Jesus is presented as the Bread of Life, offering eternal sustenance and transformation. The sermon begins with the miracle of feeding the five thousand, illustrating Jesus' power and provision, and then delves into the spiritual meaning of this act, emphasizing that true nourishment comes from believing in Him. The message highlights that just as physical food sustains the body, Jesus' sacrifice and presence sustain the soul, leading to a life of truth, love, and forgiveness, reflecting God's own character. Ultimately, believers are called to partake in this divine sustenance and share it with others, fulfilling God's purpose for humanity.
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For our scripture reading this afternoon, will you turn with me again to the Gospel of John and John chapter six, please, John six. And we'll read beginning at verse one. John six and verse one. After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. And the Passover feast of the Jews was nigh.
And Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him. He said unto himself, When shall we buy bread that these may eat? And this he said to prove or test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, Two hundred penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother said unto him, There's a lad here which has five barley loaves and two small fishes. What are they among so many? Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, but the men sat down in number about five thousand.
Jesus took the loaves and when he had given thanks he distributed to the disciples and the disciples to them that were set down and likewise of the fishes as much as they would when they were filled he said unto his disciple gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost therefore they gathered them together and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which remained over and above unto them that had eaten then those men when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did said this is the truth that prophet that should come into the world when Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him a change he parted again into a mountain himself alone what a tremendous problem God had in relation to men.
For we read that God's delights are with the sons of men. When the Son of God came into this world he passed angels by, he took down on him the nature of angels. Only of man has it written that he was made in the image and after the likeness of God sin entered in and man became most unlike God the Bible says God is light and in him there is no darkness at all he's a God of absolute unvarying truth it is impossible impossible for God to lie Hath he said it?
And shall he not make it good? God is not a man that he should lie. He is the son of man that he should repent. What a wonderful assurance it is that God is light. And in him there is no darkness at all. God is light. What is the evidence of light? The evidence of light is work. My father worked it is or two. And I worked. God is love. That love must find its expression. God so loved that he gave.
His heart and his hand are attached, not divorced. God is love and that love must find its expression. But as God looked down upon this world, what did he find? He found that men were most unlike God. Therefore we read that Christ died for the un-God-like, those that were most unlike God. Our brother was reading to us earlier today from the epistle of Titus, where the apostle White, the Christians are always liars.
That's a sin against life. step against sin against truth God is the God of truth but men are liars they live a lie oftentimes as well as teach a lie pretend to be what they are not a lot of hypocrisy in the world as God looks at men pretense we put a lot of in appearance of things the way things look but God isn't looking at the appearance of things apostles are judged not by appearances but judge righteous judgment God looks at the heart of man and then God is love but man is unloving and the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world with the express purpose the ultimate purpose that man One day, by His grace, would be like God.
We are because indwell by the Spirit of God to reflect His life even now. But ultimately we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. Like Him. We won't be God, but morally we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. That's what the scripture says. The scripture tells us how it can take place. In a very short expression in First Timothy, verse sixteen, it says, without controversy, great is the mystery of God. And if God was manifest in the flesh, justified in spirit, seen of angels, those are all events that took place before the cross.
But now he tells us what has taken place since the cross. Preached unto the nations. Christ was not preached unto the nations, the Gentiles, until Christ arose from the dead and he said, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Preached unto the nations, believed on in the world, not believed on by the world. Because the vast majority of people in this world do not receive Christ as Savior, but he is taking out of the nations, all the nations of the world, a people for his name who will one day sing to his praise, God worthy.
For thou art redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred tongue and nation and people. believed on the world and received up into glory. That's the ultimate. Our citizenship in heaven. And let us all, if we look for the Savior, shall change these bodies of our humiliation and pass them like unto his own body of glory. And it's in the light of the salvation that is now ours in Christ, as the Apostle says, writing to the Ephesians, he says, put away lying. That's the negative.
Speak every man's truth with his neighbor. We're responsible to share the truth of God with our neighbor. Put away lying, speak every man's truth. Let him that stool steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give. The incentive of getting is not a humulation but distribution let him labor with his hands working the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that need it that's being like God isn't it giving and then he says Among the people of God, the love of God is to be manifested.
He says, Be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake. Can't forgive a Jew. How is it possible that we become like him, huh? We become like Him by feeding on Him. Every one of us here physically are in accumulation of what we feed on. If we could see clearly we'd be so many pounds of potatoes and whatever, whatever you feed on physically. That's what has maintained your body to this moment and what we feed on spiritually.
