John 6:22-40

Three thousand years ago, Solomon set out to answer one question: how can I be satisfied? This man was given every possible avenue to answer that question — money, power, pleasure, work, achievement, notoriety, family. He had it all. Solomon is one of the scariest figures in the Bible — not because of what he did, but because of what he wrote at the end of his life. He wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, and at the end he writes, 'It was all vanity. It was all meaningless. It was all vapor.' This is a man who had everything at his disposal to satisfy himself, to be a fully actualized person, and he gets to the end of his life and doesn't say, 'If I'd only had a little bit more, I would have been fine.' He says, 'None of it meant anything.' Three thousand years later, another rich man, J.D. Rockefeller, was asked, 'How much money is enough?' His famous answer: 'Just one more dollar.' Two men, different centuries, and yet the same hunger. For them, every finish line was just a new starting line.

And if we're honest, that's the same hunger we have too. No matter how full life becomes, something inside us keeps asking for another bite, needing more — which raises our big question for today.

Big Question

Why are we still hungry?

Almost every high school has some version of an assignment where you write a letter to your future self, making goals for your life — we do this all the time, especially right before New Year's, making resolutions. And sometimes we really do get the things we hoped for: the job, the relationship, the pregnancy, the vacation, the promotion. In the moment, as Christians, when we get these, it's a gift from God — we're delighted, we rejoice. But usually, about a month later, this gift becomes the new baseline, the new normal, and what once was something we rejoiced in now becomes something we take for granted. We grow hungry for more. This is exactly where Jesus meets the crowd in this passage. They're convinced their deepest need is another meal. But Jesus knows the real hunger isn't tied to bread, isn't tied to something physical. We're going to see three major movements in this section: the bread that leaves you hungry, the bread you cannot earn, and the bread you cannot lose. Jesus had just fed 5,000 people, then walked on water to prove to his disciples that he is God, that he is divine. The sea calms, they get to where they're supposed to go, and people go looking for him. If I were to summarize this passage in one sentence, I would say this: Jesus is the bread of life that will not perish, and everyone who comes to him will never be cast out.

Outline

1. The Bread That Leaves You Hungry (John 6:22-27)

2. The Bread You Cannot Earn (John 6:28-33)

3. The Bread You Cannot Lose (John 6:34-40)

1. The Bread That Leaves You Hungry (John 6:22-27)

If we're going to understand why we're still hungry, we first have to understand what these people were actually searching for. At first glance, it looks incredibly faithful — here are a bunch of men who saw Jesus, and now they're going out on a boat, trying to look toward him. They even call him by the right name. Look at verse 25: when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, 'Rabbi, when did you come here?' They call him teacher. This looks like faith, looks hopeful. But now Jesus is going to confront and address the heart motive of these people. What looked like honest devotion is actually selfishness. Look at verse 26: 'Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves."'

The crowd was willing to follow Jesus. The point of having a big crowd there was to show a couple things: one, Jesus was supposed to be their Messiah figure, a king who would conquer whoever was oppressing them. This group of 5,000 people, who eventually tried to make him king, would have been an awesome army to start off with, an awesome group of people to start a kingdom with. They're willing to sign on the dotted line, willing to go all in after Jesus — except it's not him they want. They want food. They're willing to follow Jesus as long as it's easy, as long as they've got enough to eat. What they wanted was a useful savior. They didn't care for a glorious savior, a savior worth worshiping.

We think we would never do that. But in our lives, when we depend on God and our comfort disappears, if we're honest with ourselves, it makes Jesus way less appealing — it makes it seem like, why should I devote myself to him? Which can reveal something uncomfortable within us: maybe we never actually wanted Jesus. I think in our minds we create a version of Jesus that we manufacture, but as soon as the real Jesus confronts that view, it makes us uncomfortable. They wanted a Jesus who could provide, and Jesus is not pleased with that. They wanted a Jesus focused and centered around what they could get, the benefits of Jesus. Many people will follow Jesus if there's an emotional response — I see that so much today. Whole churches manufacture worship services to try to get you to feel emotional, to muster up something inside of you, so that if you continue to feel this mountaintop experience every single Sunday, you'll always show up.

