Manna: Bread Of Life : Devotional and Journal
Contents:
- The Bread of Life.
- .
- The Sherlock Holmes Companion.
They think that Jesus is encouraging them to accomplish some work that will please God, and thus they can earn eternal life. They think the law spells out what God requires of them, so that through law-keeping they can earn His favor. Paul sums up what the role of the law really is, and how men must be saved:. For there is no distinction, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed.
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Salvation is accomplished through the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Men are not saved by striving, but simply by believing in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. The Jews once again take these words the wrong way. They reason something like this: If we are to believe in Him, then He must prove Himself to us, showing us that He is worthy of our trust.
He must perform some very impressive miracle if He is going to get us to believe in Him. This is truly amazing.
They seem to ask for one great work, one magnificent miracle. They then seek to remind Jesus of what Moses did or at least what they thought he did. They claim that Moses gave their ancestors bread from heaven to eat. Jesus is expected to meet or exceed this standard.
They are requiring that for them to believe in Jesus as their Messiah, Jesus must provide bread from heaven, as Moses did. This manna was provided for the Israelites for 40 years. It seems that this is at least how long Jesus is expected to provide bread for them. First, the words which Jesus is about to speak are of the utmost importance. Second, it was not Moses who gave the Israelites bread in the wilderness; it was God. This is the clear teaching of the Scriptures which speak of the feeding of the Israelites in the wilderness:. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not Exodus The people asked, and He brought quail, And satisfied them with the bread of heaven Psalm The bread is a Person.
Jesus is that bread:. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty. They still think Jesus is offering them some kind of literal bread, which they can eat and fill their stomachs, just as they ate the barley loaves at the feeding of the 5, If these folks are to believe in Jesus as He has said they must in verse 29 , then they must have proof, and He must provide it.
They expect Jesus to perform some miracle to prove that He is worthy of their faith. The fact is that Jesus has already performed many miracles, and yet they have not believed in Him.
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So now Jesus takes up the matter of their unbelief. He has already told them all they need to know, and they have seen Him at work, performing many miracles—miracles such as the feeding of the 5, None of this brings them to faith, however. They persist in their unbelief. The reason for this is not popular, but it is true:. Everyone the Father gives to the Son comes to Him in faith. And everyone who comes to the Son in faith will be accepted—none will ever be sent away verse The Son will not act independently of the Father, but only in submission to the Father.
If the Father gives someone to the Son as a believer, the Son will receive this individual, because the Father has given them to Him. No wonder Satan sought to tempt our Lord to act independently of the Father! And those the Father gives, He gives for keeps, and the Son does keep them. He turns none away who come to Him, and He loses none of those He receives. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. By this time, there are many differing opinions about Jesus.
The Jewish religious leaders have long since made up their minds that Jesus will not be the Messiah—not if they have anything to do with it! They have, in fact, already determined to put Him to death see 5: Some would have Jesus as their king, even if by force see 6: A number are still undecided about Jesus, but some sincerely believe in Him as the Messiah. Included in this number are the 11 disciples and a number of others see 1: Some of the people seem to embrace the view of their religious leaders, rejecting Jesus as an impostor, or at least not their kind of Messiah.
Notice that their words are not addressed to Jesus, but to others about Jesus: It underscores the alleged inconsistency those who oppose Jesus are claiming. We know about His birth as a mere man. How can he now, at this point in his life, claim to be divine?
If Jesus was born of earthly parents alone, then His claim to have come from heaven is absurd. In one sense, Mary and Joseph were the earthly parents of our Lord. Mary was His biological mother, while Joseph was not His biological father. Had these folks given careful heed to the Old Testament Scriptures, they would have known that the promised Messiah was to be both human and divine, God and man see Deuteronomy He was to be born of a virgin Isaiah 7: He was to be born in Bethlehem Micah 5: The asking of the question is not wrong, in and of itself.
We should not hesitate to probe the claims of Jesus Christ and to expect a reasonable answer. This question is wrong because of the facts it assumes, and because it totally disregards other crucial facts. Look at the miracles our Lord performs in chapter 2 and elsewhere 5: Our Lord did not testify alone to His divine and heavenly origins; there were many witnesses. But His opponents closed their eyes to these witnesses.
Theirs was a willful unbelief. Our Lord responds to this complaint, but not in a way His adversaries expect, and certainly not in a way they wish. Jesus tells them to stop mumbling to one another. Do they not believe Him? This is no blow to His pride, nor is it a shock. They do not believe because they cannot believe. Jesus explains that it is impossible for anyone to believe in Him unless the Father who sent Him draws them, and these He Jesus will raise up in the last day verse God must draw men to faith in the Son, the same God who sent the Son. Do these folks find it impossible to believe in Jesus?
Jesus is not taken aback by their unbelief. Jesus does not strive to convince them that He is who He claims to be. He simply tells them that they are not among those whom the Father has given Him. Do you notice that the issues here in our text are very much the same issues that we find in chapter 5, when Jesus is in Jerusalem, rejected and opposed by the Jewish religious leaders? If He is who He claims to be, then He is from heaven, and He can raise men from the dead. Here is something few people would recommend to those who desire to witness to others about Jesus as the Messiah, the Savior of the world—telling the lost that they cannot and will not be saved unless the Father draws them, unless they are chosen of God.
