PM Home Bible Study Group; October 24, 2012
John 6:41-59
Theme: Jesus challenges the unbelief around Him by declaring that He is the bread of life.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
The things that the Lord Jesus said about Himself are remarkable—not only because of what He claimed in saying them, but because of the way He said them. He seemed to say them in such a way that, if someone truly wanted to humble themselves before God and be saved, they would be able to grasp enough of Jesus’ claims to believe on Him and be saved by Him. But if someone was hard-hearted in their unbelief and did not want to humble themselves before God, they would be confused enough by what Jesus said to be repelled by Him and hardened further in unbelief. It’s very much as Jesus summed up about His own teaching in Matthew 13:13-14; “For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.”
We have been examining a dialog Jesus had with the people of Galilee after His fourth great sign in John’s Gospel of feeding the 5,000 (John 6:1-14), and immediately after His fifth great sign of walking across the Sea of Galilee (vv. 15-21). As we’ve stated before, the dialog can be divided into four stages of conflict: (1) the questioning (vv. 25-40), (2) the murmuring (vv. 41-51), (3) the striving (vv. 52-59), and finally (4) the departing (vv. 60-66). In our last time together, we looked at the first stage of “questioning”. And tonight—because Jesus’ answers to His opponents seemed so hard for them to grasp in their unbelief—we look at the “murmuring” and the “striving”.
All of it is centered on Jesus’ remarkable claim to be “the bread of life”. That remarkable claim is still being made today in the preaching of the Gospel. It’s vital that those who hear it receive it humbly and believe in order to be saved—and that we who proclaim it as Jesus’ ambassadors never change or diminish what Jesus said in it!
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I. THE MURMERING BECAUSE OF HIS CLAIM TO HAVE ‘COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN’ (vv. 41-51).
A. We’re told in verse 41 that it wasn’t simply the people of Capernaum who were now responding to Jesus, but “the Jews”. This may have been a summary statement regarding the people of Capernaum—who were, right then, behaving in a way that was characteristic of the Jewish people with regard to the claims of their Messiah. But it may also have been that an official delegation of the Jewish religious leaders were there to hear His claims and confront Him. Notice that, in verse 59, we’re told that this confrontation was not now occurring at the shore of the sea, but “in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum”. We’re told in verse 41, “The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, ‘I am the bread which came down from heaven.'” If you look back to the things that Jesus said in the previous verses, you will not find that He used those exact words. But it’s clear that the Jews were rightly understanding that this was His claim (see vv. 27, 33, 35, 38). His claim in verse 38 was very specific; “For I have come down from heaven, not do to My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” And this, of course, was the basis of their complaint. As verse 42 tells us, “And they said, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, “I have come down from heaven”‘?”
B. Jesus knows perfectly what people say about Him. So; whether they spoke these complaints to themselves or uttered them out loud, Jesus responded to them in a very public way. They did not understand rightly the miracle of His conception in the womb of the virgin Mary; otherwise they would not have marveled at His claim to have come down from heaven. But Jesus didn’t correct them in their misunderstanding. The doctrine of our Lord’s divine nature, and the miracle of His incarnation, are things that are right for us to proclaim as part of the Good News; but we shouldn’t expect those things to convince someone who is committed to unbelief.
1. Instead of correcting their erroneous beliefs about Him—remarkably—Jesus simply reaffirmed to these ‘complainers’ one side of the two truths that He proclaimed in verses 37-40. There He said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” It is, on the one hand, God’s initiative that draws a sinner to the Savior. And there is, on the other hand, the promise that if someone comes to the Savior as an act of their own will, they will be received. Those two things are not in contradiction; because if someone comes of their own will, it is because God first enabled and drew them. And that was why these complainers— well-schooled as they were in the promises of Scripture, eyewitnesses as they were to the miracles of Jesus, but hardened as they remained in their unbelief against Him—could stand before Him and see Him, and yet still not believe. “Jesus therefore answered and said to them, ‘Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day'” (vv. 43-44). Their unbelief in Him was not because of any defect in Him. It was because they had not been drawn by the Father.
