Food for the Soul

Food for the Soul

John 6:22-59

Introduction

Why does God offer us a meal?

Last week we began our sermon series on the ordinary means of grace. We argued that the primary and foundational means by which God extends His grace to us is through His Word. As John Calvin famously stated, the Word of God is the soul of the church. Everything we do and believe in our life together as the church is directed, shaped, and governed by the Word of God.

This morning, we turn to another ordinary means of grace: the Lord’s Supper.

To understand the Lord’s Supper rightly, I think we must begin by asking a basic but profound question: Why is it a meal? When God chose to communicate His grace to His people, why did He choose to do so through something as ordinary—and as physical—as eating and drinking?

The Lord’s Supper, after all, is a means of grace. It is a vehicle, an instrument, through which God communicates grace to us. But why this instrument? Why not continual gifts? Why not repeated visions or dreams to remind us of His mercy and kindness? Why a meal?

This is the question I raised during our prayer time on Wednesday night. Why does God communicate His grace through the instrumentality of a meal?

To answer that question, we have to consider something fundamental about who we are as human beings. And if there is one thing that defines every person in this room, it is this: we are hungry, and we are thirsty.

Now, you might say, “I’m not hungry right now. I had a decent breakfast.” But I am not speaking merely of physical hunger. Physical hunger is a gateway to something deeper—our spiritual hunger. Every one of us is craving, longing, and yearning for satisfaction.

The reason we crave relationships, the reason we yearn for happiness, significance, and fulfillment, is because deep down there is a dissatisfaction with the world as it is. As human beings, we are constantly throwing ourselves at different things, asking: Will this do it? Will that finally satisfy me? We are all hungry.

That hunger, in itself, is not wrong. What is wrong is where we seek satisfaction. That is why, when Eve looks at the tree in the garden, Scripture tells us that she saw it. And it is no coincidence that what she saw was food—something that appeared capable of satisfying, of quenching the deepest longings of her heart. Food becomes a gateway to spiritual desire.

Our physical hunger is a preview of our spiritual hunger. They operate in different spheres, but they function in the same way.

Your body is hungry—and your soul is hungry as well. And your soul is feeding on something. Every soul finds satisfaction somewhere. It is either feeding on sin, or it is feeding on Christ.

Perhaps it is feeding on a forbidden image on a screen, something you anticipate in moments of privacy. Perhaps it is feeding on the endless scrolling of a device that consoles you and strokes your ego. Perhaps it is feeding on a the desire for a better relationship—a better spouse, better children, better circumstances—so that your satisfaction is always just one change away. Perhaps it is feeding on a ease and comfort: you have worked hard, and now you want to coast, to relish tranquility with no demands or burdens. Or perhaps it is feeding on a the longing for a bigger church, greater influence, or visible success.

Like Eve, we look at all these wonderful things that appear good and satisfying before us, but don’t have the capacity to provide lasting eternal, soul-satisfying gratification.

And in the midst of all our yearning and desiring, God offers us a meal.

With that in mind, we turn now to the Gospel of John, chapter 6, verses 22–59, where God’s Word speaks directly to the hunger that defines us all.

²² On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. ²³ Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. ²⁴ So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.

²⁵ When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” ²⁶ Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷ Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” ²⁸ Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” ²⁹ Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” ³⁰ So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, 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 from heaven to eat.’ ” ³² Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” ³⁴ They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

³⁵ 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. ³⁶ But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. ³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. ³⁸ For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. ³⁹ 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. ⁴⁰ 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.”

⁴¹ So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴² 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’?” ⁴³ Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. ⁴⁵ 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— ⁴⁶ not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ 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.”

⁵² The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³ 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. ⁵⁴ Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. ⁵⁷ As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. ⁵⁸ 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.” ⁵⁹ Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.

Now, as we look at this passage of Scripture, I want us to notice that the camera angle keeps shifting—from the Jews, back to Jesus, and then back to the Jews again—on several occasions. So what I want us to do is watch the movie unfold. With each camera movement, I want to describe what we see as scenes.

The first scene we encounter is this:

Scene One: Seeking Jesus?

Shot One: Where Is Jesus?

Imagine the cameras grabbing these images.

Beginning in verse 22, it says, “On the next day”—that is, after Jesus had walked on water and had previously fed this same crowd of five thousand in a miraculous fashion. The crowd knew that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, and that there had only been one boat there.

So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, they were naturally wondering where He was.

Shot Two: Looking for Jesus

In verse 24, it says that the crowd got into boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus.

That is their mission. Their mission is to find this man who provides sustenance for them. He has become the food for their craving, the supply for their hunger. They are seeking Jesus because they are hungry, and they want more of what Jesus provides. They want more bread and more fish, because they had eaten their fill, as verse 12 of chapter 6 tells us.

The reason this scene is titled Seeking Jesus? is because the jury is still out. Verse 24 ends with those two words—seeking Jesus—but are they truly seeking Jesus?

