Jesus' Most Outrageous Sayings - Unless You Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood - Part 5

You know, one of the great things about going to the Holy Land is you get to see all the places up close that you have read about in the Bible for so long. And it kind of makes your Bible reading come alive.

It kind of makes it become three-dimensional when you come back. One of my favorite places in the Holy Land is found on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It's a little town called Togfa. And here, years ago, excavators found a church from the 4th century A.D. So today almost 1600 years old. And when they unearthed all of the rubble, underneath they found a mosaic floor that was there from the original building of the church that was still intact. The focal point of that mosaic floor is what I'm going to show you on the screen now. And you say, Lon, what is that? It looks like two fish and like a basket of something.

Well, that's right. It's a basket of bread. Because this is the site where Jesus took two fish and five little loaves of bread and fed the five thousand. And we're going to talk about that today because it was right here in connection with this miracle that Jesus said one of the most outrageous things anybody has ever said. Remember, we're doing a series called Jesus's Most Outrageous Sayings. We've covered four already. Remember what we're doing. We're going through the New Testament, looking at the most radical things Jesus ever said, and spending a week on each one, asking the question, Well, so what?

And if you missed any of those four, you can pick up the tape or the CD in the bookstore. Today we're ready for outrageous saying number five. And so if you brought your Bible, I'd like to ask you to open it to John Chapter 6. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John in the New Testament, Chapter 6. If you did not bring your Bible, I want you to reach under the armrest right next to your chair, if you're here in our main auditorium, and you'll find a copy of the Bible. We're going to be on page 755, page 755 in our copy, John 6 in your copy. And we're going to start right at the beginning of the chapter, verse 1.

So here we go. John Chapter 6, verse 1. Sometime after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore, that is to the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Togfa is today, and a great crowd followed him because they saw the miracles he had performed for the sick. Verse 5. And when Jesus saw the great crowd, he said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for all these people to eat? Verse 7, Philip said, Lord, what are you kidding?

Eight months' wages would not buy enough bread for every one of these people to have a bite. Verse 8. Another of his disciples, Andrew, spoke up and said, Well, you know, there's a boy here with five barley loaves and two small fish, but, Lord, how far will this go among so many people? Verse 10. Jesus said have the people sit down.

So the men sat down, about 5,000 of them. And Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish, gave them as much as they wanted. And when everybody had had enough, all they could eat, he said to the disciples, gather the pieces that are left over, and they filled 12 baskets full with the pieces left over.

Now, you understand, of course, what happened here. Jesus took those five little loaves of bread and those two fish, and he prayed, and he said, Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'alam ha-motzelecha min ha'aretz. Or, blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread or food from the earth, and after blessing the food, Jesus started handing out pieces of bread and fish to the crowd. He kept on handing it out more and more and more until there was so much food that nobody could eat anymore. As a matter of fact, the Greek word here that we translated everybody had had enough, literally means they had gorged themselves. These people porked out, if you understand what I mean, and there were still 12 baskets of food left over. Well, I can relate.

Maybe you can. You know, I took a cruise with my wife a number of years ago, and the thing I love about these cruises are the meals, because you can get as much as you want. And so one night we had lobster tail and filet mignon for dinner, and I had cut through the casino on the way to dinner and watched all the people for a moment playing blackjack, and so every time my plate got empty, I knew exactly what to say to the waiter. I just said, Hit me again. Hit me again.

Hit me again. I had five complete meals of lobster tail and filet mignon. It was dessert too that night, I want you to know. And I walked out of there figuring I had had somewhere in the range of $200 worth of food, maybe more, and I felt like I had beat the house. Do you understand what I'm saying?

It was wonderful. Well, I don't know if you're like I am, but when somebody's offering me free food, my appetite, I find, kind of just jacks up about six levels. And these people Jesus was feeding were the exact same way. Jesus is offering them an all-you-can-eat buffet, and they sat down and ate until they literally could not hold any more food. The only reason that Jesus stopped handing out bread and fish is because nobody could eat anymore.

He could have fed 5,000 million people if he wanted to that day. You say, Lon, how do you explain that? Friends, I don't explain it. It's a miracle. It's a suspension of the natural laws of nature in this world.

