I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE – ALL YOU EVER NEED IN THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT - PART 2
This is PART 2 of the Message “I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE” one of the magnificent truths spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ when on earth. We ended the first PART looking at The Bread for Christian Sustenance, and were studying the manna. We continue . . .
POINT 3. (Considering the Bread who came down from heaven). We have seen how the manna from heaven is the heavenly food for God’s people in the earthly journey, and the Lord from heaven is the One upon whom we feed. If you don’t have any desire to feed on the Lord Jesus Christ, (to spend time with him in His word, in prayer and with God’s children), and find your interests more aligned with the world, then take a good look at your salvation that you have actually partaken of the Bread of Life for salvation. Those who belong to Christ should have a consuming desire for His word; to be fed; to feast on the Lord. That was Mary’s desire as she sat at the feet of Jesus listening to Him. That is the desire of nearly all of you here today – I hope all of you. The Bible is our inerrant, God-breathed truth, our food, and our growth supply.
FAILURE IN THE WILDERNESS – THE MANNA REJECTED
We look at this verse again –
{{John 6:32 Jesus therefore said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.”}} To the Jews exiting Egypt, this bread given in the wilderness, was not the true bread. The true manna that had heavenly origins, was not good enough for them. They whinged and whined to Moses about the bread, and God gave them their desires, but their complaining resulted in leanness (famine) to their souls. There were the malcontents who travelled along with the people in the wilderness, who found little satisfaction in the true manna but hankered after the delights of the world, for Egypt is the symbol of the world in scripture – {{Numbers 11 v 5-6 “We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, but now our appetite is gone. There is nothing at all to look at except this manna.”}}
The worldling and the worldly Christian do not desire the things of God but find them tiresome and demanding. They want to spend their time chasing the things of this corrupt world, not desiring the true manna from above. Well, God gave them their desires, and note in the passage about to come, the way their greed rushed in to gather to themselves the lusts of the flesh – {{Numbers 11 v 31-33 “Now there went forth a wind from the LORD, and it brought quail from the sea, and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, all around the camp, and about two cubits deep on the surface of the ground. The people spent all day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers) and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very severe plague.”}}
Rejection of God’s best, as you move away from the heavenly manna, always results in leanness in a spiritual walk. All you can expect, is stunted growth and failure. A worldly Christian who hankers after the leeks and garlic of Egypt, is useless for God, and likely to come under the judgement of God. The Jews of Haggai’s time did not have God’s interests as their priority, and there was drought, and a failure of harvests and leanness upon the nation. Haggai wrote {{Haggai 1 v 10 “Therefore, because of you (the people), the sky has withheld its dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.”}}
THE GREAT FAILURE IN TODAY’S CHURCHES
Is it not true, that comparison of our churches with many of those of 100 years ago, reveals leanness and failure today? What is the difference between then and now? Well the Christians back then believed the word from cover to cover, honoured it, read it, did not question it, and put it into action. Today, the termites of higher criticism, rejection, humanism, and liberalism, socialism, and now WOKE, have tunnelled through nearly every chapter of the bible, chewing up what God has given through inspiration. We must become real for God, and honour His word (His true Manna) with a true reverence. We must seek the spiritual delights of the true manna, and reject the lusts of Egypt.
Last year, I spoke in one message about liberalism in the churches today. Liberalism is killing the churches in our time, creating weak and sickly Christians, who are nothing more than “maybe saved”, but uncommitted people in the congregations, and the weak Christians who are part of that, are ineffectual and uninspired. Paul would say of this, “Clean out the old leaven”. Leaven in the scriptures is always bad, always evil, without exception. I want to return just briefly to the verse we had a minute or two ago – {{John 6 v 32 Jesus therefore said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.}} The Father sent into the world His Son, the true bread. Then we see this very important contrast. The bread from heaven in Moses’ time was the manna, but the true bread from heaven is the Lord, Himself. He is the True Manna.
Now a scriptural principle is that of opposites. If there is a mention of the “true”, then the devil will have a matching “false”. When the sower in Matthew 13 sowed the good seed, the devil sowed tares, or darnel or weeds. If there is true bread, there is also false bread, and that is what we see in growing influence in today’s theological colleges and mainline churches, and in publications, and generally throughout Christendom. We need to rid our churches of these insidious teachings and practices, false teaching and doctrines of demons that destroy the wholesomeness of scripture, and adulterate the true manna of the word.
