Food That Doesn’t Satisfy - John 6:22-27

We’ve found ourselves in another long discourse this morning. But this discourse is about Jesus being the bread of life. It’s another one of those passages that really hangs together as a unit, but if preached as a unit, we’d be here all week.

So I’m going to break this passage up into more digestible bites, so that we can try to plumb the depths of this passage. You can never do it completely, but hopefully we can do it sufficiently.

As always, it’s important to remember the backdrop of the passage. Jesus had fed the five thousand earlier in chapter 6, hid from the crowd, and walked across the sea to meet up with the disciples.

And so our passage picks up with the crowd wandering around looking for Jesus.

You’d expect that searching for Jesus is always good, right? We’re always encouraged by “seekers.” The people that just show up - interested in hearing about the Lord.

But that’s really not the case in this passage is it? Here, the crowd is seeking out the Lord for the wrong reasons.

Which I think draws out the central message of this passage: Seeking the benefits of Christ is eternally different from seeking salvation through Christ. We see it in two ways: they seek Jesus with poor motives and they seek Jesus out of a sense of entitlement.

It’s like seeking peace without really seeking peace. We’ve all sought reconciliation just to avoid punishment.

We’ve all apologized to a sibling or friend because our parents forced us to do it. Not because we actually felt bad. We were just trying to appease Mom or Dad and avoid punishment.

We all know this to be true intuitively. We all know that moral actions are not always done in good faith. It’s good to apologize when you do something wrong, but the apology is undermined if it lacks sincerity, right? The appearance of holiness is not always true holiness. Pietistic behavior is not true piety.

And we see something very similar in our passage. People are chasing down Jesus for the wrong reasons.

They seek Jesus with poor motives (vv. 22-26)

Beginning in verse 22, it’s revealed that the crowd is looking for Jesus. They look high and low for him. Because remember, after he fed the five thousand they wanted to make him a king, but because he didn’t come to earth to establish a political kingdom, he fled from them and hid.

Then, in the cover of night, Jesus walked across the sea and caught up with his disciples. We looked at that glorious passage last week.

But it really goes without saying, the crowd completely lost Jesus. They had no idea where he went! So they got into their boats to search for Jesus and decided to look for him at Capernaum.

And because we’ve already read the passage, we know the motives of the crowd. Jesus explicitly reveals their motives in verse 26. He says, “you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

They weren’t seeking Jesus to see another miracle. They weren’t chasing down a circus act this time. Instead they were chasing down the man who had just fed them.

It is rather ironic that they never gave much thought to the miraculous event of Jesus feeding the five thousand, they care more about the fact that he actually fed the five thousand. They were more interested in the result of the miracle than the miracle itself.

Their motives are very crass, elementary, and basic for finding Jesus. They just want another meal. The food provided was more important to them than the food’s provider.

And so, they’re chasing Jesus down for selfish reasons and you can really see that in their treatment of Christ. Look at verse 25: “Rabbi, when did you come here?”

They treat him with respect and pretend to care about what he’s doing. And it’s also interesting that just a few days earlier they wanted him to be their political leader, they wanted to make him their king, but now they claim to be interested in his teaching, because ‘Rabbi’ means teacher.

They’re clearly ‘buttering’ Jesus up. “Marvelous teacher, what brought you over here, we wanted to learn from you!” That’s certainly the way it comes across.

But again, they weren’t interested in his teaching, they were simply telling him whatever they thought he wanted to hear in order to extract another free meal out of him.

This also helps us understand, at least in part, why Jesus would walk across the sea at night! He was trying to avoid these ravenous wolves!

But is Jesus even allowed to avoid people? Isn’t he supposed to welcome everyone? After all, aren’t those people seekers?

Doesn’t this in many ways cut against our modern conception of Jesus?

But again, people often seek Jesus for the wrong reasons. We expect him to stop and sit down and wait for the crowd to approach him like at the beginning of chapter 6. We don’t really expect him to go to great lengths to avoid people.

American, evangelical Christianity often presents Jesus like a little puppy dog. He’s just patiently waiting at the door to jump into your arms the moment you walk through the door.

But that’s not always an accurate reflection of how Jesus treated people, especially in the gospels.

You might even think, well what about the prodigal son? After all, the Father waited on the son to return to Him. But even the prodigal son recognized his sin and was willing to repent upon returning to his father.