And you know what? God made those natural laws. So if Jesus is indeed God in human flesh the way he claimed to be, for him to decide to suspend them is not a problem for me. Maybe it's a problem for you.

It's not a problem for me. It's a miracle, pure and simple. Now, that evening, Jesus walked a few hundred yards down the shore of the Sea of Galilee to his headquarters town, Capernaum, and spent the night there, verse 24. And in the morning, when the crowd realized Jesus was not in Togpah anymore, they went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. And Jesus said when they found him, you're looking for me because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Jesus said, I know why you're looking for me.

You want more food. Do not work for the food that spoils, Jesus said, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which I, the Son of Man, will give you. Jesus said, work for the food that will bring you eternal life.

In other words, you should be more concerned about the food that gives eternal life, guys, than you are about the food that gives physical life. And this is not the first time Jesus has ever said this. He said in Matthew 16, what good is it if a man gains the whole world and loses his own soul? But the people here were not sure what Jesus was saying.

They were a little confused. They said to him, how do we do this? And what do we have to do to work for this kind of, what kind of work do we have to do for this eternal life food? So Jesus answers and says, verse 29, the work of God for this eternal life food is this, to believe in me, the one whom God has sent. How do you work for the food that endures to eternal life? Jesus said, what do you have to do to get eternal life? Jesus said, it's very simple.

You have to believe in me. Look down at verse 40. Jesus said, everyone who believes in me shall have eternal life. Look down at verse 47. Jesus said, the person who believes in me has eternal life.

But friends, the problem is that this word believe is one of those easy to misunderstand what it really means words. I mean, what kind of believing exactly does a person have to do in order to activate Jesus's promise of eternal life? Well, Jesus goes on to answer that question. He uses the miracle of the bread, the multiplying of the bread. He uses that as a teaching tool to explain to these people what kind of believing they've got to have.

Watch now. He says, verse 48, I am the bread of life. I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats this bread, me, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Verse 52, then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? And Jesus said to them, verse 53, here it comes, one of the most outrageous things that anybody has ever said. Verse 53, Jesus said, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, meaning himself, and drink his blood, you have no eternal life in you.

Verse 54, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person up at the last day, for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. You say, wow, Lon, that's kind of a really weird thing for somebody to say. In fact, Lon, that's kind of a disturbing thing for somebody to say.

Well, you're right. In fact, you're not the first group of people to feel that way. You're not the first group of people to have trouble with what Jesus said here. You know, between the death of Jesus in 33 AD or so, and the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 312 AD, during those 300 years, as you know, the Roman Empire persecuted Christians mercilessly, tortured them, killed them, and one of the excuses, one of the justifications that the Roman government gave for why it was doing this, is that it said that Christians were cannibals based on this verse right here in John chapter 6. It accused the Christians in the Roman Empire of getting together in their secret clandestine meanings and eating the flesh and drinking the blood of one another, especially their own children. And they told the Roman citizens at large, if you allow these Christians to survive and you allow them to gain power, they're going to take your children, they're going to eat your children too.

That's why we're killing them. You say, well, Lon, that's ridiculous. That isn't what Jesus... Jesus isn't talking about being a cannibal here. Well, I know. So what is he talking about? You say, Lon, I know what he's talking about.

It's easy. He's talking about communion. He's talking about the Eucharist. He's talking about the Lord's Supper where we symbolically eat his flesh and where we symbolically drink his blood. Isn't that right?

No, that's not right. You say, why not? Well, friends, look, whatever Jesus is talking about here when he said, eat my flesh and drink my blood, whatever he means, it's clear that the people standing here in front of him in John chapter 6 could do it right then and there, right at that moment.

And you know what? The Eucharist and communion hadn't been invented yet. It happened at the Lord's Supper, which is a couple of years down the road. They couldn't take the Lord's Supper standing here. The Lord's Supper didn't exist. That is not what Jesus is talking about.

You say, wow. Well, if that isn't what he's talking about, then what is he talking about? Well, let me explain that to you.

