Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 31 (06-10-19)
Bob George shares from John 6, where Jesus is explaining spiritual truth to the Jews who came to him to get food. It is a hard teaching to us because Jesus used illustrations in the physical realm to explain truth in the spiritual realm. He spoke about real food and real drink, in referring to spiritual food that can only be received by faith. You do not receive eternal life by receiving a wafer into your body as offered by a priest but by believing what Jesus did for you, that he died, was buried and that he rose again. Unless a man is born again he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, not born of mom and dad, but born again from above, by God, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3. Jesus is appealing to men to come to him for life.
This is not even religion but an extremely practical thing God did for us. If you need life then you are dead. Until we see our spiritual death then why would we ever come to him for spiritual life? If you are not hungry, why would you come to him for bread? If we are not sinners, why would we come to him for salvation and forgiveness? Until we see our need then we are not ready for Jesus, whether back then or today. We were born dead spiritually. Until we see that we are spiritually dead, and the only solution to that death is life, why would we want to come to Jesus for his resurrected life? Since all we deal with is the fact we are dead and just that we are sinners, then we stop at the cross in the teaching of salvation instead of going to the resurrection, which is what saves us. You are not saved by the death of Christ but by the life of Christ. You cannot be saved eternally by the life of Christ without the eternal value of the cross. You cannot have one (death on the cross) without the other (the resurrection) but do not mistake one with the other. They are two separate things. So many stop at the cross and walk around as forgiven sinners, and speak of themselves as “I am just a sinner saved by grace”, instead of seeing that you have been raised from dead, that you are a new creature in Christ, called a saint, that has been saved by the grace of God, saved by the resurrection of Christ Jesus, which is the only life available to man.
God is not willing anyone should perish but God has given man a free will. He did not make man a robot. He can choose life in Christ Jesus or remain spiritually dead. Choose life today. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. The humble listen to God and believe what He has said.
Turn to John 6:25.
Jesus identified himself as the bread of life. As discussed last week, when people presented with spiritual truth, they never get away from the physical aspect of it. Jesus just performed a miracle of feeding five thousand people, with just five loaves and two loaves. He then went to the other side of the lake and people had noticed that Jesus did not get in the boat with his disciples to go over there. They did not realize that as the disciples were on their way to the other side of the lake, a huge storm developed in the evening. The disciples suddenly looked up and saw Jesus walking on water. The people that came over the next day did not know this. They came to meet with Jesus, and asked him, after seeing him get out of the boat, “How did you get here?”
Jesus answered them, knowing what is in the heart of people.
John 6:25-26
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.
27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
The reason you came to follow me over here was not to come to me to get what I came to give,, but to get fed, to get bread.
John 6:28-32
28 Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?
31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
32 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
So they replied about the bread from Moses, the manna when we were 40 years in the desert. Jesus told them that first of all the manna did not come from Moses, but from God. But like anything down here it, it does not last.
John 6:34-40
34 “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.
37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
38 For 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 those 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 them up at the last day.”
Just as that bread came from God, I also came from God. You eat it and then you get hungry again. Jesus said he has a different kind of bread, something greater than that. Jesus is talking about the spiritual aspect of that. Jesus is saying, “You eat bread to stay alive physically but I have bread that will enable you to enter eternal life. That physical bread came from God and also this spiritual bread came from God”.
So then the Jews began to grumble. Again, they are only able to think in the natural realm.
John 6:41-42
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
42 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’?”
Jesus again is illustrating spiritual truth in physical terms that man can relate to. Yet the Jews continue to grumble, still not understanding.
John 6:43-47
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered.
44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.
45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.
46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.
47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.
Jesus explains to them that he came to offer them eternal life. He appeals to them to simply believe his words for eternal life.
John 6:48-51
48 I am the bread of life.
49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.
