knowing i am: gospel of john “i am the bread of life” john 6...

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Knowing I AM: Gospel of John “I AM the Bread of Life” John 6:35-59 Kevin Haah

June 8, 2014

I. Introduction

[Reminder: Please turn on the timer]

[Slide 1] We are in the middle of a series on the Gospel of John called Knowing I

AM.

[Slide 2] The title of the sermon today is “I AM the Bread of Life.”

The focus of the sermon is on life.

My cousin, who used to live with us when I was young, committed suicide a

couple of weeks ago. He decided to give up on life. He was faced with disappointment,

depression, and some serious paranoia, and he came to a point where he felt like dying

was better than living. I went to his funeral and mourned with the family. I had not been

very close to him for many years but was able pick up bits and pieces of his story.

His life was a sad story. He was physically and verbally abused by his father who

was a pastor, and by the time he left home, he wanted nothing to do with Christianity.

But, he was a seeker. He wanted life. He sought after meaning in other religions. He

was deeply into Hinduism’s American branch-Self Realization Fellowship, and actually

became a guru, a teacher, and even came out with his own brand of Hinduism. He sought

life and he went in deep looking for it.

I was told that he studied Buddhism and other religions as well.

Later, he joined the Masonic Temple, and became a Freemason. He was

extremely high up in the organization.

I think he was seeking life, meaning, and respect.

While seeking life, various things happened in which the relationship with his

family was non-existent. His life was full of broken relationships. At the end of his life,

he was hungry for relationships.

He was a very intelligent guy. He went to an Ivy League college and became an

engineer with Boeing and worked on projects like Airforce 1. He was one of the few

guys who knew how to crack the code for the president’s communication system on

Airforce 1. He worked for them for over 30 years.

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About 5 years ago, he was laid off from Boeing. Everything started to fall apart.

His identity and life was tied to his ability, and the foundation for his life came crumbling

down. He started to medicate himself with alcohol. And depression and mental illness

set in, and he was paranoid about people killing him to get the communication code for

Airforce 1 or someone from the Masonic Temple coming after him. And in the end, he

killed himself.

I am telling you this story because I think his story is a story of someone in quest

for life.

He sought life from all kinds of things, but came to a disappointing end. I’ll tell

you a little more about his story at the end of the sermon.

Your story may or may not be as dramatic as my cousin’s story. But, I think we

are all seeking life. We don’t just want to exist. I know we get busy just existing—trying

to survive. Maybe we are doing a little better. We are working and raising our kids and

we don’t even have time to consider if there is more to life than this. There are some

good times, and at times, those times actually make us think that we are living a good

life; but sometimes, those good times come to an end. Maybe we are faced with an

illness. Maybe relationships come to an end. Maybe we get fired. Maybe we get caught

up in a destructive behavior. We come to realize that we don’t have life.

Christianity is about life, and I want us to look at what Jesus said about life, and

how to find it.

Let’s read John 6:35-59:

[Slide 3] 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.

[Slide 4] 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

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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.” 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’?”

[Slide 5] 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.’[d] 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. 48 I

am the bread of life.

[Slide 6] 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. 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.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man

give us his flesh to eat?” 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.

[Slide 7] 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will

raise them up at the last day. 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.

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[Slide 8]Here is what we are going to talk about: (1) the claim of Jesus; (2) the wrong

ways to respond to his claim; and (3) the right way to respond to his claim.

II. [Slide 9]The Claim of Jesus: I AM the Bread of Life.

I want to look at two aspects of his claim.

First, he said he is the “bread of life.”

Bread is more than just a part of the meal. In ancient times, the bread is the meal.

We now think of bread as an add-on to a meal, but for them, bread is the meal. Bread is

the fundamental food that satisfies the hunger. Jesus here is saying that I am the that

which will satisfy your hunger for life.

We all want life. We don’t just want to survive. We don’t just want to exist. We

want to live. There is something in us that drives us for life. We want to thrive. Meeting

our basic physical need is important, but there is something in us that strives for more.

We want meaning, joy, inner strength, exhilaration,

And Jesus is saying that I am the source of that life.

