John 6:41-59

There's an old story about a man named Tantalus. In this story, he was punished for some of the things he had done, and his punishment was to stand in a pool of water with ripe fruit trees hanging over his head. As he stood there he got thirsty, so he bent down to get some water, but the water moved — wherever he chased it, the water would run away, to the point where he couldn't drink. He got hungry, so he reached up for the fruit just above his head — it was almost hitting him — and every time he reached and jumped, the branches would move. No matter what he did, everything was right there. He could see it, could almost touch it, but he was never able to actually possess it. He stayed hungry the whole time, surrounded by the very things he needed. This is where we get the word 'tantalize' from — it's from Homer's Odyssey, a very old and famous story, but the idea is to have something you desperately need or want right in front of you, but never quite able to get close enough to possess it.

There may not be a better picture of the crowd in John chapter 6 than that story. The Bread of Life is standing directly in front of them. They can see him, they can hear him — they've been hearing his sermons, they even ate bread out of his hand — and yet they remained spiritually hungry. Not because Jesus was unwilling to give himself to them, but because they wanted a different kind of savior. They didn't want to accept the savior standing in front of them. They wanted his gifts without his claims. They wanted his power without the cross. They wanted bread they could hold in their hands, but they were unwilling to submit their life to a savior who would demand that they entrust everything in their being to him.

Big Question

What does it mean to truly receive Christ?

Every generation has their own version of this crowd. We don't grumble over manna, we don't grumble over bread from Jesus — we grumble over things quieter. Our culture says we should get close to God, we should be spiritual, but we don't need to submit to anyone, we don't need to be under him. We say things like, 'Read a verse in the morning, say a prayer, light a candle — keep just close enough to God to feel comforted or steadied, not so much that he gets to tell you what to do with your money, your Sundays, your marriage, or your body.' We want a God we can simply visit — that's our natural default as people. We want the bread; we just don't want to have to kneel for it. Fortunately, the Bible has an answer for us in John 6. So keep your Bibles open there as we look at three major sections in this passage: the wilderness grumbling repeats itself, the bread that gives life is broken, and no body and blood, no life.

Outline

1. The Wilderness Grumbling Repeats Itself (John 6:41-46)

2. The Bread That Gives Life Is Broken (John 6:47-51)

3. No Body and Blood, No Life (John 6:52-59)

1. The Wilderness Grumbling Repeats Itself (John 6:41-46)

So let's look at that first section: the wilderness grumbling repeats itself. There's a word in verse 41 that we can't move past — grumbling. This is the same word used in the Old Testament in Exodus 16, the story of Israel wandering in the wilderness a month after they had passed through the Red Sea. A month later they are hungry, they can't find food, and the word 'grumbling' there is talking about a distrust of God, a distrust of Moses and where God was leading them. This is the word the Bible uses when people are responding to a God they don't feel like they can trust. These people had just asked Jesus to give them bread — they said in verse 34, 'Sir, give us this bread always.' And now look at their response in verse 42: 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, "I have come down from heaven"?' Essentially their argument against Jesus is, 'How dare he claim to be God — we know his parents.'

The crowd stumbles over both edges of the same stone. They can't accept that Jesus would call himself God, that he would elevate himself to be God. And on the other end, they look at him and say, 'We know you, you're a local, we know your mom and dad.' In verse 44, Jesus says something that lets us peek behind the curtain of how God saves people: 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.' Then he quotes from Isaiah, giving the promise of the new covenant where the truth is written on hearts: 'And they will be taught by God.' What Jesus is teaching us here is that in God's drawing us to himself, there's teaching — something we must know, something that must change in our perception of him. This is where God opens the hearts of people who are hardened to him, so that they love him.

In doing so, he teaches them, but he draws us to him out of love. Oftentimes I think we picture this process as God dangling something attractive that we would bite onto, almost like a fishing lure — but that's more a description of sin, something appeasing to our eyes that ultimately pulls us away. That's not how God draws us. God draws us like children to a birthday cake, like deer to salt, like a dog to peanut butter, like a hummingbird to nectar. There's no media campaign, no marketing strategy, no clever argument he needs to make to convince us. It's voluntary. Throughout the Old Testament, one of the major questions was, 'What is God like?' No one had seen him — God had forbidden idols and images of himself, and Moses was the only person who ever saw even the backside of him. Jesus is the answer to this. Jesus is standing in front of them.

