Then in verse 31 we see the challenge they present. Moses provided bread for millions of people for 40 years. You gave us bread once. The bread Moses gave us came down from Heaven; Jesus - you used earthly bread and you multiplied it.

Look at His response. Vv. 32-33. They’re saying Moses had manna ... Jesus what have you got? And Jesus is trying to tell them and He tells us, I am not talking about physical things. I’m talking about spiritual matters. He is telling them that Manna can only solve physical hunger. But this bread I am describing gives life. Now He has their attention...their appetite is whet. Look how they respond. V. 34. From now on give us THIS BREAD. Jesus then says in verse 35 “I AM the Bread of Life.” He who comes to me will never go hungry and He who believes in me will never be thirsty. I am talking about a kind of bread that will change your life completely.

Still they had trouble understanding. V. 41 tells us that they began to grumble. V. 42 tells us why. They grumbled because Jesus said that He was the bread that came down from heaven. I find it interesting that the Israelites grumbled when God provided the manna for them in the wilderness. And really human nature hasn’t changed very much because the Israelites did it, the religious crowd here in the NT did it and guess what? So do we! The real problem I think was this. They all knew about Jesus but as I have said, there is a huge difference in knowing about God and in knowing Him personally. Look again at verse 42. Some of us are in danger of doing the same thing. Maybe you grew up in church, you know a few Bible stories, you know what happened at Christmas and at Easter and you think you have Jesus all figured out. Listen, be careful that you don’t allow what you know ABOUT Him to keep you from actually KNOWING Him.

Perhaps you have read the book or heard the story that Jon Krakauer tells in His book Into Thin Air. In his book he describes the hazards that got in the way when these mountain climbers were attempting to get to the top of Mount Everest. Andy Harris, one of the men in charge stayed at the peak of the mountain too long and on his decent he started running out of oxygen So he radioed the base camp and told them of his predicament. He told them on my way down I have seen several oxygen canisters that were left behind by the others but i know they’re used up. They are empty. But the climbers who had already made it down knew they were full. They told him. Again and again they told him. But it did no good. He wouldn’t listen. He continued to argue and he insisted that the canisters were empty. Why would you do that?

Listen carefully. The problem was that the LACK of what he needed (the oxygen) had so disoriented his mind that even though he was surrounded by the very thing that would give him life, he couldn’t see it. The very thing he held in his hands ... these canisters .... were full of the very thing that was absent in his body. His body was deprived of the very thing that was right in front of him. But he just couldn’t see it. Listen, what oxygen is to the body, the Bread of Life is to the spirit. Many of us are starving ... we’re suffocating and we don’t even know it. And Jesus is offering life to us, it’s right in front of us but we just don’t see it. So we keep looking