NAMES AND TITLES OF CHRIST
BREAD OF LIFE
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 6:35
JANUARY 11, 1998
In the Bible, miracles are called signs, wonders, and powers. We can understand why miracles would be called wonders. We can understand why miracles would become powers. But why are miracles called signs? The Greek word is “semeion.” This word was used to describe something that pointed to a reality beyond itself, something greater than itself. We are to understand then that oftentimes in the Bible, miracles are signs. They point to something beyond the miracle, some truth greater than the miracle. This is why so often where our Lord Jesus Christ did a miracle, He followed it up with a teaching to understand the sign that the miracle was. This is the case in John’s gospel, the 6th chapter where we have the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. You know the story, how Jesus was gathered with His disciples on a grassy hillside looking down on the Sea of Tiberius, the Sea of Galilee, and a crowd gathered. And how Jesus took a little boy’s lunch, five small barley loaves and two fish, and with that small meal, Jesus fed 5,000 people until they could eat no more. The Bible tells us 12 baskets of food were left over.
This miracle was a sign, “semeion,” pointing to a deeper reality, to a greater truth, something greater than the miracle itself. Jesus explains this in John, chapter 6, when He gives Himself this title, “I Am the Bread of Life.” This morning we seek to understand what this means, to say that Jesus Christ is The Bread of Life. We have two teachings because Jesus was using this title in two different ways.
First of all, He was using this title in reference to His word. When He said, “I Am the Bread of Life,” He was saying “My word is bread which gives you life. My word is bread, food for your soul.” Now, the Torah in Judaism was sometimes called bread. The Hebrew word “lehem” was used with reference to the Torah. The Torah was bread. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the word “artos,” the Greek word artos for bread is used to describe the Torah. Sometimes the Torah referred to the decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Other times the Torah referred to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Other times the word Torah was used to refer to the whole of the Old Testament scriptures but, you see, always the word Torah described the word of God, and the word of God is bread, bread that gives life, bread that feeds the soul.
Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God.” Jesus is the mouth of God. He is the word of God. He is lehem, artos, bread which gives life, bread for our souls.
We have His word in this great book and this book is bread for the soul. This book, the words of Christ, gives life. In this book we have the words of Christ as recorded in the four gospels and we have the words that Christ spoke through His apostles as He inspired them.
I noticed this week on television there was the movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty.” I did not see the movie this week. I know the story. I’m sure most of you know the story. Historians tell us that in the year 1787, William Bly who was a lieutenant at the time, took the Bounty across the South Pacific in search of breadfruit trees. He had no problem recruiting sailors for that trip because sailors believed that it would simply be a kind of paradise experience.
William Bly chose his young friend, Fletcher Christian to be the second in command on that voyage. The Bounty sailed across the South Pacific and came to Tahiti. The Bounty anchored there for six months and the men on the Bounty had a great time. But then it became time to leave, and William Bly tried to gather his men that they might leave, and three men didn’t want to go. They wanted to stay with the native women and so they deserted. William Bly went after them, apprehended them, and he scourged them, he disciplined them, and the Bounty set sail. But there was a dark mood that came over the crew. Things were not the same after that. It didn’t seem like a pleasure cruise to Paradise anymore. The men began to grumble. They began to complain as the days passed. Then there came that day, April 28, 1789. On that day, the most famous mutiny in history took place, the mutiny on the Bounty.
You know how Fletcher Christian and the mutineers took William Bly and those who were faithful to him and just put them overboard, put them into an overcrowded lifeboat. Incredibly, William Bly sailed that lifeboat 3,600 miles across the ocean to safety. You know that Fletcher Christian and the mutineers took the Bounty and returned to Tahiti where they kidnapped some of the women, took for themselves slaves and then they set sail on the Bounty, and they sailed 1,000 miles until they came to an uninhabited little island called Pitcairn Island.
Fletcher Christian and the mutineers settled there, and they had a little community. They bore children and everything seemed to be going fine and then it began to unravel as they discovered how to make whisky from a native plant on that little island. They began to drink to excess and in drunkenness there was quarreling and fighting and subsequently murder and those murders were combined with disease until finally only one of those mutineers remained, only one man, a man named Alexander Smith. So, there was Alexander Smith on Pitcairn Island surrounded by many women and by many children. He would have just lived a debauched life except for the fact that he found, one day, the Bible, the Bible that had been on the Bounty.
