Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. If we were to trace some of our worst choices, bad habits, addictions and even some of our emotional problems back to their source, we would find a deep and unsatisfied spiritual hunger. So if you ever need to catch up, you can hear previous broadcasts from the I Am Teaching series we're currently in by visiting online at jdgreer.com. But for now, let's return to our teaching titled I Am the Bread of Life. Here's Pastor J.D. Capernaum was the part of Palestine where a lot of Gentiles lived.
Now follow this. It's where the ancient Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon were. And Jesus does a couple of important things there.
John does not record this next part of the story, but Matthew does in Matthew 14 and 15 if you want to read it later. Matthew says that right after Jesus feeds the 5000 and he walks on water, the first thing he does when he arrives in Capernaum after feeding the 5000 is he heals a Canaanite woman's daughter. Canaanite means Gentile. To the Jews, she's one of the impure people. She's an outsider. She's an enemy of God. And when Jesus heals her daughter, nobody can believe it. The disciples are like, what do you do when healing a Gentile? At one point in the story, Jesus even calls her a dog, which I've always thought was one of the most unpeasy things that Jesus ever said.
But in saying that, Jesus was not making a racial slur. He was giving an accurate assessment of her spiritual condition. She was separated from God.
She was spiritually impure. But Jesus says, I'll heal anybody with faith. And then get this, immediately after that healing, Matthew says, Jesus repeats the miracle of the feeding of the 5000, except this time it's with only 4000 people.
It's a nearly identical scene. Jesus is teaching the masses in a remote valley. It's late in the day. He's got only a few loaves and some fish for food. And Jesus multiplies the loaves and the fish so that there's baskets full of leftovers. But in this second miracle, he does it with only 4000 people, a lot of whom are Gentiles. And this time they only take up seven baskets of leftovers instead of 12. Which makes you ask, I mean, only seven baskets this time? Are Jesus' superpowers wearing off?
Are his batteries running low? No, that is not what is happening. During the first miracle of the manna, watch this. During the first miracle of the manna, back when Moses was doing it, the book of Deuteronomy, that records the miracle. The book of Deuteronomy says that Israel was surrounded by seven Canaanite nations. These seven baskets are for them. The seven baskets mean that Jesus is the bread of life for Gentiles too. So what we have here is a miracle sandwich. On either side of the sandwich, the pieces of bread, so to speak, are Jesus feeding a large multitude.
The first one consists of Jews, the other of Gentiles. And in between these two nearly identical miracles or two other miracles, the meat of the sandwich, so to speak, and one of those is Jesus walking on water, and the second is him healing a Gentile woman's daughter. Do you see what's being taught?
Follow me here. First, Jesus' point is not his ability to put physical bread in our stomachs or to overthrow whatever Rome is oppressing us. The point is that whatever need we face, whatever storm we are in, wherever it seems like the waves of life might overtake us, whether that is a storm in our marriage or a storm with our kids or it is a storm of addiction that we cannot shake, Jesus can step into our sinking boat and he can bring us peace. It means that what we most need is not some kind of physical bread in our stomachs, even some kind of physical healing in our bodies.
What we most need is him. He says, I am the bread of life. Again, maybe you come in here this morning looking for a miracle.
I want you to come up as soon as the service is over and we're going to lay hands on you and pray for that miracle together. But I'm telling you, what you most need, what you've always craved is a relationship with Jesus, the great I am, the maker of all miracles. The second thing this sandwich is teaching us is that Jesus came for everybody who would receive him. He didn't come just for the pure or for the church or for the morally upright. He came for those separated from God. He came for those separated from the church. He came for those across the sea from him. Whoever has faith, even people like this poor Canaanite woman, a spiritual dog, if you will, they can have Jesus if they want him. He came for as many, John says, as would receive him to any who would receive him.
He gave them the right, the power, the ability to become the children of God. Listen, you may think this morning that you are miles away from the profile of a Christian, miles away from Jesus. And maybe that's because you're several times divorced, or maybe it's because you had an abortion, or you had an affair. Or maybe it's because you're a failed father. Or maybe it's because you've been convicted of a crime. Or maybe you haven't been caught yet, but you know you're guilty of a crime.
And maybe you got a secret that nobody knows about, one that you feel so ashamed of that you hide from everybody. And the bottom line is that you feel miles and miles and miles away from Jesus this morning. Maybe you're sitting at home watching this online because you couldn't even bring yourself to come into a church.