Yet this is what our Lord chooses to emphasize in His response to the unbelief and opposition of His adversaries. But there is more. If verse 44 emphasizes the negative side of the story of election, 44 verses boldly declare the positive side of election. Jesus turns to Scripture to make His point, citing Isaiah In this prophecy, God is speaking to the Jewish people about their future hope in Messiah and His coming kingdom. Many wonderful things are promised in relation to the coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus applies this verse in a very different way than we might expect.
They are not those of His kingdom because God the Father who sent the Son has not chosen or drawn them. He alone has seen and heard the Father, and explains His Word and His will to men. This tells us more about them than it does about our Lord.
Many have seen Jesus perform miracles and heard Him preach. Jesus is not taken aback by their unbelief. Perhaps participating out of duty, rather than out of And those the Father gives, He gives for keeps, and the Son does keep them. Which of these kinds of hungers do you know in your own life? This sixth chapter of John is a watershed, a major turning point in the Gospel of John. Why or why not?
Though they ate manna for many years, they eventually died. This is true bread, the real thing. Now Jesus gets to the really hard part of His teaching. He is not talking about physical bread, about manna or even the barley loaves He provided in the wilderness for the multitude.
I received my book a few weeks ago Manna bread of Life and I love it! It has a Daily Message for each day of the year. An encouraging word to meditate on. Manna: Bread Of Life. Devotional and Journal By Shontel Stanford This is what Manna: Bread of Life brings to every believer in Christ. Manna is a collection of.
They will believe in Him verse Jesus gets to the bottom line of how men must respond to Him in verse All along in the Gospel of John, Jesus has been speaking to men in spiritual terms, and men have been understanding Him in merely literal terms. The one who eats this bread will live forever. Up to this point in time, no one has really grasped just how our Lord had purposed to save men from their sins.
It is about this point in time, however, when our Lord begins to tell men how He is going to save them. It would appear from a comparison of the Gospels that the great confession took place shortly after the feeding of the 5, It seems as though the words of our Lord have divided the audience. They are not said to be arguing with Jesus, but with one another. And so those in the crowd begin arguing with one another. Those who oppose Jesus and His teaching interpret His words in a crassly literal way: Once again, in verses , Jesus responds to what is being thought and spoken by those in the crowd.
He is not really trying to convince His adversaries, but simply attempting to clarify His meaning, knowing that the more clear His teaching becomes, the more offended many will be. He does not at all back down from what He has said, but affirms it in the strongest possible language: Jesus does not offer an alternative method for obtaining eternal life. The one who eats and drinks of Him will have eternal life, and in the last day Jesus will raise this one up from the dead. Eating this bread gives eternal life to whoever eats it. Who can understand it?
The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. You have the words of eternal life. Jesus has been saying all these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. They claim His teaching is too difficult, too obscure, but this is not really true. They are more than willing to follow Jesus when His message was not clear to them. They cease to follow Him as His message becomes more and more clear. They do not like what they are hearing, and they want to hear no more of it. Once again, Jesus knows what they are thinking and saying, and thus He responds in verses Do His words offend them, causing them to stumble and fall away?
If they are offended by His insistence that He has come down from heaven, what will they do if they see Him ascending back into heaven? It is one thing to claim to have come down from heaven, and quite another to be seen returning to the place from which Jesus claims to have come. But moving beyond the literal aspects of His teaching, Jesus gets to the heart of the problem—His audience simply cannot grasp the spiritual meaning of His words.
Nicodemus wondered how a man could be reborn from above. In both cases, Jesus refers to the spiritual dimensions of His message, and specifically to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives eternal life, quickening those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. Jesus does not name him here, though all of us now know immediately to whom He is referring. Even one so close to Jesus as Judas can see and hear all that he does without truly coming to faith in Jesus as the Messiah. This is the breaking point for many.
This is teaching that many can not and will not understand, nor are they willing to follow Jesus any longer. Having heard these words of Jesus, they leave Him, never again to follow Him as His disciples. I am reminded of the parable of the soils, in which Jesus describes the seed which falls on rocky ground:. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep. Then, when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they fall away 50 immediately Mark 4: In the parable of the soils, the seed sown on rocky ground represents those who too quickly embrace Jesus and His teaching, without fully grasping what it means.
They are offended by the suffering and affliction that comes into their life as a result of following Christ, and thus just as quickly, they fall away. He does not seem to fully grasp what Jesus has been saying, either.
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Whatever you bind on the earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you release on earth will have been released in heaven. This must not happen to you. Neither Peter nor any of the other disciples close to our Lord understand what Jesus is talking about at this moment in time. But even if they do not understand the teaching of our Lord at this moment, they know no one else has the answers, and that He does.
They believe that only through Him can they obtain eternal life. They know they have no one else to turn to but Jesus. They are going nowhere. It is a wonderful profession of faith that Peter makes. He speaks for all of the twelve, save one—Judas Iscariot, who is to betray Him.
This too is known to the Savior, and so He indicates this to His disciples. We know He is speaking of Judas, and they will know it in good time. Jesus has not only been rejected by the Jewish religious leaders in Jerusalem chapter 5 , He has now been rejected by the masses in Galilee, those who a few hours before would have made Him king by force. Is this not a preview of what will take place just a year later, when our Lord triumphantly marches into Jerusalem and is hailed as the King? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'? No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.
It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught by God. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
What are some of the signs of the kinds of starvation Mother Teresa describes? Which of these kinds of hungers do you know in your own life? If Jesus really does satisfy our hungers, why do we resist him? Secondly, if you really are the satisfaction of my deepest hungers, teach me how to feast on the fullness of all you are to me.
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Published by The High Calling, August 6,