That's the message of this chapter. The Lord Jesus, when he explains this miracle, he says, I am the bread of life. We were hearing that we begin in faith, we're justified by faith, and we continue in faith. Having begun in the Spirit, are you made now perfect by the flesh? No. We feed on Christ. We say, as the hymn writer puts it, nothing but Christ is on we tread. The gift on Christ, God's living bread, with sap in hand and feet well shot. Nothing but Christ, the Christ of God.
Nothing save him in all our ways, giving the theme for ceaseless praise, our whole resource along the road. Nothing but Christ, the Christ of God. He's the food of the soul. There are seven sign miracles in the Gospel of John. The first one is recorded in John chapter two with the Lord Jesus. You remember invited with his disciples. It says both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the marriage. When you have a marriage, your marriage or my marriage, where you invite the Lord Jesus to be there and his people to be there, you've got the foundation of a very lovely marriage.
A marriage that the Lord can approve and that the Lord's people can approve, that's a marriage worth having. They were invited to the marriage. The last miracle that is recorded, the last sign is found in John chapter eleven where the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Think about those two, the first and the last. And make a note in your mind of this, and don't ever forget it. The Lord Jesus is the only one that can put gladness into a marriage. He furnished the wine. The Bible says, Wine that cheers the heart of God as man.
It's a symbol of joy. He's the only one that can put real gladness into a marriage. And he's the only one that can take the sadness out of the funeral. Make a note of that. He puts the joy in and he takes the sorrow out. Yes, we sorrow when that loved one is taken from us, when that wife, that husband, that brother, that sister, that son, that daughter, that friend. Of course we sorrow. But as a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ, we do not sorrow like others who have no hope.
for we know that we have a hope that sure it's fixed, it's eternal in our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, we say sometimes marriage begins at forty. Well, it doesn't begin at forty, and it certainly doesn't begin at seventy. I remember a couple of years ago when I reached my seventies, I'm seventy-three now, but when I reached that seventies, I was at the park of the ponds, and I marked a brother, he was about ninety-two years of age, and he said to me, well, brother, When I mentioned him, I was seven, he says, from seventy on, he's over ninety. He says, from seventy on, it's downhill all the way. And he went like this with his arm. And I'm a kind of a slow thinker, but I thought of afterwards what I should have said.
Well, brother, praise the Lord if it's downhill all the way. I thought it was going to be uphill all the way. You know, when you can coast, that's not too bad. But downhill all the way. But there's a very real sense in which life begins, not with your birth. It really begins in a certain sense, in a very real sense, with your marriage. God said to Adam and Eve, and he didn't say it for them because what he said didn't apply directly to them in a certain sense. He said, when he brought Eve to Adam and And to pronounce them husband and wife, as we would say, God said, Therefore, he that made them at the beginning, the Lord Jesus said, and he was the one who made them at the beginning, said, A man shall leave his father and mother shall flee unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
What he was saying to Adam and Eve, they're going to set up a new home. independent of yours. They're going to honor you because of their parents. But that's their home. And you keep your cotton-picking fingers off of that home. Leave and cleave. That's the only two words you need to remember. Leave and cleave. And if you leave, then cleave. And if the better cleaving job you do, the better leaving job you'll do. How important. Simple words... But how important. The next miracle the Lord Jesus performed in John's Gospel was raising, I mean, to health again the nobleman's son.
God wants us to know, it seems to me that not only interested in seeing us set up a home. You know, we can honor God where the husband and the wife can be a reflection of the Lord Jesus and the church. but where we can have the joy of seeing our children brought to life through Him. That father is very much concerned, and how important it is that fathers be concerned. Now they have what they call these promise keepers, and men are making all kinds of promises. I don't know if they're living up to them or not, but I do know this, that one of the great problems in our country today is that fathers have neglected the responsibility of their children, and they're not reading the Word of God to them.
They're not praying with their children at home. They're spending in a Sunday school or a church school system to do what they should be doing or what we should be doing, I should say, in our homes. And it's interesting, the very last verses of the Old Testament says something like this. I'm going to send Elijah the prophet. It was mentioned today. I'm going to send Elijah the prophet. And it says, he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
God is saying, your nation, your assembly, will be under the curse of God. If the hearts of the fathers are not turned to the children, if they are, then the hearts of the children will be turned to the fathers. And they'll see the result in children that will go on for God. How important that is. Well, the one that we come today is the middle one of the seven. The Lord Jesus. Taking those five loaves, a few fishes, and feeding them all the sins.
You see, because after we are saved, and after we have our responsibility to our children, that's taken care of. And after we consider the importance of our own walk for God, which is a suggestion in the third sign, miracle, you remember at the pool of Siloam, then there is a responsibility that we have to the world around us. And those of us who have bread, we have the responsibility of sharing it with others, the bread of life.
