“Come and Be Fed” (John 6:25-58)

This is a difficult passage. 

After Jesus delivered this sermon that we’re about to examine, “many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him” (John 6:66).

The more you examine it, the more complex it becomes.

It’s like one of those Magic Eye stereograms that were popular in the 90s. The ones that look like static, but as you look into it, a deeper, recessed image appears.

You have to skew your vision and look at it with a different kind of clarity until the plain illustration reveals what’s really behind it. 

You have to refocus your vision to clearly see what’s right in front of you.

“I AM the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35)

This passage is difficult in its simplicity.

It is so simple that it has become cliché—it has become a little Christian platitude that makes for a nice wall decoration. 

But to come to Jesus, you must be drawn to Him by the Father who sent Him (John 6:44). To understand His meaning, you must be taught by God (John 6:45). Your focus has to be realigned.

I’d like to open with a joke:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming in the opposite direction, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” 

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and says, “What the heck is water?”

I borrowed this joke from David Foster Wallace, who told it in his 2005 commencement speech titled “This Is Water” to the graduating class of Kenyon College. He said:

The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude. 

But the fact is that in the day-to-day trenches of existence, banal platitudes can have a life-or-death importance.

“I AM the bread of life” can seem like a banal platitude.

Understanding “I AM the bread of life” can have life or death importance.

Let’s dive in.

A day before, Jesus fed between 15- and 20,000 people with five biscuits and two fish. Using the same creative process through which He created the universe ex nihilo—out of nothing—He filled their bellies with bread. Seeing what this Man could do for them, they wanted to make Him their king. 

That was their first mistake. You don’t make Jesus King. He is King.

You can surrender to Him as king.

You can offer everything for Him as King.

But you do not make Him King. That is not up to you.

But that’s not why He came to earth. Not yet. That was not His mission, so He slips away.

The next day, they go looking for Jesus. They can’t find Him, because in the middle of the night, He crossed the lake without a boat by walking on the water. Only the Twelve disciples saw this. 

So when those who were looking for Jesus found Him in a very inconvenient place, they reasonably asked Him, “When—or how—did You get here?”

Jesus flatly ignores the question. This would be a great opportunity for Him to further demonstrate His authority over the elements. “Even the wind and sea obey Him” (Mark 4:41).

Having authority over the elements would further solidify in the people’s minds Jesus’s divinity.

But Jesus doesn’t want people to know that He is God. Jesus wants people to believe that He is God.

Jesus wants faith.

Nothing can be more corrosive to genuine faith than miracles.

Jesus launches into His discourse: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (John 6:26).

Jesus essentially says, “You don’t want Me for who I AM—you want Me for what I can do for you.”

The people who sought to make Jesus their King did so only because they thought that He would make their lives easier. They thought that He could give them what they wanted all the time.

They sought in Christ something other than Christ Himself. They sought to fill their earthly bellies and thought nothing of the Kingdom.

John Calvin said,

He who does not aspire to the Kingdom of God, but rests satisfied with the conveniences of the present life, seeks nothing else than to fill his belly. 

In like manner, there are many persons in the present day who would gladly embrace the gospel if it were free from the bitterness of the cross and if it brought nothing but carnal pleasures. 

Nay, we see many who make a Christian profession, that they may live in greater gaiety and with less restraint. Some through the expectation of gain, others through fear, and others for the sake of those whom they wish to please, profess to be the disciples of Christ.

[But] in [truly] seeking Christ…the chief point is to despise the world and seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33).

It’s a little ironic. They say they want to know what work they must do for God, but they really want the Kingdom only if it is convenient.

They ask, “What must we do to be doing the works of God” (John 6:28). 

They not only demonstrate their ignorance of the grace of God, but also naivety about their own ability, as if they were capable of meeting whatever challenge God sets before them on their own. 

They think it will be easy.

They want easy.

So Jesus gives them easy.

Jesus gives them everything.

He simply gives, but they do not understand it.

He says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man gives you” (John 6:27).

Now, before anyone thinks that Jesus means we must work for this Bread that He is offering, let me affirm that we are not justified by works. That’s not what Jesus means here. There is nothing we can do that merits grace and the free gift of salvation. 

