John 6:26 Jesus is speaking here to the crowds that have gathered the day after he fed the 5,000. He says, “The truth is, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you saw a miraculous sign. But you shouldn’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that I, the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has sent me for that very purpose.”
Then in verse 32 through 35, Jesus continues, “I assure you, Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers the true bread from heaven. The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “Give us that bread every day of our lives.”
Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst.”
Then in Revelation 21:6 Jesus says, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give the springs of the water of life without charge!”
We have been looking at the subject of Spiritual Warfare on Thursday evenings in the small group that meets in our home. I asked a couple of weeks ago for input as to what folks saw as the big hindrances to God’s best for us at Rosebank. One of the people responded with the thought that we had too much of an emphasis on materialism. A bigger, better, more type of mentality when it comes to this worlds goods. We honour work and the work ethic and certainly we all have to work. The bible tells us that a man who won’t work has no right to eat. We have a holiday each fall celebrating work. Labour Day has been a national holiday since 1894. The purpose is to honour the working people of our land. In 1956 in the USA they published a commemorative Labour Day stamp. It was issued with a picture of a strong man holding a sledge hammer, a pick, a hoe, and an axe over his shoulder. His wife was seated by his side with a book in her lap showing a small child how to read. In the lower left hand corner was a large block with words of Thomas Carlyle carved into it: “Labour is Life.” The meaning was clear and I think it is true: without industrious labour there will be no life — no means to feed, clothe, house, and educate a family or oneself.
But it is an amazing and disconcerting thing how a true statement (like “Labour is Life”) can mislead us and devastate generations when it is isolated from other truths. If you look at your life solely in terms of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, machines, books, and toys, then the statement, “Labour is Life,” will mean that you should work mainly with a view to providing those things. But in spite of the fact that it seems so natural to work for such things Jesus said to the Jews in John 6:27, “You shouldn’t be so concerned about perishable things like food,” or as the King James Version puts it, “Do not labour for the food which perishes.” And of course Jesus didn’t mean it as just food that’s ruled out, but clothes and homes and cars and boats, and atv’s could all be inserted in the place of food. Anything that perishes, anything that wears out, anything of no eternal worth — all that is implied in “food that perishes.” He is saying, we need to ask ourselves, does this have eternal worth.
Think about that for a moment. What would change in your life and mine if we asked that question about the things we do each day and the things we work so hard for. Does this have eternal worth? Do not labour for food. Do not labour for a house. Do not labour for clothes, cars, appliances, books, sporting gear, etc. Now we are in a precarious place, because you believe in your heart it is legitimate and good to work in order to buy food, but why then do you hear Jesus saying, “Do not labour for the food which perishes.”
Maybe today, here at Rosebank Church, you will come to a crisis of spiritual discovery. Listen carefully and you may discover two profoundly important things in the next few minutes:
First, you can discover the measure of your submission to Jesus as Lord. There are two very different attitudes you may be experiencing right now. One is resistance and hardness. You may be saying, “Well, I don’t care what it means to work for things that don’t perish. I’m going to keep on working just the way I always have. After all, like you already said, the bible also says if a man’s going to eat, he HAS to work?”
A second and preferred response is humble, open submission to Jesus. You may be saying, “Well, Lord I never thought from your Word that it might be wrong to work for food and clothing. But, Lord, there is nothing I want more than to do what pleases you in the way that pleases you. Please help me understand your surprising command and make me willing to obey gladly.” There is a quantitative and eternally significant difference between those two attitudes. The first one is not of the Spirit, but of the flesh. The second one is a gift of the Spirit, fragrant with the grace of humility and submissiveness to Jesus. It is not naive, but is thoughtfully and soberly ready to say, “Anything, Jesus, anything, anything in my mind or in my behaviour I am willing to change if you say the word. It’s all about you Jesus.”
The other thing you may discover in the next few minutes, if you will listen very, very carefully and if you are open to the voice of Jesus, is a new dimension of obedience in your work. By the way, this also applies to you folks who are retired! Many of you have already made the discovery with great joy as to what is eternal and worth your time and energy. Others of you may discover for the first time an aspect of Jesus’ will for your life which you have neglected. “Therefore take heed how you hear,” Jesus said, “for to him who has, will more be given, but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” (Luke 8:18).