When the Father teaches how people are going to be saved, that teaching never goes around Jesus — it goes right through him. The crowd could not accept this. They knew Jesus' mom and dad, they had seen him grow up, they had been in buildings he had helped build — Jesus was most certainly a stonemason, not a carpenter, so he would have built stone buildings in that time. To them, these claims were offensive because they knew who Jesus was — he was too low. One of the things about our faith and how God calls us is through offensiveness, through something that seems almost offensive. Søren Kierkegaard, in his book Practice in Christianity, wrote: 'The possibility of offense is the crossroad. From the possibility of offense, one turns either to offense or to faith. But one never comes to faith except from the possibility of offense.'

This is what happens when we encounter the living God. When we peel back the layer of an infinite God, we see things that challenge us. If God is truly who he is, if he is above us, he has to be able to say things to us that are offensive, that challenge what we believe or how we've grown in our worldview. To make God align himself with everything we believe is not to put him above us — it's to make him our size. It's not to put him above us, it's to put him next to us. If God is truly infinite, truly grand, all-knowing, he has to be able to offend us — he has to be able to tell us, 'You don't see this properly.' And that's the crossroads where we either turn away from him or turn to him, trusting that he is bigger and grander than us.

Oftentimes as a pastor I meet with people who have almost a crisis of faith because they're encountering something in Scripture that seems hard for them — not hard to believe, but seemingly unloving, or seemingly against God's nature. And yet we see it in Scripture. Countless times, it isn't people who are first becoming Christians — it's people who have journeyed in their faith and stumble across something that troubles them. That's the crossroads we often find ourselves at. I think it's actually a sign of our faith strengthening when we find things that make us doubt, that make us question, but we're not willing to just stay there — we move past that into faith. The same claim that makes the crowd grumble is the claim that saves everyone. Jesus became a man. Jesus humbled himself to be a person, to have a father and mother who could be known. The question isn't how do we remove the offensive parts of God, how do we remove the parts that make it harder for us to believe him.

The question is whether the Father has made the bread of life sweet to you — whether he has made these offensive things actually things of beauty. Often when people are talking about evangelism, they'll ask, 'Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe in God?' And the answer is almost always yes. But that question is incomplete. A better question to ask ourselves is: Is Jesus Christ your greatest treasure? Is he the thing you value most? If you lost everything you had — your health, your money, your family — would you still be satisfied in what you have in Christ? Is he your greatest treasure? Scripture tells us that demons believe in God and shudder. Is the bread of life something that isn't a stumbling block to you, but has become sweet? If Scripture, if God himself, is no longer ridiculous but is becoming wonderful, becoming beautiful — this is a sign that God is drawing you to himself. It is a beautiful thing. Jesus says in Matthew, 'Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.' We will find things in Scripture that put us at the crossroads of offense. We are the ones who are blessed when we turn to faith and not away from God.

2. The Bread That Gives Life Is Broken (John 6:47-51)

Second, we're going to look at the bread of life that is broken — verses 47 through 51. Look at verses 47 and 48: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.' I want to notice what he says there — it's not 'whoever believes in me will have, can have, may have.' Whoever believes in Jesus already has eternal life. This is the beautiful thing about our faith: we don't have to wait for eternity to start — it starts the moment we believe. Just like Amazing Grace: 'how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.' It is ours the moment we believe — that God changes our heart and we respond in faith. Then Jesus repeats his claim that he is the bread of life, because he's about to explain it. Look at verse 51: '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.'

What Jesus is saying is that he himself is the bread — the bread they have been waiting for, the bread that came down from heaven. He's talking about the thing they loved, the picture of God providing for his people in the Old Testament, when God sent manna, the bread from heaven, in the wilderness. What Jesus is saying is: you loved this picture, you almost worshiped this thing — but it was only pointing toward something greater. It was only a glimmer, only a shadow of what was to come. Think about it like artwork: you can look at a high-resolution photograph of a famous painting online and think, 'wow, that's awesome' — but there's something even more beautiful about being able to touch it, to see the fine details in person. Or think about a photo of a sunset someone shows you on their phone — it never quite captures the real thing, because they were there and saw something breathtaking. That's what Jesus is saying: you had a picture — God providing manna from heaven — but now you have it in the flesh, standing in front of you. They were amazed and satisfied with a 2D image when the three-dimensional object was standing right there.