2. He went on to explain this even further by quoting from Isaiah 54:13—which they would have known very well as a passage that teaches about the times of the Messiah. Jesus said—and if this was in the synagogue, He could have even placed His hand on the scroll of the text and read it to them—”It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me” (v. 45). If anyone comes to Him, it would only be because they had been taught of the Father to do so. No one could claim to truly be taught of the Father who—at the same time—also rejected the Son!
3. Some scholars have believed that the words of verse 46 were inserted by the Gospel writer John to give further explanation to Jesus’ meaning: “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father” (v. 46). But these words could just as easily have been uttered by the Lord Himself. They are very much in keeping with the words He prayed in John 17 when He spoke of those who would follow Him; “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:24-26).
C. And if they had a reason to complain against Him because of what He had said before, He really gave them something to complain about in what He said next! He goes on to make His claim about Himself as clear as it can be—but only unto further hardness on the part of those who heard Him.
1. Notice how He makes use of that great phrase “Most assuredly” (or “Verily, verily”); as if to affirm that what He claimed was true whether anyone believed it or not. “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 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” (vv. 47-51). He claims to be ‘the bread of life’—not like the manna of old, but that which results in eternal life. What’s more, He said that to “eat” this bread was to exercise faith in Him. He is, here, essentially repeating what He said to the people of Capernaum in verse 27; “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
2. To offer His “flesh” was to offer the fullness of His Person—His identity as the Son of God in human flesh who lived on this earth in perfect obedience to the will of the Father. There’s the old saying that ‘you are what you eat’; and that is most certainly true when it comes to the Lord Jesus. As the Bible commentator F. Godet put it, “To eat the flesh, is to contemplate with faith the Lord’s holy life and to receive that life into oneself through the Holy Spirit to the end of reproducing it in one’s own life; to drink the blood, is to contemplate with faith His violent death, to make it one’s own ransom, to appropriate to oneself its atoning efficacy” (F. Godet, Commentary on The Gospel of John, Vol. II, p. 40). This is not a claim to complain against. It is a glorious invitation to believe, to accept and to be saved by.
II. THE STRIVING BECAUSE OF THE OFFER OF HIS ‘FLESH’ FOR ‘THE LIFE OF THE WORLD (vv 52-59).
A. We’re told that the mere complaining of the Jews who heard Him then turned to “striving”. “The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?'” (v. 52). They didn’t understand how He could have come down from heaven; so they certainly couldn’t have understood how He could make this seemingly-offensive claim to offer them His flesh to eat. But Jesus doesn’t accommodate Himself to their unbelief or alter what He said. He simply said the same thing again—and once more in the sort of strong terms that affirmed the absolute truth of what He claimed about Himself. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (v. 53). And think of this! Not even a member of the favored race of the Jewish people—the chosen people of God!—can be saved unless he or she, by faith, receive the very life of Jesus into themselves in such a way as to be united to Him and He to them. As the Gospel writer John says elsewhere in Scripture, “And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12).
B. Note now that Jesus makes reference to His blood—speaking even further truth—but no doubt causing even greater offense: “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed” (vv. 54-55). To “raise up” those who believe on Him at “the last day” is another way of describing ‘eternal life’ or salvation (see v. 39, 40, and 44; also 27, 47, 51, 57 and 58). He stressed that His flesh is “food indeed” (or “true food”) and that His blood is “drink indeed” (or “true drink”) because they were looking to Him to provide the temporal nourishment of manna—just as Moses had done in the wilderness. As He said in verses 32-33, “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.”
C. Jesus used strong terms. Rather than merely say “eat”, in the original language He says, “chew”. That’s a very picturesque way of describing a deliberate involvement of faith. And He says, “He who eats (or “chews”) My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (v. 56). This is describing a complete union with Jesus by faith—both in His sinless life and His atoning death. And this results in eternal life because Jesus Himself is the only one through whom the eternal life from the Father is accessed. He said, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever” (vv. 57-58).
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Is it any wonder that Jesus offended people by the things He said about Himself? The things He claimed are unlike anything anyone else would dare to claim of themselves. They put the people who hear these claims at the forks of a decision.
Jesus truly is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He truly is “the bread of life”. Others may be offended by Him. But let’s humbly receive Him, be fed of Him through faith, and live by Him! And let’s not hesitate to share what He said about Himself to others who also need to hear, believe, and have life from Him.