Follow me carefully now here. Look at the connection Jesus makes in verse 29, in verse 40 and in verse 47. We just saw it. Jesus said, believe in me and you will have eternal life, correct? OK, now in verse 54, Jesus says in the same chapter, eat my flesh and drink my blood and you will have eternal life. The point is, whatever Jesus means by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, it is synonymous in Jesus's mind with believing in him.

Or to put it in other words, Jesus uses this phrase, eat my flesh and drink my blood to explain to these people standing there, to elucidate for them, to amplify for them, to clarify for them exactly what kind of believing he's talking about, exactly what kind of believing you and I have to do in order to activate God's promise of eternal life. Does everybody see that? Do you all see that? You sure?

Because I'll go back and start over. We all see that. OK. Now, you say, Lon, I do see that, but that leaves me with one other question. And my other question is, ready?

One, two, three. So what? Lon, so what? I see that, I follow your thinking, but I don't understand what difference in the world does that make to me? How does that touch my life at all? Let's talk about that for a moment.

Remember what I said earlier. I said earlier that the word believe is one of those easy to misunderstand what it really means words. You see, Jesus knew that one of the ways of understanding the word believe is to understand it as strictly a head thing, as strictly an intellectual thing. In other words, a person could stand around and say, look, I believe that Jesus was born. I believe that Jesus was the son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross.

I believe that Jesus is the savior of the world. In other words, I believe all that in my head. But friends, that isn't the kind of believing that Jesus is talking about here in John 6. That isn't the kind of believing that brings people eternal life. That is not saving faith. That is not redeeming faith. Jesus said, I'm talking about a kind of believing, follow me now, that's like eating. You say, Lon, I don't get it.

What do you mean by that? Well, when we eat food, what do we do with food? We ingest it. We digest it. We absorb it. We take it not just into our head, but we take it into our very being. We assimilate it. We break it down and we distribute it to every cell in our body.

It gives life to every cell in our body and it becomes an inseparable, indistinguishable part of us. That's what we do with food. The point is that our relationship with food is not an intellectual relationship. Our relationship with food is an experiential relationship, an intensely personal relationship.

Now, at least it is for me. I love food. I've had a weight problem all my life.

I was raised in a functional family and I learned to eat my pain away. You know, I remember one time I was watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon. And you know, Johnny was always skinny and Ed was always not skinny. And they were talking about this. Ed was on another diet. And Johnny turns to him and says, Ed, you know what your problem is?

I'll tell you. There are two kinds of people in the world, Ed. There are people who eat to live. That's me. And then there are people who live to eat. Ed, that's you. And that's why you have a weight problem.

Well, could I just tell you, I, Lon Solomon, am in the same category as Ed McMahon. I live to eat. You know, as soon as I get through with breakfast, I start thinking, what's for lunch? And the minute I get through with lunch, I'm thinking, what are we doing for dinner? And after I eat dinner, when I go to bed, I'm already planning breakfast.

Now, maybe you're not like I am, but that's how I am. And that's why 15 years ago I ballooned up to 215 pounds, 35 pounds more than I am today. And so I decided I was going to lose 35 pounds. Wow.

Was that hard? Oh, my gosh. I tried every kind of diet you could think of. I tried the Slim Fast Shakes, you know, those things. And you know, actually, I found out they weren't all that bad. In fact, they go great with nachos, I found out.

They were wonderful. So anyway, then I tried one of these starving yourself with one meal a day sort of diets, you know, where you cut out all snacks, all junk food, all sweets. And I had a friend, she told me, she said, you know, Lon, after a week, you won't even notice you're hungry.

Well, that's not true. Friends, after a week, I was hallucinating after a week. And by God's wonderful grace, right at that moment in time, I had the doorbell ring and at the front door was a Girl Scout selling cookies.

And I said to her, oh, young lady, I think you're going to win the trip to New York right here today. Now, why did my weight go to 215 pounds? Why did I have to put myself through that? Let me tell you why. Because I do not have an intellectual relationship with food. Who wants an intellectual relationship with food?

I mean, you can sit at a table and say, wow, I purchased the food. I prepared the food. I smell the food. I see the food. I can touch the food.

I know the food would taste good. But friends, all of that's in your head for the food to do you any good. What do you got to do? You got to eat it, which I'm good at. You know what Jesus said? Jesus said, you want to believe correctly?

