Feed on Christ - John 6:48-59

We’ve taken two weeks off from the book of John, but this morning we’re back in it! And we’re picking up right where we left off in John chapter six. Next week, we’ll be the last Sunday in John chapter six. When it’s all said and done, we’ll have spent a grand total of seven weeks in John six.

Has it felt that long? Seven is the biblical number for completion so we’ll have spent the perfect amount of time in John 6.

But you know there is a real temptation, even within the church, to rush through things and to hurry on to whatever is next. It’s hard to know exactly why we feel that pressure, but I think a primary motivator is the fear of missing out and the fear of things becoming rote or monotonous. Because we want things, and I think especially church, to always feel fresh and exciting!

But the reality is anything can feel rote and monotonous. Haven’t we all at times felt like our lives are rote and monotonous? Have you ever seen the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray?

He lives the same day over and over and over again, not only is the movie pretty funny, it’s super relatable. Our lives sometimes feel like they're on autopilot.

I think this can even be true for our walk with Christ. We just put our faith on autopilot. It’s this sort of monotonous thing that we do. It’s Sunday, so we get in the car, attend a service, go home, and attend to the important matters of the day.

Apparently Tesla cars have an autopilot feature and I’ve seen pictures of people asleep in their Tesla driving down the road. Does that describe how you conceive of Christianity? You’ve walked the aisle, prayed the prayer, been baptized so you can now kick back and relax.

You’re just a passenger in this car that’s on autopilot and its next stop is the pearly gates.

But is that what the Lord intended? For Christianity to be nothing more than a series of superficial actions?

Most of you probably picked up on the parallels in this passage to the Lord’s Supper.

If you’ve been around the church at all, it’s pretty difficult for your mind not to go there when you hear Jesus tell folks to, “eat my flesh and drink by blood.” It’s classic Lord’s Supper language. But how many times have you stopped to ask what exactly it means?

The underlying message here is that the Christian faith is marked by an ongoing reliance, trust, and dependance on Christ. It’s being united to Christ by faith is what saves you. Eternal life comes through a deep and abiding connection to Jesus Christ. Which I think helps us understand a passage that is full of language that is highly metaphorical and spiritual.

Christ isn’t directing attention to the Lord’s Supper in general, rather he is directing our attention to what lies beneath the Supper. He’s using language to describe the Christians union to him by faith.

I think this is most clearly seen in the parallel between verses 40 and 54.

Verse 40 says, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Verse 54 says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Jesus talked about ‘belief’ in verse 40 and in a linguistically similar verse, verse 54, he talks about eating and drinking to the same end: eternal life.

The feeding on his flesh and the drinking of his blood shouldn’t be taken literally because it describes the closeness, relationship, or intimacy between the believer and Jesus Christ.

What we see is our belief and faith should be like eating and drinking. Just as your physical body is dependent on food and drink for survival your eternal soul is dependent upon Jesus Christ for everlasting life.

Again, it’s been awhile since we’ve been in John 6, but if you can remember three weeks ago, where we had left off, Jesus had finally come out and said to the people, “I am the bread of life.” Everything up and to that point had been cloaked in mystery. Jesus hadn’t been super direct and clear with the crowd until he said, “I am the bread of life.”

And we really unpacked what Jesus meant by that statement because like so much of Scripture that has been popularized it’s easy to blow over the “I AM” statements without ever considering the depth of meaning. “Jesus is the bread of life” is great church language but we don’t always get the breakdown of it.

Obviously, Jesus was referring to a spiritual reality. Just as bread sustains the body, so Christ must sustain your soul. And what Christ has said in the passage we’re looking at this morning simply builds upon that. Because, the Christian’s bond or association with Christ must be so close that it reflects your life’s reliance on the most basic elements: food and water.

Eat His Flesh (vv. 48-52)

Jesus states in verse 35 that he is “the bread of life” and then he restates it in verse 48. And in verses 49-58, he further explains what he means.

He says in verse 48, “I am the bread of life” and then proceeds to contrast himself with the manna from heaven.

He says in verse 49 and 50, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.”

