Sandwiches or Salvation?

If you have been in church for any length of time you know the story of Jesus and His feeding of the 5,000. You have probably heard many sermons on that event as recorded in all four of the Gospels. I am sure that you have heard messages on Jesus’ walk across the Sea of Galilee that night. But did you know that that was all set up by Jesus to create an opportunity to communicate a message of life and death importance to the people of Israel and that once Jesus preached that message to them, the Bible tell us that many of His disciples walked away and ceased to follow Him?

John 6:66 From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

The miracles are truly amazing! However the message is the important part. The miracles are just there to authenticate the message and even as Christians, we can get lost in the wonders and miss the Word that they are signifying. In this text Jesus is portrayed as the “Prophet” that Moses foretold who would come from among the nation of Israel and who would speak the Words of God to the People ( Deuteronomy 18:15 ). Like Moses who announced bread from heaven, Jesus fed the people in the wilderness with miraculous bread from a boy’s lunch. Like Moses who parted the Red Sea for the Israelites to walk across, Jesus walked across the water to Capernaum. Jesus did this in order that the people might listen to His teaching, but in their hard hearts and political mindedness they failed to see Jesus for who He was.

Once Jesus had done these miracles the Jews followed Him across the sea to get more bread. We see also in the text that they would have made Him their King after He fed them but Jesus went away up into the mountain to avoid them. Now that they found Him Jesus actually rebukes them and tells them that the bread that they had eaten was insignificant and that they really need to labor to know Him ( John 6:26-27 ). Unlike the bread that only preserves life for a short time on this earth, He is the True Bread from Heaven who will give them eternal life if they will but trust Him ( John 6:32-59 ).

Like most of the world today, the Jews only wanted enough from Jesus to achieve their own personal goals. Jesus was to them a means to their own end rather than the Means to God’s end. He is often promoted as a self-help program in the Church today; as a life improver or catalyst for change. Jesus did not die on some bloody Roman cross to make your life better! He died because you are a sinner who has offended a Holy God are are rightfully deserving of His judgment. Rather than writing you off and sending you to Hell, which would have been the right thing to do, He of His own volition chose to take on human flesh and reconcile you to Himself through that bloody sacrifice!

Romans 8:3-4 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,  4  that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This message was not what the self-righteous Jews wanted to hear. Jesus told them again and again. Political freedom and personal prosperity was on their minds rather than the promise of God to forgive their sins. Christian, you too are prone to this way of thinking. There are false systems of the Christian Faith built around this error! (i.e. The Word of Faith Movement and even much of the Christian Right)  Jesus came to save you from your sin and then to use you as a means to reach out to other sinners who need to be saved. Politics are not taboo in the Church, but we are not a political action committee either. Our focus is on the sinners and we should not be surprised when a sinner rejects the Word of God in favor of their own agenda. We all did that at one time! ( Ephesians 2:1-3 )

Jesus used the mindset of His audience to challenge them to think differently. He challenged them with the idea of eating His flesh and drinking His blood in order to get the nutrients required for eternal life which both they and we desperately need. Eating bread only sustains you for so long. A vital connection to Jesus is what is required for eternal life. That is what the Gospel is all ab0ut!

John 6:47-51 Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.  48  I am the bread of life.  49  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.  50  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.  51  I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

So the challenge for you today is, What are you trusting in Jesus to do for you? If He is merely a “life-improver” then you have missed Him entirely as the Jews of His own day did.  If however, He is the Giver of Eternal Life, the ONLY means of being right with a Holy God whom you and I have offended then you are on the right track.

Listen to the audio of the message by clicking on the link below. I pray that you are challenged to see through your presuppositions all the way to what Jesus said about Himself.

Sandwiches or Salvation? – John 6:47-59

In Christ!

Kevin