This is exactly what you got to do with me. You can look around all day and say, I know Jesus came. I know he died on the cross. I know he was the savior.

I know his blood paid for me. But friends, until you eat that, until you ingest that, until you digest that, until you assimilate it into every part of your being and make it an inseparable part of you, Jesus says, you have not believed the way it takes to get eternal life. And that's why Jesus talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

He was trying to communicate to those people and to us what the kind of believing is you and I have got to do to really grab eternal life. We've got to take Jesus in the way we take food in. Now, let me say, if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, this is really important for you to know what I'm saying here today. You can go to church all your life. You can read your Bible all your life. You can go through every sacrament in the world. You can sit around all day and confess with your head that Jesus did everything the Bible says he did. But until you ingest him, digest him, assimilate him and make him an inseparable part of your being and your life until it gets that personal, you have not believed in the way that brings eternal life. This is why here at McLean Bible Church, we talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This is why we talk about inviting Jesus personally into your life, taking him in like food. And if you've never done that, my friend, it's a simple thing to do.

Maybe nobody's ever told you you needed to do that. Well, I'm telling you here today, I'm not telling you. Jesus is telling you. He wants you to get to the place where you can say Jesus isn't the savior. He's my savior. Jesus wants to get you to the place where you say he didn't die for the world sins. He died for my sins. Jesus wants to get you to the place where you don't say Jesus came to redeem the world. He came to redeem me because I have taken him inside of me, ingested him into my life, assimilated him into my being. I'm his now and he's mine.

We're so separated you can't tell one from the other anymore. If you've never done that, my friends, I urge you, I urge you to do that. All you have to do is bow your head, close your eyes in a few minutes when we're done and ask Jesus to come in like food. Now, you know, though, if you're here and you're a follower of Christ, there's something wonderful in John Chapter six for you and me as well. And that is here in John Chapter six, Jesus tells us that he intends this kind of intimate personal ingestion connection of Christ, not just to be a salvation experience that people have, but rather he intends this to be an everyday experience for every follower of Jesus Christ.

And how does he make that point? He makes it by comparing himself to the manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness in the Old Testament. Watch verse forty nine. Jesus says, Your forefathers ate manna in the wilderness and they died. But I am the living manna. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Remember in the Old Testament, Exodus 16, God would drop manna from heaven every single day for the Israelites to eat, and they would go out and gather it every single day.

And remember the story. Sometimes there were Israelites who tried to store a bunch of it up and it wouldn't store. No matter how much you stored it or how well you stored it, the next day it was always moldy and rotten and smelly. In other words, God was trying to teach the Israelites a point. He was trying to teach them you can't live on yesterday's manna. You need fresh manna every single day. And that very same thing is true for us as followers of Jesus Christ. Just as the Israelites had to gather fresh manna every single day as followers of Christ. Friends, we have to ingest a fresh supply of Jesus, the living manna, into our lives every day if we want to be spiritually healthy. As followers of Christ, we can't live on yesterday's manna either. We need a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit every day. We need a fresh experience with the living God every day.

We need to eat a fresh meal from God's word every day to get the strength we need to love our spouse, to love our children, to live biblically, to act righteously, to hate sin, to love righteousness, to pursue personal holiness. If we don't feed ourselves on fresh manna every day, let me tell you what happens. We become like old Samson. You remember him in the Bible, the guy with the long hair? You know, Samson's problem was every once in a while he would eat a good spiritual meal and in between he would try to run on fumes. And as a result, his life demonstrated the kind of spiritual instability, the kind of spiritual inconsistency, the kind of spiritual failure that comes from only eating spiritual food on an occasional basis.

Remember what Jesus said in the Lord's prayer. He said, give us this day our what? He didn't say weekly, did he?

He didn't say monthly, did he? He didn't say quarterly or twice a year bread, did he? Give us our daily bread. And friends, if you're here and you're a follower of Christ today, the comparison Jesus makes with manna is critical. He's trying to tell you and me that we need, just like the Israelites did, to go out and we need that intimate personal eating of Christ every day in our life as well.