You'd think, I might burst into flames if I go in that place. I got good news for you this morning. Jesus has just shown up in your Capernaum with the same miraculous power to multiply bread in your life. He's the bread of life for you, right? He's come to your Capernaum looking for you. He had to walk across a raging sea to get to you. And all you got to do, like this Canaanite woman, is you just have to receive him.
Which brings us back to John 6. Number three, a satisfaction. A satisfaction. Tell you how you want to look spiritually. That warms my soul.
I don't know what it is. Now, verse 35. Now, after the miracle sandwich, now Jesus actually gives them the explanation. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger.
And whoever believes in me shall never thirst. I am the bread of life. Again, not I'll give you the bread of life or I'll give you a way to live that will feel like the bread of life.
But I am the bread of life. Christianity is not a lifestyle. Christianity is not a new strategy for living. It's not a way to fix your family. It's not a religious thing to add to your life. It is a relationship with a person and nothing more. By the way, think with me for a moment about the absolute audacity of Jesus' statement.
I'm the one you're looking for. You know it's popular in some academic circles to write off Jesus as a provocative moral teacher. To write him off as a great revolutionary, moral revolutionary, a great prophet. But would you think about the sheer audacity of what Jesus is saying?
I am. He's claiming the name of God. I am the bread of life. I mean, even if you're a scholar and you want to dispute like, Oh, was he really trying to claim the name of God?
I've heard scholars do that. Just think about what he's claiming and bringing the bread of life. I'm what you crave. The early church, this is what they celebrated.
The communion, they celebrated this concept. I'm what you crave, Jesus said. I'm what you've always craved. In verses 34 to 40, Jesus says, I, me or my, 17 different times, I'm the bread of life. Unless you feast on me, he says, you will starve eternally. Unless you feast on my broken body, that's going to be like bread to you. And if you don't do this, you're not going to live. And you're going to always be miserable.
Feast on me and you will live. Historically, there has never been anybody that egocentric who had more than a tiny group of lunatics around them. Quote C.S.
Lewis here. If Jesus wasn't actually God, one of two things has to be true. Either he is the worst liar that ever emerged from the pit of hell. Cruelly convincing people to worship and trust him, or he is a lunatic on the level of the man C.S.
Lewis says who thinks he's a poached egg. In John 6, Jesus put himself at the center of history. He put himself at the center of the Bible. He put himself at the center of your existential crisis.
He either is who he says he is or he is not. And if he is who he says he is, that means satisfaction for your deepest soul yearnings are in him. By the way, you ever wonder what that really means? You ever wonder what it means for Jesus to be the satisfaction of yourself? A lot of times Christians say things like, be satisfied in Jesus.
Find happiness in Jesus. But you're sitting there thinking, what does that actually mean? Don't look at me like that. I know that you think that. It can sound like a lot of spiritually mumbo jumbo.
Doesn't it? Be satisfied in Jesus. Does that mean that you're just serenely religious all the time? Always humming God's songs, thinking pious thoughts. Is that what that means?
No. Here's what it means. Being satisfied with Jesus means that you got the absolute assurance that you belong to him and he belongs to you. And you know that because of his promises in the gospel that you have received for yourself. And that knowledge, that relationship with him is so valuable to you that when you're successful in something, you find yourself rejoicing more in possessing him than you do in the success. And when you fail at something, you console yourself that knowing him is more important than the victory was anyway. Yeah, you can be disappointed when something doesn't work out like you want.
Right? When you don't get the job, when the relationship doesn't go anywhere, when the boyfriend breaks up with you, when you don't get into the school, when you fail to make the team, you lose the job. Yeah, you can be disappointed, but your soul is never truly devastated because you have him and he is more valuable than anything else life could give you and more secure than anything death could take away. And that is bread for your starving soul. Being satisfied with Jesus means the promise of his loving, guiding hand is like food to you when you find yourself in a barren wilderness and you don't know what to do. It means that when I walk through the valley of the shadow of the death, I will not fear any evil because thou art with me. It means that when I'm worried, I have peace knowing that he is for me and has promised to hear my prayers and rescue me and work all things in my life together for good, that not one strand of my life is out of place. That is the bread for my soul. It means that when I'm in pain or you're in pain, you've got this abiding joy that even as your body falls apart, you still belong to him and nothing can ever separate you from his love, not height or depth or principality or power in anything and all creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It means that when I look into the future, I'm not afraid because even though I don't know what the future holds, I know who holds it and I know he holds me. You're listening to the first message in our brand new teaching series in the book of John here on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. We'll rejoin Pastor J.D. in just a moment, but you know, staying spiritually grounded in a busy world can be a challenge.
