Bread of Life, Pt. 4

Pastor is gone. He will be here next week, and he will be finishing up John chapter six. We've been in John six for quite a while, and it is such a great passage, and it's very paramount to our faith. And so we're going to be diving into some deep stuff this morning. Not sure if I'm the guy qualified to do this, but the lectionary fell on this week, so here we are.

00:00:26

So we will be wading through together as a church. All right? So turn with me to John chapter six. And when you get there, please stand for the gospel reading. We're gonna be going through 51 through 58.

00:00:43

Get there myself here. This is the word of God, Jesus speaking. 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.

00:01:02

The Jews then dispute it among themselves, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him, as the living father sent me.

00:01:48

And I live because of the father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word.

00:02:13

Some of the passages are pretty tough. It was pretty tough for the Jews back then, and it's tough for us today. Some of your passages, Lord. So I pray that you would give us ears to hear, eyes to see, Lord, and that then we would leave this place ready to act on your behalf. We ask this in the name of Jesus.

00:02:34

Amen. You may be seated. Whew, man, did any that sort of rub you the wrong way a little bit? I mean, that's some strong language. What if somebody that we know said, hey, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you ain't got no part of it.

00:02:51

You don't have life in you. You're like, that guy's crazy. And so let's dive into this. Now, the Bible talks a lot about bread, and we're going to sort of go through this a little insight into the dag family. We always like to play dag trivia at the house, where I'll bring up some historical thing and ask the kids, hey, what is this?

00:03:16

Or whatever. Well, they all know that casts rates restaurants based off their bread. So it's not the quality of the steak. It doesn't matter the steak. It doesn't matter the salmon or the pork chop.

00:03:30

She doesn't care about that. That isn't dessert we leave there. And she's like, man, that was a great restaurant. Was it? That bread was so good.

00:03:36

And you're just like, I mean, the bread was free, you know, that steak was a lot of money, dude. And, like, you're focusing on that bread, like, wow. But that's just some insight into the dag family. So y'all get a part of dag trivia, and she rates restaurants by bread. Well, the Bible thinks a lot about bread as well.

00:03:54

And so if you remember a youth in the nineties or you remember that, you remember these Bible drills. Does anybody remember this? The Bible drills? Yeah. Where you have a competition, they would say Ephesians, chapter four, verse one.

00:04:08

And you'd have to. Or you had to go, you know, Hosea? And you're like, oh, boy, that was a tough one, you know? And so we're gonna do a little bit of a Bible drill this morning. So if you have your Bible and you want to follow along, let's do it.

00:04:24

Cause

Transcript

Pastor is gone. He will be here next week, and he will be finishing up John chapter six. We've been in John six for quite a while, and it is such a great passage, and it's very paramount to our faith. And so we're going to be diving into some deep stuff this morning. Not sure if I'm the guy qualified to do this, but the lectionary fell on this week, so here we are.

00:00:26

So we will be wading through together as a church. All right? So turn with me to John chapter six. And when you get there, please stand for the gospel reading. We're gonna be going through 51 through 58.

00:00:43

Get there myself here. This is the word of God, Jesus speaking. 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.

00:01:02

The Jews then dispute it among themselves, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him, as the living father sent me.

00:01:48

And I live because of the father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word.

00:02:13

Some of the passages are pretty tough. It was pretty tough for the Jews back then, and it's tough for us today. Some of your passages, Lord. So I pray that you would give us ears to hear, eyes to see, Lord, and that then we would leave this place ready to act on your behalf. We ask this in the name of Jesus.

00:02:34

Amen. You may be seated. Whew, man, did any that sort of rub you the wrong way a little bit? I mean, that's some strong language. What if somebody that we know said, hey, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you ain't got no part of it.

00:02:51

You don't have life in you. You're like, that guy's crazy. And so let's dive into this. Now, the Bible talks a lot about bread, and we're going to sort of go through this a little insight into the dag family. We always like to play dag trivia at the house, where I'll bring up some historical thing and ask the kids, hey, what is this?

00:03:16

Or whatever. Well, they all know that casts rates restaurants based off their bread. So it's not the quality of the steak. It doesn't matter the steak. It doesn't matter the salmon or the pork chop.

00:03:30

She doesn't care about that. That isn't dessert we leave there. And she's like, man, that was a great restaurant. Was it? That bread was so good.

