JOH 6:28 Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"
29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."
30 So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?
31 Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"
32 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
34 "Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread."
35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.
38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
40 For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

As we come to our text this morning we can’t help but be amazed at the lack of spiritual discernment of the people chosen by God to carry His name into all the world. From the very beginning, going back to Abraham, the Lord made it clear to the Jews that it was always about faith in God and His promises of deliverance.

There has never been a time in redemptive history where man was required by the one true God to earn heaven through some work of his own. And yet the Jews through much of their history kept introducing into the life of Israel their insistence that they somehow must contribute to their salvation as they observed the law.

And so, it shouldn’t surprise us when they ask Jesus, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" (JOH 6:28)

But it also shouldn’t surprise us when Jesus gives the same answer He gave to Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as well as us.

JOH 6:29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

At this we might think that the Jews would immediately say, we do believe, help us in our unbelief. But the fact is they don’t believe. They don’t trust in the One who has given them ample reason to believe that He is the Messiah. Instead they want more proof.

JOH 6:30 "So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?"

Now at this point we might ask, were they not paying attention to what Christ has been doing in their midst? After all, Jesus started His ministry in Galilee at the wedding feast in Cana. He had done many miraculous signs and wonders in this region before miraculously feeding these thousands of people.

They were fully aware of what Jesus had been doing and what He was teaching concerning the Kingdom of God, and His claim of being sent by the Father as the Son of God to do His will.

And they have the nerve to ask Jesus, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?"

You talk about the hard-heartedness of man and the saying which characterizes them, "there are none so blind as those who will not see."

"The Lord had said, believe. They replied, show us a sign." (A.W. Pink). In other words, we will not believe until you give additional proof which will benefit us and show yourself greater than Moses.

You see they knew the claims Jesus was making about Himself. They knew He claimed to be sent from heaven as the Father sent Him. And so, they felt that if His claims were true He would necessarily be greater than Moses who was also used by God to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt through many miracles.

This was a contest of works in their minds, instead of being a response of belief which our Lord Jesus commanded from them.

JOH 6:31 "Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

The thrust of this statement to Jesus is, "you’ve certainly fed us once with the bread and the fish, but the bread Moses gave us was called down from heaven and continued throughout their journey for many years. Your bread is of the earth. If you would move us to your side we need to see a miracle similar to that of Moses to prove you are from heaven as you say."

I find it interesting that they’ve still got food on the mind. They’re still in the fleshly mode. They’re still looking for what will satisfy their flesh, not in the spiritual food of the soul which goes beyond the flesh.

And this is where many people are today both inside and outside of the church. The unbeliever insists that unless the church has something to offer them they won’t darken their doors.

I can’t tell you how many times people have called us to buy them groceries, to pay their rent, to have us give them money so their electric can be turned back on. And I would have to say that in almost 100% of these cases, none of these people were looking for a ride to church to come seek anything spiritual from God.

But I’ve received an equal amount of calls from people who claim to be Christian where they only wanted to know how big of a church do we have. Do we have a praise band? Do we have a school for their children? Do we meet in our own building?

Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things. But when the majority of the people we talk to won’t even consider coming out to be taught the word, or be a part of a group of people who want to worship God in spirit and in truth because of size, or because we’re not a big "happening" place, then it exposes their real desires.

It’s amusing to me when families are not willing to be a part of a church which faithfully teaches the word of God so that the parents can be equipped to be better husbands and wives as well as better parents to their children, and yet they wouldn’t think twice about a church which feeds the flock pabulum, but they have a "happening" youth group.

Feed our bodies, feed our immediate needs, this crowd in Capernaum tells Jesus. Show us that you’re willing and able to feed us the food we desire, whether it feeds our souls or not.

But Christ responds to them in a way where He shows that what food they eat is important and He has no intention of simply giving what is temporal when their real need is spiritual.

JOH 6:32 "Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven."

In this response Jesus is telling these Jews that the bread their forefathers received in the desert, which came from heaven, didn’t come from Moses. But instead of going into a long dissertation on this bread which filled their stomachs, Jesus immediately explains the bread which these same Jews really ought to be seeking.

In other words, the manna which filled their stomachs, which by the way was given by God miraculously and therefore spiritual in the sense that its origin was from God in heaven, was only to satisfy for a short time. It was not the kind of spiritual bread these Jews, who were talking with Jesus, were making it out to be.

Instead, Jesus tells them about the true bread they need to be seeking, which clearly shows us that our Lord’s ministry, though certainly meeting many physical needs, was never intended for that end. His ministry was to satisfy spiritual needs which are eternal in nature.

JOH 6:32 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.

In one sense both breads, which Jesus addresses, are from heaven or from the hand of the Father. Both originate from the spiritual, but only one will satisfy spiritually. Unfortunately, they were not interested in anything spiritual though they allude to spiritual things, (i.e., the manna).

