The Bread of Life; I Am

It's rather interesting to note in the Gospel of John, the emphasis on the essentials for spiritual life. For physical life, I have to have air, the breath that God gives us, and Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to the wind in John 3. He says, "The wind blows where it will, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit."

The Spirit of God is the breath of God. And in John 4, we have the water of life. And here in John 6, we have the bread of life. Jesus Christ says, "I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."

The Jews had seen Jesus multiply the loaves and the fishes, but they were not too impressed. They said, "Now Moses brought bread down from heaven. You just took bread on earth and multiplied it, but Moses brought bread down from heaven for forty years. The manna fed the Jewish people."

In this sermon on the bread of life, our Lord Jesus is contrasting Himself and the manna. He’s trying to show these people that He is a far greater miracle and what He has to offer is far greater than anything Moses gave or did back in Exodus 16.

Now the interesting thing is this, He is contrasting Himself as the bread of life with that manna back in Exodus 16. Contrast number one: when God gave the manna, all He gave was a gift, but when God sent His Son as the bread of life, He gave the giver. Did you get that? In the Old Testament, God just simply spoke and the manna came down, the bread of God from heaven.

But when He sent the Lord Jesus Christ, it wasn't just a gift, it was the giver because the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Jesus Christ is eternal God, and He is so sweet, and He is so satisfying that once you’ve trusted Him, you'll want nothing else, for He will save you and keep you and satisfy you and one day take you to heaven.

That’s a second contrast we have to notice. The manna only sustained life, but Jesus Christ gives life. In John 6:33, our Lord said this, "For the bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." Did you notice that? Jesus Christ doesn't just simply sustain life, He gives life.

You see, the manna came down to people who were physically alive, who had to have nourishment day after day. But Jesus Christ came down to a world that was dead, dead in trespasses and sins, on their way to eternal destruction. And Jesus Christ doesn't just sustain life, He gives life.

Have you ever noticed in the Gospel of John, whenever the Lord spoke about something spiritual, people interpreted this in some material way? He said to Nicodemus, "You've got to be born again." He meant by that born spiritually. And Nicodemus said, "How can a man return to his mother’s womb?" He was thinking about the literal.

In John 4, Jesus said to the woman at the well, "If you'll ask me, I'll give you water and you'll never again thirst." She said, "You don't even have a bucket. How can you give me water?" Well, He was talking about spiritual water. He wasn't talking about literal water from a well.

Now here our Lord is talking about a spiritual experience, the experience of receiving Jesus Christ within, just as you must take bread and receive it within if you're going to sustain life. So you must receive Me within you if you're going to receive everlasting life.

Now there's a third contrast, and it’s also found in verse 33 of John 6. The manna was given only to Israel, but the Lord Jesus Christ, the bread of life, is given for the whole world. Look at that: "For the bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." Now God gave the manna to Israel for about forty years. He was caring for His people because He was going to use His people to save a lost world.

We must remember that when God called Abraham, and when He established the nation of Israel, and when He blessed them, it was not for their sake, it was for our sake. God called them that through Israel we might be given the Bible. Through Israel we might be given the witness of the true God. And through Israel we might be given the Savior. Jesus Himself said, "Salvation is of the Jews."

When God gave the manna, He gave it to Israel and He fed them and cared for them. But when the Lord Jesus came, it was not simply for Israel, it was for the whole world. Now He came originally to His own people. John tells us that. He came unto His own world and His own people received Him not. They said, "We will not have this man to reign over us." And now because of the fall of Israel, the Gospel has gone out to the Gentiles. But one day Israel will see her Messiah and believe and be born from above.

Now how did He come to the world? We remember the angel saying that He would come and this would be salvation for all people. "For unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord," for all people. Well, He came the way the manna came. Do you remember that the manna came at night?

I tell you, the world was in darkness when Jesus came. Matthew wrote and said, "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." When Isaiah originally wrote that prophecy, he said, "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." They got tired of walking, just sat down and gave up, discouraged in the darkness.

Jesus came at night. He came, as did the manna, to the wilderness. This world was a wilderness when Jesus came. It should have been a garden. It should have been bearing fruit to the glory of God, but it wasn't.