I think we should acknowledge from the outset that in verse 27 Jesus covers two perspectives. But the point of emphasis in John 6:27 is the positive statement, “Labour for the food which endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you.” Jesus, on the day before, had performed the miracle of feeding the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. When the people seek him out the next day, he accuses them in verse 26 of not coming because they had seen signs but because they ate their fill. In other words, they had no spiritual sensitivity that Jesus’ miracle pointed beyond itself to the spiritual nourishment people need so badly and which Jesus came to give. To use the language of the Apostle Paul, they set their minds on the things of the flesh, not the things of the Spirit.
So Jesus said, “Don’t work for fleshly food that perishes, work for eternal food.” They respond in verse 28 with complete misunderstanding, “‘What works do you think God requires in order to give us the bread of eternal life?” Jesus answers in verse 29 that all the works you can do for the bread that endures are summed up in one work, which is no work at all: “Believe in him whom God has sent.” Come to me, trust me, feed on me! Draw life from me, and you will have the food that endures to eternal life.
Then step-by-step in the rest of the chapter he unfolds the meaning. Verse 35: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” Jesus is the bread that endures to eternal life. Coming to Jesus and trusting him is what it means to eat the true bread of heaven.
Then in verse 51 he gets very specific: “the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” So here it becomes clear that eating the true bread means nourishing our souls with the benefits of Jesus’ atoning death. We do not simply come and trust a loving man. We pin all our hopes on the forgiveness that he purchased for us in laying down his life. Verse 53 goes so far as to say we must eat his flesh and drink his blood. This happens when the love that his death shows and the hope that it secures, so delights and satisfies our soul’s hunger that we continue in His word forever. That spiritual feeding on Christ is what the Lord’s Supper symbolizes.
That is the main emphasis in John 6:27. “Labour for the food which endures to eternal life.” Labour to feast on Jesus. Word hard at your relationship with Jesus! Give yourself to it. Make it your priority! Satisfy yourself with his beauty and his hope-filled fellowship. Jesus said, “All you who are weary and heavy laden, Come to ME and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matt.11:28-29
But I had a wise teacher once who told me that one of the best ways to find out what an author really thought was to watch for his “not … but” statements — statements where he says, “this is not the case, but that is,” or “I do not believe this, but I do believe that.” You always have a clearer idea of what a person affirms if you know what he denies. Wishy-washy politicians and wishy-washy theologians are notorious for making broad affirmations while avoiding specific denials. Ask a politician what his favourite colour is and he’ll likely say, plaid. We will increase our understanding greatly if in all our reading and listening we take heed to the “not…but” statements, the negatives as well as the affirmations.
I emphasize this simply to say that we must not ignore the second perspective that Jesus shares in verse 27. It is the negative half of Jesus’ command. Without it we will not have as clear an idea of what our Lord wants from us. Part of what he wants is that we not labour for food that perishes. What does he mean?
I have already argued that the “food that perishes” implies all material things, not just food, and includes anything that has no eternal worth. The meaning is probably similar to Jesus’ word in Matthew 6:19, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and thieves break in and steal.” Anything temporal that the heart can treasure, even immaterial things like prestige and power and status - all this is “food that perishes.” It will be worthless at death and useless on the judgment day. So Jesus says, “Do not work for it.” What does he mean?
Nowhere does Jesus show contempt for work. He said of his own disciples, as he sent them out, “The labourer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7). He intends people to work and to provide for their own and others’ needs. The apostle Paul taught the same thing in a verse we referred to earlier: 2 Thessalonians 3:10, where he says “If anyone will not work let him not eat,”. In Ephesians 4:28 he says, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labour doing honest work with his hands, so that he may be able to give to those who are in need.” Evidently then, Jesus does not mean stop working for a livelihood, but rather, in your work set your eyes on something other than the “food that perishes.”
Perhaps the best parallel is Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be yours as well.” Don’t seek the “food that perishes” God will supply that. You seek the Kingdom, seek the bread that endures to eternity. Don’t expend the effort of your mind and your will and your body to try to satisfy yourself with things. Expend your effort instead with a view to finding Christ exalted and satisfying in all you do. Aim at heaven’s best for you and get the best earth has to offer thrown in. Aim at the best this earth has to offer, and you’ll miss heaven and you miss the most important things on earth too. Choosing to seek and work for the wrong things may cost you your eternal life, it may cost you your spouse, it may cost you your kids, and their kids as you loose the hope of a godly legacy because God was not your priority.
Let me try to apply this to two areas of our life: our spiritual life and our vocational life. First, our spiritual life. Notice the connection between verses 26 and 27 — “You seek me … because you ate your fill … Do not labour for the food which perishes.” The people were seeking Jesus. They believed in his miracle-working power; but Jesus called this seeking “labouring for food that perishes” and commanded them not to do it.
