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John 6:35-51: The word of a Gentleman.(please click for todays passage)

David Livingstone was battling with doubt and loneliness in the jungles of central Africa. Then he came across (37). He wrote in his journal, ”That is the word of a Gentleman of the most strict and sacred honour. He would never break His Word.”

Although it is true, as we saw yesterday, that Jesus fully satisfies (35), not everyone will believe (36). (By the way, there is the idea of eating with enjoyment in verses 50, 51. It is both delightful and satisfying to feed on all that Jesus is.) But we should not be surprised at any lack of response we experience. Jesus met with negativity and rejection. Again, as we observed yesterday, people can be so wilfully blind and obtuse (41, 42).

The mystery of the sovereignty of God is at work in every conversion (37, 38, 44, 45). We come to Jesus and believe in Him. This is our choice. But the deeper truth is that we only make this movement towards Christ because of the Father’s drawing power.

All who come to Jesus find Him to be ‘the bread of life’ (48) who gives life. ‘Eternal life’ (47) is a new quality of life: the life of heaven begun here on earth. But it is also quantity of life; never-ending life; resurrection life (39, 40, 44, 50, 51). It is the best life available and the longest life imaginable

Jesus reveals God (46). He is ‘the window into God’ (Michael Green). He shows us what God is like in terms of a human life.

And He is also the redeemer.He gave His life for our life (51).

”Jesus lays great emphasis on his resurrection as completing his work for those who come to him. It is not enough to impart eternal life. That would bless the spirit, but leave the body untouched. And he cannot rest until the whole of our complex nature shares in the emancipation and fullness of his salvation. A transfigured manhood and a glorified body must be the crown of his service to his own. By his mighty power, he will raise them up in the likeness of his glory, that they may share his royal and exalted state. Nothing less will satisfy him, or undo the ruin that sin has introduced. Let us feed on Christ, by meditation on his words and by communion with himself, of which the sacred Feast of the Lord’s Table is a perpetual reminder.” F.B. Meyer: ‘ Devotional Commentary’, p.463.

 John 6:30-36: None but Christ…(please click here for todays passage)

In this passage we meet with one of seven ‘I am’ sayings made by Jesus in the fourth gospel (35). Many commentators take these to be staggering intimations of divinity, reflecting God’s self-revelation in Exodus 3:14. He seems to draw on that rich Old Testament theology.

Don’t you greet verse 30 with a sense of incredulity? Yet it shows how spiritually obtuse we, the human race, can be. These people had been seeking Jesus off the back of the miracle of the loaves and fishes (22-24). They had been so impressed by it, so how could they now ask this?

They were possibly thinking that Moses showed his credentials in the miracle of the manna. Jesus corrected their thinking about it, saying it was not Moses who provided that ‘bread from heaven’, but God the Father. And it was only a type, or shadow of Christ, who was to come (and, who, of course, had now come (30-32).

The ‘bread of God’ is ‘he’, not it (33, 35).

True satisfaction is to be found in Jesus.

Real life is to be found in Jesus.

This life/satisfaction is for ‘the world’.

BUT only those who ‘come’ to Jesus; who ‘believe’ in Him, will receive it (35, 36). In fact, to believe in Jesus gives definition to what is meant by coming to Him.

The crowd had come to Christ in a physical/geographical sense. They had made an effort to seek Him out. But they didn’t really want HIM – only what He had to offer materially. Like the woman at the well (4:15), they took Jesus literally, whereas He intended to be taken spiritually.

”Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?’ (Isaiah 54:2a). That question still comes to us across the centuries with startling force and relevance.

Augustine said, ”Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts find no rest until they rest in thee.” 

There is in every heart a ‘Jesus-shaped hole’, and try as you might, you will not be able to fill that vacuum with anyone or anything else. What keeps you from coming to Him and believing?

Prayer: As the old hymn says, ”Now none but Christ can satisfy; no other Name for me. There’s love, and peace, and lasting joy, Lord Jesus found in thee.” There is no one like you Lord, and I love you, and am deeply grateful.

John 6:22-29: The ‘work’ of faith.(please click for todays passage)

One commentator said about (25), we know the real question is not ‘when’ but ‘how?’

”You’ve come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs – and for free.” The Message.

Jesus meets material needs. This is a truth about Him. He cares about our physical condition. But human nature being what it is, we can seek Him for self-centred reasons. Prosperity teaching ‘prospers’ (to the extent it does), because it appeals to selfish motives. However, if we seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness ”all these things will be given…as well.” Jesus knows what is ”in a man”. (JOHN 2:25). He sees just where we are coming from (26). We can seek His blessing without wanting His rule. If we just go after what Christ can give us materially, but don’t want Him we will miss out on His best.

