INTRODUCTION The Message of Christ is Christ Himself The Bread of Life John 6:1-70 Lesson for October 19-20, 2013 Tom Ramsey WA Criswell recalls in his sermon from John the story of Harry Moorehouse. One of the most unusual providences I ve ever heard of; when Dwight L. Moody finished his revival meeting in this last century in Birmingham, England, to bid him goodbye among the throngs was a young man named Harry Moorehouse. And he said to Moody, I hope to come to America. And when I do, I ll preach for you. Well, you don t preach for somebody on your own invitation; you have to be invited. He wasn t invited. I ll preach for you. Moody was gracious and said, Well, when you come to America, you be sure and speak to us. Let us know. We ll welcome you. About six months later, D.L. Moody in Chicago received a telephone call from New York City. It was that young man, Harry Moorehouse. And he said to Moody, I m here in New York and I ll be in Chicago Wednesday, and I ll preach for you Wednesday night. When Wednesday came, Moody had to leave on another assignment, and he told his deacons, This young fellow in New York, from Birmingham, England, says he s going to preach for us tonight, Wednesday. Now you ask him to say a few words in kindness and courtesy. So Moody left. That night, Wednesday night, the deacons invited the young fellow to say a few words. He stood up there and he began pouring out his soul and heart on John 3:16. And when he gave an invitation, there were about ten people saved. Well, the deacons were overwhelmed! So they said, You preach for us tomorrow night, Thursday night. We ll have services. The young fellow stood up there Thursday night, preached on the same text, John 3:16. And there were about fifteen people saved. They were overwhelmed! And they announced, On Friday night, we ll have services again. And this young man will preach. And only Friday night, they had about twenty people saved. They announced services for Saturday night. And on Saturday, Mr. Moody came back to Chicago. And his wife said to him, she said, Husband, we re in the midst of a great revival. And this young fellow, Harry Moorehouse, will be preaching again tonight. And she said to Moody, The people are being converted, and you re going to be converted! Moody was astonished at what his wife said. He replied, I ve been preaching over twenty years and you say I m going to be converted! 1
Yes, she says, and you will see. You ll understand. When the service began on Saturday night, Moody sat on the front row, highly critical. The young fellow began preaching again on John 3:16. And there were about twenty-five or thirty people saved on Saturday night. That continued every night for six solid weeks. And when it was over, Moody said, I got converted, changed. He said, Heretofore, I have been preaching on the Sinai side of Calvary been preaching hellfire and damnation and thunder and lightning. But, he said, after those six weeks, I began preaching the other side of Calvary: grace, and forgiveness, and love, and salvation in the outpouring of the loving heart and saving blood of our Lord. In our study of John 4 and the Living Water message to the woman at the well in Sychar we find lives were changed. Christ offered living water and the entire city of Sychar was saved. In John 6 we find a great miracle and 5,000 are fed yet not a single person was saved. What happened? Could it be as Dr. Moody said the people were focused on the Sinai side of the message and not the amazing love of The Christ! The people in Sychar were looking for The Christ while the 5,000 folks fed were looking for an earthly king. Let s dig into Chapter 6. BIBLICAL/HISTORICAL CONTEXT In the sixth chapter of the Book of John: recounts a miracle, the only one that is presented by all four Gospel writers, the feeding of the five thousand. It begins with a vast multitude. In the northern part of Galilee, our Lord is in Capernaum. And, while ministering to the throngs in Capernaum, He gets in a boat with His disciples, and He crosses over the sea to the eastern shore. Now, the multitude is there because of the Passover. From the ends of the Roman Empire, the faithful Jews came into Palestine. And, this being in the northern part of the country, they were flooded with Jews from Mesopotamia, particularly from Babylon, into which they had been carried captivity in centuries before. So, the country and its cities were thronged and filled with great multitudes of worshiping faithful Jews. Now, when they saw the Lord get in a boat and go to the other side of the sea, the multitudes walked around the head of the sea, beyond Bethsaida, waiting for Jesus to arrive on the other side. Now, when they were there in their vast numbers "Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw that great company." Now WA Criswell continues in John 6. Read 6:1-13 I. Our Lord Sees the Boy! Then, in that throng He sees and He meets a little boy. How remarkable. In the throngs and the multitudes, He sees you. There are seven billion people in this earth and the Lord looks at you. He knows you. He calls you by name. He knows all about you. What a remarkable thing! That's the Lord, pressed and thronged by the multitudes, uncounted numbers on every side, He knows you, and He's sensitive to you. 2
