Ephesians 6:17; Satisfaction is only gained with Christ.

Class Outline:

Thursday June 2, 2022

 

Christ is to be in our conscious mind our constant companion - remembered and loved and followed.

 

Christ said that if anyone loves Him they would keep His commands and He and the Father would make their home with him (JOH 14:23). Would we like to walk through life in the home of the Father and the Son or in some claptrap of our own making?

 

We must be wholly His. To love Him is to desire all of His commands since all are Him.

 

Joh 6 is such a vital chapter in the word of God since it graphically sets up the difference between what mankind wants for himself and what God wants for mankind. There is a barrier between these two poles, and that barrier still exists to some extent in believers.

 

When Jesus fed the five thousand (and the four thousand), He gave them all the same simple fare, bread and fish.

 

The same substance is the only thing that satisfies men and women from any age or culture or race - living bread and living water.

 

Different cultures at different times develop their own kind of cuisine. But God offers the same word, Spirit, and life to all of us.

 

If you haven’t eaten for many days, and someone offers you bread, you are not going to hold out for something more interesting on the palate. If you haven’t had anything to drink for two days and someone offers you water, you will not ask for Perrier or raspberry Gatorade. That is not to say that what God offers is more simple than the world. It is to say that what the world offers in a lie because it cannot satisfy, and only what God offers will satisfy.

 

There is another unique aspect to God’s fare of bread and fish and living water. God commands us to eat and drink all of it. If we are of the habit of eating some and spitting out the rest, we will not find satisfaction.

 

“We must beware then of looking with repugnance on what Christ calls us to, as if it were a superfluity that may reasonably be postponed to more urgent and essential demands; of as if He were introducing our nature to some region for which it was not originally intended, and exciting within us spurious and fanciful desires which are really alien to us as human beings. This is a common thought. It is a common thought that religion is not an essential but a luxury. But in point of fact all that Christ calls us to, perfect reconcilement with God, devoted service to His will, purity of character, - these are all essentials for us, so that until we attain them we have not begun to live, but are merely nibbling at the very gate of life. God, in inviting us to these things, is not putting a strain on our nature it can never bear. He is proposing to impart new strength and joy to our nature. He is not summoning us to a joy that is too high for us, and that we can never rejoice in, but is recalling us to that condition in which alone we can live with comfort and health, and in which alone we can permanently delight. If we cannot now desire what Christ offers, if we have no appetite for it, if all that He speaks of seems uninviting and dreary, then this is symptomatic of a fatal loss of appetite on our part.” [Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, p. 213-214].

 

God is the only one who can satisfy the soul of man. Man’s ignorance of this leads him to try other ways.

 

JOH 6:26-27

Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. 27 "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal."

 

It is a testimony to all of us, all of fallen mankind, that we followed Jesus to the other side of the lake, not because He was offering us eternal life and eternal fulfillment, but because He made a lot of bread. When He pointed out that they were more impressed with full bellies than they were with His works, they pressed Jesus as to how they might do God’s work, to which He replied …

 

JOH 6:28-29

They said therefore to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" 29 Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

 

When He pointed out to them that the work of God was to believe in Him, they demanded a further sign. To accept Him alone as the works of God drew them right to the water that they should drink it. I’m sure they had in mind some kind of debate, but Jesus drew them right to the water and said, “Drink it.” Not convinced in Him alone as the source of life, they asked for a further sign, not because they were so far impressed with His signs, but because they put themselves in the seat of judgment and demanded that Jesus prove Himself to them.

 

JOH 6:30-33

They said therefore to Him, "What then do You do for a sign, that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform? 31 "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.'" 32 Jesus therefore said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. 33 "For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world."

 

In fitting with the type of people that they have already been shown to be, they imagined that Jesus was talking about a new kind of manna. In fact, the rabbis interpreted PSA 72:16 to mean that when the Messiah came He would renew the gift of manna.

 

PSA 72:16

May there be abundance of grain in the earth on top of the mountains;

 

JOH 6:34

They said therefore to Him, “Lord, evermore give us this bread.”

 

Let us not miss the import of this passage. Mankind wants a full belly, a perfect marriage and love life, a superabundance of money and power, perfect security, and on and on the list goes. But man cannot achieve any of it. When life is going along fine, we delude ourselves into thinking that we are self-sufficient, but as soon as pain comes, and it will, our pretense is removed and we discover that something is wrong, that something needs to change. It turns out that God uses pain to speak to us, to in fact yell at us. We can even ignore pleasure as we are calmy experiencing it, but pain cannot be ignored - it must be immediately attended to.

 

In our pain and suffering all supports melt away. We find ourselves, if we’re honest to ourselves about us and our situation, that we are helpless and nothing and that we really have no one, at least anyone that can really do anything for us.

 

This is an incredible thing that God has done for us, for in a small way, just so that we can get a glimpse, we are Christlike when He hung on the cross alone and had nobody and suffered under a deaf sky to which He cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me.” This probably could only be a realization for someone who has already become a believer, but perhaps every unbeliever feels a pulse of it. Of course, Jesus suffered in this way as a perfectly righteous Man and infinite God while we suffer this way as sinners, and so they are not close in merit, but our own pain when it has us at our weakest, gives us a small taste of Christ’s sacrifice, and glory to God, after this we are resurrected to life like we have never experienced. Perhaps this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote:

 

Php 3:10-11

that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

 

“Death and Rebirth - go down and go up - it is the key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.” [C.S. Lewis, Miracles]