00:03:36

And you're just like, I mean, the bread was free, you know, that steak was a lot of money, dude. And, like, you're focusing on that bread, like, wow. But that's just some insight into the dag family. So y'all get a part of dag trivia, and she rates restaurants by bread. Well, the Bible thinks a lot about bread as well.

00:03:54

And so if you remember a youth in the nineties or you remember that, you remember these Bible drills. Does anybody remember this? The Bible drills? Yeah. Where you have a competition, they would say Ephesians, chapter four, verse one.

00:04:08

And you'd have to. Or you had to go, you know, Hosea? And you're like, oh, boy, that was a tough one, you know? And so we're gonna do a little bit of a Bible drill this morning. So if you have your Bible and you want to follow along, let's do it.

00:04:24

Cause we're gonna go a little bit of a tour of what the Bible says about bread. Now, interestingly, the first reference we get to bread in the Bible is all the way back in Genesis, chapter three, verse 19. And if you know that it's the curse, and this is when Adam and Eve have failed, and God comes down and pronounces the judgment of what will be the consequences. And this is what it says, by the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taking for your dust, and to dust you shall return. That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

00:05:04

That's the length thing that we say. But all the way back in Genesis, chapter three, the first mention of bread in the Bible is the curse. Adam and Eve will work the ground to let it produce bread for them. No longer will it just be there for them. No, no, no.

00:05:23

It's part of the curse. So that's the first instance. And that man, that's some foreshadowing, isn't it? Because if Jesus is the ultimate bread, he reverses all that. He comes to give us life and reverse the curse.

00:05:37

All right, another one. Genesis 1418. It's a beautiful scene here where Abram, so before his name was changed to Abraham, it's Abram. Lot has been taken, his nephew, and he goes and defeats this group of kings. And as they're coming back, this odd figure, Melchizedek, meets him and brings out bread and wine, and they have a meal together.

00:06:05

And he says, he basically congratulates Abramouse. And then in psalm 110, the psalmist also mentions this, speaking to the MEsSiah. And he says, you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. And if you know your Hebrews, Hebrews seven will say, they connect the dots and say that Jesus is our high priest in the order of Melchizedek. And so we get even bread and wine way back at this king priest figure in the Old Testament that foreshadows Jesus the messiah because he comes in the order of Melchizedek.

00:06:47

Now, the next passage is the Passover. So now we're in Egypt. God is raining down plagues on the Egyptians, showing them that he is the only God and not their gods. And then the last plague is the death angel. And so he institutes the Passover meal.

00:07:08

And he says, you will eat unleavened bread for this meal. He says, what is leaven? Well, leaven is sort of the yeast that you put in the bread to make it rise, makes it nice and fluffy, that type of thing. He says, eat unleavened bread. And the reason for that, it actually tells in the passage is that they were, they left in a hurry, so they did not have time for their bread to actually rise.

00:07:33

So Jesus says, don't even worry about it. Unleavened bread. That's what I want you to take with you out of the land of Egypt because I want you to go very quickly. So that's the Passover meal. And this leaven Jesus will actually pick up on, if you remember when they're in the boat.

00:07:49

And they had just had a big confrontation with the Pharisees. And Jesus warns his disciples, he says, hey, beware the leaven of the Pharisees. Now, the disciples quite didn't get it. Like, I don't a lot. And they were like, man, we didn't bring bread.

00:08:06

Like, oh, boy, whose fault was it? You didn't bring the bread? And he's like, no, no, no, I'm not talking about physical bread. We're the leaven of the Pharisees, the sin that can get in and permeate because you put a little bit of yeast in a dough and it goes throughout the whole thing. And it's a very good object lesson for us that a little sin heals.

00:08:31

It will permeate your entire body. And so the Jews, when they were getting ready for the Passover meal, would take a whole week, clean the whole house of any traces of the leaven because God commanded them to eat unleavened bread. Very good object lesson for them. Let's keep going. Exodus 16 well, they wake up and they found this dew like substance on the ground.

00:08:58

The children of Israel found themselves in the desert place. And this is manna. God feeds them manna, which they take and they form into bread. And they eat that for over, for about 40 years in the desert while God sustains their life, while they complain and act like us because we do the same thing. So we've got manna.

