My name is Josh, I'm one of the pastors here. A couple of years ago, I was filling in at a church in London for a friend of mine, a guy we had a missional partnership with. He was back in the states, so I was living in his flat with my family. We had two kids. My wife is pregnant, and we're filling in his church leading teams. Lived in the west end of London in Shepherd's Bush, loved it. That's my dream. Is to live in London and I would have to do it single, which is not worth the cost because I like my wife a lot. But, you know, yeah. So there's one night where we decide we haven't been on a date like the whole summer. We hadn't not been on a date and so we get one of the interns to watch our kids and we go out to a local pub. We go out for dinner.

[00:00:51] So we get there, we pull up the menus and something you need to know about me is I love weird and different and new. I am lured by the possibility of the unknown. Like, "Oh, that's intriguing." Which means often I'm a bad menu orderer, right? Because it's like, "Chicken parm. I've had chicken parm. I know that's good. But oh, caper jelly. I wonder what that is?" Terrible. It's terrible, is what that is. So I see this thing, it's called a gammon steak. I get a gammon steak. It's got an egg on top and I'm like, "Oh, it's steak with an egg on top. That sounds cool. I will do that." And so I order that thing and it comes out. It was not good. It was the saltiest thing I have ever tasted in my life. It's supposed to be like a salted pork steak, but it was really more like a salt cube with like a slight hint of pork flavoring.

[00:01:44] I mean, it was so salty and part of that's my fault, because like when I thought of like delicious international cuisine -- no offense to my British friends. I love British culture, but you're not often saying like, "Oh, British food, that's where I'm going." That's my fault. That's my fault. It was not good. And my wife is watching me as I sit there just like this is... But I'm too cheap. Like, I can't throw it away. So I'm just like, "Oh, yeah, this is wonderful." It's so bad. It was so bad. And my sweet, sweet, sweet, wife who is just clearly a better person than I am, slides her plate across the table and takes mine, and she's like, "I'll eat it, you take mine." And it's one of those you're like, "No, no, I'll keep eating this. You don't have to. Thank you very much." I mean, because hers was much, much, better.

[00:02:34] I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I knew myself. The problem is because I was wrong, I ordered the wrong thing. I left the restaurant hungry. That happens to us all the time. It happens to us all the time. We think we know the right thing to do. I thought I knew what I wanted. The truth is, we often don't. We don't understand ourselves nearly as well as we think. And we're going to look at that idea more this morning as we continue our series Come and See with another description that Jesus gives himself: I am the bread of life. I am the bread of life. We see that in John Chapter six. If you've got a Bible, you can turn there to John Chapter six, verse 22. If you have it on your phone or tablet, that's okay.

[00:03:19] John Chapter six Verse 22. I'm going to give you a little background on this. Jesus is speaking in a synagogue in Capernaum, his from the Galilean region, and so this is kind of his stomping grounds. And it's Passover season, which is the time of year when Jewish people remember their enslavement in Egypt and how God had rescued and delivered them. And this takes place in John just after a significant miracle, Jesus had fed 5000 people. Probably many, many, more than that because numerically they'd counted families by counting the men there and you'd extrapolate out. So maybe 15,000 or 18,000, we don't know. But he fed 5000 people from a boy's lunch. They took a boy's lunch. The boy was probably like, "Hey, wait a minute." No, he offered it. We know that he was very kind.

[00:04:04] Five fish, two loaves and Jesus multiplied that and fed these people. He performed this incredible miracle. That's the thought of the context where we are. So the idea of bread and hunger are very, very, relevant ideas. Jesus calls himself the bread of life, which is an intentional metaphor. Because what he's doing is using a physical need to point to his spiritual needs, using physical hunger to be a picture of spiritual hunger. And Jesus starts talking to these people, and he tells them some crazy stuff that totally catches them off guard. He tells them some crazy stuff that they don't even know how to wrap their minds around because it's big, substantive truth. We get to see in these verses how Jesus, as the bread of life satisfies, how Jesus sustains, and how Jesus secures for us.

