The Signs of Jesus (VI)
Jesus: The Bread of Life (II)
John 6:25-40

Have you ever heard the story of how to catch a monkey? Maybe you have never thought about catching a monkey yourself – I don’t know what you would do with a monkey if you ever did catch one. But catching a monkey is actually very easy – apparently.

You do it like this: Get a container with a small opening at the top. Put some bananas in it. When the monkey sees the bananas, it will put its hand in to get one. It will grab a banana. But it won’t be able to get it’s hand back out because it is holding onto the banana.

The monkey will then be stuck in a dilemma. It is hungry, so it wants the banana. But it can’t get the banana out of the container. However, because it is hungry, it won’t let go of the banana. So, the banana is unable to actually fulfill the desires of the monkey, but the monkey is now chained to the banana in the container. You have now successfully caught your monkey!

Last month we read about a group of people who were hungry. It was a very big group of people – maybe 15 to 20 thousand. They had been on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. The Passover festival was full of symbolism, and taught each generation about God’s faithfulness, God’s protection, and God’s provision and blessings in saving them from slavery and death in Egypt.

So these people were looking forward to partaking in the Passover feast; but on their way to Jerusalem, they heard that Jesus was near. This was Jesus the miracle worker. Jesus the healer. And so instead of going directly to Jerusalem, they made a detour to Jesus.

However, as we saw last time, these people were trying to find Jesus only because they were attracted to His miracles. To jump straight to the conclusion, Jesus had come to fulfil their deepest hunger, but the people were not expecting, or even wanting, anything more than a superficial snack.


But, Jesus saw the deep spiritual emptiness in those people’s lives. They were all eagerly following the traditions of the religion of their God, but they were not following the God of their religion. They needed true spiritual nourishment. And Jesus wanted to feed them. So He performed a miracle by providing for their physical hunger in order to teach them about their deep spiritual emptiness. And He wanted to teach them that it was He, only He, who could provide for that need.

How did He do this? Jesus took just five small loaves of bread and two small fish, gave thanks for it, and distributed it to everyone so that they each had their fill, with a large amount left over. The people had no food. There was nowhere near to buy food. And even if there had been, there was no way that Jesus’ disciples would have been able to afford to buy enough for each person to have even a little bit. In other words, the people had a need, but no one had what was necessary to meet that need. So, through this miracle, Jesus taught the people that He is able to provide what they were not able to provide for themselves.

The people were amazed at what happened, and they came to the conclusion that Jesus was indeed great! In fact, they were so impressed that they wanted to make Jesus their king! They had been hungry, and Jesus miraculously fed them. If He could do that, then as king, surely He would be able to miraculously fix their other problems too!

However, Jesus knew not only their plans, but also their motivation, and so He withdrew from them. This is why:
As we saw last time, those people actually had two kinds of hunger. One was superficial – physical: the need of food for the stomach. The other kind of hunger was deeper – spiritual: the need of food for the soul.

In the same way, those people had two kinds of problems: One problem was superficial; the other problem was spiritual. On the superficial side, their nation was under the control of the Roman government. The Jews were still able to live in their own homes, basically follow their own laws, and worship at their own temple. But at the same time, they strongly felt the loss of their true freedom under that Roman control.

On the other hand, they were also under a different kind of bondage. It was a deeper, spiritual bondage. Their hearts were under the control of sin. However, although they felt the loss of their freedom under Roman control, in this case, even though their hearts were under the control of sin, they did not feel their loss of the freedom of a right relationship with God.

And so just as they only sought to receive an answer to their superficial, physical hunger, they also only wanted to get a solution to their superficial, political problem. Just as they had gone after Jesus trying to fill only one kind of hunger, they also wanted to make Him king to fix only one kind of problem. In other words, they wanted to make Jesus a superficial king. And so those same people whom Jesus had miraculously fed, continued to look for Him the next day. But while Jesus welcomed them warmly the first time, this day it was different:

Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval." (John 6:26-27)

Jesus talks about two kinds of food here. There is the food that spoils, and the food that endures to eternal life. First, the food that spoils is represented by the meal that those people had enjoyed the previous day. Of course, we need that kind of food. In fact, we often take our ability to enjoy food for granted – until something like the recent disaster in the Tohoku region happens.