This crowd was marked by irreverence and indifference toward their sin, and you can really see it in the manner in which they treated Christ. Think about it, they witnessed Jesus perform this incredible miracle and their biggest takeaway was, “man, that bread and fish tasted good!”

This is very reminiscent of why people go to church isn’t it?

Countless people go to church seeking after the benefits of the church without ever truly seeking after the Lord. Hopefully, this doesn’t come as a gigantic surprise to you.

We all know that people go to church for a variety of reasons: they want a nice family, or a healthy marriage, or perhaps they’re looking for community, or a business network to tap into, or perhaps their political convictions compel them to go to church.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of reasons why people do what they do.

But that’s not the primary reason to go to church. We go to church to worship the Lord! It’s a glorious weekly opportunity to express gratitude to the Lord for the forgiveness of sins we experience through Christ our Lord.

And yet, we so easily miss the forest through the trees! Not only do people go to church looking for the other stuff, often the church will highlight the other stuff.

Do you want community? The church can fix that. You want a fun safe place for your kids? The church can take care of that too. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but the problem arises when these things are prioritized over the worship of our Lord.

But I hope you see the problem with this mentality. It’s so consumeristic. It’s constantly asking the question, “How can the church serve me?” which implies that the Lord instituted the church to serve you. Instead we must pray each Lord’s Day, “May I give God the glory he rightly deserves!” Worshiping the Lord must be prioritized over having every one of our felt needs met.

Isn’t this precisely what’s happening in our passage? The crowd is seeking Jesus, something that on the surface, I think every Christian would applaud. But they're seeking him not because they want to serve Jesus, they’re seeking Jesus so that he can serve them. After all, they were getting a little hungry! Their tummies were beginning to growl! They want him to feed their bellies again.

How quickly do we twist the glorious things of God and make them about ourselves?

They seek Jesus out of entitlement. (vv. 26-27)

You can really see what’s developing here. Jesus miraculously feeds the five thousand and rather than expressing deep gratitude for the Lord’s kindness and provision, the crowd hunts down Jesus because they have a little rumble in their tummies!

But isn’t that one of the most important elements that is missing from the crowd? They totally lack gratitude. They’re ungrateful for what Jesus has done for them.

And somewhere along the way a shift happened in their minds. This miraculous gift of God’s free grace manifesting itself in all you can eat bread and fish has become an expectation. They chase Jesus down with the expectation of being fed again!

Jesus didn’t have to feed them the first time! When Jesus fed the five thousand, it was a tremendous act of grace. He didn’t have to do it! He did it to test his disciples and bless the crowd.

But what is being revealed here? The crowd’s growing sense of entitlement. Specifically, a growing sense of entitlement to God’s grace.

How quickly do gracious gifts turn into expectations?

Parents I think really understand how this works, right? You get ice cream one day after school as a nice treat or surprise, and what happens the next day? Hey Mom, Dad, aren’t we going to get ice cream today?

Next thing you know you’re having to manage expectations. “Just because we got ice cream yesterday doesn’t mean we get ice cream everyday.”

It’s especially true around Christmas time. It’s crazy to me that I’ve seen some stores pulling Christmas stuff out already. It seems like it starts earlier each year. At this rate, in ten years, Christmas will be marketed year round.

Giving presents on Christmas is somewhat of an art form because if you go all out one year, you know you’ll have to top it next year!

Gracious gifts sometimes have the potential to backfire because they can turn into an expectation. Because sometimes good gifts – rather than fostering a deep sense of gratitude – can foster a sense of entitlement.

Isn’t this often the way we treat our own sin? We entertain it, we dabble in it, because we believe we’re entitled to God’s grace? If we believe we have a right to God’s grace then we will likely believe we have license to sin.

But is that really the way grace works?

The Apostle Paul clearly answers this question in Romans 6: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? …But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

Grace shouldn’t lead you into sin, rather, it should help you grasp the beauty of our Lord and his gospel. Grace should lead you into righteousness.

But the opposite is happening in our passage isn’t it?

The crowd’s ingratitude fostered entitlement.

A meal that was miraculously and graciously given to the crowd is now something that they’re entitled to. Now they have a right to the miracles of Jesus.

But did you notice how Jesus responded to the crowd? They asked Jesus in verse 25, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” But he doesn’t answer their question. He completely ignores their question. He knows exactly what they’re doing!

He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves…”

He’s keenly aware that his gracious gift has become an expectation. It was no longer a nice gesture - he’s now required to feed them. The crowd’s mentality is, “he did it once, he can do it again!”