The Greek word for seek is the same word used when the parables speak of a merchant looking for beautiful pearls (Matthew 13:45), or a housewife searching through her home to find a drachma (Luke 15:8), and even when the Passion narratives say that Judas was seeking an opportunity to betray Jesus (Matthew 26:16). The verb implies an act of the will rather than a mere reflection of the intellect.

So the question remains: Were they truly seeking Jesus?

That question leads us into the second scene, found in verses 25–59, which we will call Satisfying Our Hunger.

Scene Two: Satisfying Our Hunger

First Group of Shots: Heavenly Food Is Needed

Here in verse 25, we begin to receive our answer as to whether the crowd is truly seeking Jesus. When they find Him on the other side of the sea, they say to Him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?”

Notice how Jesus answers them:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

Not because you are hungry for Me—but because you are hungry for what I can give you. You are hungry for earthly satisfaction.

They had their earthly fill, and therefore they had earthly aspirations. Their minds were focused on the things of earth, not on the things of heaven.

This shows us something true of all of us: we are all seekers. All of us are seeking something. The question is, what are we seeking? What is it that we are looking to for satisfaction?

These men were seeking Jesus, after all. They were seeking the Messiah—the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, the One who in due time was going to die for the sins of the people God had chosen before the foundation of the world. They were seeking Jesus.

But Jesus exposes the true desire behind their pursuit. They were not seeking Jesus as Messiah, as Lord, as God. They were seeking a Jesus made in their own image—a Jesus who gave them earthly things to satisfy spiritual longings.

That is why Jesus says in verse 27, admonishing the crowd that followed Him:

“Do not work for the food that perishes, that spoils, that is here today and gone tomorrow, but for the food that endures to eternal life.”

Jesus is saying: heavenly food is needed.

There is a meal you can partake of that gives eternity. There is a partaking of eternity—an ingesting of eternity. And this is the reality of our lives: we live in tension. We are hungry. We are yearning. We are thirsty for something eternal. We long for something that lasts forever.

After all, how does the story of redemption end? It ends in the marriage supper of the Lamb. It ends with a meal. It ends with a celebration. That is what we are yearning for. That is what we are craving.

And yet, so often, like the Israelites, we hew out broken cisterns—broken cisterns that hold no water—while forsaking the giver of life, the quencher of thirst.

The Camera Shifts Back to the Crowd

In verse 28, the camera shifts back to the crowd that was “seeking Jesus,” and they say to Him:

“What must we do, to be doing the works of God?”

In other words, If we are to work for food that endures to eternal life, then what must we do to attain it? How do we partake of this heavenly food?

The Camera Shifts Back to Jesus

Jesus tells them:

“This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

The way you “work” to receive heavenly food—the food that is needed—is by believing, trusting, having faith.

This is not abstract faith or vaguely defined belief. It is faith in the One who truly reveals God. It is faith in Christ, the Son of God.

Many people believe that following Jesus is merely believing in Him vaguely, without concrete definition. But to believe in Jesus is to believe in the Jesus revealed in Scripture—not a Jesus of our own making.

Stephen Nichols, in his book Jesus Made in America, says:

“For some Americans, Jesus is the consummate best friend and lover. For others, he is strong and mighty, ready for the defense of the weak. For others still, he’s a guru, a wise and enlightened sage… For countercultural rebels, he’s a crazed malcontent, hurling the establishment—in the form of money changers—from the temple. For the inimitable Johnny Cash, he’s ‘The Greatest Cowboy of them all.’ Jesus, like most cultural heroes, is malleable. And his given shape has much more to say about the shapers than it does of him. Christians in all cultures and ages have the tendency to impose their understandings and cultural expressions on Scripture or beliefs.”

And that is why the crowds are having such a hard time understanding the crux of what Jesus is saying.

The Crowd Pushes Back Again

The camera shifts to the crowd once more. They speak spiritually. They are fluent in Moses. They quote Scripture. They ask Jesus:

“Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?”

They appeal to their experience and say:

“Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness.”

They even quote Scripture, showing that they know it was God who gave them bread from heaven.

In other words, they are saying: If you are the one we must believe in, then show us something that proves you are the Messiah. Verse 14 tells us they were already itching for an earthly king.

It is almost as if they are asking Jesus to do something greater and more powerful than Moses.

The Camera Shifts Back to Jesus

Into this moment, Jesus explains redemptive history:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father.”

Jesus is telling the crowd that what the manna in the Old Testament typified—what it foreshadowed—was the true food, the true meal that comes from heaven.

And that true food, that true meal, is Jesus Himself.

But before we think the crowd is starting to understand, they show that they still misunderstand. In verse 34 they say:

“Sir, give us this bread always.”

It seems they still do not realize that Jesus is talking about Himself.

At this point, the emotion in the sequence intensifies, and we move into a different group of shots…

Second Group of Shots: Jesus Is Heavenly Food

In order to provide clarity—and because it is evident that the crowd is not understanding what Jesus is communicating—Jesus speaks plainly in verse 35. He declares, without metaphorical softening or qualification, “I am the bread of life.” He then expands the claim: “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Jesus is saying, in unmistakable terms, I am the heavenly food. What you are ultimately hungry for is not bread, not signs, not earthly provision—it is me. I satisfy your hunger. I quench your thirst. And the reason you do not experience this hunger-satisfying, thirst-quenching relief is not because it is unavailable, but because you do not believe.