And like the manna, Jesus came at night, in the wilderness, on the dew. Often in the Old Testament, the dew is a picture of the Holy Spirit. How did Jesus come to this world? Through the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit of God worked a miracle in the body of Mary, and that holy thing that was born of her was the Son of God.

So He came at night, on the dew, to the wilderness, and He came where the people were. Our Lord Jesus was accessible. He didn't come in some faraway place where people couldn't find Him. And He came to a rebellious people. My, oh my, how rebellious Israel was, and how rebellious the world was when Jesus came. And the interesting thing is this: the manna was sufficient, and Jesus Christ is sufficient for everyone.

Someone has calculated, I don't know how they came about with this calculation, but somebody has calculated that to feed Israel, what, a million, a million and a half, maybe two million people, we don't know for sure, but to feed them this manna in a natural way, you would have had to have had four railroad trains of sixty cars each filled with the manna. And all God had to do was just speak the word and down it came from heaven.

But the manna was sufficient, it was adequate. Nobody went hungry. You know that Jesus Christ is adequate for the sins of the whole world? He’s adequate for you. When the manna came, it came only to Israel. But when Jesus came, He came for the whole world.

Now there's a fourth contrast, and this one blesses my heart. When the manna came, it didn't cost God anything. Did you realize that? When the manna was sent down from heaven, it didn't cost God anything. But when He sent His Son, it cost Him and it cost His Son. All God had to do to feed Israel was just open the doors of heaven and send down that marvelous manna. But when it came to saving your soul, giving you eternal life, a price had to be paid.

Jesus Christ had to humble Himself, become obedient unto death, and not just ordinary death, even the death of the cross. The death of a criminal. The death of the lowest kind of a slave. That’s what Jesus Christ endured for us. And so this bread of God that came down from heaven is free, but it is not cheap. It’s very expensive, but it is free. And so you and I can just simply trust the Lord Jesus because at great price, He purchased our salvation.

That’s what grace is all about. Someone has defined grace as God’s resources available at Christ’s expense. That spells grace: G-R-A-C-E, God’s Resources Available at Christ’s Expense.

There's a final contrast between the manna and Jesus the bread of life. They had to labor to get the manna, but all we have to do is believe if we would receive Christ as our Savior.

Now God sent the manna right where they were. All they had to do was walk out of their tents and there was the manna, and they had to work to get it. They had to stoop down and pick it up and put it in their jars or their baskets and take it back to their tents. They had to feel a need, they had to feel hungry. They had to realize they had a need, and the need would be met if they just walked out and stooped down and picked it up.

Now the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't say to me you have to labor to get saved. In John 6:27, when He says, "Labor not for the food which perishes, but for that food which endures to everlasting life," He’s not saying you work for your salvation. He’s saying strive, be determined, realize how hungry you are.

Oh, my friend, if you have never trusted Jesus Christ, that empty place down inside, only He can fill. You may wonder what it is that makes your life so dissatisfied. I'll tell you what it is: you're hungry. You're hungry for something real, something eternal, something lasting.

That Old Testament Jew had to stoop down to pick up the bread. Well, there's a sense in which you and I have to stoop down. We have to humble ourselves. We have to realize that we aren't adequate for our own salvation, that He is the only one who can save us. And you know, you don't have to do this every day.

Every day the Jews had to go out and pick up the manna. Once and for all, you partake of the Lord Jesus Christ and He saves you. And then day by day you feed on Him as you meditate on the Word of God and partake of the truth of the Lord Jesus. Yes, He is the bread of life. And if you've trusted Him as your Savior, you are enjoying this bread, and I wonder, are you sharing it with others?

Now many of you I know are good Bible students, and as you've read the Gospel of John, you have noted that on seven different occasions, our Lord Jesus said "I AM," and then He completed that statement with "I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the door, I am the good shepherd, I am the resurrection and the life, I am the way, the truth, and the life, I am the true vine."

These seven "I AM" statements are so rich, and we’re going to be spending these days examining them and finding out what they mean to us today as God’s people. But the place we’re going to start is not the Gospel of John; that may surprise you. We’re going to start back in Exodus 3 because there we have this name of God revealed to us as He spoke to Moses.