00:09:21

Jump to Exodus 25 and then also Leviticus, that crazy book of the Bible that we have tough with. But it's Leviticus 24 and it's the showbread. Now God is giving Moses the instructions for the tabernacle. And he says, hey, I want you to bake bread and put it on the table for the priests. That's the holy bread of God.

00:09:46

You sort of see where this bread motif is going now we're beginning to get to the point where it's actually holy and it's on a table now that God sets up for us. And if you remember, David eats this bread. You remember this. In one Samuel, chapter 21, verse six, David is running from Saul and is David of the line of Levi, is he a priest? And his men, they're not.

00:10:15

And so they come to ahimelech the priest and they're like, hey, we're sort of famished as you got him bread. And he's got, well, I got the holy bread here. And they eat it. And interestingly, Jesus mentions this in the Bible when the remember, the disciples are going through the grain field and they're plucking those grains and eating them. And the pharisees get all up in arms and say, hey, they're not washing their hands.

00:10:38

And he said, do you remember what David did when he was hungry? He ate the bread of the presence. It was only for the priests. Another instance of bread. And then Moses will also remind us in deuteronomy eight three.

00:10:50

You may actually want to turn here on this one. Deuteronomy eight three.

00:10:56

The old generation that disbelieved, remember, they sent the spies in. They said, no, we can't go. And that generation was cursed to wander in the wilderness and die. So that generation's dead. The new generation is up.

00:11:09

They're ready to take the land. Moses gives them deuteronomy. And in eight three, he says, man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of. If that sounds familiar to you, it's also what Jesus used when he was in the wilderness being tempted of Satan. He said the same thing now and then.

00:11:35

Emily last week, if you remember, preached on Elijah. What a great message. That was. Very encouraging, man. She just has a gift from the Lord.

00:11:42

But the Lord supplied bread through the raven and then through the widow. So you get this thing of bread. And even in the New Testament, I'll just mention, too, there's a lot more. But the Eucharist, we're going to get into that later. The Lord's supper and then on the road to Emmaus, you remember it.

00:11:59

Those people, the two guys, they're talking about all these things. This third guy joins them, and they're like, you don't know what's going on. And he opens the scripture to them. They sit down, and when it says the breaking of the bread, they realize that it was Jesus in the breaking of the bread. So there's this big theme of bread in the Bible.

00:12:23

And so when we get to John, chapter six, verse 51. Let's look at that again. John 651. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

00:12:42

And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. So begin to see where all this was going. It's gonna end in Jesus saying this whole bread thing, all the manna that I had, the show bread, all the stuff, even from the curse way back then, I am the living bread, and it's my body that is the actual bread, man. Sort of blows your mind. All right, so let's.

00:13:15

Let's table that for a minute. And now we're going to go to the blood. That was a sort of a weird part, you know, he said, if you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you don't have any lice in you, man. The blood part's a little tough. You're like, man, that's a little weird.

00:13:31

Well, let's talk about the blood part, because the Bible has a lot to say, really, about blood as well. And again, the first really sort of allusion, not illusion, the allusion to blood is Genesis, chapter three. Again, it's just a few verses later. It's still the curse. All right, so Adam and Eve have sinned.

00:13:51

God pronounced the curse on them. And it says that the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothing them. Well, there's only one way to get a garment of skin, and that is to kill an animal. And so the first sacrifice happens in the garden, and it's God doing it on behalf of humanity. We're the ones who failed.

00:14:21

We're the ones who realized our nakedness before each other and before God tried to cover ourselves. He comes down and does it for us, and he does it the right way. But it requires the death of an animal and blood to be shed, which obviously this is foreshadowing to the sacrificial system that will be set up by Moses. Now, interestingly, Genesis nine four will say, you shall not eat a flesh with its life, that is its blood. And Leviticus says it this way.

00:14:59

I'll read it for you a few passages. If you've got your bible, turn to Leviticus 17 10 14. If anyone of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among the people. And he dropped down to verse eleven, for it is the blood that makes atonement by life. And again, at the very end of that passage in verse 14, he says, whoever eats it shall be cut off.

00:15:36

It's interesting. So in the Old Testament, man, they were very, very against eating the blood. Okay? They knew this. Leviticus.

00:15:48

They knew it. Every good jew would know this. You pour out the blood on the sacrifice, you don't eat it with it. Well, then we come to our passage here, and Jesus speaking to those jewish people, he says, if you don't eat my flesh, he's already said, my flesh is the bread of life. If you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life.

