Hey, you know, one of the great things about going to the Holy Land is that you get to see right up close the places where all the events of the Bible took place.
And, for example, there's a place on the shore of the Sea of Galilee named Togphah. And years ago, excavators discovered the ruins of a church from the fourth century A.D. And when they cleared the rubble away, they found a marvelous mosaic floor, the original floor of the church. And the centerpiece of that mosaic, it's an image of two fish and a basket of bread. And the reason for this is because Togphah is the site where the Lord Jesus fed the 5,000 people. And this mosaic was built to commemorate that great miracle that Jesus did here. But, you know, every time I go to Togphah and I see this mosaic, I remind myself that Jesus did not do this miracle just for artwork.
No, no, no. Jesus did it like he did everything to communicate to you and me life-changing spiritual truth. And that's what we're going to talk about today as we continue in our series entitled People Jesus Met. We want to look at the encounter that the Lord Jesus had with the 5,000 people here at Togphah. And then we want to bring all of that forward and we want to talk about, okay, what kind of life-changing lessons for us today are embedded in this event. And, you know, let me just say before we go on that the life-changing truths that Jesus has embedded to this event must be pretty important because this is the only miracle Jesus ever performed that is recorded and mentioned in all four gospel accounts. So what is it that's so important Jesus wants to communicate to us here?
Well, let's look and find out. John chapter 6 verse 1. Sometime after this Jesus crossed to the far side of the Sea of Galilee and went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. But a great crowd of people followed him because of the miracles he had performed on the sick. Now every time I read about the great crowds that followed Jesus everywhere he went, I think of the movie What About Bob? You know the movie where this poor psychiatrist finally creates a little space for him and his family to get away. And Bob, Bill Murray, follows him everywhere he goes.
He can't shake him no matter what he does. And if you remember, of course, the psychiatrist was annoyed. He saw Bob as simply a nuisance. Well, the interesting thing is that the crowds that followed the Lord Jesus, this is not how Jesus saw them. Watch verse 5. And when Jesus looked up and saw the great crowd coming towards him, he said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? Mark's gospel adds, For Jesus had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. You see, Jesus did not see all these people following him as a nuisance or as a bother. He saw them, the Bible says, as sheep who desperately needed a shepherd, and he was happy and excited to be that shepherd for them. Now friends, the same is true for us today. No matter how often we call on God, no matter how often we go after God, no matter how often we pray to God, God never sees us as a nuisance or a bother either. He sees us exactly the way he saw these people, sheep that need a shepherd, and he is happy to be a shepherd for us, just like he was happy to be a shepherd for them. Hey, that's great news, huh? Amen.
Now, let's go on. Verse 6. And Jesus asked Philip this, this what? Well, where are we going to get bread to feed these people?
He asked him this to test him, for Jesus already knew what he was going to do. And Philip said, Lord, eight months wages would not buy enough bread for us to even give all these people a little bite. Another of his disciples, Andrew, said, well, here's a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will this go among so many people? Then Jesus said, look, just have the people sit down. Now, there was plenty of grass in that place, so everyone sat down, about 5,000 of them. Then Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated, look at this, as much as they wanted.
This was an all you can eat buffet. And he did the same with the fish. Verse 12. And when everyone had had enough to eat, literally in the Greek, when everyone had gorged themselves, Jesus said to the disciples, gather up the pieces that are left over. So they gathered them and filled 12 baskets with the leftovers.
So, folks, here's what happened. Jesus takes the two fish and the loaves of bread. He lifts them up to heaven, and he says, blessed are you, O Lord our God, who brings forth bread from the earth. And then Jesus started handing out pieces of bread and fish, and he kept on handing them out until there was so much food that people were stuffed.
In fact, the only reason Jesus stopped making more food is because nobody could eat any more food. You say, well, Lon, how do you explain this? Folks, you don't explain this.
This doesn't have an explanation. This is a miracle, pure and simple. This is a suspension of the natural laws of the universe, pure and simple. But, you know, if you believe, like I do, what the Bible says, that Jesus was Jehovah God himself wrapped in human flesh, then you know what? This is not a problem for me. If you believe that Jesus was the one who made the natural laws of the universe, then for him to suspend the natural laws of the universe, hey, no problemo. You understand? So I got no problem with this, and you shouldn't have either.
Well, let's go on with the story. In the morning, verse 24, when the crowd realized Jesus was not there, they went to Capernaum in search of him. Then Jesus said to them, You're looking for me, I know why, because you ate the loaves and had your fill.
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. So they asked Jesus, Well, what must we do to do the works that God requires? The people said, Hey, we're confused, Jesus.