A couple of weeks ago, our church took a truck load of relief supplies to Taira Christ Church in Iwaki City, Fukushima. There are many places that weren’t getting enough food, and Pastor Mori from that church was organizing the distribution of supplies.

However, they had actually been experiencing a problem with some of the food that had been previously sent. The reason is that there are many people in aged care homes who had not been able to evacuate. The church had delivered lots of bread to those places, but it was just plain bread, and it was difficult for the elderly to eat.

So, Pastor Mori asked us to bring up boxes of jam to eat the bread with. And as he was giving thanks for the delivery of this jam, he declared: “It is just as Jesus said: “Man does not live on bread alone!””


Well, we all laughed, but of course, Jesus was not talking about jam! In fact, Jesus continued to say:


(Jesus answered,) "It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’" (Matthew 4:4)

The people had wanted to make Jesus their king because they had an expectation of what their freedom should look like. (For example) “If only this was different.” “If only that could be changed!” They had put certain conditions on their happiness.

But Jesus is not an idealist. Jesus is a realist. The lesson that He wanted the people to learn was that eternal peace will not come through the changing of superficial things: our environment, our situation, the people around us, the things that we do ourselves. Of course these things can all have a strong influence on us. Sometimes it is a positive influence, and sometimes it is a negative influence.

But our deepest need in life is not physical. In fact, our deepest need in life is not even mental or attitude related. Jesus is teaching that our deepest peace, our greatest emotional security, is spiritually based. And He is teaching that Jesus Himself is the One, the only One, who can fulfill that need.

That is why Jesus called Himself the Bread of Life. He said:


(Then Jesus declared,) "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)

When our stomachs are empty, we eat food – but that only satisfies for a short time. When our hearts are empty, we try to fill them with things to stop us thinking about that hunger: a change of environment, a change of jobs, a change of relationships etc. But these too are only temporary solutions to superficial problems.

But if our true emptiness does not come from our environment or situation; if it is not based merely our feelings, but from a soul that is empty of the love and grace of our Creator God, then no matter what we do, we will always end up back where we started. We will just continue in the same cycle, without ever finding true peace. The Bible says that our deepest problem does not involve what we do, but who we are.

Jesus was not offering a temporary solution to a superficial problem. He came to provide an eternal solution to our deepest spiritual problem: our separation from God.

He said:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (John 6:51)


Jesus gave His flesh on the cross. There, He paid the penalty for our sin, our broken relationship with God.

John later tells us that:
(Yet) to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—(1 John 1:12)

That is what believing in the Bread of Life is all about. Just by believing in who Jesus is, and what He has done for us on the cross, we are brought into a right relationship with our Creator God. But Jesus doesn’t stop with simply believing something about Him. He is not giving us the option of being passive here. In fact, Jesus brings a shocking confrontation to us:


Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:53-54)

What Jesus was saying is that He isn’t here to be an accessory. Jesus is declaring that we can only receive forgiveness and eternal life through believing in Him. He is teaching us that the problem He has come to fix reaches into the deepest part of our souls. And so it is that very depth of our soul that we must open up to Him. But to open our souls to Jesus, we have to let go of whatever else it is that we are holding on to.

Do you remember the monkey? The monkey is a slave to the banana because it won’t let go, even though the banana can’t help the monkey.


Is there anything like that that you are holding onto – something that you won’t let go of? Have you set up your own conditions for your own righteousness, your own peace?

Jesus beckons us to let go of that, and let Him inside instead - right down deep inside. Because if you do, His guarantee of eternal love, forgiveness, and eternal life, will give our hearts security and peace. And that security and peace will in turn fill our hearts with the true freedom to be people of love and forgiveness. This is God’s will for us.