<\/a><\/p>\n The Bread of Life<\/p>\n
Grace,
\nmercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior,
\nJesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes
\nfrom the Gospel, which was read earlier.<\/p>\n
Most of us
\nhave heard the saying, \u201cA cat has nine lives.\u201d It\u2019s not true. A cat has only one
\nlife. Only human beings have, or are
\nmeant to have<\/u>, more than one life. God intends that you and I have lives, plural. God intends that we have bodily life,
\ncharacterized by breathing, thinking, and muscular activity. He gives us this life through our
\nparents. God also intends that we have
\nspiritual life as well; the life of God Himself, characterized by loving God
\nwith everything we\u2019ve got and loving our neighbor as ourself. This life God gives us, and nourishes,
\nthrough Baptism, the Lord\u2019s Supper, and the Gospel message of salvation. In God\u2019s design, we are to be born and then
\nbe born again. In fact, unless the
\nsecond birth occurs, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus once told
\nNicodemus.<\/p>\n
Logically
\nthen, designed for two kinds of life, bodily and spiritual, a human being needs
\ntwo kinds of bread, or food, bodily food and spiritual food. Today, we hear Jesus impress upon us this
\ntruth: JESUS, THE BREAD OF LIFE, IS THE FOOD THAT ENDURES TO ETERNAL LIFE.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today, we
\nmay or not be overly concerned with what kind of food that we eat, just that
\neat. A person on the street isn\u2019t too
\npicky about eating scraps of food they find in the trash or leftover food that
\na caring person gives to them. They eat
\nthe food because that is the only food that they have at their disposal. Children, if given the choice, would probably
\nwant to eat McDonald\u2019s everyday over eating fruits and vegetables. What we fail to understand is that this is
\nfood of the body; food that will ultimately pass away. What if we ate prime rib and filet mignon all
\nof our life? Will that sustain our souls? Of course not! But we don\u2019t see it that way. We\u2019d rather have the good food because for
\nsome reason, we think that the better the food we have, the better live that we
\nwill have. That, however is not true,
\nbut it is sadly the way that some think. We need the bread that gives eternal spiritual life, not just the bread
\nthat gives bodily life. <\/p>\n
We need
\ndaily food. This is evident from the
\naccount of the feeding of the five thousand just prior to our text. This is evident from Israel\u2019s need for food after they left Egypt;
\nGod provided manna and quail to the Israelites in the wilderness. This is evident in the Fourth Petition of the
\nLord\u2019s Prayer; \u201cGive us this day our daily bread.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a lover
\nof video games, ever since playing PONG for the first time. One of the video games that I\u2019m playing now
\nis a game where people are stranded on a desert island. They need to build shelters, harvest food and
\ncare for the sick. If they don\u2019t have
\nenough food, it will say something like \u201cBob is worried about food.\u201d In the game, Bob is worried about food for
\nthe body, not food for the soul. We are
\noften like Bob, worried only about food for the body and not food for the
\nsoul. We cannot live merely by bread
\nalone. Why not? Because we have another mouth to feed,
\nanother life to sustain; our spiritual life.<\/p>\n
When God
\ncreated the first people of the human race, He endowed them with both kinds of
\nlife, bodily and spiritual. When Adam
\nand Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, they immediately lost their
\nspiritual life, the life of God. As God
\nhad warned them, they died that very day \u2013 and eventually they would lose their
\nbodily life as well. By committing
\nspiritual suicide, our first parents spiritually murdered the whole human race
\nby causing sin to enter the world. Every
\nperson born into this world since is alive in the body, but dead in the soul. David writes in Psalm 51, \u201cSurely I was sinful at birth, sinful from
\nthe time my mother conceived me.\u201d<\/em> Paul writes in Romans, \u201cFor the
\nwages of sin is death.\u201d<\/em> We are
\nsinful from the start. With that sin
\nbrings death. Every person born into
\nthis world is sinful, whether we want to admit it or not. Every person in this world will die, whether
\nwe want to admit it or not. That is a
\nreality due to what happened in the Garden of Eden. Damnation is what we deserve, hell is where
\nwe are destined, game over. Fortunately
\nfor us, what Paul wrote in Romans doesn\u2019t end there. \u201cFor
\nthe wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus
\nour Lord.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nJesus
\nChrist, the Son of God, came into our world as a human being to give us this
\nspiritual life again which was once ours. He achieved this goal by dying on the cross and by rising again from the
\ngrave. This was something that was done for us<\/u><\/strong>, not by us!<\/u><\/strong> Even though
\nJesus has made available the bread of life, His very body and blood for us, we
\nare still dead in our transgressions and sins. Just as a corpse cannot raise itself and come to the table for a meal,
\nso we are unable to raise ourselves and acquire the bread of life which gives us
\nspiritual life.<\/p>\nYet for
\nsome reason, we think we can. Even in
\nour text for today, those present asked Jesus, \u201cWhat must we do to do the works God requires?\u201d<\/em> The rich young ruler asked Jesus, \u201cWhat must I do to inherit eternal life?\u201d<\/em> The jailer at Philippi asked Paul and Silas, \u201cSirs, what must I
\ndo to be saved?\u201d<\/em> The answer to those
\nquestions: nothing, we can do nothing to be saved, because salvation happens
\nfrom outside of us. Jesus tells us that \u201capart from me you can do nothing.\u201d<\/em> Nothing that we do or try to do will sustain
\nour souls. Only the bread of life, who
\nis Christ Jesus, can sustain us. Luther
\ntells us in the meaning of the Third Article of the Apostles\u2019 Creed: \u201cI cannot
\nby my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ\u2026or come to Him.\u201d<\/p>\nOnly Jesus
\ncan provide the bread that gives external spiritual life. Jesus warns us in our text, \u201cDo not work for food that spoils, but for
\nfood that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.\u201d<\/em> The food of this world is just that, of this
\nworld. It\u2019s materialism, worldliness,
\npursuit only of the bread of this life. We gather all we can in this world to make us feel good about ourselves
\nor to fill some void in our lives. But
\nwhat good does it do us? We can\u2019t take
\nit with us when we die. And the things
\nthat we do have, they only get replaced by bigger and better items. But in the end, they do us no good. They can\u2019t bring about salvation, they can\u2019t
\nbring about forgiveness of sins and they can\u2019t bring about life everlasting. Only the Son of Man can give us \u201cfood that endures to eternal life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe bread
\nof life that is given to us, we eat it when we partake of the means of grace:
\nBaptism and the Lord\u2019s Supper. Whoever
\neats this bread from heaven receives the \u201cfood
\nthat endures to eternal life.\u201d<\/em> We \u201cwill never go hungry.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\nSince Jesus
\nis the bread of life and since He assures us that whoever eats this bread will
\nnever go hungry, what shall we say to these things? What better response than the cry of our
\ntext: \u201cSir, \u2026 from now on give us this
\nbread.\u201d<\/em> In the name of Jesus, amen.<\/p>\nNow the
\npeace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through
\nfaith in Christ Jesus. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Text: John 6:24-35 The Bread of Life Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. The text for the sermon this morning comes from the Gospel, which was read earlier. Most of us have heard the saying, \u201cA cat has nine lives.\u201d It\u2019s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revtucher.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}