How do we do this? I mean, how do we get this eternal life food that you say you're offering? And Jesus answered, verse 29, and said, The work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent. What do you have to do to get eternal life, Jesus said?
Hey, it's real simple, fellas. All you got to do is believe in me. And you know, this was the message of Jesus everywhere he went, that eternal life comes from simply believing in him. John chapter 6, verse 40, Everyone who believes in me, Jesus said, has eternal life. John 6, verse 47, The person who believes in me, Jesus said, has eternal life. John chapter 11, verse 25, He who believes in me, Jesus said, will live even though he dies here on earth. And that's just a small smattering of all that Jesus said about believing in him equals eternal life. But you know, there is a problem here. You say, Really, what's the problem? The problem, friends, is that the word believe is one of those easy to misunderstand what it really means words.
I mean, think about it now. I mean, there's head believing, there's heart believing, there's scientific believing, there's in your gut believing. What kind of believing exactly is Jesus talking about that unlocks eternal life for you and me and everyone that does it? Well, Jesus doesn't want there to be any confusion about that. And so what he does now with these 5000 people is he points them back to the miracle he did the day before, to the feeding of the 5000, and he uses that miracle to help explain to them, to clarify for them what kind of believing he's talking about.
Watch. Verse 48. I am the bread of life, Jesus said. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Well, then the Jews began to sharply argue among themselves and say, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Verse 53, Jesus said, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man 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 on the last day. You say, all right, all right, all right, stop. Well, not stop. What is he talking about?
Lon, you say? I mean, this is the most gruesome thing I've ever heard in my life. Eat his flesh, drink his blood.
What is he talking about? Well, you know, a lot of commentators believe that Jesus is talking here about communion, the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, where the bread symbolizes Jesus's body and where the cup symbolizes Jesus's blood. But, friends, that can't be because whatever it is Jesus is talking about here in John 6, it's clear that the people standing right there listening to him were able to do it right then and there. But communion doesn't exist yet. The Lord's Supper doesn't exist yet. The last supper where communion was begun is two years away. No, no, no. This has nothing to do with communion.
You say, well, if it doesn't have anything to do with communion, then what is he talking about? Well, let's look. Put on your thinking caps now, okay? Put them on. Follow me. If we look carefully here, I want you to see the connection that Jesus makes here.
Watch. In John 6, verse 29, verse 40, verse 47, Jesus says, Believe in me and you'll have eternal life. Then here in verse 54, Jesus says, Eat my flesh and drink my blood and you'll have eternal life.
The point is that whatever eating Jesus's flesh and drinking his blood means, it's clear that in Jesus's mind that is synonymous with believing in him properly for eternal life. Now, does everybody see that? Yes? You guys with me? Yes?
To put it another way, Jesus uses this phrase, eat my flesh, to explain to us, to clarify for us, exactly what kind of believing you and I have to do in order to activate his promise of eternal life. Now, does everybody see that? Yes.
Okay. Because that is the fulcrum point. That is the key to understanding this passage. And if you understand that, then you certainly have a question in your mind, a big question in your mind, a question you're just dying to shout out right now in your mind. So you know what that question is. Here we go. Everybody watching.
One, two, three. A little late, but good. All right. You say, Lon, so what? Say, you know, I appreciate what you're saying and I got that connection, eat my flesh, drink my blood, believe in me. I got that. But you've got to make this more practical for me, Lon.
I mean, you've got to put some handles on this for me. Okay, let's do that. Remember what we said earlier? We said that believing is one of those easy to misunderstand what it really means words. And the most common mistake that people make when it comes to the word believe that Jesus talks about in the Bible, the most common mistake that we make is that we limit that word to intellectual believing, to in my head believing only. We say, yes, I believe Jesus is the son of God. Yes, I believe Jesus died on the cross. Yes, I believe Jesus rose from the dead.
Yes, I believe that Jesus is the savior of the world in my head. That is, it reminds me of the story of the famous French philosopher Voltaire. One day Voltaire was out walking in Paris with a friend and they passed a Christian processional. And Voltaire immediately stopped, stood at attention, took off his hat and tipped his hat to the procession.
His friend was mortified, completely shocked that he would do this. He turned to Voltaire and asked about it and Voltaire said, and I quote, he said, when God and I pass, we salute each other, but we never speak, end of quote. And you know, folks, this is exactly the kind of I believe that God exists in my head believe that Jesus says is not the kind of believing that he's talking about. This is not saving faith.