[00:04:55] First thing we see Jesus do here, the bread of life satisfies our needs. Jesus talks about I'm the bread of life, and he talks about how he satisfies our needs. Verse 35 says, "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." That's pretty significant words. That whoever believes in me, whoever comes to me, will never go hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Not most of the times, not in the right circumstances, never. Whoever comes to me will never hunger or thirst. That's a huge promise. To be honest, that sounds intriguing. It's like, "Okay, never be hungry or thirsty again." You're going, "Okay, you've got my attention here".

[00:05:40] Jesus is getting here at our understanding of our needs because our needs are cyclical, right? We go. "How is that possible? I always get hungry again, no matter the best meal we've had." It's not like after the best Thanksgiving meal you had, you push back from the table and you're like, "That's it. No more. I'm never eating again. It could not possibly be better than that." We were always hungry again. We're always hungry again. Jesus is really digging it, this idea of our understanding of our needs, who we are, what we want and truly what we need. What he knows is we can't meet our deepest needs on our own. We're unable to do that. We want to. We try to. We think we can meet our own needs. In fact, the belief that we can meet our own needs is really where sin comes from.

[00:06:26] This idea that we can find good or joy or meaning or purpose or happiness apart from God, that we don't need him to find those things. So we can find fulfillment and satisfaction, we don't need God to experience those things. We misunderstand our needs, and we often fill those needs the wrong way. We confuse wants with needs if we're honest. We confuse wants with needs. We'll say things like I need a new pair of shoes. Well, that one is fair. I mean, that was -- you can always need a new pair of shoes. I need a new car. I need to eat Taco Bell. The thing is, I don't need to eat Taco Bell, I want to eat Taco Bell. And I frankly probably shouldn't want to do that. We want things, and we substitute the word need for want. And the reason that we know that that's not enough is -- have you ever wanted something really, really, badly?

[00:07:20] Have you ever wanted something really badly? Go on. You don't have to tell me. I'm not going to call on you, like, make you answer me here, that would be weird. I'm not going to do that to you. Anybody ever wanted something really badly like, oh, you just have to have it? So we have a couple of honest people and then the rest of you are liars. We have all wanted that. We've all wanted something where you're just like, "Oh, I just have to have this." You think about it all the time. You tell everybody. It's like, it's on my Christmas list. You keep hoping for it. Think about that thing that you just had to have, you just had to have it. What happened when you got it? What happened when you got it?

[00:07:55] Did you walk out of your house and proclaim to your neighbors "That's it. I am finally complete. The longing of my life is over, my needs have been sated and I am a whole human being. Come to me to find the secret of life, friends, neighbors and countrymen." That doesn't happen in my neighborhood. I have yet to hear that. Was it enough for you or did you want more? I'm going to bet you wanted more. We want the wrong stuff. It doesn't mean that the stuff that we want are necessarily bad, it doesn't mean that. But it does mean that the things that we want are very often not the things that will truly satisfy us. They're very often not the things that our souls are longing for. And our sin is really rooted in a wrong perception of God. It's us trying to take care of our needs in our own way, the way we see them, the way we experience them, in the way we want them met.

[00:08:56] Think about some basic stuff. Think about stealing, what's stealing other than saying there's something that I want and it matters more to me that I acquire it, than that I acquire it the right way. Right? Think about lying. The result matters more to me than the way that I achieve that results. Think about adultery. I have needs that I deserve to have met in the way that I want them met. Sin doesn't truly satisfy, it never does. It never does. It's a bottomless pit that we will pour action into and it will never fill up. In fact, it's like drinking salt water. It just makes us thirstier. It just makes us thirstier. God knows what we need far, far, far, better than we do. I love a good quote. Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, and he talks about this idea this way. He says, "What else does this craving in this helplessness proclaim, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?".