The food and drink that Christ provides are so glorious, so powerful, and so sufficient that whoever looks to Jesus in faith and feeds on him will, as verse 40 says, have eternal life and be raised on the last day. Jesus is the heavenly food that gives eternal life and eternal satisfaction. He causes our earthly hungers—our spiritual longings—to subside, and he overcomes them with his glory and might. His food is so powerful that all whom the Father has given to him will never be lost.

Naturally, the crowd responds by grumbling. John now identifies them explicitly as the Jews. They grumble because Jesus has made an astonishing claim: that he is bread come down from heaven. To them, Jesus seems insignificant, even presumptuous. They know his father and mother—at least according to the flesh—and therefore they are unimpressed. When Jesus says in verse 42, “I have come down from heaven,” they are taken aback. The claim does not fit their categories.

Jesus, understanding their confusion, tells them not to grumble. Instead, he points them to the supernatural work of God. He makes clear that partaking of eternal life is not something people autonomously choose to do; it is a work of God. In other words, if God is not working in our hearts, we may be present physically, but we are not truly here to seek Jesus or be nourished by him. Instead, we are seeking selfish desires—often veiled in religious language.

Jesus states plainly: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” What is necessary to be drawn to Jesus is faith. And how one feeds on Jesus as heavenly food is by believing in him.

That is why Jesus says again in verse 51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.” Had Jesus stopped there, the teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum might have concluded politely. It would have been challenging, but manageable.

But Jesus does not stop there.

He makes a provocative statement—one that pushes beyond all existing human categories. He concludes verse 51 by saying, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This statement is so jarring that verse 52 is almost an understatement: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

This reaction sets up the next sequence, the next camera angle, the next escalation in intensity—what we will call:

The next group of shots: We must feast on Christ.

Third Group of Shots: We Must Feast on Christ

Beginning in verse 52, we enter into the conundrum faced by the Jewish crowd—those who, for the life of them, could not understand why Jesus was speaking about eating his flesh. If that were not unsettling enough, Jesus intensifies the claim in verse 53: “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.”

This was not merely odd; it was unthinkable. The Law of Moses strictly forbade the consumption of blood—whether animal or human. And yet here Jesus is, speaking not only of flesh but of blood. The claim is deliberately provocative. Jesus is saying that if we are to participate in life—true life, abundant life—we must feast on him.

Just as the Jewish hearers were scandalized, so are we. Just as they looked at Jesus and said, “We cannot eat you,” we often look at the bread and the cup and say, “That cannot give me grace.” We doubt that we could possibly be spiritually nourished by this meal, by this means.

But that is not the case.

In the Supper, Jesus offers himself to you. The meal is food for your soul because it points you to Christ. It directs your faith to him as the true source of life.

It is important to note that verses 54 and 40 are closely parallel:

• “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (v. 54).
• “Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (v. 40).

The only substantial difference is the language. One speaks of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood; the other speaks of looking to the Son and believing in him. The conclusion is unavoidable: the former is a metaphorical expression of the latter. Indeed, the structure of the entire discourse supports this interpretation. It is no surprise, then, that Augustine of Hippo famously wrote, Crede, et manducasti—“Believe, and you have eaten.”

The remaining verses only deepen this reality. In verse 56, Jesus says, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” This union with Christ—this mutual abiding—can only happen through a feasting on Christ by faith. As Jesus explains, “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.”

Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven—not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on Christ will live forever. And why is this so? Verse 55 gives the reason: “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”

You and I are hungry. We are thirsty. And here, in Christ, is the meal that truly satisfies—the meal that gives eternal life.

Main Point: Only Christ can Satisfy – that is why gives us a meal!

The Lord’s Supper as a Means of Grace

We do not believe that we are physically consuming Christ’s flesh and blood. This meal points beyond itself. It’s a sign.

Just like a STOP sign is a symbol of a city’s authority, and doesn’t have authority in itself, neither does the Supper have grace in itself.

The Lord’s Supper depicts physically what happens spiritually.

The Lord’s Supper is also a seal. Just like a seal authenticates a document, so also the Lord Supper authenticates what you have in Christ. What do you have in Christ? Blessing.

What you and I are hungry for is blessing. We want to know that we are blessed. In the Supper, Jesus offers himself to you, and since he offers himself to you, in him you are blessed.

No guilt. No condemnation. But grace!

This is a means of grace to you as an individual.

But this is not just for the individual, it is also for us as a church. This is a family meal. It signifies that we share in Christ’s life together, and therefore in each other.

So, this morning, as we prepare to partake of the Lord’s Supper, remember God’s grace.

Christ is spiritually present. As we partake, we remember that we are justified, adopted, united to Christ—sons and daughters of God.

Are you hungry? Come and eat.
Are you thirsty? Come and drink.

Stop wasting your appetite on what does not satisfy. Feast on Christ—and live.