This is not redeeming faith. Instead, Jesus said, listen now, that redeeming faith, saving faith is akin to, is like eating. You say, well, what does that mean?
All right, let's think. When we eat, what do we do? Well, you say, well, we take it in, right.
That's exactly right. We take food in, not just into our head, right? We take it into our whole being. We assimilate it. We digest it. We absorb it. We break it down and distribute it to every cell in our body. And that food becomes an inseparable part, an indivisible part of everything we are, right?
Is that right? Hey, our relationship with food, folks, is not an intellectual relationship. It is an intensely personal relationship. It is an experiential relationship. Now, I got to tell you, I love food.
I do. In fact, the minute I get up from breakfast, I'm already thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch. And the minute I get up from lunch, I'm already planning what I'm going to have for dinner.
As soon as I get done with dinner, I spend most of the evening thinking about what I'm going to have for breakfast. This is why I've had a weight problem my entire life. This is why in high school I was five feet seven inches tall and I weighed almost 300 pounds. Forty-five years ago, I had to lose 100 pounds. Ten years ago, I had to lose 35 pounds. Two years ago, I had to lose 20 pounds more. Friends, I've been on a diet for the last 45 years. Now, why do I eat like this?
Why do I keep putting myself through this agony? Let me tell you why. It's because I don't have an intellectual relationship with food.
No, no. Besides, who wants an intellectual relationship with food? I mean, we can purchase food, prepare food, smell food, see food, touch food, sit at a table full of food, but food is no good unless you what?
You got to eat it. Exactly. Now, you understand that, so you understand what Jesus is saying. In John chapter 6, Jesus tells these 5,000 people, look here, and he tells us. Jesus said, I want to tell you, this is the kind of believing it takes to unlock eternal life.
It takes an experiential believing. See, I'm not just some kind of theological theory that I want people to sit around and intellectually debate in a classroom, Jesus said. I am a personal savior to be ingested and absorbed into every part of your being.
I am a personal savior that wants you to take me into your life so you and I become inseparable and indivisible. That's how personal the believing is that Jesus is talking about. See, friends, it's not good enough for us to say we believe that Jesus is the savior. We've got to be able to say we believe he's my savior. It's not good enough to say that we believe Jesus died for the world's sins. We've got to be able to say Jesus died for my sins. And it's not good enough to say that we believe Jesus came to redeem the world. We've got to be able to say Jesus came to redeem me because I have ingested him and reached out and taken him into every part of my being personally and experientially. This is saving faith and this is the kind of believing that activates Jesus' promise of eternal life. Now, you know, it's really tragic that there are tens of thousands of people sitting in churches all over the world today or watching Christian television programming all over the world today. People who are totally convinced that they have believed in Jesus correctly.
People who are totally convinced that they're going to heaven when they die because they have given intellectual consent to what the Bible says factually about Jesus. But you know what? After today, you and I ought to understand that's not going to work.
That is not the kind of believing that unlocks eternal life. Oh, no, no. It has to go from here to here, from your head into your heart. I was with a gentleman a few years ago in my office here. He came in for an appointment. We were talking. And after listening to him for a while, we were talking about his personal relationship with Christ. I said to him, I said, you know, sir, I don't mean to offend you, but let me just say to you, you are 18 inches away from eternal life. He said, what? I said, you are 18 inches away from heaven.
He said, I understand what you're talking about. I said, sir, you've got all this stuff up here in your head, all these things you know about Jesus, all this intellectual information, but you have never moved it the 18 inches from your head into your heart. You're 18 inches away from going to heaven. And you know, there are people all over the world who've been going to church their whole life, reading the Bible, been listening to sermons, but they're still 18 inches away from going to heaven because either nobody told them or they haven't been willing to move all of that from an intellectual relationship to Jesus to an experiential relationship with Jesus in their heart. Now, if you're here today and you're 18 inches away from heaven, I've got great news for you.
In just a few moments, we're going to give you a chance to remedy that. So just hold on. But you say, Lon, you say, but I am a follower of Christ here today. I mean, I've believed in Jesus, right? And you said there was life-changing truth here for me. I don't see it yet. Well, here we go.
I'm going to show it to you. Jesus said, John 6 48, I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate manna in the desert, yet they died. But I am the bread that comes down from heaven, which if a person eats of, they will not die. Verse 51, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Verse 58, your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever. Now, do you see that here in calling himself the bread of life, the Lord Jesus compares himself to the manna, the supernatural bread that God gave the Israelites to eat when they were out in the wilderness? And there's our lesson, folks, because what do we know about this manna? Well, Exodus chapter 16, then the Lord said to Moses, I will rain down bread from heaven for you.