[00:10:13] This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him seeking in things that are not there, the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object." In other words, by God himself. What he's saying is there's a longing in our soul that we will try and fill with all sorts of things, but the reason that we will always feel empty is because God is the only thing that can fill that void. The only thing. We have needs. That's a true thing. We have wants, but needs are real too. We have physical needs. We have emotional needs. We have spiritual needs. Really as humans, we're just a collection of needs. But our deepest needs are not physical or even emotional, they're spiritual. They're spiritual. You can survive being physically broken or emotionally broken if you're spiritually whole.

[00:11:11] Let me say that again, you can survive being physically broken or emotionally broken if you're physically whole. You cannot survive the opposite. You can't survive the opposite. Forever is a much, much, longer time than the span of our lives, and it's a much, much, longer time than what you're going through right now, though it may not feel like it. Jesus in these verses here, as one writer says, claim to be the only permanent satisfaction for the human desire for life. Jesus is saying, You find that complete in me. We want our felt needs immediately met in the way that we want them met. Jesus came to meet our actual needs, our spiritual needs forever. Forever. God satisfies our deepest need through Jesus.

[00:12:08] The second thing that Jesus describes as he says, I am the bread of life is that the bread of life sustains our lives. The bread of life sustains our lives. Versus 32 and 33, Jesus says to them, "Very truly, I tell you, it is not Moses who is giving you the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." The bread of heaven, the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the whole world. Jesus says again in verse 57 later on, he says, "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." Jesus makes a very intentional connection here that his audience would have understood him. He brings them back to Manna, brings them back to Moses.

[00:12:58] Says it's not Moses who is giving you the bread from heaven, but it's my father. He's reminding them of this moment. Remember, they're going through Passover, so this story is on their minds. He says, "Remember your ancestors who were wandering in the wilderness, who had escaped from Egypt because God had rescued them? They didn't have food. And so God sent them food. This miraculous food from heaven. He sent them manna, sent them this special food from heaven. He provided it. God had this bread come down from the sky. This literal food from the heavens? If you wonder where Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs got the idea, it's from the Bible. And manna is talked about as like a thin flake that looked like coriander seeds or like a white kind of flaky thing. I think frosted flakes. Is that possible?

[00:13:42] When I think manna that's what I think of. Little like white kind of flaky texture like this? No, I'm not saying that Kellogg's stole it from Jesus, but, you know, that's what I think of. And every day God provided this. Every day, except for the Sabbath the day before when they gather twice as much. God provided them food from heaven. And what Jesus is saying is, "Guys, Moses didn't do that for you, God did that for you. And that points you forward to me. That was a temporary food for a specific time. I am the forever food." I'm the forever food. Moses got this. Moses understood this idea, and this might be my favorite verse in the Bible, Deuteronomy 8:3. Some of you might be familiar with the second half because Jesus quotes it, but this is where it comes from. It says, "He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known. To teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the father.".

[00:14:53] Carlos talked about two weeks ago, Jesus is the word. John wants to tell us that Jesus is the word, the ultimate word of God. We can't live just on bread alone, but we live, we find our life in Jesus. This is the hardest thing for me. If I'm honest, this is the hardest thing for me. I get that Jesus satisfies my big needs, my need for a savior, my need for forgiveness. That resonates with me. I get that. Where I struggle is seeing that he's enough for me in every moment of every day. That he is enough for me in the small things too. That's hard. God doesn't just want me to trust him in the big stuff. And frankly, doesn't even make sense. If I can trust God with the big stuff then the small steps nothing. Why wouldn't I trust him with that too? We all trust things. We all trust things. Every day, we all trust things.

