Sermon by Pastor Robert Green, 8/16/15, 12th Sunday after Pentecost, No. 1144, Ascension Evangelical Lutheran Church, W.E.L.S., Harrisburg, PA, based John 6:41-51
Trust in the Bread of Life having come down from heaven to save you!
One of the hardest things we who believe do is to use our reasoning powers, given by God, to try and understand the Scriptures, but at the same time submitting our reasoning to the Scriptures, so that let Scripture rule what we believe and not our power of reason. God does not give usthe freedom to demand that he makes sense to us for good reason, for he is so far greater than we that we could not possibly begin claim to know, grasp or understand him with our puny human reasoning. That is why he revealed himself to us in the Scripture in terms we can understand. Yet, even in his revelation there are things we cannot understand, but we believe them simply because he has spoken. Indeed, who among us can understand the very essence of God, especially as he reveals himself to be separate three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each completely true God, yet there is not three gods, but one God.
It is good that our faith is not a matter of human reason in the sense that we believe only because things make sense to us, or that we believe only what is possible according to human reason, for our reason is subject to sin. The fall into sin corrupted the human nature and all its intellectual powers of reasoning. Take to heart that means human reason cannot be trusted to dictate what is to be believed about spiritual matters.This demands that we take God at his Word, even when it goes against reason.
We see all this played out in Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse from the Gospel of John, chapter 6, which begins with the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Recall that after being fed, the crowds sought by force to make Jesus their bread king. Knowing this, Jesus left the people to a solitary place, but the next day the people caught up with him. That is when Jesus began his discourse by telling them they were seeking him not because of his divine miracles or teachings, but because they had eaten their full. Jesus told the crowds, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you…The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
The people were thinking of the bread Jesus had given them and challenged him to be like Moses who gave them the bread of manna for forty years. Jesus pointed out to them the manna was bread for the body, not the true bread coming down from heaven that gives eternal life. Jesus told them, “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world…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.”
Then in the verses just before the reading Jesus said, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”This is where the reading for today begins in which Jesus encourages all to trust in the Bread of Life having come down from heaven to save all people!
John went on to tell us, “At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” And they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” There is no question that what to believe about God was at stake. These unbelieving Jews used the knowledge that Jesus as just a local lad and reasoned that therefore it was impossible for him to have come down from heaven. These Jews sinned by rejecting what Jesus said. This they did because it went against their human reason.
Human reason does not stop at saying it is not possible that Jesus came down from heaven, for human reason, corrupted as it is by sin, must shout, apart from faith, that the entire Christian faith is unreasonable. For it is not reasonable that God became a man, became the sin of the world by reaching forward and backward in time to all who would ever live and taking all sins upon himself. It is not a matter of reason to believe that Jesus the God-Man suffered and die for those sins, so that all who would believe would be saved. In response to allowingreason ruling over matters divine, Jesus told them, “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” for such grumbling was the result of rejecting his claims, based on listening to human reason rather than to God.The word for “to grumble” means to grumble under one’s breath, as if to say, “This makes no sense.”
Jesus continued saying, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns comes to me.”The word to draw, really paints a picture of dragging against resistance. The same word used when some, thinking Paul was dead, drug him outside the city. It alsomeans to draw a sword. Notice that the word for “to draw” is used on an object that offers no cooperation. When God draws to faith, he is bringing us to faith. Luther understood the Scriptures well on this and so wrote in the Small Catechism about this, “I believe that I cannot by my own thinking or choosing believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.”The Father must draw us to faith, for it is quite impossible for the spiritually dead to bring the self to faith.
Jesus explained how God draws a soul to himself by going back to the divine Word recorded by the prophet Isaiah, who speakingabout believers, said, Isaiah 54:13, “All your sons will be taught by the LORD, and great will be your children’s peace.” The LORD, Yahweh, the God of love will teach the people and they will come to faith finding peace that comes from sins forgiven. Paul explains the same thought in Romans 10:17 (NIV84)“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.”
Thus, all who listen to the Father come to Jesus. One listens to the Father by hearing the divine Word and believing it. Jesus was directing all of us to the Word, which is centered on him, so that through the preaching and teaching of the Word we might be brought to faith and be saved! So, dear believer know that indeed you trust in the Bread of Life having come down from heaven to save you, for God has brought you to faith through the Word!
Understanding how hard it was to believe this, Jesus went on to show he indeed was God by saying, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.” Jesus’ point was that, as the Jews knew well, no one can see God and live. Yet, Jesus indeed had seen the Father and lived because he was no mere man, but true God. Take to heart that Jesus was telling the people to believe that he, the son of Joseph and Mary, was to be the object of their faith. This was an extraordinary claim that went far beyond reason, for Jesus was claiming not only to be from God, but to believed and worshiped as God!
In his claim to be God Jesus then sworn an oath saying, “I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life.”Did you catch Jesus’s promise that if we believe we have everlasting life? That means that everlasting life is guaranteed to us the moment we come to faith, there is nothing left for us to do. This is possible only because Jesus not a mere man, but true God, sent to save us from our sins by offing his divine suffering on the Cross. Believe this not because it makes human sense, for it does not, but because God has said it is so, which gives all the reason you need to trust in the Bread of Life having come down from heaven to save you!
Jesus then said, “I am the bread of life.” Life means the very essence of living, that is, the state of being alive. He is speaking about spiritual life. As physical bread gives life to the body, so he as the spiritual bread of life gives life to the soul. Physical life lasts but a few years, spiritual life endures forever. To illustrate this, Jesus the master teacher, then said, “Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die.”
What does he mean that we may eat of this spiritual bread and live forever? Let Jesus explain what this spiritual bread is, as he says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.”To understand what Jesus means, take to heart that “To eat of this bread” is a figure of speech and represents the picture of believing in Jesus. As bread sustains physical life only if one eats it, so Jesus will give eternal life only if one receives his bread. His bread is to believe in him. Any person who believes in Jesus will never go hungry or thirsty for he is the living bread and the living water.
Jesus makes it perfectly clear what this bread is, for he says, “This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”Jesus would give his body and blood unto death as he endured the penalty of damnation on the Cross, the complete separation from God the Father captured in those haunting words, “My God, my God! Why have you abandoned me?” Jesus came as a true living man so that he could do what God cannot do by definition, to suffer and die. He came as true God to do what no mere mortal could do, to pay for the sins of the whole world. He gave himself so that through faith in him we would have life, for he is the bread from heaven!
Dear believer, remind yourself that when you struggle against God’s divine revelation given to you in the Scriptures, and allow your reasoning to rule over Scripture by rejecting, twisting, or turning the Scripture to make it say what you like, instead in accordto what God has revealed, you have sinned. What comfort we lose when we do not believe what God has said, for when we do not believe even the little things, why would we believe the greatest thing God tells us, that through faith in Jesus we have eternal life? When you struggle over matters of faith always remind yourselfto not let your reason rule over Scripture, but to let Scripture rule your heart and mind so that you trust in the Bread of Life having come down from heaven to save you!To God be all glory, amen!