This may come as a shock to you but the lesson is clear: it is possible to seek Jesus and believe in his power, but be totally lost and worldly-minded. In our situation today, …in our culture it may mean that you believe Jesus was the Son of God and you may even believe lots of what you’ve heard about Him. Maybe you’ve even prayed and it seems to you that you have had answers from him, but you have never repented of sin and accepted the forgiveness He offers and the leadership in your life He wants to give. It is very possible to be a religious person, who believes in God and has many right doctrines but not be born again. That only happens when we turn from sin and self and ask Jesus the SAVIOUR to be our Lord and our leader.
The people in our text just wanted more bread that perishes. What they needed was a spiritual feeding on Christ, a heart delight in all that he stands for and a lowly childlike submission to his word. Jesus urges us to examine ourselves to see whether even in our church life we are labouring for the bread that perishes instead of really feasting spiritually on the Lord we love. How often should we eat? How often do you eat? ……
The second application is to our vocational life. How do you get up in the morning and go to work not for the bread that perishes? This is really a spiritual discovery attained through much prayer and longing; my words of explanation won’t make it happen. But maybe the Holy Spirit will use these words to fire up your quest. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:30,31 that since we live in a time of great urgency, “those who buy should buy as though they had no goods and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.” I think this is another way of saying, yes labour, but do not labour for the bread that perishes. Go ahead and purchase, but act as though you have no goods. Do your business dealings, but stay free from them. Possess the things necessary but don’t let them possess you! Suppose you are a Christian stockbroker and have watched the market go up and down so radically this past week. What it means to you not to labour for the food which perishes is that your true life is not jeopardized, your peace and joy are not destroyed. You were not working for the bread that perishes. Your goal is to enjoy Christ being exalted in the way you work. Jesus said in John 4:32,34, “I have food to eat that you do not know… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” None of us in our vocations should aim at the food which perishes — leave that to the Lord. We should aim instead to do the will of him who sent us. That too is a kind of feeding on Christ. The Christian stockbroker will say in the face of a falling market: “The main food I want from this job is still there. I am hungry above all to pass this test of faith and have a deep restfulness in the goodness and power of Christ. And I am hungry to enjoy his name being esteemed as others see my demeanour and my integrity and give Christ glory.” And to that end he labours for the food which endures to eternal life. He labours, rising early for prayer and meditation, and holding Christ near to his heart all day.
Jesus calls us to be aliens and exiles in the world. Not by taking us out of the world, but by changing at the root how we view the world and do our work in it.
While I was enjoying all the wonderful joys of a teenager living at beautiful Chesley Lake in the mid – 1960’s, civil war broke out in the Congo. Among the missionaries caught in the crossfire was a wonderful man by the name of William McChesney. He served with WEC Int’l, which was Worldwide Evangelism Crusade. He was not large of stature at 5’2” and just 110 pounds. Perhaps he should have been a jockey!! Bill had an outgoing radiant personality and spread cheer and God’s love wherever he went. All of his co-workers dubbed him, “Smiley.”
On Nov. 14th, 1964 suffering from the missionary worst blight in Africa, Malaria – Bill then just 28 years of age was seized from his sick bed by Congolese rebels. Ten days later he was beaten mercilessly, his clothing ripped from his body, and he was throw into a filthy, crowded, stinking cell. Several Catholic priests gave him the best care they could recognizing his fever and uncontrollable shaking. The next day he was dragged from his cell and beaten until he died.
On his application to serve with WEC before he had left America, Bill included a little poem he had written. It said in part:
I want my breakfast served at eight,
Ham, eggs and hash browns on the plate;
A well grilled steak, I’ll eat at one,
And dine again when day is done.
I want an ultramodern home
And in each room a telephone,
Soft carpets too upon the floors
And pretty drapes to grace the doors.
A cozy place of lovely things
Like easy chairs with cushee springs,
And then I’ll get a nice T.V.
And I’ll be careful what I see.
I want my wardrobe too, to be
Of neatest, finest quality,
With latest style in suit and vest
Shouldn’t Christians have the best!
But then the Master I can hear
His call so certain, so crystal clear
“I bid you come and follow me
The lowly Man of Galilee.”
If He be God and died for me,
No sacrifice too great can be,
For me, a mortal man to make;
I’ll do it all for Jesus’ sake.
Yes, I will tred the path He trod,
No other way to please my God;
So, henceforth, this my choice shall be
It is a choice for all eternity.