I am a Korean-American. We eat a lot of rice. For my parents, if they don’t eat

rice, they don’t feel like they ate.

• I remember when I was in high school, my brother, who is five years older

than me, got a job at a fancy computer company in Santa Barbara. When he

came up for a business trip to San Jose, where we lived, he wanted to treat all

of us to at the fanciest restaurant in San Francisco. I think it was called

Maxwell’s Plum. Being an immigrant family, none of us had ever been to

such a fancy restaurant. We literally had a waiter dedicated to waiting right at

the table for us. I don’t remember what we ate, but it wasn’t rice.

• When we all came home, I remember the first thing my mom did was to eat

rice and kimchee. Without eating rice, she just was not satisfied. It’s like

there is a stomach for other things you eat, and there is a stomach for rice. If

you don’t eat rice, you are not satisfied.

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• I think if Jesus came to my family, he might say: I am the rice of life.

He is saying I am that which will truly satisfy you and give you all that your heart is

yearning for.

Let’s look at the second aspect of what he said.

Jesus said, I AM the bread of life. If we don’t pay close attention to this, we miss

it. In Greek, Jesus said, ego emi the bread of life. The word ego already means I am. It

is a first person subject. In Greek, the verb to be is embedded in the subject. So, he

could have said, ego the bread of life. But, he said ego emi: he said, I AM, in an

emphatic way. This is the second time Jesus used this phrase: ego emi. Jonathan went

over this last Sunday: when the disciples were caught in a storm in the middle of the sea

of Galilee and struggling, Jesus walked on water and came to the disciples, and said, in

verse 20: “It is I; don’t be afraid.” But, in the original Greek, it says, “ego emi; fear not.”

He said, I AM fear not. In today’s passage, he said, I AM the Bread of Life. I

AM is the name that God gave Moses when God commissioned Moses to go to Egypt to

free his people from slavery. Moses asked for God’s name, and God said, I AM. Tell

them I AM has sent you. It is a verb to be. He is saying that he was, is and is to be.

There was no other time in which I was not. I AM. And Jesus is taking on the name of

God. This is really clear in John 8:56-59, Jesus said,

[Slide 10] 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he

saw it and was glad.” 57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen

Abraham!” 58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59 At

this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from

the temple grounds.

Jesus is clearly taking on God’s name. That’s how they understood it. That’s why they

tried to stone him. I know some people say that Jesus claimed to be divine in a sense that

all of us are divine. No, that’s not what he said. Jesus was saying he was divine in a

particular way. In the context of Judaism, he said I AM. He said I Am the Creator of the

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Universe. I Am the author of life. I was, I am, and I will be. I am the source of life. I am

the bread of life. I am that which your heart and soul is yearning for.

All of the other teachers and religions of the world are saying: I know the way to

bread of life; but Jesus said, I AM the bread of life.

If you are going to understand who Jesus is (and this is the point that John, the

author is trying to get across to us), you have to stand back and say: wow. This is a pretty

amazing claim. You have to deal with the magnitude of his claim.

Now, how do we respond to this?

III. [Slide 11] The Wrong Ways to Respond to This.

We either ignore what he says or give lip service to the fact that he is the

bread of life, but actually seek life elsewhere. We are actually trying to get life from

something else. Is Jesus truly the source of life for you?

[Slide 12] We often try to get life through success. This is what we hear all the

time in our culture: “If you want to have life, and life abundant, be successful.” My

family was Christian, but we grew up with a big dose of this culture. Being successful is

good, but if we try to get our life from that, we will fall into all kinds of trap--because

success does not give us true life. We hear so many people who have become successful

at the cost of their families, relationships, and even of their own health. And if we

believe that success is what will give us life, we will dedicate everything we have to that

end because we all want life. We will destroy everything that gets in the way because we

think that is what will give us life. And if something happens in our lives where our

success is in question or we come to grips with the fact that we will not be as successful,

your foundation shakes. We fall into depression. We start to medicate ourselves. Jesus

said, “I am the bread of life, not your success, and if you eat me, then and follow me, you

will have life. The road might not seem conventional. It might seem like the road of

difficulties; it might seem like a road of going down and rolling up our sleeves to serve;

but, this is the road to life.”

