Bread from Heaven (John 6:15–35) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:01 Our Scripture this morning is once again from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, and it is published in the bulletin that we are to begin at verse 22, but I'm going to preempt that and begin earlier at verse 15, and then read through verse 40. Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone. And when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. And then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing.

1:00 And when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat. And they were afraid. But He said to them, It is I. Do not be afraid. And then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going. And on the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there except the one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but that His disciples had gone away alone. However, other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks.

1:53 And when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into the boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here? answered and said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, You seek Me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him. And they said to Him, What shall we do that we may work the works of God?

2:51 Jesus answered and said, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent. And therefore they said to Him, What sign will you perform then that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert. As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. And Jesus said to them, Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And then they said to him, Lord, give us that bread always. And He said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. We're going to stop at that point, finish the text, God willing, next week. But we'll stop there, and so you may be seated for now.

3:59 One of the reasons why we take vows, as we did this morning upon joining the church, is because sometimes we have to buttress our promises with sacred commitments because as fallen creatures we are by nature covenant breakers and we are taught by the Word of God that all men are liars. There is no exception to that. So I have to confess to you this morning that when we started this study of John's gospel, I said to you I would not be looking at every verse of this gospel, would be covering the highlights, and I lied. I realized this week that I had intended to pass over this brief passage that records the miracle of Christ of walking on the water.

5:02 And I just couldn't do it. I couldn't just leave that out. It's too important to the whole gospel. It's too important to our understanding of the person and work of Jesus. And it's also very important to the continuity of what's going on here in this extremely important, chapter 6. And so, after having confessed my sin and asked for your forgiveness and indulgence, I'm going to start this morning at verse 15 instead of at verse 22. We read that when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king. They weren't interested in electing Him or even drafting Him, but they wanted to compel Him to be their king. And when Jesus noticed this and understood what they were about to do, He left the congregation, He left the multitude, and sought solitude in a private place.

6:12 Now we read the foreboding words in verse 16, Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. Now notice when John gives us the brief description of the scene that he's describing here, he says this, that it was already dark. And Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind came, and they had rowed three or four miles when they saw Jesus walking on the sea." Now one of the things that we notice in the structure of John's gospel is how alert John One is to major themes and passages of Old Testament redemptive history.

7:13 Even this bread of life discourse that he is introducing at this point harkens back to the feeding of the people in the wilderness experienced by the manna that God provided from heaven. But if we remember back to our very first lesson from John's gospel, to the prologue, remember how the words of this gospel began by saying, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And how when we looked at the beginning of this gospel, one couldn't miss the obvious connection to the opening words of the Old Testament, where we read there in Genesis 1-1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then in verse 2 of Genesis 1, we read a description of the yet unordered, unfinished work of divine creation, where we read that the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

8:37 I mentioned previously that in Hebrew poetry, the most negative image ever used by the Hebrew poet is the image of the sea, because the sea is the figure of violence. The sea is the figure of that which is ominous, that which threatens destruction. And not only was that true of the ocean, but it was also true of the Sea of Galilee that was given to such wild outbreaks of violence because it was 600 feet below sea level and was situated, as it were, in the middle of a wind tunnel where the winds would come off the Mediterranean or off the mountains and instantly without warning stir up violence in the sea. We see that in the other passage when Jesus was in the boat, when such a storm arose, and Jesus was called upon to calm the storm.

9:34 But it's that same body of water that we find now in this passage, and we're told that it was dark. And the waters were raging, high waves, not a calm, placid pond that Jesus tiptoes gently across the water. But as these seasoned veterans of this lake, these professional fishermen are pulling at their oars to get across the lake, which isn't that far across, they go three to four miles miles against this wind in this violent choppy water, and they're making little or no progress. All of a sudden they see Jesus approaching them.

