Sermon: John 6:35-51, August 8, 2021

08/09/21 • -1 min

A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on August 8, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on John 6:35-51. You may play the audio of the sermon here.

A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text this morning is from the Gospel according to John, the 6th chapter:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Thus far the text.

My dear friends in Christ,

Jesus last week revealed Himself to be the fulfillment of the promise of manna from heaven, that He is the bread of life, and that whoever comes to Him shall not hunger nor thirst. That coming isn’t a finding of Him out in the wilderness or inside your own feelings, but that coming to Him is a believing in Him, a gift of faith given by God Himself. You cannot come to Jesus on your own; you must be drawn, and drawn by His Word, drawn by His promises. And so it is that you have gathered here once more, drawn by our Lord, that you might receive Him by faith.

The people gathered around Jesus were not drawn by faith, but by the satisfaction of their bellies. They come because Jesus fed them in the wilderness. But you have come because He has fed you at a table set before your enemies. He satisfied their hunger, but He has given you that which satisfies forever. The feeding of the 5,000 wasn’t about some miraculous thing that Jesus could do, but rather that it pointed to Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise that the Father would feed His people on the bread from heaven, which is Jesus Himself. And so, Jesus gives the world Himself. Willingly He went to the cross. Willingly He laid His life down. Willingly, He gives for the entire world His flesh, that we might eat of Him and have life. He follows the will of the Father in all of this.

The Father has sent His Son just as He sent manna and quail into the Israelite camp. He sends what we need in order to be fed, in order that we might live, in order that we might give thanks to God for His provision. After all, it pleases God to receive our sacrifice of thanks and praise for all that He has done for us. It pleases God to hear us recognize His gifts. And He has given us so much, hasn’t He? Every material thing we have is from the hand of God, and still He gives us more.

Yet, the Lord is not satisfied in giving us the material things of this world. It is true that we shall inherit it all, but He doesn’t stop with the material. He gives us that which lasts forever. He gives us that which goes beyond the material. He gives us His Son, the divine Son of God who takes on human flesh that He might give us His divinity. Not that we become God if we are in Jesus, but that we become more and more like God. We look more and more like Christ. Because He has taken humanity into Himself, Christ has bound Himse...

08/09/21 • -1 min

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