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So a big thank you to them. Now let's return for the conclusion of today's message. Once again, here's Pastor J.D.
The blind hymn writer, Fanny Crosby, said it this way. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. His constant presence, his unfailing promise is the bread that satisfies the hungry soul.
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. That is what you feast on day by day. It's what I feast on when I get up in the morning. It's why I start my day with the Bible, because I need to feast my soul on Jesus before I encounter all the hunger that's going on in the world. It's what my last thoughts in the evening are feasting upon him. It's why I need friends in my life speaking God's word and the gospel to me because my soul is starving and it's only filled up with the love of Jesus Christ.
Which brings me finally to number four of supper. Verse 53, so Jesus said to them, 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. As he said these things, verse 52, the Jews disputed among themselves, saying, how can this man give his flesh to you?
That's gross. Even some of Jesus' disciples stumbled on this. Verse 60, see it? When many of the disciples heard it, they're like, this is a hard saying. Who can listen to that? I'm not going to podcast this one later. Jesus said something here that confused even his disciples.
But with all this background, I think you're in a place to understand what he meant. Remember at the very beginning of this story, John explained that Jesus did this miracle on the eve of the Passover. Remember? Jesus is presenting himself as the new Passover. He is saying, y'all, in some mysterious way, that Passover meal where the lamb was killed and his blood was sprinkled over your doorpost and you ate unleavened bread, that and the manna that appeared on the ground every morning as you walked out of Egypt and through the wilderness of the Promised Land, that all pointed to me.
My blood is the real Passover blood and my body is the real manna that is broken to feed and sustain you. Y'all know that you can't just eat raw wheat? You ever find yourself in a wheat field and you're hungry?
Don't just grab a bunch of this and just feast on it till you're, it'll make you sick. I mean, maybe a little bit of it's going to be fine, but raw wheat would make you sick. For wheat to become bread, it has to go through a rather elaborate and quite violent process.
First, the grains are cut like this. Then they're beaten, they're winnowed, they're ground down into flour, they're processed, and then they're baked, and only then will it rise into what we call bread. What does it mean for Jesus to be the bread of life? On the cross, Jesus was beaten, ground down, and put through immense violence. And only then did he rise as our bread of life. And so, on the eve of his crucifixion, at another Passover meal, Jesus again repeated exactly what he said here in John 6. You must eat my flesh and drink my blood.
In saying that, he was setting the stage for what was about to happen over the next 36 hours. On the cross, he would become the bread of our forgiveness so that we would never have to feel the starvation pangs of condemnation again. On the cross, he would be beaten and winnowed so that he could become the cleansing for my sin so that we could be free of sin, stain, and shame so that even though our sins are like scarlet, he could make them as white as snow. That's the bread of forgiveness. On the cross, he would reconcile God to me so that I could feast on the bread of knowing that I'm never alone, not in any circumstance, for any reason. That is the bread of his presence.
On the cross, he would give me the power of new life, the power to start over, the power to break addiction, the power to build a life of beauty. Even when my sin had reduced it to a pile of ashes, that is the bread of the new creation. But see, to give me that kind of bread, he had to be crushed.
He had to be ground down. Only then could he be raised to new life, new life so that he could say to any and to all of us, if anybody hungers, let him come to me and eat. He that feasts upon me will never hunger, and he that believes on me will never thirst. I am the bread of life. I'm what you've always craved. Researchers say the three phrases that bring the most joy to humans are, in this order, I love you. I forgive you.
Dinner is ready. Isn't it awesome that in the gospel, Jesus says all three of them to us? I had the most remarkable experience last week. I got asked to be on a TV talk show.
It's on TBN, one of those large Christian networks. And I flew out to Dallas to do the interview. Well, I was in the waiting area, and I sat down at the table with a guy who was going to go on the show right after me. Never met him before, never heard of him. So before the show started, I just asked him what his story was. I was like, hey, we're both about to be on the show.
Tell me your story. He said, well, I'm a fairly new Christian, and I've just written a book called Seven Lies That Will Ruin Your Life That Ruined Mine. He told me, he said, you see, up until a few years ago, I was a performer in the adult film industry.