[00:15:48] And frankly, we all trust things that sometimes may seem crazy to other people. For example, this looks absolutely crazy to me. Let me show you a picture, this looks absolutely nuts to me. Where is it? It's behind me, so I forget that. That's insane. Don't tell me about all the tensile strength of the rope, Josh. It's actually strong enough to... I don't care. That looks nuts. There is not a chance. If you see me up there, call the police. I am being held hostage. That looks nuts to me. When I worked at Stewart Ministry, we would go and do zip lines and rope courses and stuff like that, and I like to think I'm a smart guy. Like I understand how stuff works. And so I know they put that harness on you so like you're all strapped in and they get it real tight, so tight you wonder if you ever can have kids later on. They're like, "Is that tight?" You're like, "That's good. It's bloody tight." And then they like hook you on the zip line.

[00:16:48] I understand that this is going to hold me. Like, I get it. I know the harness is strong. I get it. I know intellectually that it will hold me. But when push comes to shove and it's time to run off the edge, like by the time I get here, I'm like, I think I'm just going to hold on to be safe. When the reality is, if the wire snaps me, holding on to this harness is not going to do anything, it just will help them find the harness when they find my body. But there's still that part that's like, I just got to hold on, because I can't fully trust something else. It's hard. Trust is hard, and trusting God can be hard too. Sometimes we'll say, "Well, God, just show me a sign. I'll trust you. Just show me a sign. God, just do this thing I want. Look, you me, just between friends, you do this thing I'll trust you. That'll be cool. Just trust me.".

[00:17:30] Like, we have this great idea that's like, that's all. I just need some proof. Not even a lot of proof. Just a little proof. Just like proof light. Diet proof. Like, that's just enough for me. Just a little bit of proof and I'll be fine. Well, the people in this story said the same thing. And verse 26 and 27, Jesus answers them, he says, "Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs I performed, 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. For on him, God the father has placed a seal of approval. They're saying, "Well, Jesus, just show us a sign." And Jesus very nicely says, "I have done that." You know when? Yesterday. Literally yesterday. Not metaphorically yesterday, the day before yesterday.

[00:18:17] Remember the food you ate for dinner and how I made that miraculously more than enough for everybody? I literally just did this. And the Israelites did the same thing when God provided Manna. I mean, think about it, the Israelites have their bowlful of manna that they've gathered And we see in the Old Testament they're like, "God, where are you? You have forgotten about us. We need to eat. And in fact, you don't even care. We're out here struggling in the wilderness. If at all you would care enough about us to be present in our lives. I don't even know why you're not doing anything." They are complaining to God as they eat the food that he provided from the sky. So before we get too cocky for ourselves now, we got to remember people who ate sky food still wrestled with it. We're going to wrestle too.

[00:19:32] When our oldest child turned one, my wife found out that she was pregnant again. And we were really excited. Super exciting. Pregnancy is going well, we're looking forward to meeting this, this new life. And we're out one day at King of Prussia Mall, hanging out with some friends, and Bethany texted me from the bathroom and says she's having a lot of bleeding and she's really scared. And so she calls the doctor. We set up an appointment and we go in for an ultrasound. Doctor does the ultrasound or ultrasound tech does the ultrasound, and we have a baby sitter, so we got to wait and they tell us it's going to be a while. And so I send Bethany home so she can relieve the babysitter. And I'm just sitting out there. And I'm sitting out there for an hour. They call me back and doctor is on the phone and says a bunch of stuff, and I don't fully understand. It's all kind of a blur.

[00:20:22] And so I finally said, "Are we buying baby clothes or not like what's going on?" And the doctor says -- I'll never forget these words. It's, "I do not believe this is a viable pregnancy." And so I walk out to my car and I call my dad and I'm on the phone with him. I get to my office and I just start walking around in a field and then I have to hang up because I just feel myself start to unravel. Because it had taken my wife and I five and a half years to get pregnant. We'd struggled with infertility. And what I wrestled with is, God, why would you do this? Why even let us get pregnant? Why even give us this false promise just to take it away? I've had students that have gotten pregnant do not think we'd be good enough parents. Why would you? It's just got mean-spirited. And I could feel God speaking to my soul, not audibly, but to my soul, are you going to trust me less because of this?