Jesus is simply using the language that they are using, as He does with the “bread.” 

Faith is not a work. 

Faith brings nothing to God except that it places us before God as poor and empty so that we can be filled with Christ and His grace.

But these men don’t want to be filled, they only want to be full.

They want God, but only on their terms.

If we work for God, then we earn God—we deserve God. And if we earn God, then we own Him.

We as people want God as we understand Him, not as He is. We want to put Jesus in a box so that we can take Him out and use Him whenever we need or want something.

We want Jesus for what we can get out of Him, not for what He puts into us.

They wanted bread, so Jesus gave them Bread.

Remember the context. Remember the water that they are swimming in. Jesus just produced bread for roughly 15,000 people.

This was impressive. 

They surely received their fill (there were leftovers).

And now they wanted more.

They didn’t really want God; they wanted a bakery.

Because if we’re being honest, they already had their “god.”

Philippians 3:19 says, “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly; and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” 

This was their context. This is the water they were surrounded by and thus couldn’t see.

Before we go further, it should be understood that there was a Jewish expectation that when the messiah came, he would bring with him manna from heaven. 

That is why, when they asked for a sign, they added, “Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” (John 6:30)

The previous day, Jesus had produced almost 22 tons of bread (I did the math). Surely this resonated with some of them that perhaps the Messiah had come. 

That is why Jesus speaks of bread.

I am sure that had this been an off-the-cuff sermon or discourse, Jesus would have simply said “I AM the life” (as He did in John 14:6). But since “bread” is the water they were swimming in, Jesus refocuses their attention to the truth behind their context.

Their perspective was hopelessly earthbound. They could not see past their earthly context to see the spiritual significance of what had occurred.

They could not see that the bread from heaven was pointing to Christ. 

He wasn’t going to bring the bread. He is the bread. 

We’re talking about context; let’s look at this in context. John 6:26-34 says:

“Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 

‘Do not work 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 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.’

So they said to Him, ‘Then what sign do You do, that we may see and believe You? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the mana in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from Heaven to eat.”’”

Do you see what they did there? It’s subtle. Remember, the day before, they were clamoring to make Jesus their king. Now they’re demanding another sign so that they can believe in HIm. 

Why the change of heart?

To put it bluntly, they were ungrateful.

As soon as Christ does not answer their prayers—as soon as He does not give them what they want in the moment that they want it—they no longer deem Him worthy to be their King.

Yesterday, they wanted to serve Him. Today, they want to be served by Him.

How quickly we forget what Christ has done for us.

How quickly we become ungrateful. 

How quickly the Bread of Life becomes stale.

Thank God that we are justified once by His grace through faith.

Thank God that we must only eat once and be fed forever, preserved by the hand of Christ!

John 6:32-33—

“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world.”

God provided bread in the wilderness. Moses distributed it. The people ate it and eventually died. It was a fixed point in history.

Today, what the Father gives has come down and is distributed by God Himself. 

Jesus is not only the Bread from Heaven, He is the Bread of God—the same substance as God—and He has come down to meet us at any point in time no matter when or where you are in life.

Those in His presence need to look no further than Jesus to see God (John 14:9).

Jesus speaks in terms of bread, not because it is the most accurate description of Himself—not only because the manna that the Jews expected was a type of Him—but because He meets us where we are in our context and points us to the Father.  

The true bread—the Bread that gives eternal Life—will not and does not see decay (Psalm 16:10), and will raise us up on the last day!

The manna expired. Jesus does not.

 John 6:35:40—

“Jesus said to them, ‘I AM the bread of life; whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst. 

‘But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.

‘For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He has given Me, but raise it up on the last day.

‘For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who looks upon the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’”

This is what being a Christian—a true disciple—is all about. You must look beyond yourself to Christ; behold Him and come to Him.

You must see Him as He truly is, not as you want Him to be.

You must see yourself as you truly are, in desperate need of Him. 

You must come to Him, moving away from yourself and your old ways and your unquenchable hunger and your inability to satisfy yourself, and instead come to Him in faith, laying out all of your need on the table. 