In 2016, David Jeremiah did a series called, “I never thought I’d see the day”, and one message was “. . . that the bible became irrelevant.” My friends, we are seeing that in so many churches. Plenty time is given to entertainment with all sorts of choruses that are repeated and then you repeat the repeats. They miss the focus on the very depth of Christ. There are children’s talks and other items of entertainment, then there may be 20 minutes left for some short non-confrontational talk with some mention of the bible. Joel Olsteen who controls the largest church in the USA will not use the word “sinner”. This false teacher is on about universality and self-esteem, but is leading thousands to hell. Why have we descended into this mess? Why? It is because we have lost our appetite for the bread of life and prefer rather, the onions, cucumbers, leeks and garlic of Egypt. We have dishonoured the Lord of the churches, and despised the bread of life. Indeed, we have despised THE BREAD OF LIFE.
Point 4. Man’s Failure with the Bread from Heaven. {{Exodus 16 v 2 “and the whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, Ex. 16:3 and the sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”}} They hankered after the world’s food - the world’s literature, the world’s games, the world’s delights and activities. [“One hour of my time at church on Sunday? - well the Lord ought to be grateful for that!”]
The wilderness meant a place away from the distractions, from all that would engross the people. There is nothing better than a private place of withdrawal to meet with God, but when the world’s delights occupy your soul, it is just plain drudgery. In Egypt they ate bread to the full, and that is often the way of the natural man – they will fill themselves with the world so much, that there is no place for God. It is so sad when the carnal Christian, who ought to be feeding on the things of the Lord, is not full up, and goes off craving for more satisfaction in the world’s things.
There is one serious aspect I can’t cover today – that is, the false shepherds who ought to be feeding to the sheep, the bread of life, but instead are feeding them crumbs, dried chaff. Meanwhile they gorge themselves!
AN EXTRA LOOK AT BREAD AND MEAT AND SPIRITUAL FOOD – AND NEGLECT
{{Exodus 16 v 11 and the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, Exodus 16:12 “I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel. Speak to them saying, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread and you shall know that I am the LORD your God.’” There is something very important here. It was in the meat and in the eating of the bread, that all the congregation would know the Lord God, and it is this God who demonstrated His glory in a cloud in verse 10. The glory of God is shown in the meat and the bread. He wanted them to be filled, not half filled, or in the case of some of us, drip-fed! They would know God’s fullness as they fed on the meat and the bread.
Do you want to know God? This verse clearly teaches that we will know God as we take up what God has given us for the whole of our spiritual life, for all our life. You will see, of course, that God gave both bread in the morning and meat in the evening. We know from Corinthians that there is a difference between milk and meat. Young Christians begin with the milk of the word and very soon OUGHT to move on to bread and meat. Bread and meat are for mature Christians, and let me tell you something - all of us, except very recent Christians, should be mature eaters of the bible. We should take the bread and the meat as we grow more and more with God. Isn’t it a terrible thing when preachers are not encouraging, that is, pressing with great decisiveness, their hearers to eat heartily in the bible, with ever increasing desire. It is lamentable that many messages preached, are for itching ears, non-controversial, and as bland as junket or tofu. Preachers will be accountable for not challenging their hearers with sincere desire and urgency to take up the word of God as the great men of God have done in the past.
Dr.W.W.Breckbill, one of the founders of the Evangelical Methodist Church, wrote, [[“Wesley always approached the Bible with prayer. His periods of Bible study were always interspersed with periods of prayer. I knelt in Wesley s prayer room where he studied the Word on his knees. Grooves are literally worn into the boards where his knees, in prayer, pressed into them. In his notes, Wesley states that as he read the Word, he paused frequently to examine his own life by what he read. He stated that Bible reading and study had little value if not applied to heart and life. Wesley's Bible study always related to experiential piety. The state of the soul and the walk of the believer were an important commentary on the written Word.”]] Jeremiah was told to devour the scroll of God. Paul said, “Woe unto me if I don’t preach the gospel. Local preachers and ministers listening to me, firstly maintain and fight for the pure word of God, and secondly, preach it uncompromisingly and faithfully.
THE CONTINUING TEACHING
Jesus continued speaking to the crowd expanding on what He had been saying.
{{John 6 v 47 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. John 6:48 I am the bread of life. John 6:49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. John 6:50 This is the bread which comes down out of heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he shall live forever, and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.”
John 6:58 This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not (in the way that) the fathers ate, and died, (but) he who eats this bread shall live forever.”}}
I fear our time has gone. I pray that God may give us understanding of the great sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Bread from heaven. The Lord bless you all.
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