And it is his flesh and blood. John uses language here that's almost different than you'd expect — you'd think this is almost a commentary on the Lord's Supper, and yet he uses 'flesh and blood,' not 'body and blood,' the way any other New Testament passage on the Lord's Supper does. John is compacting three images together into one: he's alluding back to the incarnation, when 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.' Jesus is combining his incarnation, his crucifixion, and the Lord's Supper into one. The flesh he took in the incarnation is precisely the same flesh he would give during the crucifixion — the same killable stuff he was clothed in at Bethlehem, he would wear and hand over at Calvary. This is the same flesh we must consume, that we must eat. Jesus presses this image further, saying one of the most offensive things he could say to a room full of Jews at that time — that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood.

3. No Body and Blood, No Life (John 6:52-59)

No body and blood, no life. Verses 52 through 59. Jesus says that those who want eternal life, true life, must eat his flesh and drink his blood. Jesus is being intentionally offensive here — this may be one of the most offensive things he could say to the people standing before him. He could have used a variety of different language, different imagery, different metaphors, and yet he chose this. He knew this would be unsettling, and why it was unsettling is because in the Old Testament, the people were given permission to eat the meat of a sacrifice, but they were prohibited from drinking the blood. Leviticus 17:10 says: 'If anyone of the house of Israel or the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I, the Lord, will set my face against that person who eats the blood and will cut him off from his people.' This prohibition was severe. In a synagogue full of Jewish people, this couldn't have been more of a stumbling block.

So why would Jesus say this? Why use this image? He wants to talk about his blood because they understand this — they would have grown up seeing goats and bulls slaughtered, the blood drained out of them. This was a violent picture, a messy picture, the picture of a violent death and a sacrifice. Jesus says this with almost a double-intended meaning — he's saying it in order to give them life, and to judge them. Remember, this is at Passover, one year before they would hang him on a tree. These people are outraged that Jesus would tell them to drink his blood, and yet one year later they would have no problem spilling it. The offense of this statement points them directly to the cross — they're offended by the sacrificial language, but they won't be offended when they nail him to a tree, when they nail the second member of the Trinity, a sinless man, to die for them.

In saying this, Jesus isn't saying that doing this or not doing this makes you spiritually weaker or stronger, some optional thing for a mature believer to do — some sort of spiritual eating your vegetables. What he's telling them is that they have no life in them. True life needs to be given to you, taken into you from his violent and bloody death — we need the result of his bloody sacrifice. The word he uses in verse 56, 'whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him' — that word for 'feeds' is more blunt than it sounds in our language. It's talking about gnawing on something, almost chomping on it, the way an animal would eat. This is not polite snacking, not refined dining. The language here is taking Christ into ourselves with an animal-like intensity, bringing him wholly and totally into ourselves. To feed on Christ is to take his death into us, with a hunger like an animal has. To feed on Christ is not to simply admire him from across the room — we can't do this from a distance. We need to be so united to him that he is in us and we are in him. That's what the Lord's Supper is all about.

We will be taking the Lord's Supper next week together, but we cannot take him in an unworthy way — we can't come to the table and miss what Jesus is telling us here. To believe is to eat. Jesus connects these two — earlier in this chapter he said, 'Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life,' and here he says everyone who eats his flesh and drinks his blood has eternal life. To eat is to believe, to believe is to eat — they're one and the same thing, one setting the scene for the other. This is because Jesus is the bread of life, and that's our main idea: the bread that gives life to the world is the body of Jesus, broken and given.