He had never read the Bible and Alexander Smith began to read the Bible. As he read the Bible, he met Jesus Christ and believe in Jesus Christ. He found the bread of life. Through Christ he found eternal life. Through his word, he began to feed his soul and then he took the Bible, and he began to teach the women and the children that were with him on that island so that in the year 1808, when a ship called the Topaz arrived at Pitcairn Island, they found a Christian community living in harmony and peace. That Bible that had been on Pitcairn Island was taken to the United States and it was displayed for a time. In 1950 it was returned to Pitcairn Island and it’s there today on that island in a small museum that is there, a testimony to the power of His word to give life. Bread for the soul. The power of His word to transform lives and to transform cultures.
In U.S. News and World Report this past week, there was an article on the use of the Bible in the context of public schools. U.S. News and World Report made the statement that in the 1960s, religion was basically eradicated from the public school system with the banning of school prayers, with the government’s proclamation that the Ten Commandments could no longer be displayed in school classrooms. The wall of separation between church and state became almost absolute. Religion virtually disappeared from public school classrooms. In fact, U.S. News and World Report tells us that a study has been done of 60 textbooks used in the public-school systems and they found that religion is conspicuous by its absence from those textbooks, even history books. I mean you would think from reading those textbooks that we are a nation where religion just simply no longer exists.
In those public-school textbooks, you can read about the pilgrims with no reference to God. You can read about the pilgrims and not read about their faith in God and the love of God that prompted their actions and their lives, inspired their lives. You can read about Joan of Arc and there’s no mention of her visions, no mention of her devotion to God. So, you see, God has been scripted out of many of these public-school books. God has been scripted out. You’re left with a distortion of historical truth. You’re left with a distortion of historical truth because throughout history so many women and men were inspired by love of God, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln. So many were motivated and prompted and inspired by love of God. But, you see, it’s all left out. What the ACLU does not understand is that when religion is scripted out, you wind up indoctrinating children in secularism. You can’t help it. The irony is that in the very effort to not indoctrinate in religion, you wind up indoctrinating in atheism or in secularism.
Bill Clinton and the Clinton administration is quoted in this U.S. News and World Report as saying that the First Amendment was never meant to make the public schools a religion-free zone. That’s a good statement. That is true. There are some changes that are being made and perhaps in the future the Bible will be examined at least as history, but I promise you, we’re never going to reach a time in this nation, in this culture, when His word is presented as bread of life. We’re never going to read a time in this nation where, in our public-school classrooms, His word is presented as bread for the soul. It isn’t going to happen. And that’s why I thank God for churches. I thank God for this church. I thank God for the hundreds of thousands of churches in this nation and around the world where His word is taught and explained and proclaimed. I thank God for Sunday Schools in this church and all over the world where His word, the bread of life, is given and offered.
But. you understand, churches are not enough. Sunday Schools are not enough because we need to receive His word daily. We need the bread of life daily just as physically you need food every day, so the soul spiritually needs food every day. This year, as we enter 1998, I know God would like you to resolve, to make a commitment, that you are going to daily spend time in His word for your soul’s sake because His word is the bread of life. He challenges you by His Spirit this morning to make this commitment, that in this year you’re going to make a change, you’re going to start reading the scriptures, His word, every single day that you might feed your soul.
There’s a second teaching this morning and there’s a second meaning of this title, the Bread of Life. Jesus basically presents both of these meanings in John, chapter 6. The second meaning is His body. When Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” He was referring to His word and He was also referring to His body. He makes the statement, “I am the bread of life” in two verses. He makes that statement in two verses, He makes that statement in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life.” In the subsequent verses from 6:35 to 6:47, the reference is to the word of God. “I am the bread of life” and He’s referring to the word which feeds the soul. But in verse 48, He again makes the statement, “I am the bread of life” and then from verse 48 to the end of the chapter, He begins to use this title the Bread of Life in a new sense where it refers not to His word but to His body.
And so, we come to John 6:51 where Jesus makes this statement. “This is the bread I give for the life of the world, My flesh.” And then you come to John 6:53 where Jesus makes this extremely difficult statement, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” I don’t think any verse has been more controversial than this verse in holy scripture, John 6:53. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” What does this mean? Unfortunately, in many segments of the Christian world, this verse has been taken with a crude literalism and it has led to the theological doctrine called “Transubstantiation.” That doctrine teaches that the bread in communion is supernaturally transformed into the physical flesh of Christ when you partake of it. The wine in communion is supernaturally transformed into the literal and physical blood of Christ in communion so that when you partake of the bread and the cup, according to Transubstantiation, you are intaking the literal body and literal blood of Christ.