The problem is, our faith, the Bible, doesn't talk about that. We're not supposed to have a mountaintop experience every Sunday. We're supposed to have communion with God, communion with other believers. I'm not saying mountaintop experiences are something to avoid — praise God for the times when he moves in and through you, when you can feel his nearness. The problem is chasing Jesus for the benefits of having those incredible experiences — what we do is turn Jesus into an idol, turn those feelings into an idol, when Jesus is the source of those. We try to use him to get those emotional feelings, and in a sense we're perverting who and what Jesus is. That's not what we live for. We live for Christ. Augustine said it best: 'Jesus is scarcely sought after for Jesus' sake.' So rarely do we come to worship because all we want is him — whether he confronts us, challenges us, or encourages us. We often want a Jesus we can manage, a Jesus who fits within our understanding, who makes us feel good.

If we cannot be satisfied with all of who Jesus is, then his gifts will turn sour in our mouth. That's what Jesus is talking about when he says 'the food that perishes.' You could be a zealous person running after Jesus, just like the men in the boat, and be doing it for all the wrong reasons. This is a time to take an honest look at ourselves — I can't answer this for you, maybe not even your spouse or your kids or your parents could answer this for you: why do you want Jesus? What is it you actually want? Do you want to follow him to try to get something from him, or do you want him? Do you delight in just having him? I think there are too many people who call themselves Christians yet use Jesus as an accessory for their best life now. Jesus exposes our appetite, exposes what we truly seek after. That's what he's done with the people here, and now the crowd asks a question every religious person eventually asks: what do I need to do?

2. The Bread You Cannot Earn (John 6:28-33)

What must be done? That's what we see in this next section, the bread you cannot earn. Jesus had just told them not to work for the bread that perishes, so let's see their response. Verse 28: 'Then they said to him, "What must we do to be doing the works of God?"' Their immediate response to 'do not work for bread that perishes' is, what works can we do, what is the course of action we must take? They're not asking for one specific action to earn this eternal bread — they're asking what kind of program they need to be a part of, what curriculum they must use. Can you give us a checklist we can run through to make sure we're okay? They're asking the only question they know how to ask. Up until this point in history, I think every religion outside of Christianity asks this question: how can I be good enough, what must I do to be good enough? Every religious teacher up to this point had been there to offer a new philosophy, a new set of rules you must follow to be good.

That's what they're asking. They're saying, 'You're the teacher, you're the one who just gave us this miraculous bread, you must know what we must do, you must know the curriculum, you must know the checklist. Tell us this new program you can put us on so we can inherit this goodness.' They wanted Jesus to be their teacher, to tell them how they could climb up to God — and they forgot to realize they were standing in front of the God who had come down to meet them. They could not make their way to him. We cannot make our way to him. We want to assume that we can make it, that we have the power to save ourselves if only we had the right instructions in front of us. But Jesus responds in verse 29: 'Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."' The work, the works, is no work at all.

Jesus answers, 'Believe.' Because Christianity isn't fundamentally about climbing towards God — it is about trusting the God who climbed down to meet us. They ask for works, plural — 'what works must we do?' — and Jesus gives them the work of God, singular. God requires one thing, not a thousand, and even that one thing is given to us. God gives us this gift of grace, this ability to believe. Their response was to ask, then prove it — prove that you're someone worth believing in. Essentially they say, 'Moses gave us bread too and fed all of Israel, every single day. If you're better than him, maybe you should do something better than him.' They're trying to bait him into another miracle, trying to trick him into proving himself again. You would have thought that feeding the 5,000 would have been enough — but even miracles aren't enough for people when they're trying to serve themselves.

So Jesus responds, verses 32 and 33: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father who 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.' What these people wanted was a spiritual ziggurat — a Babylonian structure, a huge pyramid with a shrine at the top for the gods to come down and stay, so the harvest would be good or the plague would subside. They would leave offerings to try to trick the gods into coming down and giving them favor. This goes back to the Tower of Babel — almost certainly a ziggurat, a way for people to make a name for themselves and try to get God to come down, to trick God into doing what they wanted.

