“Jesus Offers Enduring Blessings” John
Intro.: When I
was a little boy I saw an advertisement on the back of a comic book for a
treasure chest of fishing gear. For a
mere $19.95 I could receive 4 fishing poles, 4 reels, an assortment of flies,
lures, hooks, bobbers, sinkers, and multiple packages of bait. So I convinced my dad to pay me $20 for
pulling all the weeds from our huge horseshoe driveway (which was in fact
pretty generous since he was going to make me do it anyway). Well, after a couple of weeks of clawing
weeds out of the stone, I reached out my bloody fingers to receive the payment,
and promptly sent it away for that gold mine of fishing tackle. What a disappointment that was! When it arrived the bait was all rotten, the
poles were each about two feet long, and the reels did not work. It was all cheap junk that did not last.
All that work for what turned out to be
nothing at all. In today’s Gospel our
Lord Jesus, applies this lesson to us all as He invites us to stop wasting our
lives working for what will not last, and instead receive the enduring
blessings He offers us. Like the people
of our Gospel we are guilty of spending our…
I.
Life In Pursuit of Spoiled Goods.
(vv. 24-27a, 30-31)
A. As our Gospel begins we find the same crowd
who the day before had been miraculously fed by a couple of fish and a few
loaves of bread, traveling “to
Jesus knew exactly why they were looking
for him. He tells them: “You are looking for me, not because you saw
miraculous signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” (v.26) They did not really
come for Jesus at all. They came because he fed them, and they hoped that he
would feed them again. He had met their physical need. Their focus was not on
Christ or the meaning of the miraculous signs, but only on the results: He could give them the food they wanted. Their pursuit of Jesus,
and their pursuit of life was for spoiled goods. All their labors were wasted on temporal
pleasures, and their loyalty was to the desire of their flesh. But Jesus warns them that none of this will last. No matter how many times he feeds them with
earthly bread, they will get hungry again.
B. What about you? Have you figured out what you want out of
life; your reason for eating, sleeping, and breathing? Have you thought about what it is for which
you are working, and why you are here looking for Jesus?
Too often we behave like the crowd in our
Gospel lesson; so caught up in ourselves and our hunger for earthly bread that
we don’t even notice that Jesus is no longer there in our lives. Then, like them, we go searching for Him for
the wrong reasons. In our pursuit of
spoiled goods we go looking for Jesus so that we can eat and have our
fill. Our first priority becomes food
for our stomachs and clothes for our bodies, and Jesus is just the one who can
give it to us. We fool ourselves into thinking
that if we come to worship, pray, and work hard enough at being good people
then He will give us what we want. We
will eat and have our fill of youthfulness, wealth, success, romance, pleasure,
and everything that we think makes life worth living.
C. In our Gospel Jesus warns the crowd that
came looking for him then, and this crowd here
today: Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal
life, which the Son of Man will give you.
On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” (v. 27)
Even after this warning the people continued
to call out for more signs from Jesus for the benefit of their bellies. They reminded Jesus of the way “Moses”
provided them with manna in the desert, forgetting that each day brought hunger
and what they received could not be stored up for the future, because by the
next day it would become spoiled and maggot infested.
So it is for us when our lives and our
relationship with Christ is all about getting our fill of earthly bread
securing treasures that tarnish and rust.
To each of us who gather here today, weary of the spoiled goods which
have resulted from our wasted labors, Jesus comes to invite us into a…
II. Life Gifted With Enduring Blessings. (vv. 27, 33, 35)
A. To all of us who are hungry and thirsty Jesus
says: “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal
life, which the Son of Man will give you.
On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval…” (vv.27)( 33, 35)
Led by the Holy Spirit we are here not
because of what Jesus can miraculously do to feed us with earthly bread, but
because of what that miracle says about Him; that the Father has placed his
seal of approval on Jesus to be Christ our Savior. By His Works we know that He is not only the
giver of everlasting, spiritual food, but the very bread from heaven sent to
earth so that through faith in Him we may receive eternal life, through the
forgiveness of sins.
He is the one approved by God to suffer
hunger in the wilderness and to overcome the assaults of the devil through His obedience
for us. He is the one approved by God to
suffer a dying thirst as our substitute upon the cross to receive the
punishment for our sins. And He is the
one approved of God to be the bread who would not spoil in the grave, but rise
again in victory to be our life-giving bread.
B. All the things of this life are destined to
spoil, tarnish and fade away, but not Christ and His Word. They will endure forever and bring enduring
blessings to those who pursue them, as Jesus says in our Gospel: “The
bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world… 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.” ( vv.
33&35)
Jesus offers to deliver us from the
disappointments of a life spent in pursuit of spoiled goods. He offers us a truly satisfying life, an
abundant, eternal life filled with enduring blessings. He promises us that when we come to Him in
faith, believing that in Him we are forgiven, reconciled, and made a new
creation, we will never suffer hunger or thirst, again. We will be filled with every spiritual
blessing here, and will eat of the tree of life in the paradise of heaven. What a wonderful promise!
But how can we get this bread, and
discover such a blessed life? This is
the best part of all it is not something we have to earn, it is God’s gift
received by faith. Jesus makes no
demands of us, but simply…
III. Jesus Invites Us To Be Blessed. (vv. 28-29, 32-35)
A. In our lesson the natural response of the
people to Christ’s offer of a life of enduring blessings is, “What must we do to do the works God
requires?” (v.28) Isn’t
that just like us? Our best friend
offers us a wonderful gift from the heart, and we pull out our wallet and ask, “What do I owe you
for that? Here, let me give you
something for that?” and the love of the friend is insulted.
This is the kind of religion that resides
in the heart of everyone who does not know God in Christ. What do I have to do to please God, and win
His favor? Which works does He
require? The religions of the law
prosper as they prey upon people’s faulty belief that certain sacrifices, a particular
pattern of obedience, or some form of morality will earn them blessings from
God. Even some of us allow ourselves to
fall back into this slavery to the law, by constantly asking, “What must I
do?” But the Bible is clear that while
there are many works we should do, many things that God wants us to do,
anything we think we must do will leave us living for spoiled goods.
B. Jesus’ response to the people who wanted to
know the works that God required of them to receive a life of enduring
blessings was, “The work of God is
this: to believe in the one he has
sent.” (v.29) With these few
words He delivers them and us from our life of futile labors. We don’t have to guess what “works God
requires” or struggle to find “signs” of His blessing. The only work we need is the work of God in
us to bring us to faith in Christ as our Savior, and the only sign we need is
the sign of the cross. That sign with
which we were sealed in our baptism to be the forever blessed children of God,
that sign offered us in the words of absolution, that sign carved into the
table and imprinted upon the bread of life we receive in the Lord’s
Supper. With that work of God and sign
of the cross we have it all.
It is not what Moses did, nor what we do,
which brings us a life of enduring
blessings, but what we believe the Father has done for us through His Son. As Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you bread from
heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he
who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. 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.”
(vv.32-33, 35) By grace God the Father carried out His
promise to send His Son to bring life to the world. By grace God the Son came down from heaven to
perform the work necessary for our salvation through His holy life, innocent
death, and glorious resurrection. And by
grace God the Holy Spirit came to us to bring us to faith, so that by believing
in the all God’s saving works, we would be delivered from a life of spoiled
goods to a life of enduring blessings.
Concl.: With the
people of our Gospel, let us pray: “From now on, Lord, give us this bread (the
bread of life).” Amen.