[00:21:14] Are you going to allow this to change your view of me? And my answer was, yes, because if you were good, you wouldn't have done this. This is the worst thing you could have done. It would have been better for her to not get pregnant at all than for you to take this life away. And the next day I had the same conversation with God. Are you going to let this change your view of me? Are you going to trust me less because of this? And I said, yes. And then the next day, the same conversation and the next day and the next day for a week. And so it's one of the most significant moments in my life that I can remember, just feeling like God speaking to my heart, asking me that question again and something breaking inside of me and saying, no. You are still good. You are still faithful. You are still loving. This doesn't change who you are.

[00:22:13] Probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to say in my life. But there was such freedom in that moment because God was digging out something in me. We had to end up going to see the doctor the next day for an appointment and they do an ultrasound and everything's fine, there's the heartbeat and everything's normal. And I'm convinced it was a miracle. It was our daughter, Izzy. And when I see her frequently, I think about that. It doesn't matter, though, if it was a miracle or not, because the point of the story wasn't the result. The point of the story for me was God didn't need me to tell him I trusted him. God knew I needed to tell him I trusted him. God didn't need to hear me say it. God knew I needed to say it. God didn't become more good, God helped me realize how good he had been the whole time.

[00:23:13] I was concerned about the wrong needs, and so I missed the signs too. God have been so, so, faithful to us and I lost sight of that. He had sustained us and I had trouble seeing that as enough. That's why Jesus says he's the bread of life. He is what sustains us. He's what gives us hope, he is what helps us to look forward. He's what reframes what we're experiencing. That's why, frankly, reading the Bible is important because the better we understand who God is, the quicker we can reorient our hearts back towards him. God sustains our lives through Jesus. The last thing we see is the bread of life secures our forever. Verse 40 says, "For my father's will is that everyone who looks up to the son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise them up at the last day." Verse 47 says, "Very truly, I tell you the one who believes has eternal life.".

[00:24:13] Verse 58 continues, "This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." Jesus points us to the father through himself here. Jesus talks about eternal life 13 different times in these 37 verses. Do you think it's important to him? He's trying to tell them over and over and over and over again, where do you look to see your security? Because his audience was focused on the material and he wanted them to think beyond that. He points to the idea that they were made for something more, and so are we. He points to something that I think makes sense to us at a deeply personal level. C.S. Lewis says it this way, "If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." The Jewish audience here wanted to know what they had to do to inherit eternal life.

[00:25:13] Literally, they said, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" And while there's a willingness in that, we see this bent towards self-sufficiency. Well, just tell me what I got to do. Give me a list. Which, if we're honest, that's very much us. All right. What do I got to do? What do I got to do? Just tell me what to do. They figured they just needed the right combination of good things, and Jesus instead pointed them to himself because eternal life isn't a reward we earn, it's a gift we receive. It's a gift we receive. He's trying to take us out of the driving force there because if it's something I earn, then I'm the one who has that agency there. Right? It's because of my effort I have achieved something. But what Jesus is saying is this is a gift that I give you. He wants people to receive him for who he will be to them, their savior, their rescuer, and not just what he can do for them.

[00:26:10] He wants people to know him and to experience him and to have a relationship with him and through him a relationship with God. Because Jesus knows our deepest needs are not physical or emotional. Our deepest needs are spiritual. Our deepest needs are spiritual. And God secures our forever through Jesus. Now, what do we do with that? Well, Jesus kind of gives us a template for that, but I want to explain something first. It says in verses 55 to 57, Jesus is talking, he says, "For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink, whoever eats my flesh and drinks, my blood remains in me and I in them." And then he doubles down. 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.