00:16:13

And they're like, man. They remember Moses words. It rings loud in their ears, like, we don't drink blood. That was forbidden by the old covenant. And so, and I think it's a good lesson for them, the ones that actually did get it, because the blood of the bulls and goats did not save, could not.

00:16:38

It was sprinkled. It was all object lesson. It was. It was foreshadowing of something greater to come. And so the Bible equates blood and life together.

00:16:52

And we know that from. From biology, right? So if you don't have any blood, you're dead. I mean, it's. That's one way that a lot of people die, is exsanguination, and the blood is your life.

00:17:05

The heart pumps the blood, the kidneys filter the blood, the liver helps filter the blood. Everything revolves around that. And if you look at the brain, you've got about four minutes without blood before your neurons begin to die irreversibly. That's why drowning victims, if it's over four minutes, it's tough. They can have brain damage.

00:17:30

And for other tissues, it's usually about 6 hours. And then that tissue begins to irreversibly die. We know that. So blood is super important. We know that.

00:17:41

And here the Bible said it thousands of years ago, and the hebrew writer really says this best. So again, like I said, we're doing Bible drills this morning, Hebrews, nine verses, eleven through 14. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, that's the tabernacle, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purpose of purification of flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Man.

00:18:44

Oh, don't you love the hebrew writer? He's the one that really helps connect us with the Old Testament and what Jesus is doing. He's our high priest. And here's Jesus with his sinless blood, and he takes it to the temple not made with hands, he takes it to the father, and he presents his blood before the father and says, this is enough. It's not the blood of the bulls and the goats that all was foreshadowing.

00:19:10

It was pointing. It was a sign that pointed to something greater. We've talked about signs a lot here recently, and all that pointed to Jesus sacrifice on the cross, his blood that was shed, and he takes that into the holy of holies not made with hands, to his father's house in heaven. And he says, this is enough for life, for all humanity. And that's why he says, if you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you don't have life.

00:19:43

Because I am life. It's my blood. That is the life for all humanity. Cause it is what we were created for. We were created in the image of God, and it's God himself who could only atone for our sins.

00:20:01

Man, that is just, like, mind blowing, you know? So it's the blood of Jesus that saves his life is derived from the father through the son to us. Cause in verse 57 of our passage this morning, as the living father sent me, and I live because of the father. So whoever feeds on me, he will live because of me also. Man, that's a promise, which is beautiful.

00:20:29

All right, so we talked a lot about bread. We've talked a lot about blood. So where does this come together for us? And ultimately it comes together in the Lord's supper, in the Eucharist. And so if we look at the synoptic gospels, y'all remember the synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

00:20:50

So John is sort of excluded. John's a little different, and John's awesome. I love John. But the synoptic gospels all give the account of the last Supper. Jesus institutes this.

00:21:01

They have the Passover meal. Crazy. We just talked about that. The unleavened bread. And he takes that unleavened bread, and he says, this is my body broken for you.

00:21:13

And he takes the wine, and he says, this is my blood poured out for you.

00:21:21

And that's where these really come together for us, the church. And Paul will also mention this in one corinthians, chapter eleven. Now, Jesus loves metaphors, and the Bible is full of metaphors. Is this just a metaphor? Now, if you're sort of a nerd like I am, you know, I love the, like, words and things like that.

00:21:48

And so what it actually is a metaphor. It's a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally the application. Okay, example. John will do a lot of this. I'm the bread of life.

00:22:05

I am the light of the world. I am the door. I'm the good shepherd. I'm the true vine. These are all metaphors.

00:22:14

Jesus is not a vine growing out of there. He's not going to get up to heaven, and it's just a vine. Okay, but it's a metaphor. It points to something greater for us, you know? And so is this just metaphor?

00:22:30

And I would say, really, when we really start to look at the Eucharist, the Lord's supper, the bread and the wine, I think is a little bit more than just metaphor, because he says to us, this is my body. This is my blood. If you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life. It's sort of like the light of the world. That's a little more than just metaphor, because when we get to heaven, it says there won't be a sun or a moon.

00:23:03

God himself will be the light that illumines everything. So that's more than just metaphor. He is light itself. So when we look at the Eucharist and we partake in it, we don't really. It's mystery.