The people are to go out every day and gather enough for that day. And the people call this bread manna. Verse 20, however, some of the people tried to store up jars of manna for the future, but when they opened it, it was full of maggots and it smelled. Listen, God, when he gave manna to the Israelites, told them they were not allowed to store it up for the future. Rather, God said on every day except the Sabbath, you are to go out and pick up new manna, fresh manna, every single day. And friends, he was trying to teach the Israelites back then, you can't live on yesterday's manna.
Now, today as followers of Christ, the same thing is true. When it comes to our feeding on the living manna, on the living bread of life, on the living Lord Jesus Christ, God wants us to understand that we can't live on yesterday's manna either. As followers of Christ, God wants us to understand that if we want to have the spiritual power we need every day to live biblically and to act righteously and to hate sin and to love righteousness and to pursue personal holiness, if we want to have the spiritual power we need every day to love our spouse right and our children right and our neighbor right, we need a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit every day. We need a fresh experience with the living Christ every day. We need to eat fresh manna from God's Word every day.
Remember what the Lord said in the Lord's Prayer. He said, Matthew chapter 6, give us this day our what? Our daily bread. He didn't say give us our weekly bread or our monthly bread or our quarterly bread, did he? No, no. He said daily.
It's about daily. And you know, it's my observation after having been a pastor for almost 30 years that the church in America today is plagued with an abundance of people who come to church and claim to be followers of Jesus but who go out every day and live powerless, insipid, wimpy Christian lives. And this situation is a disgrace to the living Christ because it cheapens his power in the eyes of our world. It weakens our witness for his glory. It undermines our efforts to bring people to him. People look at the lives that we live, those wimpy lives, and they go, what kind of Savior do you have?
I mean, if that's the best he can do, I'm not really interested. And why is this, friends? I'll tell you why. It's because we're not living on fresh manna. To change the imagery a little bit, you know how in NASCAR in those races often the drivers will skip the very last pit stop, the very last fill up and try to make it to the finish line running on fumes, you know what I'm talking about? Well, I'm here to implore every one of us who are followers of Christ not to be NASCAR Christians, not to try to run on fumes. Friends, God serves up fresh manna every day right here in the living written Word of God, living manna that will fill our lives with spiritual vitality and spiritual power and spiritual authenticity, and we need to be eating from it fresh every single day. So let me close and say that if you're a follower of Jesus here today, my question for you from John chapter 6 is simply this, how's your daily time with the Lord? I mean, how's your daily Bible reading? How's your daily Bible study? How's your daily Bible memorization?
How's your daily prayer time? Folks, are you running on new fresh manna every day? Or are you trying to run on yesterday's manna, yesterday's victories, yesterday's power? Look here, God designed abiding in Christ to be a daily experience that demands daily refueling, and no one, not you, not me, no one can live a powerful, effective, dynamic Christian life running on fumes.
You can't do it. So don't be a NASCAR Christian, my friend. If you need a life change, a schedule change as a follower of Christ, hey, wonderful. Find a time every day, you can find it, where you can refuel from the living Christ, the living manna, the living bread of life. All right, let's bow our heads together, shall we? And with our heads bowed and eyes closed, you remember that a moment ago, I told those of you who felt maybe you're 18 inches away from eternal life that we were going to give you a chance to remedy that before we were done, and that's what we're going to do right now. And the way we're going to do it is by praying a little prayer where you're going to move everything you know and understand about the Lord Jesus. You're going to move Him from your head 18 inches into your heart and into your life. So if you're ready to do that, to personalize and ingest the Lord Jesus Christ, then you pray silently, I'm going to pray out loud.
Here we go. Lord Jesus, I come to you today because I want eternal life. I want to know that my sins are forgiven and that my place in heaven is secure. And so today I invite you to come into my life like food. Today I want to ingest you into my life and surrender my heart to you and make you an inseparable part of my being for the rest of eternity. Lord Jesus, I invite you to become my personal Lord and Savior and to take over my life today. In Jesus' name I pray. And Father, I want to pray for the folks who prayed that prayer, that you would confirm in their hearts even as they sit here today that a great transaction has taken place in the heavenly places, as John 5-24 says, they have passed from death into eternal life, never to go back. Lord, I invite you to take them up on their invitation and to move into their heart personally and be like food for them that feeds every cell in their body and in their life from this point on. Lord Jesus, thank you for speaking to us so deeply from your Word and thank you for challenging our lives and teaching us well. May what we've learned today be life-changing because we sat under the teaching of the eternal Word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. .