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[Slide 13] Sometimes, we seek life through getting respect. This might actually

be the mother of success. People often want success because it is a way of getting to

their real life: respect. We get life when we think that people respect us. Anytime

anyone does anything that shows disrespect, we brew in anger or depression. The life

that we have is driven by other people’s opinions of us. I think it is good seek the good

opinion of others. If you didn’t care what people thought of you, you might actually be

very self-focused. But, our life does not come from receiving respect from people. Our

life comes God. He is the source of our life. I know for some of us who come from gang

background or prison background, respect is huge. We have gotten into fights with

people and endangered our and their lives in the name of respect. Think about the

relational conflicts you are in, it is so often about respect. I am not saying that receiving

respect from others is not important. It’s important; but, it is not the source of life. If we

make it the source of life, our lives will be tossed up and down based on whether other

people respect us. We will hide and become a hypocrite because we don’t want others to

know who we really are. Sometimes, we feel like if we don’t have the respect of others,

our lives are not even worth living. We have to build our identity and life on God, not on

what others say. When we do that, we actually have the ability to forgive, to let go and

let be. If we are actually getting life from respect and someone disrespects us, we can’t

forgive. We can’t love. We can’t embrace people. God never told us to love people who

respect us. He told us to love even our enemies, and enemies don’t respect you. It is

only when we are getting life from God that we can let go of getting life from respect,

and actually start loving.

[Slide 14] Sometimes, we try to get life from relationship with people. I think

we do get a lot of life and encouragement from relationships. But, if we make people and

relationship THE source of life, we are going to chock the relationship. You know why?

We will fail and people will fail. We are messed up. We get selfish. We get

inconsiderate. We get angry. We get bitter. We get offended. So, sometimes,

relationships get difficult. When you get to that point: you have two choices: one, try to

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squeeze life out of that person and demand life out of that person. We often do this.

“Give me life. You are my source of life. Give. Give. Give… But, the other person is

doing the same thing. I need affirmation. I need love. I need need need.” We squeeze

each other dry. But, what if we sought life from God. What if our source of life,

meaning, and identity came from God? As we receive life, we can give life in our

relationships. Even if that person was messed up. Even if that person hurt us. Even if

that person offended us, disrespected us, stabbed us in the back. We can still give love

and grace.

When we get life from Jesus, we actually improve our relationships.

[Slide 15] Sometimes, we seek to get life from being a good person. This is

sort of a cousin of respect, but a little different. We get life from thinking that we are

approved by God because we do all the right things and don’t do the stuff that we are not

supposed to do. We seek righteousness by good work. Of course, doing good work is

good. But, it is not the source of life. It is not the bread of life. We can do good works

for the wrong reasons. We can do it out of pride. We do it to feel better than other

people. Or to support the belief that you are better than other people. You can be a very

moral person in terms of your behavior but be very prideful, judgmental, bitter, and even

hateful against people, especially against those who judge to be less than good.

This is so important for us to know. Life does not come by keeping the law. Life

comes from the bread of life. The law of God teaches us what is right and wrong, guides

us to his holiness; but, this is not where life is. Life is in Jesus. If you get life from the

law, you will be very critical of people. You can’t help it. So many people in the world

perceive Christians to be getting life from the law; but, it is really interesting that people

who did that opposed Jesus more than anyone else. The Pharisees were people who kept

the law and got life from the law, and it is to them that Jesus cried out: I am the bread of

life.

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IV. [Slide 16] What is the right way to respond to Jesus?

In verse 53, Jesus said: “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.” What does he mean by this? He is

speaking emphatically, shockingly, to focus us on the cross. He is saying that unless your

sustenance, your life, your identity is based on what I did for you on the cross, you have

no life. Our life comes from what Jesus has done for us on the cross. Now, what does

this mean?