10:30 without the benefit of a boat, but walking, striding in the darkness over the chaotic frothing of this boiling sea. Just as in creation God looked at the darkness, the emptiness, and said, let there be light. And we are told in the beginning of John's gospel that the incarnate Son is the one through whom creation came to pass. That it was the Logos of John 1 who created all things, and John said, nothing that was made was made except by Him. the Christ of the New Testament is the God of creation, and His divine nature is masked and hidden by His human veil.

11:35 But there are these moments when the deity bursts through that veil and becomes obvious and manifest to anybody who's watching, and that's what happens when this one who is cloaked in mortality and veiled in humanity does what no human being could possibly do. He strides across the sea, and the waters support Him, and the waters obey Him, and the darkness that seeks to engulf His disciples has no power. over Him." Think for a moment how you would have felt if you were in that boat with the waves crashing against the gunwales, and your oars strained to bring inches of progress, and you look Look up, and here comes the Master who made the sea, who owns the sea, who rules the sea, now walks across the sea towards you.

13:00 The same reaction they had on the other occasion when He calmed the storm on the same sea. Instead of being relieved and throwing their Southwesters in the air and saying, are we glad to see you? They're terrified. And so would you be if you watched somebody walk across an angry sea without sinking. But Jesus said to them in their terror, it is I, do not be afraid. In recent weeks, I completed a series of messages for the radio called the I Am's of Jesus, all taken from the gospel according to St. John. Those famous statements where Jesus declares such things as, I am the way, the truth, and the life, I am the vine, you are the branches, I am the good shepherd, I am the door through which men must enter, I am the bread of life, and so on.

14:02 Those I am's, before Abraham was I am, all have the characteristic of Jesus prefacing these descriptions of His own office by the strange combination of Greek words, ego eimi. And the word ego in Greek means I am. We get the word ego from it. But they have another verb to be, which is the word emi, and what emi means is I am. So if you put them together, ego, emi, literally what they're saying is I am, I am, as if one were stuttering. But also when we look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the way Hebrew scholars communicated the ineffable name of God, Yahweh, into the Greek language was by this strange construction, ego eimi, which can be translated, I am who I am.

15:20 And therefore, when Jesus says, I am the door, I am the bread of life, almost every commentator recognizes here that He's using the divine name for Himself. But when the scholars break out of the Gospel of John, the I am's of Jesus, they don't include this statement here where He says, don't be afraid, it is I. And I'm not sure why, because it's exactly the same structure, and it's exactly the same meaning. Because here they are watching Jesus walking on the water. They're terrified. He said, don't be afraid, ego eimi. I am. I who am.

16:19 is here. Now, whether the next sentence communicates a second miracle is somewhat ambiguous in the text, because they said, after Jesus announces that it's He in this manner, then they willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going, suggests that when He entered the boat, that was the end of the sea's resistance to the efforts of His disciples to gain headway into the wind and into the water. By His mere presence, the boat immediately came safely to the other shore. You know, there's an illustration there.

17:18 I don't want to be maudlin. But ladies and gentlemen, this is where our lives are. This is not intended to be a parable in the text. This is historical narrative, not an illustration of what happens when Jesus comes into your life, but it certainly illustrates what happens when you come into your life. Your life is a time of pulling against the oars, against resistance, trying to get somewhere. You're not getting anywhere. You're about to be engulfed, and as soon as Jesus gets in the boat, you're home free. And that's what happens when Christ comes into the life of His people. He gets us through the darkness. He gets us through the violence. He carries us through the storm. Well, as I say, this is a transition from the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, which was witnessed by thousands and thousands of people, and now a miracle that is witnessed only by His disciples.

18:17 However, it doesn't go unnoticed by the clamoring multitude. As we read in verse 22, on the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there except the ones that the disciples had entered. And they noticed the night before that Jesus had not entered that boat, but His disciples had gone away without Him. And yet all these other people went around the lake and wanted to be where Jesus was, and they came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, When did you come here? Which was really like saying, how did you get here?