They didn't realize they had the answer to the Tower of Babel standing in front of them. God had already descended, God was already there, and they didn't have to trick him. He came on his own accord, of his own voluntary nature. Trying to trick God into doing what we want, or trying to earn enough good to earn his favor, does not work. Trying to use God is like pretending he's some cosmic slot machine — if we do the right amount of things, order things properly, he'll give us the jackpot. The other way is trying to earn God for yourself, essentially saying, 'God, I've done the right things, I've done good, therefore you owe me — now you must do what I ask.' Either way, you're trying to exert your will over God, trying to force God to do what you want. This open rebellion minimizes your own humanity and makes you almost superior to God. Both are impossible. The bread that gives eternal life came down for us.

3. The Bread You Cannot Lose (John 6:34-40)

After hearing all of this, the crowd still misses it — still thinking about bread, still trying to get another miracle — which leads us to a verse where Jesus says one of the most profound things in all of the Gospels. He says, 'I am the bread of life.' Their response to this is upsetting. Look at verse 34: 'They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."' Their response is essentially, 'Why haven't you given us this bread the whole time? Why have you been holding back the good stuff?' What they're saying to Jesus is, 'We want the bread guy back. We want the one who feeds us — all this stuff about eternal bread, I don't know, it's just a lot. It was nice when it was simple, when you were just the bread guy who gave us what we wanted. Can you just give us another sign, some more bread?'

I think often our approach to Jesus is similar. We want a Jesus we can contain, that we can put into a box, that we can control — a Jesus who never calls us out on sin, who's really just there to uplift us and make us feel good, that we can add into all the other things we use to feel good about ourselves — the guy who says, 'You're forgiven, it's all good, you're not a bad guy.' Isn't that simpler? That kind of manufactured Jesus. But Jesus will not allow us to reduce him to something lesser, something weaker, something less beautiful than he actually is. That's why he says what he says next — a sentence that shatters all of our worldviews. Verse 35: 'Jesus then said to them, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst."'

They asked what the bread was, and the answer was who. Bread isn't a substance handed out by God — it is God himself being handed out. This is the first of seven 'I am' statements Jesus will make in the Gospel of John, each one building on another. For us, Jesus saying he's the bread of life might go over our heads — bread is an option for us, in our pantries, whether we have it with a meal or not. But for a first-century Jew, bread was life itself — bread was survival when survival wasn't guaranteed. People genuinely died of starvation; bread sustained life. Jesus isn't offering to be another option, another blessing alongside all the others. He is saying, 'I am the only way. I am the blessing.'

And suddenly, the manna in the wilderness makes sense. The bread in the wilderness was a foretaste of the true bread that would come. In the Old Testament, manna rained down from heaven every morning for the Israelites to sustain them, to teach them that God operates on grace, not works. The manna was a 40-year lesson in daily dependence on God. But every piece of manna was pointing beyond itself — it wasn't the destination, it was a preview of what was to come. The true bread was still coming. God did not merely send food from heaven — he sent heaven in the flesh. The wilderness bread would postpone death, but the Bread of Life comes to defeat death itself. And because he defeats death, everyone who comes to him will remain. That's what he says in verses 37 through 40: '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 to do 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 on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.'

Think about who he's talking to here — the people who questioned him, doubted him, wanted to use him for the benefits of what he has to offer. And his response isn't, 'Go away, and when you've changed your attitude, come back,' or 'I'll think about it,' or 'Prove that you're sincere.' His answer is, 'Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out.' There may be people who are convinced that everyone has given up on them, that their family, their friends, even they themselves have given up on them. But Jesus never grows tired of seeing a sinner transformed. Jesus never grows tired of receiving a sinner. This is one of our foundational beliefs as Christians: it does not matter what you have done, previously, either bad or good — Jesus receives us.

And Jesus is the one who makes the way, and because of that, he holds us to himself. This is another foundational belief for us as Reformed people: when Jesus saves, he's the one who holds salvation, he's the one who owns it — we cannot run away from him once he's truly saved us. He holds us to himself. The language in the Greek here is that he will never drive us away. The one who would not waste a scrap of barley bread will not lose a single one of his own. He is the only one who has the power to save you, and the only one who has the power to hold you to himself. Jesus has overturned the way we think about life with God. The world says buy, religion says earn your way, and Jesus says come. That's the heart of this passage — our main idea for today: come to the bread you cannot buy, you cannot earn, and once you come, you cannot lose.