We can't be like NASCAR Christians who try to run on fumes to the last possible moment. Friends, in the written Word of God, the Bible, Jesus serves up spiritual manna every day and we need to be eating it every day. On our knees in prayer, Jesus serves up his personal presence and power to us every day and we need to be ingesting that every single day. And so as we close today, if you're a follower of Christ here, I got a question for you.

My question is, how is your daily time with the Lord? You say, all on. Now, buddy, you've gone from preaching to meddling, friend. Well, that's my job. My job is to meddle in your life. That's why you come here for me to meddle in your life. And if I'm stepping on your toes, well, God bless you, it's probably because you're in the wrong place. That's my job.

So let me go back to my question. How is your daily time with the Lord? How is your daily Bible reading, your daily prayer time, your daily connection with Jesus Christ? My question is, are you running on new fresh manna every day? Or friends, are you trying to run on yesterday's manna, last week's manna, last month's manna, last year's manna?

Well, if your life as a follower of Christ exhibits spiritual instability, if your life as a follower of Christ exhibits spiritual inconsistency, if it exhibits spiritual failure more than you want, I can tell you one of the reasons why that's probably true. It's probably because you're not running on fresh manna every single day. And you know, there's a lot of folks who come to church once a week and they try to take in all the manna they need for the whole week.

They try to put it in a big jug. You know, here's Monday's lawn, Tuesday's lawn, Wednesday's lawn, Thursday's lawn. And friends, that won't work. That gets rotten and smelly and bad. You can't run on Sunday's manna on Thursday.

You can't do that. And I really find there are so many of us as followers of Christ who get so much in a hurry and our priorities get so out of whack and we have so much pressing in on us that the thing we sacrifice is the thing we need the most, which is a fresh pot of manna every day from the Lord Jesus. Otherwise, the rest of it doesn't get done right. And so I want to challenge you here. I want to remind you that abiding in Christ is a moment by moment, day by day experience.

And if you don't do it that way, your Christian experience and my Christian experience will not work right. So I want to challenge you to take a hard look at your priorities here today, a hard look at your schedule here today, because I suspect that for many of us, we need a course correction in our schedule, a course correction in our priorities. This is a nutty town. This town goes a thousand miles an hour. You know that.

I know that. And if you're not careful, the pace of life in this town will rob you of the manna you need every day to live in a successful way for Christ. Don't let that happen, friends. So Samson did. And, you know, he met Delilah.

You don't want to meet Delilah in your life, whatever he or she looks like or it looks like. The way to do that is stay connected with Jesus daily. So I want us to take a moment. Let's bow our heads, if we will.

Let's close our eyes. And if you need to do business with God in these couple of moments, I want you to do it. If you're here and you're not a follower of Christ and you want to take Jesus into your life like food today, this is your moment. You tell the Lord that.

You invite Him in. And if you're here today and you're a follower of Christ and you need a course correction in your schedule and your priorities, then you take a moment and tell God that and ask for His help in beginning that change starting tomorrow morning. Let's take a moment and talk to the Lord.

Lord Jesus, remind us what you said in John 15. You said, abide in me and I will abide in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must abide in the vine, the trunk. Neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me.

For apart from me, you can accomplish nothing of real spiritual value. Lord, those are haunting words when you live in Washington. When you live with the pace of life that we live, to take the time every day to abide in Christ, to take the time every day to spend time in the Word of God and in prayer and eating fresh manna is a challenge, a big challenge.

But Lord, you know, it's interesting to me that the Bible never changes. You don't change your rules for people who live in Washington. Your rules are the same. Abide in you and you'll abide in us. And so I pray today that many of us here, this will be the beginning of a whole new way of living, a whole new lifestyle and a whole new schedule, one that has fresh manna every day as the non negotiable event of the day.

Everything else can go, but not that. Lord Jesus, teach us that we can't live on yesterday's manna. Lord, help us to stop trying and crown our lives as we do live on fresh manna with the joy and the power that you want to give us each and every day as your representatives in this town. Change our life because we were here today. Lord, change the very way we live and we pray these things in Jesus name. And God's people said, Amen. Thanks for being here. Bless you guys. See you.