The distinction that Jesus draws is that the manna that God provided to the Israelites as they wandered about in the desert only satisfied one thing: their flesh. It provided sustenance for them and nourished their physical bodies. But that is all it did. It was simply food.

Now Jesus is preaching to the Jews in the synagogue in Capernaum, but there’s no doubt they are familiar with the manna passages in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11. In fact, it’s probably why they chased Jesus down after he fed the five thousand. They thought, “if he fed us once he could feed us again.” The Jews didn’t see him as the Savior of the World, they saw him as the one that could provide dinner. He was just a free meal ticket.

That’s why Jesus so emphatically said in verse 49, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” But what Jesus wants the Jews to see is that manna could only sustain physical life but it could not grant eternal life. Literal bread can only sustain your body temporarily. But Christ can sustain your soul eternally.

The manna that the Lord provided was certainly done in a miraculous way, but everyone still died after eating of it. And to make things even more interesting, the Lord always provided for the Israelites as they wandered about but they were consumed with their own felt needs. They felt sorry for themselves.

Whatever they thought was important consumed them. But who can’t relate to that? How many of us have some house project we want to do and everytime you walk into the house it’s just glaring at you. It’s like all you see. At our house the downstairs area needs some serious work and everytime I’m down there doing whatever, it’s all I think about: like why is this wall here? And this bathroom is an issue…

The ironic thing is when we moved back, we were just so happy to find a house! And now, sometimes I find myself thinking, we could find something better. It’s the perpetual obsession with the next thing, and I don’t think I’m the only one who struggles with it.

Wasn’t that a major issue for the Israelites wandering about in the desert? They thought being slaves in Egypt was better than being in the desert then eventually the manna that God provided wasn’t good enough because they wanted meat. They were nearly impossible to please. And what’s really depressing is, the Lord provided for them, they finally got what they wanted and then they died.

It sounds depressing because it is depressing. There’s no depth to it. It doesn't go beyond the surface. How depressing does it sound to say the greatest thing that happened to you was the first day you tasted manna. No doubt it was a glorious day, but is that it? There’s a worldly hunger that can never be satisfied. It just wants you to consume more and more and more and more and there’s no end to it. What you currently have is never as good as what you could have. The way things are is never as good as the way things could be.

And it’s that mentality that will put you in an infinite loop for more.

That’s why Christ reminds the Jews that those that ate manna died. Those that hunger to simply feed their flesh will never be satisfied and will inevitably die.

We see doubt among the crowd (vv. 51- 52)

That’s why Christ told the Jews they needed to eat something that has value and worth that cannot be measured: HIM. They don’t need to eat manna, they need to feed on Christ. They needed to feed on him.

Look at verses 51 and 52 with me.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.””

He really kicks his language up a notch, doesn’t he? He moves from saying he’s the “bread of life” to telling them, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

It would have been highly offensive language to the Jews for two reasons: first, Jews weren’t supposed to eat anything that still had the blood in it. Second, and more obviously it sounds cannibalistic.

Eat his flesh?

But we know he’s speaking spiritually. He’s speaking metaphorically. He’s not speaking literally. After all, Jesus was never a literal loaf of bread.

But nevertheless, the Jews took his words literally. Verse 52 tells us, “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?””

It’s the same perpetual problem that we’ve seen several times already in the book of John. The Jews took the words of Jesus literally.

But again, these words were never meant to be taken literally. He explains further in verse 56, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” The key word there is abide. Food and drink can do a lot of things, but one thing it cannot do is abide. It’s not sticking around. It’s changing into something and leaving at some point.

But again, he’s speaking spiritually and not literally because there is a spiritual result that comes from eating his flesh and drinking his blood: eternal life.

When I was in seminary a professor of mine told a great story about how he signed his daughter up to participate in a Christian soccer league. And he had to fill out some paperwork for her and one of the things he had to sign was a document that subscribed to a particular interpretation of end times. The people that hold this view think it’s the only one that Bible literally so if you don’t subscribe to this particular view then you don’t take the Bible seriously.

It was a backhanded way of testing one’s view of Biblical inerrancy - that you really believed the Bible to be the word of God. And of course he did, he just didn’t subscribe to that particular view.