And again, this is the way it is for a lot of people. They like to talk about spiritual things, but when it comes right down to it they are not interested in what a true spirituality is and what it takes to have true spirituality. They think that touching things which are associated with spirituality will somehow translate to real spirituality.

This is where simply going to church is mistakenly equated to a spiritual relationship with God. This is where being involved in spiritual things like visiting the sick, clothing the naked, feeding the poor are often equated with pleasing God in and of themselves, without submitting to the One by faith who gives spiritual life.

In other words, people can do what appears to be spiritual acts and works, without having any true spirituality. This is what is often referred to as a works oriented approach to God, not unlike what the Jews were doing in keeping the law thinking that that was a spiritual act which gained them righteousness and access to God.

Jesus comes along and bursts their spiritual balloons. While they’re busy looking to themselves and what they can do to earn heaven Jesus tells them to look to a person outside of themselves who is their true spiritual bread.

JOH 6:32 "... it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, for the bread of God is [that which] comes down from heaven and gives life to the world," but He who comes down from heaven.

Again, that which is truly spiritual is not a "that," but a "He;" a person who can give spirituality, or life with the true spiritual God in heaven.

To have life with God is to have true spirituality. After all, God is Spirit, as Jesus told the woman at the well, and all who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. To suggest that anyone can have such spirituality without a relationship with God through Christ is not to understand this spirituality.

Our spiritual lives as we express our faith in God through love and obedience is directly related to our faith in Christ. Not to have Christ is not to have true spiritual life. And not to live day by day in this faith in Christ will certainly effect our ability to express this spirituality in love and obedience which comes from God alone.

This is what it means to live in the Spirit. Living in the Spirit by faith in Christ is to live spiritual lives which always relies on the God who gives this life through Christ.

This is the point Jesus is making to these crowds who think spiritual things are eating and drinking the stuff of this world. But in reality spiritual things have nothing to do with this world, it has everything to do with one who has come into this world from the outside, that is from heaven.

That is why Jesus says in verse 33, "For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

There is no life in this world. It can’t be found in any aspect of the creation of this world. It can’t be found in the people of this world. It can’t be found in the works of the people of this world.

This life comes from the only One who has life in Himself and then who in turn gives it away to the people of this world as a free gift. But notice that Jesus uses language which parallels the language and the thoughts these Jews were stuck in. And so, in one sense Jesus is speaking in parables as He says, "For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven..."

These Jews make the connection to spiritual sounding language without the benefit of being spiritual and so they naturally put a carnal spin to it.

In this one statement we see the deficiency of their perspective of spiritual things. They understand Jesus to say that there is a spiritual bread which is for you that has come from heaven. But they miss the entire point of this parable type language to mean that it is spiritual so as to satisfy their physical need.

Again, this is almost identical to what Jesus spoke to the woman at the well when using this type of language when referring to spiritual water.

JOH 4:14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

She understood Jesus to mean that there was a physical water which was from the hand of God which would satisfy her forever in this life. And as we saw when we studied that section of the Samaritan woman at the well, she was really mocking the Lord in this statement.

In a similar way these Jews were acting in unbelief as they flippantly told Jesus to give them this bread which was supposedly from heaven and would satisfy them physically.

Keep in mind, they were not willing to trust Jesus prior to this when He proved He could provide physical bread. And they were certainly not willing to trust Him now as He promises a spiritual bread.

JOH 6:35 "Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe."

By the way, verse 36 is the key to what the Jews say in verse 34, "from now on give us this bread," which appears to be a real desire for the true spiritual bread Jesus talks about. But our Lord makes it clear in verse 36 that they weren’t serious. "As I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe."

But it’s verse 35 where our Lord identifies which bread He is talking about. "I am the bread of life."

The Jews essentially say, give us this bread for this life, and Jesus says, no way. My bread satisfies your real need for spiritual life. Their bread addresses their stomachs, Jesus’ bread addresses eternal life.

And like the woman at the well where Jesus says, "whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst, Jesus tells these Jews "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."

Again, this is spiritual language which can only be discerned spiritually. It’s kind of like those secret messages we used to get in cereal boxes where you can only read them with those special glasses they put in the box.

You can look at that paper all you want, but until you put those glasses on you won’t have eyes to see. In a similar way, until our spiritual eyes are opened by God to spiritual truths we only see what our physical eyes want to see, and our physical wants and desires, because our sinful nature only wants that part of life.

And so, on the one hand Jesus says, all who come to Me will never go hungry or thirsty, and yet on the other hand He points out that none of these Jews want to come to Him. The result. They will all perish.

But our Lord Jesus is not satisfied with that and neither is the Father. Remember, what Peter told us in his second epistle?

2PE 3:9 "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

God is not some big ogre in the sky delighting in these types of people who reject Him so He can squash them. It grieves our Lord when people reject Him because He knows there is no life outside of Himself. But He also loves people too much not to do something about it to bring us back to Himself.