A child, in the midst of a throng of at least twelve thousand people, five thousand men and women and children. So, He took from the willing hands of the little boy a small lunch. Five little barley muffins and two little sardines, just a little lunch that apparently his mother had prepared for him, willingly placing it in the Lord's hands. There's nothing in the Scriptures that even suggest that coercively the disciples forced the boy to give it to the Lord. Placing it in the Lord's omnipotent hands, Jesus took the little lunch and gave thanks. II. Kingdom Works Requires You Our Lord! Over so little, giving thanks. And He distributes to the disciples and the disciples to the people. What an amazing thing is exhibited there, described there, the Lord associating Himself with those disciples, using them. Why would He use them? Why associate us with His work? He is so omnipotent, and all sufficient, and all adequate, and all powerful, why depend upon us? Why didn't He just rain down manna from heaven? God did that in the desert, in the wilderness. Why didn't He just rain down manna from heaven and feed that multitude? Why use the disciples to distribute, to distribute, to distribute? Why does He always do that using us? He always does that, He uses us. And without us our Lord seems to be unable to accomplish his full purpose. He chooses to associate us in all of His ministries in the world. The Gospel's not preached if we don't preach it. And the church is not built if we don't build it, and the people are not fed if we don't feed them, and they aren't clothed if we don't clothe them, And the children are not brought up in the admonition and the love of the Lord if we don't bring them up. God associates us with all of His mighty ministries. III. Be Still and Know God So, the people are seated. You'll not be listening to the voice of God in the clamor and the noise and the bustle, and the hurriedness of daily life. You've got to quit. You've got to be quiet. As the Psalmist said, "Be still and know that I am God" [Psalms 46:10]. All day long they've been arguing and contending, some of them said, He is an imposter. Some of them said, He is the Son of God. And with flushed faces and flashing eyes and loud words and gestures and hurried feet, all day long they've been busy walking and talking and confronting, but as the day wore on and the sun is hot and they become tired and hungry, they are seated. And calm now replaces noise, and meditation now replaces confusion and argument. And seated the Lord has opportunity to feed them. We are like that. And in all of the bustle and hurriedness of life there has to be a time when we are quiet before the Lord, so He can talk to us and we can hear His voice, so we can feed on His word. IV. Filled Now, he uses a word here that we must not pass, "And when they were filled." When they were filled. Let's not forget or overlook that word. When they were filled, filled! Isn't that like God? He doesn't just barely save us. God not only saves us, but all through the years of our pilgrimage, God ministers to us, and sustains us, and He feeds us. He fills us! Not just barely with enough, 3
but over and abounding and beside. And each one of those apostles took home with him a basket of the bread, multiplied over and above. That's God! V. Little is Much in the Hands of our Lord God taking so little and using it so much, as Zechariah says, "We're not to despise the day of small things" [Zechariah 4:10]. If I do what I can, God will do what I can t. And that is the Lord, and this boy, and his little lunch. With him, with the lad, it was nothing at all. He could have eaten it, nothing beyond. But in Christ's hands, giving it to the Lord, what the Lord could do with it. That's God with all of our small limitations, and our halting and feeble powers. Give them to Him and see God use it. And the same thing characterizes His ministry. Blindness, He'll make into blessedness. Lameness, He'll make into strength. A halting hesitating spirit, He will make dynamic for Him. Do you remember the word of Paul in the twelfth chapter of [2] Corinthians, Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in my weaknesses, my infirmities, for when I am weak, then am I strong. [(2) Corinthians 12:10] The smallest and the humblest gift offered to Him, a word, hands, feet, heart, life, witness, God uses it and God magnifies it. It is as Paul said, "I can do, I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me [Philippians 4:13]. Why, my brother, he s in jail; he's incarcerated; he's bound to a Roman soldier, or he's in stocks and chains. Yet he says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." Taking our little and multiplying in His omnipotent hands. O my friend, what a blessing He can make out of you, if you give yourself to the Lord Jesus. Read 6: 14-70 VI. An Earthly King?? After the feeding of the 5,000 the story continues, and when the men who were there saw the miracle that Jesus had done, they said, This is of a truth, that Messiah and that promised Leader and Prophet that should come into the world, that should bring Israel to her Messianic glory. (A limited earthly vision of our Lord) And they sought to come and take Jesus by force and make Him a king. [John 6:14-15]. That s what the fifteenth verse says in this sixth chapter. So they said, Let us take Him by force and make Him a king. All the time that was going on, you had Andrew over there, and Simon Peter over there, James and John over here, and Thaddeus and Bartholomew over yonder, and they were egging it on. Ah, that pleased those disciples. Yes, we shall make Him a king. We will get an army to march behind Him, and we ll confront those Roman legionnaires, and we ll overthrow the power of the Caesar, and we ll bring in the glorious messianic day of Israel. Ah, they had it figured out. But when Jesus saw that they were to come, that they would come by force and make Him a king, He sent His disciples away [John 6:15]. He pushed them in a boat and sent them across the sea, and He Himself went up to a high mountain to pray alone. Then in the night He 4