Now you know the story well. Moses went out to take care of the sheep. That day began just like any other day. Moses had been spending some forty years there, caring for the sheep, his father-in-law’s flocks. And I'm sure that while Moses was caring for those sheep, he was praying, and he was interceding for his relatives and his loved ones and friends down in Egypt. They were in bondage, terrible bondage. And as you remember, Moses was a renegade. He had murdered a man there in Egypt and he had fled, and now he’s waiting and praying.

Well, he took his flocks out that day in Exodus 3, and as you'll recall, he saw an amazing sight. He saw a bush that was burning, but it was not consumed. And it was there that God intervened. You see, God was interested in revealing Himself. Our God is a God who reveals Himself, because unless we know God, we can't be saved. Unless we know God, we cannot go to heaven. Unless we know God, we cannot fulfill in our lives today all that He has for us.

Now there were three stages in God’s revelation of Himself. First, He reveals Himself in a name. God said to Moses in Exodus 3, "I'm going to send you to Pharaoh and you're going to deliver my people." And in Exodus 3:11, Moses said unto God, "Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh? Who am I?" And of course the issue is not who am I, the issue is who is God.

After all, God is the one who’s going to do the work. How many times you and I have said to ourselves, "Who am I that God could ever use me?" Well, God can do it because God can do the impossible. God said, "I'm going to be with you. I'm going to fulfill my promise."

Now Exodus 3:13: "And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them?"

That’s a good question. What is the name of this God who has authorized you to come and tell us what to do? And God said unto Moses, "I AM THAT I AM." And He said, "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."

You see, God revealed Himself in a name. God took a simple Hebrew verb and He made that His name. That verb means "I was, I am, I shall be." It’s the simple verb "to be." We have made this into the name Jehovah, or in our authorized translation, LORD with capital letters. At least 6,823 times in the Old Testament, you find this name of God, I AM, Jehovah, the LORD. Not "I was" or "I might be"—I AM. God reveals Himself in a name, and that name is I AM.

Now stage two: God reveals that name in a person. And who is that person? The Lord Jesus Christ. In John 17:6, our Lord said this to His Father, "I have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world." The Gospel of John is preeminently the Gospel of the eternal Son. In this Gospel, we find the Lord Jesus magnified as the eternal Son of God. Actually, twenty-six times in the Gospel of John, our Lord uses the little words "I am."

To the woman at the well in John 4:26, He said, "I AM is speaking to you." When He met those disciples in that storm, John 6:20, He said, "I AM, be not afraid." In John 8:58, He said, "Before Abraham was, I AM." In John 13:19, He said, "that ye may believe that I AM." And so the Lord Jesus took this name I AM and He completed it.

Do you see this, my friend? The Lord Jesus Christ took that Old Testament name I AM and He completed it. He is saying to us, "I am whatever you need." If you're hungry, or in the dark, or in bondage, you come to Me because I am all that you need.

Now stage three: He reveals that person in our hearts. It’s not likely that you and I are going to see burning bushes that are not consumed. But we are going to see the Lord Jesus Christ through the Word of God, through the Holy Spirit.

In Matthew 11:25, listen to what Jesus has to say: "At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." And notice those next words: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

You see, the Holy Spirit of God reveals the Son of God in our hearts. God does not reveal Himself to the wise and the prudent. It’s not a matter of IQ or education, as good as those things are. One day Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, thou art the Son of the living God." And Jesus said, "Peter, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven."

Now let me close this study by asking you a very important question: Have you opened your heart to the revealing work of the Holy Spirit? Have you seen Jesus Christ in the Word by the Holy Spirit and have you trusted Him? You see, God reveals Himself in a name, I AM. You can know that and never be saved. God reveals that name in a person, Jesus Christ. You can know that and never go to heaven.

But God reveals that person in our hearts. And when we respond to God’s revelation through His Word, by His Spirit, then we come to know the living and the true God. And to know Jesus Christ means to be saved. And so I'm saying to you right now, open your heart to Jesus Christ. Trust Him. He will be unto you all that ever you will need.