Verse 27 is all of a piece with chapter 4: 13. We can ‘eat’ at the world’s heavily laden table; we can ‘drink’ from it’s water supply, and yet go away totally unsatisfied. There is a level of consumption that whilst doing something for the body, does not reach the soul, the spirit. We may ‘work’ hard to fill that God-shaped hole, but our labours will get us nowhere. Everything the world system has to offer ‘spoils’, but what Jesus gives ‘endures’. It is a life that is ‘eternal’ (27)

”Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides.” The Message.

There is one ‘work’ we need and that is to put our trust in Jesus (29). This is a ‘work of God’. When anyone is converted and becomes a disciple; when they really believe in Jesus, that is something God Himself has done. So no Christian can ever boast about it.

Prayer: Thank you Lord Jesus that you fully satisfy.

John 5: 19-29: More gigantic claims.(please click for todays passage)

Following the healing of an invalid man on the Sabbath day, Jesus spoke of His unity withy the Father. The Father had healed the man, and Jesus’ work of healing on this occasion gave expression to His oneness with the Father. The Jews got the point and saw that Jesus was claiming equality with God (18). That gave them even more reason to want to kill Him. But this was just the starting point. Jesus had even more things to say about His essential unity with the Father. He can only do what the Father does (19) so whenever we see Jesus at work, that is God the Father at work. And, indeed, to honour the Son is to honour the Father (23). If we don’t honour Jesus we can’t honour God. 

We need to get this message:

The Father heals the sick on the Sabbath, and so the Son does – for they are one (16-18);

As the Father raises the dead, so Jesus has the power to raise people both spiritually and physically – for they are one (21, 24, 25, 26, 28 and 29);

As the Father judges all, so does Jesus – for they are one (22, 23).

”The relationship of our Lord to the Father was such that he felt himself competent to fulfill all the functions of the Divine Being. Is it God’s prerogative to raise the dead? It is also Jesus Christ’s…Is it the divine right to be the judge of man? It is also the Redeemer’s right…Is it the peculiar attitude of God to be the fountain of life, so that life, inherent, underived, and perennial, is ever arising in his nature, sustaining here an angel and there a hummingbird? This is also an attribute of our blessed Lord…The entire sum of the attributes of Deity are resident in the nature of the Son of man. But though although all divine attributes were his, and might have been called into operation, he forebode to use them, that he might learn the life of dependence and faith, the life which was to become ours toward himself. He did nothing apart from the Father…No vine ever clung more closely to its trellis, and no child to its mother, than he to the Father. See Gal.2:20; Heb.12:2” F.B. Meyer: ‘Devotional Commentary’, pp.461,462.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, as you walked through life in total dependence on your Father, so enable me to keep my heart and eyes fixed on you. I need you every hour, every minute, every second (and milli-second!)

John 5:10-18: That’s gratitude for you.(please click for todays passage)

I still smile at the memory of some words I read in a commentary years ago: ‘The man healed by Jesus appears to have been an unpleasant character!!’ He certainly wanted to avoid any flak coming his way and was happy for them to train their sights on Jesus (10, 11 and 15). He showed them where to aim their fire (15). If he did repent of his sins, we have no clear indication of it. Yet the Lord had been so good to him.

It appears that the healed man’s illness was connected in some way to sinful behaviour (14). Sin is ultimately destructive to the human body. It is not good for your health. It is for our own good that Jesus asks us to leave our sinful burden at the foot of His cross. That’s not the main reason, of course, but it is a reason.

Religion shows its worst face where it just cares about rules and regulations and not the needs and struggles of real people. The key to understanding all this anger towards to Jesus lies in the fact that the Lord performed the miracle on the Sabbath day. It led to the man carrying his bed on the Sabbath, and these clerics interpreted that as work (9b, 10; see also 16). Even worse, Jesus said the man He healed was in fact healed by His Father  in heaven (who was also working on the Sabbath day), and so He was expressing His oneness with God (18). That’s what they took Him to mean, and they were correct to do so:

‘It was not his own deed, but the Father’s in him and through him. If, then, they condemned it, they were in direct collision with the Infinite One from whom the Sabbath law had originally come.’ F.B. Meyer: ‘Devotional Commentary’, p.461.

This is one of the massive claims made by Jesus about His own identity. He did not think that He was just a man. How about you? What’s your view of Jesus? As C.S. Lewis argued, Jesus is who He says He is, or He is a psychiatric case (on the same level as someone saying he’s a poached egg), or He is the devil from hell. But we must not come out with any patronising nonsense about Him just being a good man. He has not left that option open to us.