Max A Forsythe
Christ covenant reformed (PCA)
4787 Palmer Road S.W. - Reynoldsburg, OH 43068-3315

Copyright 2004

The Bread of Life
For the Lord’s Day: the 13th of October 2002

John 6: 25-29

"When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, 'Rabbi, when did you come here?'  Jesus answered them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.  Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.  For on him God the Father has set his seal.'  Then they said to him, What must we do, to be doing the works of God?' Jesus answered them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.'"

Introduction: Years ago there was a Reader's Digest article about a baker's search for a bread recipe. If I remember the story right, it was in a shell shattered Belgium village that a hungry GI was given some fresh baked bread, which more than met his essential needs. It was bread that filled and sustained him through the desperate combat of the Battle of the Bulge. To him it must have been like the prized elvish bread in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, that special treat which Tolkien invents for his tale was a bread of more than just passing notice. That was a special recipe to sustain life in difficult times.

But, the GI in our story remembered that life giving bread not for its exotic quality but for its common touch. After all, the village baker had not the resources to create exotic bread in the middle of a battle. He had simply fired up his ovens out of daily habit and gratefully given his product to the American liberators.

Years after the war, this former GI still remembered that special meal. Once his fortune was made he and a partner began a search for that baker in Belgium. After several years, the baker was found and the recipe freely shared. Back in the states, the partners began tinkering with baking methods and materials to recreate the essence of what the businessman wanted to call the "bread of life". He wanted a final product that people would remember and return for again and again.

Now bread is not always bread, as you may well know. Time was that only the nobility could afford the specially milled white bread. The common crowd ate brown or even black bread made from flour coarsely ground. Sometimes a county or even country's grain was contaminated with mold. It would appear from historic documents that a contaminated oat crop set off the behavior that lead to the Salem witch trials. Also, the year that the French Revolution turned ugly, a type of fungus that was similar in effect to LSD infected the commoner’s barley. When Marie Antoinette unfeelingly suggested for the common crowd: “Let them eat cake” instead of bread, she unwittingly guessed upon the cure for what had set the crowd off! However, she was soon to lose her pretty head and the French monarchy would collapse because of the riotous qualities of the French "barley bread of death". We may thus see that the common bread is deeply tied up with the life and times of a people. In our day, if we take the common white bread and sample it we may understand that it is a credit to the miller's art of the lowest common denominator.

The common white flour is processed by the ton and shipped to the mass production bakeries. Things are taken out and things are added to ensure as long a shelf life as possible. The result is a mass-produced generally lifeless tasteless product designed for the greatest appeal. You see if your product has much taste, either people must learn to like it or you have to multiply the production options. Even the specialty breads of our time are mass-produced. Long gone in this country are the local bakers meeting the needs of each family in the village. Even further gone is the general willingness and even ability for each family to bake their own daily bread.

Development: Is there little wonder that we take the biblical phrase "the bread of life" blandly and unappreciated? Very many Communion services are designed to serve the largest crowds in a minimal amount of time. In order to control waste and to allow almost unlimited storage the mass-produced plastic tasting, round wafers have become all too common. And, even as our common products are mass-produced so too are our theological concepts as well. The images, the issues, the realities of faith are masked in the lowest common denominator so that no one is offended. Denominational labels mean so little in our time because of this very general tendency to dump theology down to the least offensive level. And so a generation has really begun to wonder what is behind the phrase: "the bread of life".

In a little while we will share the bread of communion as we think of our Lord Jesus Christ. The recipe which we use at Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA) is well over 150 years old. It has been used in Presbyterian churches since my ancestors were first elected elders in the frontier counties of Pennsylvania in 1758. In imitation of the unleavened bread used for Passover, there is no yeast, but it is lightly sweetened for taste. It is not mass produced, but baked fresh. In the same way do we wish you to seriously consider the image in the mind of Christ when he tells us about a theological "bread of life"? And to that end we now turn. Please turn in your Scriptures to the Gospel according to John: John 6: 25-59 “When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, ‘Rabbi, when did You come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, ‘you are seeking Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill off the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on Him God the Father has set His seal.’ Then they said to Him, ‘What must we do, to be doing work the works of God?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.’”