[00:27:00] We're friends, right, we can say that's a little weird. It's a little weird, Jesus. What are you talking about there? And this idea would have been even crazier to the people that he was talking with because the Old Testament law explicitly forbade the drinking of blood. I mean, this is a huge deal. So what's Jesus mean? Well, first, let's say he doesn't mean literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood because that's, you know, cannibalism and that's generally frowned upon. You've seen a lot of places where that's okay. Jesus repeats this idea multiple times because it is deeply significant. I mean, it's hugely significant because the concepts that Jesus is talking about are as real to him as food and drink are to us. Essentially, what he's saying is as food is fuel for your bodies, Jesus wants to be fuel for your soul.

[00:27:50] We have needs. Real needs, physical needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs. As humans, we are really a collection of needs. And what Jesus is saying is you find those needs most fully met in me. In me. Just as we look to food and to drink to give us the energy to live, Jesus says, look to me as the energy to make you whole. What does God give us to meet our needs? Well, lots of things, really. But Jesus is God's answer to our deepest and most important needs. Our need to be rescued. Our need for a savior. I know you're hungry. I know everyone in here is hungry and not just for the nachos we're having afterwards. Sorry, Quakertown, you're doing something cool, it's different, but it's cool, you'll love it. You're all hungry. I'm hungry, too. I'm hungry, too. Where does this passage call us to be satisfied? Where does it call us to be satisfied? Jesus.

[00:28:57] It calls us to Jesus. It forces us to ask that question, what am I really filling my life with? And so I want to challenge you take this week to take stock of your life. I know it sounds like a big thing, but I just mean, ask yourself that question, what am I filling my life with? And the reason we have to do that intentionally is because how many times do we realize that our life has become filled with stuff we don't really care about because we're not paying attention? That's true for me. What things are you pursuing? What does your life show that you value? What has your time and your money and your focus? What has your heart? Is it success? Is it advancement at work? Is it a newer job with better perks, is it being noticed for your accomplishments? Is it stuff? Is it a bigger house, a better car, newer shoes?

[00:29:47] Is it a relationship? Do you define yourself by your boyfriend, by your girlfriend? Do you define yourself by your spouse or by your lack of a spouse? Is it a distraction? Does something good or something unhealthy consume your time and your attention and your resources? Is it an addiction? Does something unhealthy have hold of your life in your hearts? Jesus says he's the bread of life. What bread are you eating? Uneaten bread does no good. And similarly, an unreserved savior is no good. What can you trust Jesus with this week? Because Jesus wants you to know a deep and rich and meaningful satisfaction that comes from filling your life with him. I want to leave you with these two questions that I'm going to be wrestling with this week too, what are you hungry for? And what are you running after to satisfy that hunger?

[00:30:51] We're going to take communion this morning. And it's appropriate because the text we're looking at, because Jesus gave us communion in a sense to continually replicate what happens in this passage. In communion, you have a physical piece of bread and a physical cup, but you're still going to be hungry after you take it. We continually reenact this passage through communion, because in communion, we take a physical thing that won't satisfy our needs perfectly that points us to the ultimate satisfaction when we consume Jesus as our savior. Communion is when followers of Jesus come together to participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's not a magical thing, but it is a mystical thing. There is something meaningful and significant in this moment, and Jesus has called us to do it. It's a picture of our constant need for spiritual renewal. Our need to receive what Jesus has done on our behalf.

[00:31:48] Communion is an outward expression of that. It's a chance for us, just as Jesus says, to eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, metaphorically speaking, because anyone who eats his flesh and drinks his blood, metaphorically speaking, has eternal life. But that's literal. That's the good stuff. It's a powerful picture for us. Let me pray, Father, we pray that as we enter into communion right now that she would speak to our hearts, that she would help us to understand those things that we hunger for and those things that we look to satisfy that hunger that are not you.. Lord, would we surrender those things in this moment? Would we lay those down at your feet? Would you help us to understand more? How you are the life giver and that you sent Jesus to be the bread of life for us, to satisfy us, to sustain us, to save us, to secure us. We thank you, Lord, meet us in this moment right now. We pray this in your son's precious name, amen.