Is this passage talking about the Lord's Supper? It doesn't mention it directly, and yet this may be the best commentary on it. The Lord's Supper doesn't offer us a different feeding or a different Christ. It's not bringing Christ down to us — it's making the gospel visible. The Lord's Supper is John 6 enacted. So when we come to the Lord's table, does that mean the elements we take are literally the very body and blood of Jesus — the Catholic view, the Eucharist? No. And yet this is not simply an act of remembrance, not simply a time we dedicate to remember that Jesus died for our sins. There is something more, something real happening here. When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we aren't physically ingesting Jesus' body and blood — we aren't tasting or eating it with our mouths. But we are, with our souls. To our soul, it is as if it is truly his body and blood. In a Catholic view of the Eucharist, God comes down into the elements. What the Bible says about communion is that the Holy Spirit brings us up to him spiritually — we are brought before the throne of God, into his chambers, and we receive him physically there. You receive the living God into your soul every time we take the Lord's Supper.

God knew that our faith would waver, so he gave us a promise that not only we could hear, but that we could touch and taste. Eating is the posture of surrender, the posture of having empty hands. Eating is one of the only things we can't do for someone else — it's a vulnerable position. Not to eat is to die; it's to say, 'I need something outside of myself, I can't do this alone.' Eating is the least self-assertive thing our body does, and God chose to make this the way we encounter him, because this cannot be done by the strong or the self-made. All we bring when we come before the Lord's table is our need. That's why it's worship — worship is when we understand who we are in relation to God, that he is God and we are not. When we eat, we declare that we cannot save ourselves, and we rejoice in knowing that we are saved by God.

So if this is true, how do we respond? This can't be just a ritual, just another thing we do as a checkbox to make ourselves feel spiritually better. First, we must come to the table. Jesus says, '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.' This is not a spiritual add-on, not an optional thing for a mature believer. Communion is where you regularly receive the life that only he can give. We cannot passively take this, and we also cannot skip this. This is one of the most important things you can do — so important that we ought to rearrange our calendar for it. Not because we need higher attendance, but because it is spiritually beneficial for you. It is worth rearranging around a family visit, a grandchild's game, even a family vacation. This is not a guilt trip — it's an invitation. Christ has set the table for you. He has given his body and blood so that you can have a seat at it. So don't miss it. Every other posture we take in worship can be faked — we can be performative while we sing, we can use prayer as a time to put something on display, even our confession can become a kind of achievement. But you cannot fake hunger. You cannot eat without admitting you're starving.

And if this is so important, then second, we must examine ourselves. We cannot take communion flippantly. The Bible says to examine yourself and not take it in an unworthy manner — which means we should not take communion if any of the following are true: if you're living in active rebellion to God, if you're actively choosing sin without repentance, if you haven't reconciled with another Christian and there's a rift in that relationship — it's more important to go and fix that first — or if you're living in hypocrisy, contrary to the gospel. These are reasons to temporarily withhold from the Lord's Supper and go address those things. I tell you these things not to make you feel condemned, but because it is so important that we cannot take the Lord's Supper in a way that would dishonor him. I want to draw you back to Jesus and away from a performative version of Christianity. The Lord's table is too important to go through the motions, because it's more than a ritual — besides your baptism, the Lord's Supper is the most important thing you will do as a Christian. It is a tangible gospel that you get to encounter, hold, and taste.

The crowd wanted bread from Jesus, but Jesus came offering something far greater than bread that would feed their stomachs. He came to give himself. The bread of life came down from heaven. He took on flesh that would be wounded, blood that would be poured out, a body that would be broken. And at the cross, he did not merely show us how much he loved us — he wasn't just a good example for us. He gave the life he knew we needed by surrendering his own. He came and carried our guilt, endured our judgment, entered death so the starving sinner could have life. In the Old Testament, the sacrifice worked this way: you brought your sacrifice, it was burnt on an altar, and the smoke rose to heaven. The gospel reverses that order. God is now the one who brought the sacrifice, once and for all. We no longer need to bring something to God to show him we've arrived — God brings the sacrifice to us. The Son gives his body and pours out his blood, and shows the empty-handed sinner: come, take, eat, and live.

That's what faith is. Faith is not proving you're strong — faith is admitting you're starving. It's not bringing something impressive to Christ — it's receiving what only Christ can give. So the challenge is to stop trying to live on what cannot keep you alive. Stop feeding your soul with achievement, approval, recognition, comfort, or religion. Come to Christ. Come hungry, come with nothing other than your need, because the bread that gives life to the world is the body of Jesus, broken and given — broken for everyone who feeds on him by faith, and they will live forever.