “They said therefore unto him, what sign showest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? What dost thou work?”  They want another miracle now.  They want some more bread to be produced.  Well, they have already had enough signs, more than enough signs, the healings, and how he has fed them and so forth.

Tom:

Hey Dave, can I back you up to verse 28, because that verse really hits me.  “Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?”  That’s the problem with every religion outside of biblical Christianity.  Everybody believes, for the most part, unless they just don’t believe in anything, that there is something they have to do, and you just said there isn’t anything they could do.  Explain that.

Dave:

Does God need me?

Tom:

I don’t think so, well, come on, I don’t think so,—I know he doesn’t.

Dave:

That’s why God says to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? What do you know?”  God doesn’t need us.  Well then, can we help him?  No.  Can we appease him?  I mean, if we do good deeds will he be impressed? Will he mark that up to our favor and will that cancel out some of our sins?  Tom, we are such pitiful creatures, we’re nothing.  What do we have to offer God?  Well, David raised that question in the Psalms.  He said, “What shall I render unto the Lord for his benefit?”  He said, “I will take the cup of salvation that he offers me and I will drink it, I will accept it.”  So, we can’t work the works of God, only God can work the works of God and he doesn’t need us, he doesn’t need our help.  However, he loves to use us and the more we realize how unworthy and how helpless we are that God doesn’t need us, then the more we can accept what he will give us and what he would do through us.  Now they think that there’s—they are not qualified to work the works of God.

Tom:

Well, do you think they recognize they’ve got their problem of sin, at this point?

Dave:

I don’t think so.

Tom:

Okay.  Because that’s another answer to a question like this.  Many people think well, what can I do to be reconciled to God? What works can I do?

Dave:

Well, they are not even wanting to be reconciled, it looks like.  They just want to kind of help God out.  What does God want to do on this earth?  Well, we’ll do it for him, what should we do? Tell us.  You claim to come from God, now what does God want us to do for him?  And Jesus again, going back to verse 29, “This is the work of God, that you believe.”  He’s going to work in your hearts to reveal the Son, to reveal the Messiah to you and you will have your choice.  And that’s what all the rest of this chapter is all about, whether they will accept him or not.  Now they are asking him for a sign in verse 30, and they give him a little hint, the kind of a sign they want.  They say, “Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”  Now, come on, lets have a little more of that bread, it was really delicious, you gave us the other day.

Tom:

Fish, as well.

Dave:

Right.  He gave them bread from heaven to eat.  Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven”; They didn’t see God behind Moses, they were following Moses.  Moses had said that God will raise up a prophet like unto me and so forth, well, in fact, greater than me.  But they were the disciples of Moses, they looked to Moses and Jesus is saying, “It wasn’t Moses that gave you this.  My Father gave you this bread.”  But, he is turning them from the manna, you know, everything in the Old Testament was a picture of a spiritual reality.

Tom:

Right, we call it types.

Dave:

Right.  And so Jesus is turning them from the manna, physical food, and that’s important because in this chapter the Roman Catholic Church is going to try to make everything physical and they are going to say we take it literally and you don’t.  Well, of course, we don’t take it literally when Jesus said, “I am the true vine and you’re the branches,” when Jesus said, “I am the shepherd and you’re the sheep,” when Jesus said, “I am the door” and nobody thinks he meant a physical door, “I am the light of the world,” what he said to the woman at the well two chapters earlier, “The water that I give you will be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life.  You drink of the water that I give you, you will never thirst again.”  He wasn’t talking about physical water but the Catholic Church said, oh, but we take it physically now, when we get to it, when Jesus says, “Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood.” Well, we take it physically and our priests have the power to turn that wafer into the body and blood of Jesus and you just take it as a symbol.  Well, right at the very beginning they are talking about bread and they are talking about manna, physical bread, to satisfy the hunger in their stomachs.  Jesus said, “My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world.”  He’s talking about himself, the true bread. Jesus isn’t literally a loaf of bread, or however the loaves were shaped in that day.  Jesus isn’t literally manna lying on the ground.  Jesus is talking about something beyond that, spiritual food, as we have often quoted, “man shall not live by bread,” that is, physical bread, alone “but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  We have the old hymn that says:  “Break thou the bread of life dear Lord to me, as thou didst break the loaves beside the sea,” and so forth.  It’s speaking of the spiritual food of God’s Word and God’s Word speaks of Christ who is the living Word.  And so he says, “The true bread is the bread of God, as he was coming down from heaven and giveth life unto the world.”  This is not physical life, this is spiritual life.  They don’t get it.  Verse 34, “Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.”  They are going to take him and make him their king by force.  You can just pull bread out of thin air, this is fantastic, give it to us, keep giving it to us every day!  Tom, they missed the whole thing, he’s not talking about physical bread, but sadly, and we don’t have time to get into it—you’re telling me our time is gone.  But the Catholic Church, tragically has emphasized the physical side.  They want that wafer in their stomach, which they say is Jesus, this is literally the flesh and blood of Jesus and you’ve got to have the physical eating of him.  It’s evident—we haven’t even gotten to that part of this chapter—it is evident from the very beginning that that is not what he is talking about.  He is talking about spiritual life—well, I’m sorry; I jumped in ahead of it, Tom.

Tom:

We’re going to pick up with it next week because this is an important thing.  Understanding the scriptures, understanding what Jesus was saying, that’s our encouragement to all of our listeners.  I’m encouraging myself—I want to understand what God is saying, what he is laying out that I might walk in faith, walk in obedience and please him in all these things and we want to encourage everybody out there who is listening to do the same.

Dave:

Amen.