But ultimately, Jesus points them to himself.

Look at verse 27: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

Verse 27 is really the guiding light to Jesus’ whole “bread of life” discourse. In typical Jesus fashion, his language operates on two levels: a literal one that relates to the conversation at hand, and a more metaphorical, spiritual one.

And in verse 27, he connects the situation to more important spiritual realities and by doing so, he’s drawing the crowd’s attention away from food and to himself. It’s the genius of Jesus Christ on display here.

But obviously, this is not the first time he’s done this. He did it when he told Nicodemus he must be “born again.” Or when he told the woman at the well that she needed to drink from “living waters.” And now here, in John 6, he’s telling the crowd “not to work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

The food that perishes are things that you think will give you satisfaction but will never truly please you. They’re the things you keep going back to over and over again. Things like worldly wealth, honor, and pleasure which will always leave you hungry for more. The things of this world are fading away, and yet, they’re so tempting aren’t they?

Notice how seamlessly he moves the crowd from thinking about literal food to salvation. But I think there’s a particular word we need to pay attention to: “work.”

“Do not work for food that perishes…” How hard have the people “worked” in order to get a free meal? They’ve gone to great lengths for some more bread and fish. Not only does food spoil, but it only satisfies for a short period of time. If Jesus fed them again right here, where would they be in a few hours? “Hey Rabbi, good to see you again…”

But what is the food that Jesus tells them to “work” for? “...food that endures to eternal life.” A spiritual food that doesn’t spoil and always satisfies.

In other words Jesus is telling them, “Don’t chase the temporary satisfaction of your flesh, chase eternal satisfaction for your soul.”

This is really consistent with how the whole of Scripture views “food.” Food is often a symbol of God’s provision.

Isn’t this exactly what Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s prayer? “Give us this day our daily bread!” When we pray that petition we’re praying that the Lord would graciously provide for our daily needs.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism beautifully sums it up like this:

“What do we pray for in the fourth petition? “A: In the fourth petition, which is, Give us this day our daily bread, we pray that of God's free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life, and enjoy his blessing with them.”

It’s a glorious thing to pray for. But have you ever honestly wondered if you were going to have food on the table? Have you ever wondered if your bare necessities would be met?

If you’re anything like me, probably not. I pray that continues to be the case for all of us.

But why do we chase with such vigor after a free meal of worldly desire and rarely pursue the Lord with the same level of effort or concern? “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

God has always provided and sustained his people, not the food they ate! He has always provided for our physical needs, but he provides for our spiritual needs too! He provided his Son, didn’t he? And this is exactly why Jesus tells the crowd, “For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

One commentator wrote, “Jesus points to the spiritual meaning of the miracle, which is to set God’s seal of approval on His ministry and to identify Him as the Son of Man, the promised Messiah, and His death as the Father's provision of eternal life-giving bread from heaven.”

As we’ve noted previously, the miracles always point to the deity of Christ! And that’s why Jesus is reorienting the conversation away from literal food and bread and to himself.

Because what the crowd needs isn’t another free meal, they need to be saved! They need a Savior!

It’s so easy to miss the forest through the trees, isn’t it? We go to church expecting an amazing children’s program, a great community of like minded believers, incredible music, influence in the community, fun events and those aren’t necessarily bad things! I pray we have all of those things at Providence! Those are good things and I want them too!

But isn’t that missing the point? Isn’t that settling for bread that perishes? It’s totally Christless isn’t it?

This passage forces us to ask ourselves, what are we chasing? What do we want? Do we want the spoils of Christian community more than Jesus Christ himself?

We so easily settle for bread that only satisfies momentarily instead of chasing bread that doesn’t perish.

We end up worshiping the benefits of Christianity more than the object of our faith: Christ!

Which I think brings us to the tragedy of this whole passage: the tragedy is that the crowd is willing to settle. They’re willing to ignore the Savior of the World in the hopes of getting another piece of bread.

They’re setting for an off brand slice of bread when they could be eating a steak dinner.

I think this is what we must remember in the days and weeks ahead: Don’t settle for bread! Don’t settle for the things of this world! Do be fooled into believing that these things that so quickly perish have any lasting substance.

Pursue something better! Set your sights on something higher! Look to the Lord and giver of life!

May He sustain us and be the satisfaction of our souls. Let’s pray together.