“Come to Me,” He says, “and you will never hunger. You will never thirst. You will never be turned away.”

This is not an abstract statement. This is an appeal. 

It is not an imperative, it is an invitation:

“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy, and eat…

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. 

Incline your ear and come to me; hear, that your soul might live…

Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts;

Let him return to the Lord, that He may have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

(Isaiah 55:1-7)

Come to Jesus, He will give you everlasting life.

Turn to God, He is nearer than you think.

They only needed to look at Christ, but they couldn’t see past their bellies. 

John writes (6:41-42)—

“So the Jews grumbled about Him, because He said, ‘I AM the bread that came down from Heaven.’ They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He say, “I have come down from Heaven?”’”

Again, they want to put God into a box. Jesus is not like the Messiah they expected, or the one they imagined in their minds, so they reject Him. They refuse to take Him as He is.

They do not want Jesus as He presents Himself, and He presents Himself to be God.

When Jesus says, “I AM,” He is identifying Himself with Yahweh. This is the Tetragrammaton—the I AM that I AM—ego ami in the Greek, YHWY in Hebrew. 

Jesus does this eight times in the Gospel of John, if we count His conversation with the woman at the well in John 4:26. 

He says: 

• “I AM the bread of life” (John 6:35, 48, 51)
• “I AM the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5)
• “I AM the door of the sheep” (John 10:7, 9)
• “I AM the good shepherd” (John 10:11, 14)
• “I AM the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25)
• “I AM the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6)
• “I AM the true vine” (John 15:1, 5)

When people say that Jesus never claimed to be God, yes, He most certainly did. 

The Jews picked up on this and eventually crucified Him for it.

And now the focus should not so much be on Him being the “bread,” but on Him being “from heaven.”

That’s what they grumbled about. Jesus’s primary residence matters.

Jesus claimed to come down from Heaven. No one does that.

Enoch went up, but he didn’t come down. Elijah went up, but he didn’t come down. Moses, David, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all died and stayed buried (for now). 

Only God comes down from Heaven.

Jesus repeats His coming down from Heaven seven times in this discourse.

This is what they grumbled about. And it’s almost funny because they knew where Jesus lived. He had a physical address. 

They thought they knew who Jesus was, and He was not who they wanted God to be.

This word “grumble” indicates discontent. They grumble just like their ancestors did when they were hungry in the wilderness.

They grumble now because they are like spoiled children, filled up on the wrong kind of food—a false religiosity that feigns piety.

They were filled with false assumptions about the Christ.

Just like people today, they thought that their own personal spirituality and observations and knowledge about what they think they understand about Jesus qualified them to determine what is or isn’t true about who He is and what He says. 

“We adopt many false imaginations, which produce a contempt of the gospel. Nay, there are even many who frame for themselves monsters, that they may make them a pretense for hating the gospel. 

In this manner, the world deliberately drives away the grace of God.” —John Calvin

Because their hearts are turned in upon themselves, they seek to find a god in their own image.

When you come to Christ, come freely. But check all of your paltry presuppositions and earthly expectations and everything you think you know at the door. 

D. A. Carson said, 

“It is impossible that my perceptions, distorted as they are by the fact that I make myself the center of my world, could of themselves recognize and receive the power of God in this Man [Jesus].”

It’s just like the fish from the joke that didn’t know about water because that’s all they knew by observation. It takes Spiritual wisdom to see beyond ourselves and our world and our sin.

You do not know God until you have been taught by God.

John 6:44-46—

Jesus said, “No one can come to the Father unless the Father who sent Me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. 

It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me—not that anyone has seen the Father except Him who is from God; He has seen the Father.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.”

Religious and cultural presuppositions will not lead you to believe that Jesus is God and that He offers free salvation to anyone who believes. 

You have to come to Jesus in order to know God. Nothing in this fallen world will lead you to that conclusion on your own.

Knowledge of God cannot and will not come from religion or culture or spirituality or a really good gospel tract or a Bible verse on a T-shirt or a warm hug from that person you know who goes to church or the promise of thoughts and prayers when your marriage is falling apart.