And I bring that up only because there’s a temptation for folks inside and outside the church to apply a rigid literalism to God’s Word. And I think it comes from a good desire to take God’s Word seriously. But sometimes a rigid literalism will force you to come to weird theological conclusions. This is why non-Christian will adopt a rigid literalism - not because they take the Bible seriously, but rather in an effort to demonstrate inconsistencies within the Bible.

But what’s more important than being rigidly literal is seeking to understand the message of God’s Word.

For the record, I take God’s Word very seriously. My point is that if you always adopt a rigid literal reading of God’s Word you might miss the meaning or the message - sort of like the Jews here!

They were so busy being shocked and scandalized by the literal words of Christ, they never sought to understand the meaning or message he was trying to communicate.

I even think there’s a good chance the Jews knew Jesus wasn’t speaking literally, but they took his words literally in order to dispute, challenge or cast doubt upon him.

By taking his words literally you might be able to discredit him!

They miss what Jesus meant because they weren’t that interested in his message.

Union with Christ (vv. 53-59)

But to be fair, Jesus was saying something quite scandalous and it had nothing to do with “eating flesh or drinking blood.” The scandal is what Jesus meant by “eating flesh and drinking blood.” The fact that he was saying that he could grant eternal life - now that’s scandalous! Christ was promising eternal life to anyone who united themself to him by faith.

But it’s only scandalous if you assume he’s lying. Because if you Christ is telling the truth then his words must be taken very seriously.

What we ultimately read in verses 53-58 is a deep, profound exposition of the doctrine of union with Christ. That is, the fellowship, union, or intimacy of the Christian’s relationship with Christ.

It’s the doctrine of union with Christ that lies beneath Christ’s words of “eating my flesh and drinking my blood.” Just in the verses we’re looking at this morning, Jesus uses the word ‘flesh’ six times and the word ‘blood’ four times.

That’s a lot of flesh and blood!

Look at verses 53-58 with me.

“Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.””

I think this is more than anything a description of the closeness or union with Christ that a believer must have. A connection with the Lord Jesus that is so deep is the fuel for your soul in the same manner food is the fuel for your body.

And again, you may read these verses and want to jump to the Lord’s Supper, but more than the Lord’s Supper, I think the Lord Jesus is calling you and me to reflect back on the Jewish Passover meal.

If you remember from Exodus the tenth and final plague was to take the life of the firstborn, unless what? The blood of a lamb was smeared on the door post.

And this is important: those that smeared the blood along the door, their firstborn lived.

And what did they do with the Passover Lamb? They ate it!

The lamb that spared the firstborn was the same lamb they fed upon. Life was given through the flesh and blood of the Passover lamb.

This is, I believe, the better parallel. Christ is comparing himself to the Passover lamb, but he promises to provide something much greater than anything the Passover Lamb could provide. Jesus doesn’t promise to temporarily spare your life, he’s promises to give you eternal life.

Because all of this is foreshadowing Christ’s death and sacrifice. This passage adds a sort of weight to the fact that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper at the Passover meal.

This is precisely what he hints at at the end of verse 51, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

“Give for the life of the world” - that’s sacrificial language! He’s pointing the Jews to his sacrificial death.

This really gets at something that’s key for us: Faith in Christ is synonymous with trusting in his work of atonement. His atoning sacrifice on the cross was the sufficient payment for our sins. That when Jesus Christ died on the cross it was enough to take your sins and my sins away.

I think it’s really important that we recognize this because often in church circles we’ll hear about leaning on Christ, or looking to Christ, which isn’t wrong, but is vague. It’s so generic and bland it’s difficult to know exactly what someone means by it.

When we “look to Christ” or “lean on Him” we’re trusting in the sufficiency of his atoning sacrifice on the cross. Only his body that was broken and blood that was spilled on the cross was adequate to forgive sins and grant everlasting life.

The Christian must rely or depend upon that reality which Christ has accomplished. That He is our strength and portion. Your salvation is utterly dependent upon Christ’s sacrifice on the cross!

And so we should depend daily on the sustaining grace of the Lord’s sacrifice in the same way we believe and trust that food and water will sustain our bodies.

Let’s pray together.