It means our life does not come by what we do, how successful we are, what

others say about us, how much money we have, whether we are in a certain kind of

relationship, or even how good we are, how obedience we are to God’s laws. Our life

comes from what Jesus has done for us on the cross, and how he has given us his

righteousness, the right relationship with God. Even though we are sinners, we have

been embraced by God and adopted as children, this, all by grace, as a gift. We

appropriate this by faith. We make this truth happen by receiving it by believing in work

of Jesus, and making that the basis for our life.

So, to focus on the cross as the basis for life means two things: (1) coming to see

that we are more messed up than we know—that we are sinful. We have to constantly

search our hearts. Everything we seek life from something other than God, it leads to a

mess. We have to come to grip with that reality. It is not only when we disobey God; it

is not only when we do bad things that we sin; it is also when we seek something other

than God for life that we create all kinds of mess. This is called idolatry. When we seek

to get life from something other than God, it is idolatry. This brings us to humility. (2)

Coming to see that God loves us more than we can imagine. God embraces us, and loves

us, invites us to his table, into his presence, and celebrates with us. That is life. His

presence. He is all that we need. He is enough for us. He is everything. In him, we

rejoice. Do you see that we are free? Do you see that we can rejoice not based on our

circumstances, our performance, our approval, but on the rock of his love for us? That

while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He died to demonstrate his love for us.

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A couple of months before my cousin took his life, he sent an email to my other

cousin, his brother, during one of his times of sanity. He was trying to sort out what he

learned from his life journey. As you recall from the beginning of the sermon, he was a

seeker. He dove into many religions and philosophies. At the end, he concluded that all

of the world religion and thoughts are really about self-gratification; about how to fix

ourselves; in other words about how to get life through doing something, improving

something, focusing on something. But, he came to realize that Christianity is the only

religion that brought him to humility, that he was a sinner, that he was pretty messed up,

and he can’t do it on his own, and that he needed God’s grace. He said: without this

humility, there is no forgiveness and without forgiveness, there is no reconciliation. He

was grieving over all of the broken relationships in his life, and he realized that the path

he had walked did not bring him to humility. Then, he wrote pages and pages of things

he did wrong and regretted doing and started to repent via email, and he called his

brothers and others and asked for their forgiveness. He sought reconciliation. His mental

illness ended up taking his life, but I believe he came realize that the only way to true life

is through the gospel of the cross.

I think this is what it means to eat his flesh and drink his blood, to focus on the

cross for life. We admit to our wrong-doing, our brokenness, and seek reconciliation

through humility. We do that first with God, and his grace covers us. Then, in humility,

we seek to reconcile with others.

I want to give you some practical suggestions on what it means to eat this

bread of life.

We need to feed on the bread of life everyday. We need to seek him for life every

day.

Here is what we need to do. Focus on our relationship with him. Everything

needs to arise out of our relationship with him. Seek him every moment of your life.

Spend time praying. Spend time worshipping him. Spend time meditating on his word.

Spend time getting to know God’s loveliness, his grace, his holiness, all of him.

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I love something that Derrick does every morning. He puts down a thought from

the Scripture that he is mediating on for that day on Facebook. For some reason, his post

is always the first thing I read when I go on Facebook. I am always encouraged by that.

I love how some of you write to seek clarity from God.

I love how some of you dance to worship God.

I love how some of you love to sing and worship while driving.

I love how some of you pray for people as you view the news.

I love how some of you are constantly interceding for people.

I love how some of you absolutely love the Word of God and meditate on it day

and night.

I love how some of you are involved in Bible studies where we can learn from

one another about this life that is in Jesus.

Here is the point: we need to dwell in the house of the Lord. The only way to get

in is through the redemptive sacrifices of our Lord Jesus, just like the only way to get into

the Holy of Holies, the place of the God’s glory, was through the blood of the sacrificial

lamb. And the more we dwell in his presence, the more we are filled with his life, the

more we are free, and the more we serve and live out our lives with vitality and grace.

Here is a sneak peek at what is coming up: the Holy Spirit. God has given his

Holy Spirit to us so that we can get life from him all the time. Romans 5:5 says: “God’s

love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to

us.” It is this Holy Spirit that gives us life on a daily basis.

knowing i am: gospel of john “i am the bread of life” john 6...

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