00:23:18

We don't really understand all of what's going on. And I think that's okay. You know, it's funny when we talk about people and you talk about, do I know Cassie? I say, yeah. Yeah, I know Cassie.

00:23:33

Does she know me? Yeah. Do I know her completely? Fully. Everything she's ever done, thought, actions, everything.

00:23:42

Well, obviously, no. And I dare say you don't even know yourself that well. Comprehensively. Now, does that mean I shouldn't. I should just call it quits and say, well, if I can't know her completely, I'm not gonna know her at all?

00:23:56

This is not worth it. Well, no, because you wouldn't have friends, you wouldn't have anybody. You wouldn't have a spouse, and we wouldn't know anybody. And so just because we can't know something fully doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Okay.

00:24:11

Same thing with the eucharist. Just because we don't know exactly how God does it. When I take that bread and I dip it in the cup, as we do up here, because I don't know that perfectly. Does that mean I don't even try? No, it means that.

00:24:27

It encourages me to know as much as I can this side of heaven. And I think on the other side, man, we're going to know a lot more, and it's going to be beautiful. And we'll look back on these moments. I think God will give us some of these moments to look back on, and we'll begin to see. He was present with me in the breaking of the bread and the dipping in the cup.

00:24:47

He was with me. It was the means of grace. And that's how Wesley talked about the Eucharist, is. It's a means of grace. Grace, remember, is getting something you don't deserve.

00:24:59

Mercy, on the other hand, is not getting something you do deserve. And God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and in steadfast love. And so he prepares the meal for us that we get his body, his flesh, and we get his blood. In the cup, and we partake of that, and that is Jesus presence with us. Now, we don't believe that it actually transforms into his actual body.

00:25:30

The bread doesn't become human cells. You don't look at it under microscope and say, oh, yeah, after you ate it, it actually became. We don't go that far. Okay. But we do believe that he is with us in a special, holy way in the breaking of the bread and in the drinking of the wine.

00:25:50

And so isn't it interesting that when I thought of this, when I was going through this, think of the perfect date scenario, all right? Kiddos are taken care of. Maybe they're grandparents. And you're like, oh, Mandy, this is awesome. You got a date night.

00:26:06

What do you do? Hey, honey, do you want to play video games all night? Ooh, this is probably not going to go over well, right? You know, if you just want to go to the movie. Usually our date nights involve some type of meal, some type of food is involved with that.

00:26:23

And I'm not taking her to Crystal. We're not going to McDonald's on date night. You know, we do something special. You know, we try to go to different restaurants where she likes the bread, you know, and so we try to pick those. And it used to be early in marriage because we didn't quite have the funds, but we did Carrabba's.

00:26:42

Carrabba's was like that, man, that, you know, that oil mixture, all that bread was amazing. We loved Carrabba's. That was our go to place. And so it's special to us when we gather around a table and we eat together. It's very intimate and it's loving.

00:26:57

It's showing I care. And I even thought about my meemaw and my grandma Russom. They would cook the most wonderful country food on God's green earth. Man, those biscuits in the morning were amazing. And it was an expression of her love to me.

00:27:15

She loved to feed us. I mean, every time you went over there, hey, you hungry? I'm like, what? We just ate. Mama always had food everywhere, and she loved to cook, and it was an expression of love.

00:27:27

And this is God's expression of love to us as providing a meal that we share as his family. Because we're family. We're not just humans down here by ourselves. We're family. And so he has this meal of his body and his blood.

00:27:46

Now, make sure I'm getting all my notes here just right. Okay. One other thing to think about on the mystery part of it. And Marshall was helping me out with this this morning, so I had to give him kudos on this. First, Ignatius would say that the Eucharist is the medicine for immortality.

00:28:08

Now when you go to the doctor and you've got, say, sinuses and you're blowing out sort of the green stuff, right? It's not clear, it's not a virus. They're going to give you an antibiotic, amoxicillin, whatever it is. Who knows how amoxicillin works perfectly in the body to kill that bacteria and not hurt your cells. And none of us, we don't know that.

00:28:30

I mean, gosh, there's some good scientists that know that. I did learn that. But still, it's tough just because you don't know it. Do you not take it? We do take it.