19:14 Now Jesus doesn't give the answer I wish so much He would have given. I wish when they said, how did you get here, I would love to have had Him say to these people, I walked, and watched their reaction. But that's not what He did. But again, He knows what's on their mind and what they're looking for, and He says to them, I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw the signs. He ignores their question. He does this all the time. When did you come here? He says, never mind. I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Now on the one hand, they did seek Him because they saw the signs, but they didn't see the significance of the signs. That's what Jesus is saying. You saw the miracle, you enjoyed the benefit of the miracle, and so you've been chasing after Me to make Me your king because I filled your bellies.

20:15 But will you want me to be your king when you see the baptism with which I am baptized? You want to enter into the feast, but do you want to enter into my sufferings? You want to pick up my cross and follow me. Jesus is saying these are fair-weather fans that are following Him. Then He said, do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you because the Father has set His seal upon Him.

21:06 This is as far as I'm going to go with this text, but I'm not going to stop until I look at this part of the text. labor for the food that perishes. How many times I hear people say, well, what are you doing with your life? Well, I have a job. Is that your vocation? Is that what you want to do? No, I'm just trying to put food on the table. What an empty life when our labor and our sweat and our toil is done simply so that we can put food on the table. Sometimes it's necessary to do that, don't get me wrong, because we have the responsibility to feed our families. If we can't get work anywhere else, we're going to have to go out and do what's not our vocation just to make sure we get the food on the table. But that is frustrating, ladies and gentlemen. Because that food perishes.

22:06 You set the table one night, you eat the dinner, that's cool, but tomorrow you have to set the table again, and you have to get more food, because every helping that you enjoy perishes. Jesus said, don't spend your life pursuing that sort of thing. Don't spend your life pursuing that which has no ultimate significance. I think about this every day. I see my friends who aren't Christians, and I see them get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work, go through the anguishes and the struggles that daily life brings to them, and I'm saying, why are they doing this? And one morning they wake up, they're 65 or they're 70, and they're saying, why did I do that? Is that all there is?

23:00 It's not all there is. There's so much more than the food that perishes. Jesus says, seek that which is eternal. Invest in that which doesn't perish. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where there aren't any moths and there's no rust and there's no thieves that come in to steal it. Do you ever ask yourself that question? What are you doing with your life? Why are you living the way you're living? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? What is it you hope to gain? Have you not heard that he who gains the whole world and loses his own soul? has no profit.

23:59 don't labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. Why? Because God the Father has set his seal on him. Now, I've talked about that word before. Every time we have a baptism, I mentioned that the baptism, the sacrament, is not magic, doesn't convert anybody, but it is God's sign and God's seal of His promise of redemption for all who believe. Some people say, well, what good is that?

24:52 All right. You've seen the old Robin Hood movies and medieval movies where, you know, the king sends his henchmen out into the town square and they take a hammer and they pound up a wanted sign of Robin Hood and reward 500 ducats or whatever for whoever gives information to the capture of this bandit. And then you'll see at the bottom of this edict… A place where there's a wax inscription, and the purpose of that wax inscription is to bear the image of the royal signet ring. How do you know it's not the village blacksmith that's hung up this reward? by the signet ring that bears the seal of the king. that authenticates that the message carries the authority of the King.

25:59 And this is what Jesus is saying about this eternal, everlasting bread, the bread that doesn't perish. He said, I, the Son of Man, will give you this bread because the Father has put His seal upon me.

26:23 He is authenticated by these miracles that I have come from Him and I speak nothing on my own authority, but He has given to me all authority on heaven and on earth, and I have the authority now to give eternal life to you. He can do it. He's authorized to do it. So seek Him, for He is the one whom God has sealed to be your eternal provider. Let's pray. Father, when we try to walk on dry land, we stumble, we fall, we trip over ourselves as we rush in hot pursuit of those things that perish.

27:29 O Father, by Thy Spirit, turn our eyes upon the One who made the waters, the One who walks upon the water, the One whom Thou hast given the divine seal of Your approval, thereby authorized to provide for us that bread that does not perish. We ask it in His name. Amen.