came to the disciples in the storm, and when the storm was hushed, suddenly they were at their destination. And the next morning, when all of that multitude on the eastern side of Sea of Galilee saw that the Lord was gone, having gone up the mountain to pray, and waiting for Him and He didn t return, why, they asked where those boats were headed for in which He had thrust His disciples. So all the people got in other little boats, or again walked around the top of the lake, and came to Capernaum and found the Lord in Capernaum. VII. Finding the Bread of Life? And when Jesus looked at them, He said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, you seek Me, not because you have found in Me God s answer to your lives, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled [John 6:26]. There has not been a convert among you. When the Lord got through this address, the last part of the sixth chapter of John says every one of those disciples left Him, every one of those so-called converts left Him; not one left. He never won a single soul by that marvelous miracle of feeding the five thousand, not one. Well, they were astonished at Him, that He would take such a turn, such a bend like that, so they said to Him, Why, how unlike our great Moses are You, for Moses gave our fathers manna to eat, as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. And Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you that bread from heaven, but My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. I am the bread of life [John 6:31-35]. VIII. The Message of Christ is Christ Himself Then as He continued talking to them, as they murmured and strove among themselves, He said, Except a man eat My flesh and except a man drink My blood, there is no life in him. But the man that eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life [John 6:52-53]. Ah, what words: I am the Bread of Heaven [John 6:50,58]. As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat and any man who had a blessing for the enrichment and nourishment of mankind, of him could that be said: He gave them bread to eat. But when He says, I am that bread of life, oh, we enter another world. No man ever said that, never. The message of Christ is Christ Himself! The doctrine of Christianity is Christ Himself! The heart of the Christian faith is Christ Himself! It is not a theological system. It is not vast volumes of ecclesiastical learning. The faith is Christ! Beginning, end, middle, first, last, now and forever, it is Christ! There is no such thing as listening to or receiving the message of Jesus apart from the personality and the life of Jesus Himself. You cut into the heart of the Christian faith, and it s Jesus! You look at the wellsprings of our religion, and it s Jesus. You look at the secret of any mighty church of God, and it s Jesus. And you look in the life of any devout and godly Christian, and it is Jesus. 5
IX. Feed upon Christ Now and forever. Hallelujah. Glory to God. Amen. I am that bread of life. And no wonder they murmured among themselves when the Lord spake of that: Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you [John 6:53]. Then it says, And the Jews strove among themselves [John 6:52]. And they strove among themselves : well, they re not the only ones that have staggered at those words of our Lord. Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you. This reference to the Lord s Supper is the truth that saves us, which is Ye that eats My flesh and drinketh My blood, He dwelleth in Me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent Me and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me. It is Christ in us, the hope of glory. It is Jesus with us, the comfort and joy and peace of our lives. And there is no one of us who has named the name of our blessed Savior but who knows that precious fellowship. We are to feed upon Christ Himself. Tis a wonderful thing, the presence of the Lord in our hearts, in our lives, in the quietness of the night, or in the pilgrimage of the day: feeding upon the Lord Himself, His presence. X. Conclusion Changed Lives The woman saith unto him, I know that Messiah, which is called Christ, cometh, and when He is come, He will tell us all things. [John 4:25] He will be from heaven, and He will be the Lord, and He will tell us all things. He will have an answer to every question and strength for every weakness and help in every trial when he cometh! Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am He. And, then the testimony of the whole city Now we believe for we have heard Him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. Oh, what that means! Accepting Jesus as the Savior of our souls! The despised people of Sychar found living water and Christ because they were seeking a messiah. The 5,000 on the Sea of Galilee got fed a meal and their lives were not changed because they were seeking an earthly or political king. Harry Moorehouse spoke of the love of Christ and lives were changed. They found living water and the bread of life in our Lord Jesus. That is our charge as Disciples of Christ to show the love of Christ to a lost and dark world. In the Ephesians chapter, we re not able, the apostle writes, to comprehend the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ which passeth knowledge [Ephesians 3:17-19]. It is incredible. It is immeasurable. It is shoreless; it is boundless. It is beyond knowing. 6