And yes, that means exactly what you think it means. It turns out he'd done quite well in that industry. A few years ago, he'd actually won performer of the year in that entire multi-billion dollar industry. He said, I was super successful. He said, but I was miserable. He said, my journey to Christ began several years ago when a girl I'd known for years, who's from right here in the Raleigh area, by the way, she said to me, Joshua, the gospel is that you are not defined by the worst thing that you've ever done, just like we're not defined by the best thing we've ever done.
We are defined by Jesus' love for us, nothing less and nothing more. He said, you know, just hearing her use my real name got my attention because in my profession, nobody uses real names anymore. In my industry, you have an acting name, a porn name. He said, I don't really know how to explain it, but the combination of her calling my name, my real name, and then speaking the gospel over my soul in her voice, I heard the voice of my maker speak in my heart. You see, he said, I got into the porn industry, not through one dramatic act, not because I just decided one day this is what I'm going to do with my life.
I got into the porn industry as a captive, basically, through one small bad decision at a time. He said, when I was in middle school, my dad just up and left my mom and me when it came out that he actually had another family that he had secretly started on the other side of town. And so when it came out that he had this other family with kids not that much different in age than me, he said, he chose them, not us. He left my mom and me, and he never spoke to me again.
Even though my dad was really well off, he refused to pay child support and somehow got away with it, never paid child support to my mom and me. And I had to go to school, because it was a small town, I had to go to school with his other kids, and I would see them every day, and they lived comfortably while my mom and I lived in abject poverty. He said, I felt worthless, unloved, and that's when I started to hear these voices in my heart, voices that told me that I was nothing more than the bad things that I had done, that nobody would ever truly love me, that I would never be a good father, that I would never be a good man, that I would never make anyone proud. And so I turned to the porn industry to try and satisfy a hunger deep in my heart. He said, for a while it was intoxicating, but that day when that girl said my name and spoke the gospel over me, my maker unlocked the chains that had shackled my heart. After a few months, he said, I came to Christ, and then I got discipled by some godly men, and now I go around the country speaking at men's conferences and in student ministries, warning them about the true nature of the porn industry, the predatory nature of the porn industry, and testifying to the power of the gospel. I sat there dumbfounded.
I don't know how to explain this if you've never felt it, but I knew I was in the presence of the I am. God was just there, right there in the room with us. He said to me, so what's your story? I said, not that, not that. I said, man, I sure am glad that I'm going on this show before you and not after you. He had a copy of his book there, and I asked him if I was like, is this book basically your story? He said something I thought was absolutely profound.
Listen to this. He said, not really. He said, I mean, I use my story in it obviously some.
He said, but I don't want to glorify my story. He said, what I did was a symptom of a hungry heart, a heart that every man I've ever known possesses. Most people will not express their hungry heart the way that I did or to the extent that I did, but all of them got the same hungry heart that I have.
My book is more about the bread of life offered to all of us than the particulars of my specific story. If anybody hungers, let them come to Jesus and eat. Whoever comes to me will not hunger. Whoever believes in me will never thirst.
Why don't you bow your heads, if you would, at all of our campuses, bow your heads. If you've never received the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, if you've never received his restoration, right now give yourself to him. Receive him as Lord and Savior. To as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the children of God, to those who believe on his name, right now say, Lord Jesus, I receive your forgiveness that you're offering. I receive you as Lord and Savior.
I surrender. So the question is, are you trying to fill your hunger with things that will never satisfy, or are you feasting on the true bread of life? You've probably heard a lot about who other people think Jesus was, but the real question is, what did Jesus say about himself? Our featured resource this month helps answer that question. It's called I Am Seven Weeks in the Gospel of John. This seven-week printed resource offers a week-by-week journey through the seven I Am statements found in the Gospel of John. Each week you'll dive into a different declaration exploring its significance through commentary, scripture passages, and thought-provoking questions.
We pray you'll gain a deeper understanding of who Jesus is, what he came to do, and how his life and teaching can transform your life today. This is a brand-new exclusive Summit Life resource, so you'll want to get in touch with us soon with your gift to the ministry. Give us a call at 866-335-5220. One more time, that's 866-335-5220. Or you can request the I Am Bible study in a print or digital version when you donate online at jdgrier.com. That's J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R dot com. If you'd rather mail your donation, our address is J-D Greer Ministries, P.O.
Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 27709. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Join us Tuesday as we look at the next I Am statement from Jesus here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries. J.D. Greer Ministries.