Knowledge of God won’t come from signs and wonders. 

There is no method of demonstration, persuasion, or apologetics by which one can come to saving faith.

And so you may ask yourself, “How does anyone choose to follow Christ?”

The answer is: You don’t choose. You are chosen.

And thank God for that!

Thank God that He draws us to Christ.

If I were given the choice to either trust a Man who claims to be God and took my place by dying for my sins on a cross so that I could have eternal life, or to work really hard to be good and earn my way to Heaven, my fleshy, self-indulgent heart is going to choose the latter.

I guarantee that I would make that choice, and so would you. 

But God guarantees that all who believe in the One He sent will have eternal life.

And this guarantee is not based on our feeble grasp of Christ, but on His firm grip on us. Our salvation in Him is ultimate and final. 

John 6:47-48, 51—

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I AM the bread of life…

I AM the living bread that came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

That’s weird.

This is easier for us to understand now than it was for them to understand then.

They said, then, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?”

Now we know, because it has become almost a cliche—another banal platitude. We forget how shocking this statement is.

Jesus said the bread that He will give (future tense for them) is His flesh. He is speaking, of course, about the cross.

This is an allusion to the atoning death that Jesus would die, along with an invitation to enter into the closest and most intimate relationship with Him imaginable.

His death on a cross was the once-for-all atonement that gives everlasting life to those who believe. Eat of that flesh—partake in that work by believing in Him—and you will have guaranteed eternal life.

Now, because this is a series with a focus on discipleship, there is one point that I would like to make that I find very interesting. Notice what Jesus says next.

John 6:53-56—

“Jesus said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on 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.’”

Come to Jesus. Believe in the One the Father sent. Trust that His atoning work on the cross—His life, death, burial, and resurrection—guarantees your salvation once and for all. 

Whoever appropriates Christ by “eating His flesh” (consuming, digesting, assimilating Him) has eternal life. Understand that.

But here’s the interesting thing: Jesus uses two words for “eat” in this section.  

In verse 53, Jesus says, “Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood, you have no life in you.” Both “eat” (φάγητε/“phagēte”) and “drink” (πίητε/“piēte”) here simply mean “eat” and “drink,” but are in the aorist form, denoting a once-and-for-all or completed action. Literally, “Unless you shall have eaten the flesh…and shall have drunk the blood.”

You eat and drink once, and you have life forever.

However, in verse 54, Jesus says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” 

Here, the word he chooses for “Eat” is in the present, as in continuing action. Literally “The one eating of My flesh…has eternal life,” or, “Whoever continues to eat My flesh has eternal life.” And His choice of word (τρώγων/“trōgōn”) is interesting.

It means “eat,” but it has more of a connotation of “munch” or even “snack.” It means eating and smacking your lips with relish.

That’s weird.

It’s weird to think Jesus said, “Whoever munches on my flesh has eternal life.”

But here’s the discipleship application.

Snacking does not sustain life. 

We have been given life once and for all by the assimilation of Christ into us. But we continue to snack—to abide or remain by coming back to Him—not because we have to, but for the sheer enjoyment of Him because we are delighted in Him.

That is abiding in Christ. That is discipleship.

John 6:58—

“This is the bread that came down from Heaven…Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

We want a king who will give us bread.

Jesus is the King who gives us Himself. 

Jesus gives Himself freely to all who are drawn to Him by God, and God does not draw anyone unwilling to come.

If you believe in Christ today, thank God that He chose you and drew you out of the world to Himself.

If you do not yet trust that Jesus is the One who came down from Heaven to give life to the world, but you want the promise and security of eternal life, thank God that He is drawing you now. 

If you have a hunger that nothing else on earth will satisfy, even though you’ve tried to fill yourself up with things in this world, then be filled with the Bread of Life—the true food—that is Jesus Christ. 

Now is the time. Make today the day that you finally satisfy the hunger that has been gnawing at you—a hunger that only Jesus can satisfy. 

Come to Him freely. The invitation stands open and unqualified. God is drawing you now, whenever and wherever you are in life. You will never be turned away for any reason. “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Come to Jesus.

Come, and be fed.