You cannot buy it. Jesus, out of love, will not allow you to buy it, because if you could own it, you'd be able to lose it. You cannot buy it because you don't have the capacity to. This is why he's been talking about his deity leading up to this point — that he is God himself, because he's the only one able to purchase it. And because he purchases us on the cross, we cannot lose it, because he owns it. God owns everything — we know that, we believe that, we profess that God is sovereign, that he holds the whole world in his hand. But he also owns our salvation. There isn't a part of us that he doesn't have a right to, even our own salvation. He owns it, and because he owns it, we can never lose it. That's why we sing 'He Will Hold Me Fast' — when we say that, we're saying that he holds us to himself, that he can never let us go, and that if we come to him, we can never be lost.

Because he owns our salvation, we can never lose it, and there's a kind of rest that comes with that — not licentiousness, not 'well, God, I said a prayer at summer camp so I can do whatever I want now,' but a kind of rest that leads to delight, to belonging, to obedience. As parents, you probably see fractions of this — there are slivers of time where you can see your kids trust you, feel secure, and know that whatever you ask next is going to be for their best. There's trust. This is a deep longing we need — to sit on our Father's lap and say, 'Abba, Father, we trust you,' to be held, to know we're safe, to know that whatever God asks of us next is going to be good, that we can trust him, that we don't have to put the whole weight of the world on our shoulders, don't have to pretend to be the sovereign one who holds the stars together, don't have to try to order our future because he's already ordered it for us. When Jesus says, 'I am the bread of life,' what he's saying is, 'Stop looking to created things, even within yourself, to keep alive what only I can keep alive.' He's asking us to rest in him.

So what does this rest look like? Two points of application. First, stop chasing what cannot satisfy. All of us are hungry, all of us are searching for the next thing. Whatever God has given us becomes our new baseline, and we become numb to it, no longer see it as a gift, and start searching for anything that would make us feel alive again. The danger is what Ecclesiastes calls chasing the wind — we will never be able to be satisfied. The crowd tried to live this out in real time: one night of fullness, and the next morning they're hungry again. You can spend your entire life working for a food that never stays eaten. You can throw yourself into your job, and when you retire they will buy you a cake and forget you. You can spend your whole life trying to be the perfect parent, and one day your children will move out. Our identity cannot be in what we do, because what we do can always be taken from us. Our identity must be founded in Christ Jesus — something we can never lose, and someone who promises we will never be lost from him. Chasing after things that will not satisfy will not lead to life, but to the grave, and you will run your whole life and have nothing to show for it.

Our second point of application is this: stop earning what God freely gives. I think oftentimes we're exhausted from trying to chase God, trying to run after what he has promised he will give us. We spend years trying to become the kind of person that God would finally love, finally approve of — climbing a ladder of trying to do good things, to be a moral person, wondering every day if we've done enough. The gospel of belief blows apart that kind of meritocracy. Acceptance comes first, as a sheer gift. The works flow out of that acceptance, never toward it. That is the fault line between mere religion and the gospel. Religion says, 'I obey, therefore I am accepted.' The gospel says, 'I am accepted — I have been accepted by Jesus Christ — and therefore it is my delight, my desire, to obey him.' One produces either pride or despair. The other produces gratitude and rest.

But everything we've been talking about this morning hinges on this: how can Jesus say this? How can Jesus look at a sinner and say, 'I will never lose you, I will never cast you out'? The answer is not found within ourselves but on the cross. On the cross, Jesus was cast out. On the cross, Jesus experienced the only hunger that really mattered — separation from the Father, from the Father's love. The one who said, 'I will never cast you out,' was cast outside the city, hung on a cross, rejected, forsaken, and condemned — not just by men, but by God himself. Because of that, everyone who comes to him will never be condemned, forsaken, rejected.

One day, everything in your life will become meaningless. One day you will sit on your deathbed, and there will no longer be thoughts about the promotions you've had, even the grudges you might have held against other people — all of that will be meaningless. Every avenue we seek satisfaction from will be exhausted and will lead to no more life. The promotions will be over, the applause will stop, the vacations will end, the money will belong to someone else. Even our last meal on earth will be just that — our last meal. But there is another table being prepared for you right now, a wedding feast where the Bread of Life himself will be the host. He has a seat for you with your name on it, and all you have to do is come. Come to the bread of life — you cannot buy it, you cannot earn it, and once you come, you cannot lose it.