Heavenly Bread
For the Lord’s Day:  the 13^th of February 2005

John 6: 41-45

Introduction:  I would like to begin with a word today, and it is “sublime.” The American Oxford Dictionary defines it this way:  “¹ of the most exalted or noble or impressive kind. ² extreme, lofty, like that of a person who does not fear the consequences.”  While I cannot find CS Lewis’ classic and extended discussion of the philogical and philosophic implications of this once well understood concept, still we are left with the impression of this entire passage today that there is much more going on in this discussion than is perceptible with the common mind.  In fact, a proper understanding of the word and the working out of deeper thought is akin to the work of the Spirit in and through the common words, phrases and sentences used to explain and expound the Gospel of grace.

A few years ago, during a work day – I was carrying on three different conversations with groups of students at the end of class.  One of the students got confused with the clutter of words and ongoing conversational relationships.  And sadly, her confusion resulted in an embarrassing tale that she reported to another teacher.  Not believing the story, the other teacher confronted me with what she had heard.  Once I explained what had transpired, all was understood – but I still apologized for the confusion that I had inadvertently caused.  I then explained to the students that I would no longer engage in what had become a minor sport of trying to confuse the teacher.  Instead, it was the students who confused themselves and embarrassed us all by taking the mixture of words and phrases out of context.  People do the same with the verses and paragraphs that they read in the scriptures.

With those very different starting points: let me share what prompted my thinking about sublimity.  Calvin tells us that “it is a great hindrance to us that we look at Christ only with carnal eyes and so see nothing sublime in Him.  We pervert everything in Him and His teaching by our sinful outlook, such false interpreters are we.”  To put this thought in perspective, we can read in the fiftieth Psalm (50: 21) of Asaph, the Lord God thunders against the wicked in these choice words:  “You thought that I was one like yourself.”   

No indeed – and this is the purpose of the text before us to prove the exact opposite: that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had come down from heaven and that He could and would ultimately use the powers of divinity with which He held in common with the Father and the Spirit.  This essential declaration is not understandable by everyone as Jesus argues carefully in these verses for today.  Calvin again catches the essence of our first point this morning:  “Christ says that although the teaching of the Gospel is preached to all indiscriminately, it cannot be understood by all, but that a new mind and a new attitude are necessary.  Therefore faith is not at man’s disposal but conferred by God.”

Development:  There is also a second issue before us, as outlined by Calvin:  “not content with [truth] we get hold of many falsehoods, which breed a contempt of the Gospel.  Hence the world deliberately repels God’s grace.”  And it is in just this sense we realize the antipathy of the world against our Lord.  So not only is there a generic misunderstanding of the Gospel, but there is also a seditious undermining of the Gospel on purpose as well.  This sedition of course takes many different forms, some apparently with the full blessing of pastors and teachers.  And by “sedition” we mean any “words or actions that make people rebel against … authority.”

Winston Churchill taught me my preaching method from his own speaking habits.  Years before it was possible to change the size of a font at will, his secretaries were fitted out typewriters with extra large letters.  All of his speeches were written out as he called it in Psalm style with about three lines of text spaced from the next batch.  To these notes, he would ordinarily add asides and instructions such as:  “pound desk and speak loudly – argument is weak here!”

It is seldom necessary for us within the church to raise our voices because we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is little any of us can do to convince you to take the Lord of all the earth more seriously.   It is never expedient to pressure people to put on Christ, as if we must close the deal today.  All we really accomplish with any false bravado and high pressure sales techniques is to put off people from considering our Lord and Savior seriously.  In such an endeavor of intense coercion we stand in the way of people seeing Christ, because we are waving our fists and demanding that people do what they are incapable of!  At best, we only delay the new birth, until the Spirit grows people around our short-comings.

One of the greatest problems we face in the ministry today with the various ethnic groups is that when we train one of their young men to our standards of education and send them back, they no longer speak the same language and therefore demonstrate an almost immediate cultural uselessness.  I am stricken to the heart as I remember the slow steady decline of the general body of students over two and a half decades of teaching.  Our whole body politic has not only allowed, but also encouraged the dumbing down of the younger generations – so that they can only feel emotions. 

And yet, even in such a culture as ours, the Word of God never goes forth without it accomplishing the goal that the Lord had in mind when He inspired it.  Just Thursday, I received an email from a member of my first Catechism class clear back in 1974.  She found me on the internet and thought it was time she thanked me for what I had taught her so many years ago.  She admitted that she hadn’t remembered much of the lessons, but many years later, it all fell into place and she suddenly realized the foundation upon which her faith was building – the word of God heard so many years before.  In another instance, I recently read a story of a man who was converted late in life because he suddenly remembered a sermon he had heard a generation earlier on a rare occasion when he had been to church.

In Romans 10: 14-17 Paul reminds us “How are they to call on him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone preaching?  And how are they to preach unless they are sent? … But, they have not all obeyed the gospel.  For Isaiah says, ‘Lord who has believed what he has heard from us?’  So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

Application:  So what was the problem with the Jews who were grumbling in the opening verse of our passage for today?  Calvin paraphrases our text:  “My doctrine contains no ground of offense, but because you are reprobate, it irritates your envenomed breasts, and the reason why you do not relish it is, that you have a vitiated taste.”  As we see in the text, it would do no good for Jesus to pressure the jaded crowd or to even plead with them to only believe.  Verse forty-four sums up the tragedy of their position:  “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.  And I will raise him up on the last day.”

Not only are the murmuring opponents of Jesus wicked, but also He reminds them that their bad theology, advice and false preaching will be confounded.  As Calvin describes it: faith in Christ “is a peculiar gift of God to embrace the doctrine,” so therefore even the multitudes who have been taught wrongly or badly may have a hope in the love of God revealed through the preaching of the Word.  Given the apparent revival of conservative values that seems to be spreading out from the evangelical Christian base, the worldly liberals must indeed be furious that all of their life work these last fifty years is proving to have been for naught.  Some people are even thinking again, forty years after it was supposed to have gone out of style!  Just as people so obviously wish to breath free politically, so may we hope and pray that the absolute truths of the Gospel may once again be coming into season.  And if it pleases the Lord – He will increase the visible kingdom once again after so many decades of sad decline.  In verse forty-five Jesus confirms the testimony of Isaiah (53:13) where, speaking of the future restoration of the Church, he promises to her a generation  who “will all be taught by God.”   It should be obvious here that the Church can never be restored unless God undertakes the office of a Teacher and thereby brings believers to Himself.

Well, I have gone on and rambled through the thinking of about five verses.  I had intended to cover eleven, but the text proved greater and better than anticipated.  So, like the leftovers of a thanksgiving feast, we shall have more than enough to consider in another week.  I hope that I have not confused anyone more than usual, we turn to the book of Revelation and wonder our whole lives what is going on.  There are more places than that book, where the teachings of grace and the love of God is more than we can comprehend fully.  But, then – as the word sinks in like my former student discovered, there is more than we expected and by His grace we will have eternity to savor the heavenly bread revealed in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES
Calvin, John:  Commentary on the Gospel of John.
Tasker, R.V.G.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: The Gospel According to St John.
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.

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