Jesus continually repeats and mentions that he came down from heaven. He is from heaven and came down to us. He is God and always will be God. God sent his son to be born as a virgin. Jesus is saying, “If I was born in the loins of Adam, I would be born dead like you. But I was conceived of the Holy Spirit of God”. He lived some 33 years fulfilling the law of God and thus died for the sins of us who could not fulfill the law. He identified to us that he is the bread of life.
John 6:51
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
Recognize you cannot live without bread. If you eat physical bread of this world you will be hungry again. This bread of life is spiritual bread that whoever eats this bread will live forever.
The Jews, not able to understand spiritual truth, are arguing among themselves.
John 6:52
52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
1 John 5:10-12
10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
It is a cut and dry situation. This is not even religion but an extremely practical thing God did for us. If you need life then you are dead. Until we see our spiritual death, then why would we ever come to him for spiritual life? If you are not hungry, why would you come to him for bread? If we are not sinners, why would we come to him for salvation and forgiveness? Until we see our need then we are not ready for Jesus, whether back then or today. We were born dead spiritually. Until we see that we are spiritually dead, and the only solution to that death is life, why would we want to come to Jesus for his resurrected life? Since all we deal with is the fact we are dead and just that we are sinners, then we stop at the cross in the teaching of salvation instead of going to the resurrection, which is what saves us. You are not saved by the death of Christ but by the life of Christ. You cannot be saved eternally by the life of Christ without the eternal value of the cross. You cannot have one (death on the cross) without the other (the resurrection) but do not mistake one with the other. They are two separate things. So many stop at the cross and walk around as forgiven sinners, and speak of themselves as “I am just a sinner saved by grace”, instead of seeing you have been raised from dead, that you are a new creature in Christ, called a saint, that has been saved by the grace of God, saved by the resurrection of Christ Jesus, which is the only life available to man.
This is in quite contrast to the thinking of many today, who think they are saved because they are Jew, or Catholic or Baptist. The Jews that Jesus was speaking to on earth said they believed in Moses.
John 5:45-47
45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set.
46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”
The Jews also thought they had eternal life because they read the scriptures.
John 5:39-40
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me,
40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
You are not saved by your heritage or church or religious affiliation. In essence, Jesus is saying, “You come to me for forgiveness. You come to me to get fed. But you do not come to me to get life. You need spiritual life if you are going to live eternally with me.”
John 6:52
52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus continues to explain spiritual truth using a physical illustration.
John 6:53
53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
When do we get raised up?
There are only two ways of death, where absent from the body and present with the Lord or the rapture of the church.
If you have eternal life now, are you going to spend thousands of years in grace until you get eternal life? No, you have eternal life the moment you believed and forever. If you have the Son you have life.
1 John 5:12
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Once you have life you have it forever. This spiritual life that lives in me will never die. Just go to sleep in Jesus and wake up in his arms. You wake up in the presence of Jesus where you will live with Him eternally.
John 6:55-59
55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Leviticus 17:11
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.
Life is in the blood. When Jesus is talking about blood here, he is talking about life. But he is talking in the spiritual realm concerning himself. Jesus is saying, “Just as real drink and real food are two things needed for physical life, my bread and my blood is needed for spiritual life.”
Deuteronomy 8:3
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord
1 John 4:13
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.
Jesus is talking about spiritual truth. When you and I come to Christ we come one and only one way and that is by faith.
Romans 10:17
Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
We hear truth and the heart responds to truth. I do not see him and I cannot touch him, for he is Spirit, but I know he is alive. I know by the spirit he has given me. I am told he is standing at the door of my heart knocking and if I hear his voice and open the door then he will come into me.
Revelation 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
That is either the truth or it is not. When you hear something like this then you either have to accept or reject it.
If Jesus is not alive, this is all a fairy tale. How do you account for the apostles, who all died as martyrs, claiming they met the resurrected Christ? How do you account for that? Who would die for a lie? You can be deceived until someone tells you they will hang you upside down. Then you will get rid of your deception in a hurry. How do you account for the testimony of people from 2000 years, that on a specific day heir life was changed. Am I a liar or am I insane? They either had an encounter with Christ or they did not. Either you are an imposter or you would be insane claiming yourself to be God, if indeed you are not. Jesus is Lord, liar or lunatic and you have to choose which to believe. The evidence is overwhelming that Jesus is God in the flesh.