This passage follows after John's account of the feeding of the five thousand. These are the people who find Jesus on the other side of the lake. Jesus confronts the crowd with the reasoning behind their following after Him across the wide Sea of Galilee. Like the GI in our earlier story, they had crossed the water to find the maker of that peculiar bread which had so amazingly filled them. Unfortunately, in their eating and in their coming, they had missed the essential point. They were coming for more bread and not for the blessing of the Messiah. Calvin observes that the multitude "did not profit by the works of God as they should have done. For the true way to profit would have been to acknowledge Christ as Messiah in such a way as to submit to His teaching and government, and led by Him, to make for the heavenly Kingdom of God."

All they wanted was cheap bread. And cheap bread was the curse of the Roman Empire. This was how the population of Rome was controlled through cheap subsidized bread and free access to the Circus! All these people wanted was a means to fill their bellies with as little work as possible. Here was a man, a prophet: Jesus who could multiply bread without effort. Here was a man who could release them from the all too ordinary labors, which were necessary to put food on the table day after day. That was all they saw. What do you see in this Christ who claims to be the "bread of life"? In verse twenty-seven Jesus teaches what He wants His people to be aiming at - eternal life. He tells us plainly that He is our essential "bread of life". Only in and through Him will our salvation be found. In this passage we are encouraged to believe that He is the Lord's Anointed Messiah. In this passage we are encouraged to know that whoever eats of His bread will live forever.

Now the lesson from the image of “the bread of life” is difficult but not impossible. Let us look at the common bread and it’s processing to understand that it is Christ's atonement that saves us. We begin with the tiny insignificant grains of wheat, rye, barley or oats. Jesus once spoke of such a tiny little seed.

John 12; 24: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." In the context of that passage, Jesus was speaking of the necessity of his death. When the Son of Man is symbolically planted in the grave, He grows and He produces many grains.

But when it is grown it must be harvested. Isaiah looked forward to the coming of the Christ and spoke of the fullness of His time in these words _ Isaiah 53: 8: By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression my people?

Just as ripened grain must be cut off of the land and bundled up so Isaiah saw the cutting off our Lord Jesus Christ. In this harvesting model, the wheat must not only be cut off from its roots, it must be threshed as well. In Isaiah 53: 5a this necessity is noted: But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. We have only to consider the scenes of the cross and the gross cruelties of the barbaric execution to realize that Christ was indeed threshed to the utmost.

Wheat must be ground into flour; this is done usually by crushing it between stones. The closeness of the stones is used to measure the size of the flour. The common southern breakfast portion of grits is named for the coarse size of the corn meal. Our Isaiah passage certainly allows for the crushing of our Christ on our benefit. The flour that results in our image must be baked. Jesus as we know underwent the fire of God's wrath and judgment for our sins. And just as the seraph touched Isaiah's lips in a Temple encounter with the heat of a live coal so may we know - Isaiah 6: 7: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."

Finally when the bread is eaten, then the nutrients of the bread become part of the one who eats. Listen to these words of Jesus - John 6: 54-56: "Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him upon the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.”

Application: In verse fifty-two the Jews of Jesus time ask Him the essential question that we must raise in our time as well. "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?"

The first step is the two thousand year old invitation: Believe in Jesus, know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this prophet, the Jewish Messiah was God incarnate, God come down on earth in human form to invite us to spend eternity with Him.

The second step is to come to Him in spirit and with a submissive trust so that we may commit ourselves to Him as our Lord who ought to be granted sovereign rights over our beliefs and daily way of life.

The third step is to gather together until He comes and remember regularly what He accomplished on that cross almost two thousand years ago.

The message of the symbol of bread before us is that Christ must become part of us. We are not His because we talk about Him, we are not His because we look for Him, and we are His because we internalize His body symbolically in the bread and in the fruit of the vine of communion. We feed regularly on Him and on His word, so that we may grow in grace and knowledge and so that we may be prepared for eternal life with Him. Let us come to His table and heed His invitation in verse thirty-five: "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst." Amen.

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PLACES PREACHED:

Rushsylvania United Presbyterian Church (USA) 10 January 1971 - Huntsville United Presbyterian Church (USA) 17 January 1971
Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA) 16 April 1992 & 30 April 1995
Zanesfield Community Chapel 21 August 2001 - Providence Presbyterian Church (PCA) 04 August 2002
Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA) 13 October 2002
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PREACHING RESOURCES

Parker, T.H.L. Calvin’s Commentaries: John 1-10.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.
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Permission granted to redistribute unedited versions with this notice.
http://www.tulip.org/Com/Com11.htm