00:28:40

And why? It's because we actually trust the physician that we see that that medicine is good for us and it's helpful. Well, all the physicians here on earth are flawed, but there's one who is not. It's Jesus. And so when he says, this is my flesh, eat it, this is my blood, drink it, just because we don't understand it all and it sounds a little odd, do we trust him?

00:29:13

Do we trust him to partake in the meal, the family meal that we have together? And our answer is yes. As a church we trust the great physician because it is medicine for our soul, better than any medicine that you can get from the pharmacy. This is the medicine of immortality. This is how we know God.

00:29:34

So sort of bringing all this together, what's the whole point of all of this? And ultimately I think it's what, it's what jesus says, sort of at the end he says, I will raise him up on the last day. And really, if you remember, at the end of our passage, he says he'll live forever and it's for our benefit. It's eternal life in Christ. So if life truly does come only from Jesus, how do we receive that life?

00:30:08

And one of the best ways to receive that is the Eucharist is to partake in his body and his blood as a family together. This local expression of his church here. And what's crazy is churches do this all over the world and we all join in the same table to partake of the same meal and it unifies us as a body, his body. And so ultimately Jesus is the answer and he will be the one to raise us up on that last day. So actually in John six he mentions this four times.

00:30:47

Now, if you know anything about the scriptures, if it mentions things several times, man, we gotta. Those red flags better go off in our mind and be like, I may need to pay attention to that. He said that a few times. And so four times in chapter six, Jesus says, I will raise you up. Now, the first time it actually says, I will raise it up.

00:31:07

And he's talking about creation. There's three other times it says, I will raise him up. And he's talking about humanity there. And so this is the way for eternal life. Now, as you can see up here today, we actually don't have the bread and we don't have the juice.

00:31:29

And that's because there's actually not someone ordained to offer those the Eucharist. And we do believe as Methodists that it is ordination. You do need to be an ordained minister to offer the elements the Eucharist, and I am not. And so we're actually not partaking of it today, but we will next week when our pastor comes back, we will partake as a family together. And it is something that I think should be mentioned, that ordination and the administering of the elements, just as everything is ordered.

00:32:08

Think about it, you know, being in the medical field, everything is ordered. Not everyone can prescribe that antibiotic, right? So you don't go to the pharmacist to get the prescription for the antibiotic. You don't get it from just any medical person at the hospital that you run into. You get it from a prescriber.

00:32:29

And so there is an order there. And the same thing is in the church as well. We don't just partake of the elements from just anybody that offers them, but as someone who is ordained, which means that the church has said, this person is called of God to preach his word and to represent us to Christ and Christ to us. And so just a little bit about. That's why we're not partaking today, but anticipate next week, because next week we get to join together as a family and do this together.

00:33:05

Okay. Now, sort of in closing, what I want to end is if Jesus says, this is my body and this is my blood, partake and you have life, why don't we do that? Why do we turn to so many other things when we know that the answer is only Jesus? I mean, we turn to hedonism. We see our world going down.

00:33:34

This. I mean, pursuing pleasure at all cost is greater than everything else. Pleasure or leisure. You know, man, I can't wait to get retired and get this and get that and just do this. Is that what life is?

00:33:50

Is that where life happens, or power or wealth, whatever it may be, we turn to all these other things instead of Jesus. And so this morning, I want us to examine our heart through knowing this passage. If eternal life is through Jesus, he's the ground. He's the, I guess, the framework of everything. He is life itself, then why do we not turn to him?

00:34:20

And interestingly, I'll sort of end with this. The way he uses that term, feed on my flesh is a little bit different than your normal eating. It's gnawing like an animal almost. You gnaw on the flesh. And I think that sometimes it's hard, what Jesus says to us.

00:34:45

Sometimes it's not easy. It's not like soup sometimes, you know, sometimes the soup just goes down easy. Sometimes you get a rib and that thing is a little tough, and we need to gnaw on it. And Jesus says, come to me. Gnaw on me.

00:34:58

And so this morning, if you think you've been turning to other things, if you're looking to other things for life, examine yourself this week. Think back to this week. Where are times this week that you did look to other things? I know I had them. I got frustrated with patience, frustrated with kids, frustrated with myself.

00:35:24

Think back right now, and I want you to just talk to God and say, look, I know that you are life eternal. Help me this week to turn to you. So let's gnaw on Jesus. Let's drink deep of his blood and be made holy. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

00:35:41

Amen.