JOH 6:37 "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
40 For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

"All that the Father gives me will come to me." One of the things we see here is that it is the Father who desires a relationship with people. It is the Father who has sent the Son to accomplish this. And it is the Father who has chosen a people for Himself whom Jesus is coming into this world to bring to the Father.

People sometimes get all wigged out about this aspect of the Father’s will when it comes to Him choosing us, or electing us. But it is something the Scriptures clearly teach us.

EPH 1:4 "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love
5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will -
6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."

EPH 1:11 "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory."

Jesus is saying in our text that God has a plan to redeem sinful men. Before the first man was created God had chosen us in Christ to be redeemed from our sin, which is to say that God knew Adam and Eve would sin when given the choice to obey or rebel.

So, does this mean that men don’t have a choice if they haven’t been chosen by God before the foundations of the world? Not at all. All men have a choice and all men are responsible before God to repent of their sin and embrace the Messiah. But not all men will, not because they haven’t been chosen, but because they choose to continue to pursue their sin nature and its desires.

But there is the good news that God knows His own and will make sure that nothing will keep them from Him. "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away."

This is a beautiful statement of the surety of our salvation. If the Father has given a people to the Son then nothing in heaven or earth will keep us from Him. And of all that the Father has given to the Son He will never drive any of them away. All who come to Christ will be welcomed with open arms.

John Calvin makes an interesting statement about this whole issue of election and predestination. And it’s ironic that he’s the one usually associated with a view which some say is fatalistic as it relates to all of this. He says this.

"The election of God in itself is hidden and secret. The Lord manifests it by the calling with which He honors us. Therefore, they are mad who seek their own or others’ salvation in the labyrinth of predestination; for if God has elected us to the end that we may believe, take away faith and election will be imperfect."

In other words, if even our faith is a gift of God which we can’t take credit for, it is still up to the individual to believe. Election without the faith of the individual believing is no election at all, because it would be an election which is deficient in its ability to accomplish the will of God.

Though God secures the end He also ordains the means where man must give and hear the gospel and then must believe on that truth if he is to be saved.

God doesn’t believe for us. Each individual believes on his or her own, albeit as they utilize the gift of God by the faith which God supplies. Election and predestination are truths we cannot avoid, but neither should we avoid the very clear teaching of the free will of men which puts the responsibility to choose God squarely on their own shoulders.

ROM 1:20 "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

I’ve shared this before, but I like the way Pastor Chuck Smith addresses this whole issue of election and the chosen of God, as those in the world might argue that they haven’t been chosen.

Pastor Chuck’s response is, would you like to know if you’re chosen? Then believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the final responsibility as it relates to man’s culpability ultimately belongs to sinful men. We are all guilty and can blame no one but ourselves when it comes to our rejection of Christ.

We can’t blame God by saying that He chose that person and didn’t choose me. All men have sinned and all men deserve to be separated from God. But God, in His mercy and grace has sent His only begotten Son into the world to die for the penalty of the sins of the entire world.

And Jesus is saying that His mission is not without purpose which includes the eternal plan that was foreordained by the Father in eternity to redeem a people for Himself. Jesus came to the earth to accomplish that plan, that loving and caring plan for people who chose to reject God.

JOH 6:38 "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me."

This does not mean to suggest that Jesus had a different will from the Father, only that the Father’s will is His will. And nothing will keep our Lord from accomplishing the Father’s will.

And what is that will? What is that purpose which the Father has ordained long before the creation of this world and the creation of men?

JOH 6:39 "And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day."

Have you ever wondered, if after you came to Christ, if you could lose your salvation? Have you ever wondered if there would be something that could keep you from seeing your God after you placed your faith in Christ alone for your salvation?

Well, consider this. If God has chosen you before the foundations of the world and you have embraced Christ by faith then it is God who has made sure you will come to Him and it is God who holds you. If God’s salvation is so fragile that He cannot hold on to you when you or I are prone to wander, then what kind of a God is He?

That doesn’t mean that we can’t find ourselves outside of God’s will at times in our lives, but that is very different from being outside of His life. If He has sealed us with His Spirit as He has sealed us for the day of redemption then what can separate us from Him?

ROM 8:38 "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

But so as to give us the confidence that not only will nothing separate us from the love of Christ, John goes on to say that nothing will separate us from the Father who sent Christ.

JOH 6:40 "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

It doesn’t get any better than this. Whether it’s the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, they all agree that once you have placed your faith in Christ alone for your salvation, there is every confidence that God will bring us home. We need never fear that God will renege on His promise.

1JO 5:13 "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life."

Do we know that we have eternal life? Then may we walk in that life in the power of the Spirit out of thankfulness to our God so as to bring Him all glory and honor.

EPH 5:8 "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light
9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)
10 and find out what pleases the Lord."

May that be the hallmark of the life of every believer; wanting to please the Lord.

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