It is a tragic doctrine because it’s not the bread and the cup which blesses but it’s the cross that blesses and it’s the one who died there that blesses. I so much want you to understand this this morning, that Jesus did not intend us to take those words with a crude literalism and He says as much because you then come to John 6:63 where we’re told that the disciples struggled with this statement and so Jesus said to them, that they didn’t need to struggle because He said, “The Spirit gives life and the flesh counts for nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.” Jesus wanted the disciples to understand that He wasn’t speaking literally and physically. He was speaking spiritually and it’s not the flesh which gives life but it’s the Spirit which gives life.
You see, I think there are many Christians who come to communion with superstition, a kind of religious superstition. The word superstition comes from the Latin word superstition which means “to stand in awe over” and I think there are Christians who stand in awe over the bread and over the cup rather than stand in awe of Christ Himself.
You know, religious superstition in times past was very common. This was certainly true in the middle ages. Historians tell us that in the 13th century, men returned to Europe from the Crusades. They returned from Jerusalem. They returned from Constantinople, and they came back to Europe bringing relics, bringing allegedly sacred objects from the Holy Land. Priests and bishops sought those relics. They sought them for their churches, for their cathedrals, because they wanted their churches and cathedrals to become holy sites, places of veneration and pilgrimage.
And so, historians tell us the Crusaders returned to Europe bringing relics, sacred objects, from the Holy Land, and these allegedly sacred objects—many of them were bizarre. I mean they came bringing barbs from the crown of Christ. They came bringing splinters from the cross of Christ. They came bringing feathers from the wings of the Angel Gabriel. They came with the finger of doubting Thomas, the finger he had placed in the wounded side of the risen Christ.
At the church at Haverstot, it was claimed that they had the sponge and the reed used to offer vinegar to Christ on the cross. At the church at St. Omer, it was claimed that they had the lance that was used to pierce the side of Christ after His crucifixion when we’re told that blood and water poured out. At the Cathedral of Amiens, we’re told that they had the head of John the Baptist in a silver bowl.
Three different churches in France claimed to have the full corpse of Mary Magdalene. St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome claimed to have the bodies of Peter and of Paul. Other churches throughout Europe claimed to have Noah’s beard or the stone of Jacob mentioned in Genesis, chapter 28, or a piece of the sepulcher of Christ, or the staff of Moses. There was the robe of Christ, the Mandylion, the shroud. There was the cup of Christ, the chalice, the Holy Grail. All of these things were venerated and the objects of pilgrimage.
We should not be surprised that on October 13, in the year 1247, the blood of Christ appeared in London, England, guaranteed by the Crusaders, sealed by the patriarch of the city of Jerusalem and by the archbishops of the Holy Land. King Henry III did not sleep the night of October 12. He was so excited. That next day, with a royal entourage and full regalia and with a host of priests, he marched through the streets of London, from St. Paul’s Cathedral to Westminster Abbey, carrying the alleged blood of Christ in a vase. The crowds gathered and they marveled. What was all of this about? It was all about religious superstition, the belief that if they could see a fragment of something or someone deemed holy, they would somehow be blessed—if they could see or touch it. Religious superstition.
I promise you there are some people in the Christian world who approach communion that way. That vase held aloft by Henry III did not contain the blood of Christ. This cup that we use this morning does not contain the blood of Christ. The cup of blessing which Jesus used in the Upper Room the night before the cross contained wine. It did not contain His blood. It was consecrated to represent His blood as, indeed, this is consecrated to represent His blood, but we don’t want to approach communion with some kind of superstition. We want to understand it’s not the cup and the bread that saves and gives life. It’s Christ. He saves and gives life. His body is the Bread of Life, broken on the cross, His blood shed for us in order that we might find forgiveness and atonement and life itself.
If you don’t believe in the cross, if you don’t believe in Christ, it won’t do you any good to partake of this bread or this cup. It won’t do you any good at all because it’s Christ who is the Bread of Life and we receive that life through faith in Him and in what He did on that cross so long ago when His body was broken for us, and His blood was shed for us. Whenever you take the cup, you remember the sacrifice He made. Whenever you take the bread, you remember the sacrifice He made, His body broken, His blood shed and you come in gratitude and in recommitment, reconsecration of your life to His service. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.