When saying, “I am either insane or an imposter or had an encounter with God”, I am not talking about seeing God with my eyes. Bob George was born again in 1969, going in one direction and then immediately going in another direction after an encounter with truth from God.
John 6:55-59
55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
We have physical bread and spiritual bread. We have people today who believe the way you have Jesus in your heart is to put a wafer in your mouth. People come down aisle to have a priest put a wafer in your mouth and that wafer is said to be transformed into the body of Jesus (referred to as transubstantiation), then Jesus supposedly lives in you. If that is true, then that will not stay there long as much as we have a digestive tract. Bob remarked, “How people can believe this I do not know”. That is why have to keep coming back to keep getting Jesus over and over. That is not the way to receive Jesus. You receive Jesus not by taking a wafer or drinking something physically.
John 3:1-8
1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council.
2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit.
7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’
8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
You are saved by believing the truth that Jesus was raised from the dead so that life that raised him from the dead can raise you from the dead spiritually. So when you believe that then something occurs that is called “born again”. Jesus used the term “born again” when explaining spiritual truth to Nicodemus in John 3. I cannot explain it but I know because he did it to me. It is a miracle of new birth in Christ Jesus, where the Spirit of God that was in Jesus is now resident in you. Whenever you participate in the agreement with God and man by faith, you are born again and will live forever. When absent from the body, you are eternally present with the Lord forever.
2 Corinthians 5:8 (KJV)
We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
John 6:60
60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
Of course it is hard teaching. He is talking about bread but yet he is talking about spiritual bread. He is talking about wine but he is talking about spiritual wine. He is making an illustration for us. Whenever he talks with illustrations to explain spiritual truth we are always thinking in the natural realm we live in. We think in the natural realm so it is hard teaching.
John 6:61
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?
He did not give them a chance to answer, already knowing what they are thinking and what they need to hear.
John 6:62
62 Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!
Did that happen with Jesus following his resurrection? Absolutely.
Mark 16:19
19 After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.
Until then there is no gut wrenching in their being that this is the absolute truth.
John 6:63
63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.
Think about this. We are getting older. We know how quickly this life goes by. This life down here in light of eternity is nothing but a quick second. We place so much importance on it. These bodies of ours are unbelievably important. When you are 60 or 70, you just do not look like a 20 year old. You can get your face stretched but your arms are all baggy. We are so interested and preoccupied with this body that we have, that some people even have diseases, such as anorexia and bulimia. You do not see 60 year old models in bikinis. We all get a turn to look good but it will not stay there. The body will not do what it used to be able to do. If you were an athlete you cannot perform the same as you get older.
The flesh counts for nothing yet we put all this emphasis on the physical things that die rather than on spiritual things that last forever. Our successes and failures are temporary. What we do spiritually is what counts. This will affect our eternity. What you do down here only affects you for a fleeting moment. So do you prepare for eternity?
The Word of life, and the words of eternal life, is not a message of gloom but reality. If you are going to live forever, you are not going to live forever physically but you can live forever spiritually. Think about what will happen in the Spirit.
John 6:64
64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him.
65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Is that true or not? That is straight out of the scriptures. Will all come to repentance? No! Why? He also gave us a will. It is God’s will and you have a will. He gave you a choice. He did not make you as a robot. That is why things happen, terrible things. That is why wars take place. So a man goes to worship Allah instead of going to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not all people will come to him. They would rather kill people who are Christians and think they will receive 7 virgins for doing so.
1 Peter 5:5
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
The reason people reject the message through Jesus alone is because of pride. The proud of heart thinks, “I want to be a broad thinker. I just want to believe everything is going to be okay. I just want to come into church and be okay, where I want to believe in anything. I want to be tolerant of people, not calling sin what God calls sin.” God will not touch your heart when it is prideful.
