Bread of Heaven
Opening Prayer
Lord God, please remove any limitations, or spiritual blinders, that may keep me from understanding Your Word.
Read John 6:41-59
[41] At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” [42] They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” [43] “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. [44] “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. [45] It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. [46] No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. [47] Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. [48] I am the bread of life. [49] Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. [50] But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. [51] I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” [52] Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” [53] Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. [54] Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. [56] Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. [57] Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. [58] This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” [59] He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Reflect
What benefit does Jesus offer as the Bread of Life?The characters in this encounter now change. Those described as “the Jews” reappear and the atmosphere becomes much more hard-headed and aggressive. Though John refers to “the Jews” several times in his Gospel (e.g. 5:16), they cannot be all of the Jewish people since both Jesus’ disciples and many of the people whom we’ve met earlier in this chapter are also Jews. It may be best to think of them as religious leaders, since their concerns are religiously motivated. They seem to know something about Jesus and his family background (42). Indeed Jesus’ origins are often under discussion, perhaps not surprisingly (see 7:41-43). The “grumbling” that Jesus refers to in v. 43 is very reminiscent of the reaction of Israel in Exodus 16 when, first, they hadn’t enough to eat; then, they didn’t like what they had to eat. Things never change! Jesus presses their understanding further. He is the bread of life (48) and he insists that they must eat his very flesh and drink his very blood (53). The controversy which Jesus caused has echoed down through the centuries. Here “the Jews” fail to understand that their God has become a man of flesh and blood—human just like them!
Apply
Meditate on this passage again, asking yourself what it means for you to feast on Jesus, the Bread of Life.
Closing prayer
Lord God, there is so much I still don’t understand about Jesus. Help me to live by what I do understand.
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