Q2, S03 The Bread of Life

Quarter 2, Session 3: The Bread of Life

WILL YOU BE SUSTAINED BY ME?

Passage

John 6

Concept

This session falls under Jesus’ fourth question: Have you encountered me? After Jesus miraculously provides bread for five thousand, he is confronted by crowds who simply want more bread. Jesus explains that he himself is the bread; he is the food. This passage pushes us to trust Jesus even when he asks us to follow him into situations that do not make sense to us. He is the true source of life, sustenance, and purpose.

Key Question

Do you love Jesus because of what he can provide? Or because of who he is? What is the difference? And how can you know you love Jesus for who he is?

The Parabola Tool

Do you see our Parabola tool being played out in John 6? With whom? How so?

The Bread of Life

Have you ever felt purposeless in your work? As you work so hard day in and day out, do you ever wonder what the point of it all is?

We are all constantly working. We work at our jobs. We work to keep our houses clean and maintained. We work to care for our children. We all work hard to provide for ourselves and our families. If we don’t work, we won’t eat, and we won’t be able to provide. This is good and right and natural. But provision is an insufficient goal for all of your work. If you are only working to provide for your physical needs, then something is lacking. You’ve probably felt this pull. There must be something more to all of this than simply providing the physical food and things your family needs!

In our passage, Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to enteral life, which the Son of man will give to you” (John 6:27). Here Jesus is tapping into a greater longing. He’s addressing something that we all feel. Sometimes this longing for more becomes a crisis, other times it’s a nagging question in the back of our minds.

In this section, Jesus will ask us if we are working for the things that perish or if we are working for something that lasts. We all know what work is, we know what it’s like to work hard, but Jesus always gets to the heart and pushes us to look at what we’re working for.

So how would you answer that question? What are you working so hard for? In the end, we all know that it’s not about the work itself. It’s not about how hard we work. It’s about the greater purpose behind it. How often do we find ourselves working and working and working and breaking our backs and wearing ourselves out, and we’re not sure why? Every now and then we stop and ask ourselves: What is the point? It’s not the size of your bank account, not your possessions or status. There’s something more.

As we dive into this section of Scripture, we have to ask ourselves what that “something more” is. Jesus will direct us to it, but we have to have eyes to see and ears to hear.

1.     Read John 6. Right off the bat, what strikes you about this passage? What do you find interesting or challenging or confusing?

The Sign

After Jesus miraculously fed five thousand, the people caught up to him, expecting more. The crowd was enamored with what Jesus was capable of, and they came to the conclusion that Jesus was a prophet, a man who had come from God. Jesus recognized that they were all going to rush to him and try to make him their king. The irony, of course, is that Jesus was and is, in fact, king. But not in the way that the crowds were expecting.

This is why the call from Jesus is always “follow me.” It’s not about what we want to do, it’s not about what we expect Jesus to do in our agenda, it’s about Jesus being who he is and leading us where he wants us to go.

When the crowds caught up to Jesus again, he explained to them what he was doing. It wasn’t about the bread; Jesus explains that it was a sign. A sign is all about what the thing itself points to. It shows the significance of what the whole thing means. The crowds had come to find more food, but Jesus says that they should be looking for something entirely different. It wasn’t about the food, it was about him.

How often do we come to Jesus because we’ve seen what he provides for us, and we come back again and again because of what he can provide? It’s not wrong to seek Jesus for the things we need, but we have to realize that the stuff itself is not the reason he provides for us. What he really wants to give us is himself. He provides for us as a sign of his ultimate provision, which is giving himself to us. What God gives us as provision will never be enough. What we need is him.

2.     How often do you come to God seeking provision? (This is an appropriate thing to do, and it’s actually something we often neglect.) Why do you think you come to him in this way so often or so seldom?

3.     Have you ever found yourself coming to God more for what he provides than for himself? What is the distinction here and why does it matter?

Trust

The underlying question Jesus is driving at in this section is how much we trust him even when what he says seems impossible to us. Jesus feeds five thousand, and as he does this impossible task, he asks his disciples to trust him.

In this context, Jesus says that doing the will of God is believing in Jesus (v. 29). Sometimes we equate belief with agreeing to propositional truths, but Jesus has something more in mind. It’s about trust. Do we really trust Jesus? Are we willing to follow him? To place ourselves in his hands? To go where he goes and to do what he does? This involves more than our minds, it requires our lives. It means that he will set the agenda and we will walk in it because we believe—we trust—that the place he leads is the place we need to be.

4.     How do you respond when Jesus calls you to do something that makes no sense given your context and experience? Why?

5.     What have you seen happen in those times when you have trusted God in the midst of these situations?

I Am the Bread

When the crowds ask Jesus to provide more bread miraculously for them, Jesus tells them, “I am the bread.” He’s explaining clearly that he is the food. When you find yourself starving or in need in any possible sense, the whole point is that we need to come directly to Jesus—he is the bread. He is the food. The people demanded a sign from Jesus to prove that he came from God. They pointed to the time when God supernaturally provided manna from heaven to feed Israel. But the irony is that earlier in our passage—literally the previous day—Jesus had miraculously provided bread and fish for them to eat. He had already performed the sign, they seem to just want more food.

They didn’t want Jesus, they just wanted full stomachs. Jesus’ point is that it doesn’t matter what hungers we have, it doesn’t matter why we come seeking Jesus; the real question is whether or not we want Jesus. The question is whether or not we believe that Jesus is the true bread, the true source of life. The battle is not just to see God at work, but also to believe in him. To trust him.

Jesus confidently says that only those who are being drawn by God will see who he truly is. Jesus is clearly claiming to be God, but he has the confidence to know that only those who are ready will see that reality. We have to ask ourselves: Who is Jesus?

Jesus can sense that the people asking these questions are not with him, so he takes it way further and talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He’s not concerned about convincing them, he talks more about the reality to which the sign points. It’s about him. It’s about how we relate to him. So he talks about this deep reality, knowing that it will push his questioners further away. He’s not concerned about that because he knows their hearts are already far from him.

6.     Do you trust Jesus? What evidence can you point to that demonstrates that you trust him? If you do trust him, what do you sense him calling you to trust him in during this season of your life?

7.     Spend some time in prayer. Ask God to increase your faith. Pray that you would be able to see Jesus truly and follow him with your full trust.

Key Question

Do you love Jesus because of what he can provide? Or because of who he is? What is the difference? And how can you know you love Jesus for who he is?