It's the fourth sign miracle. And John writes of these sign miracles. Many of the signs truly did Jesus and the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through His Navy. And as I said, it's the only miracle the Lord Jesus performed on earth that is recorded in all four of the Gospels, because every one of those four Gospels have in them the Great Commission. expressed in one way or another. In Mark's Gospel, the one that we familiarly quote, it says, Go into all the world and preach the gospel of every creature.
You've got the bread of life. You have the responsibility of sharing it with others. Matthew tells us we have not only the responsibility of sharing the gospel and seeing men becoming disciples of Christ, But we have the responsibility of discipling them. Not only seeing them brought into the world, a man might say, well, those are my children. He may have fathered these children, but I've neglected all of his responsibility to them. He doesn't pay a bill. He runs off somewhere and vacates his responsibilities to his children. But yet he's the father of the children. But he's not the kind of father that God wants him to be.
His responsibility does not be. When he is fathered, the child. when he has been the physical means for that child to come into the world. Now he is the responsibility of caring for that young life. And bringing him up, as the epistle of Ephesians puts it in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So, Matthew said, rather, go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you all the way into the end of the age. Well, it says Jesus saw a great company come unto him.
The real problem was multitudes of hungry people. What a picture that is of our world. Multitudes of hungry people. Many not even knowing they're hungry. But they don't have anything. All they've got is chaff. And Jeremiah says, what is the chaff to the wheat? Who feeds on chaff? But that's what the world is feeding on. Chaff! We've got the wheat. We've got the food. We've got the bread of life. As the Lord Jesus saw these vast multitudes, he says, When shall we buy bread that these may eat? You know, it costs something to feed people.
It costs the Lord Jesus everything. to feed people he said that this chapter the bread is my flesh which I shall give for the life of the world it caught me everything the Son of God loved me the Apostle says he gave himself for me He paid the greatest price that has ever been paid in this universe for anything.
He gave himself. It's mentioned seven times in the New Testament. That expression or similar one is used. He gave himself. He gave himself for our sin. He gave himself. He is the bread of life. And that's stated seven times over this chapter in one way or another. He's called the living bread. He's called the bread that came down from heaven. He says, I am the bread of life. Seven different times. He called himself in this chapter, bread. Well, we need bread. We need food to eat in order to live. My dad years ago was in the state of Wisconsin.
Preaching in a prison. Not as a jailbird, but preaching. And when they got through preaching, they were passing out some tracks. And one fellow, he handed him a track and said, I don't want that. I'm no goat. I don't need paper. I don't want that. Well, Dad said, I didn't give it to you to eat. I gave it to you to read. I don't want it. What we need in this present, he says, some decent food, the stuff that they give me here isn't fit for the hog to eat. Well, he says, my advice to you is don't eat it.
Because I don't know any law in the state of Wisconsin that says you have to eat. Yeah, he says, yeah. But if I don't eat, I'll die. He says, yes, and if you do eat, you'll die. You can have steak every day of your life, but someday you'll take your last meal. And he says, this little paper is telling you about that event. What then? You see, we need the bread. We need the bread that he has to offer. I am the bread of life. He which is to me shall never hunger and never thirst. He says, Verily, I stand to mean that I believe it unto me.
Half everlasting life. Ah, that's worth having, isn't it? Many of us here today can say amen to that. He's the bread. John says he's the word. The word would make flesh and dwell among us. And he says, the bread is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. How can we make that bread really are that we have to eat and live? by faith. We receive him.
We taste and we prove that the Lord is good. We prove that the word which reveals him to us is living food. I am a bread of life. He which he needed of me shall never hunger and never thirst. Just as he spoke the world into existence by his word, he spoke and it was so. There was nothing. And he just spoke and it was so. And he spoke and it was so. But you know, he shouldn't just speak and it was so. He had to pay the price of our sins. We need God's holy and just a man before he could speak.
And it would be so. But oh, the wonderful thing, it is he speaks, and it's so. I love that verse in Hebrews chapter two. It says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? It's great because he provided it. It's great because it's eternal. It's great because of what it does, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord. Oh, his salvation is the message. That's right. which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, just as he spoke the worlds of the existence by his word. So he speaks, and those who believe his word pass from death and the life, because we're born again not of corruption, we'll see, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which living and abiding forever.
And Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. He says, it's the power of God of the salvation. Everyone at worst, remember that? Everyone that gives, everyone that's baptized, everyone that turns over new leaves, everyone that tries the best he can. No, that isn't what it says. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Or it is. It is. It's the power of God of salvation to everyone that believes it. For therein is a righteousness from God revealed something from him, for faith to faith as it is written.
The just shall live by faith. When we take God in his word, believe the message of the gospel, we make a wonderful trip from death unto life. You know the wonderful thing about the message of gospel, his you don't have to go to Jerusalem to receive it you don't have to go to Mecca no place on earth that you have to go you can receive the gospel right where you sit the apostle says the word is nigh thee even in thy mouth and thy heart the word of faith which we preach that if thou shalt confess With thy mouth Jesus as your Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
For with the heart man, believe in him the righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made under salvation. And it is this message, the message of the gospel, the message that has brought us salvation that God has put in our trust. Isn't that marvelous? to think that God would not only save us, but commission us to carry this message with us in our homes, in our business locations. Wherever we go, we can carry the message of the gospel. He didn't give the job to angels.
He told an angel, tell Saul to go and join himself with his chariot down there, you know, and speak to this Ethiopian eunuch. And why did the angel go and do it? No, he gave Philip a redeemed sinner the privilege of carrying that message. They tell the story years ago that a man had a dream. In his dream, he saw two churches. In the front of one, it said, the Apostle Peter will preach here tonight and tonight only at seven thirty. And over here was another church at Asana.
Same date, same time, seven thirty. The angel Gabriel will preach here tonight and tonight only at seven thirty. Then he saw somebody coming towards him in his dream. He said, I suppose you're wondering who should go to hear tonight. Can't hear them both. Both at the same time? Well, he said, yes, I wasn't a little bit of a quandary. I was wondering who I should go to here to preach. Well, I should hear Peter or Gabriel. Well, he says, I'll tell you to go here and preach. He said, my name is Cornelius. And I had a message from the Lord that told me to call for Peter.
And he shall tell me words whereby thou shalt be saved in thy house. Though angels may with rapture see our mercy flows, in Jesus' love. It is not theirs to prove as we the cleansing virtue of that flood. And when we sing redemption story, they will fold their wings. For angels never felt the joy that God's salvation brings. No, we've been put in trust for the gospel. And yet so often it is in the story that our brother read from Luke chapter ten, we pass by on the other side.
All of us, I'm sure, as Christians, we have felt guilty many times of opportunities that we've had since it's like the Lord threw it in our lap. And we missed it. We didn't take advantage of it. I had a phone call not so long ago from our daughter up in Grand Rapids, and she was telling me of an experience she had. She was visiting with a man who was fifty-two years of age, dying of terminal cancer, and he knew it, and she knew it. When she walked in the room, she saw what she had on the table next to him, one of these daily breads that Dr.
DeHan and his family have printed for years. She said to him, would you like me to read you something from this? And he said, no. And then she started to tell him because just the day before was the fifth anniversary that their brother was called home just after his twenty-ninth birthday, just nine days after he was twenty-nine years in days. And how it went he had, she had been with him when he saw the doctor for the last time. He came and said, because his baby was going to be born, he didn't know what then was actually going to be born the day of his funeral.
Two days after he died, his firstborn, his only child was born. Never got to see her. He said to the doctor, he said, you know, I'm not afraid to die, but I don't want to die. I'd like to see that little girl. I'd like to be with my wife a little while longer. And she shared that with this man. And after she shared it with this man, she said, Would you like me to pray with you? And he said, Yes. And she prayed as we know we can pray and bring the gospel into our prayer.
And after she got through praying, he found a motion with his hand and she didn't know what he wanted. But what he wanted to do was to read him something from that daily bread. And Jenny said she just flipped through till she found something that would just be good for a sinner to hear. You know, a lot of things were good for all of us to hear, but just something that would apply to you. Well, I don't know if he trusted the Lord or didn't trust the Lord. But the thing is, God gives us those opportunities. Sometimes we pass by on the other side. I never will forget. A story that Herb Swine and an American comedian told years ago.
He said, you know, I went to New York. I have a country boy. He said, I'm from Hoosier. And he said, I didn't know what the big city was like. And when I got to New York, he said, boy, I wanted to ride in one of those subways. I don't know who would have heard about subways. So he says, I got on this subway and sat down and pretty soon other people came in and sat down and said, after a while, I noticed this lady got on. And she had a big package. She was only in her arm. And there wasn't any sitting room anymore. So she just held on to that strap and come out and managed to hang on her package that she had. And another little lady got on. She had one hand a baby.
She was holding a baby in a package that she was adding on this strap. She said, well, you know, I'm a simple country boy. She said, I was just amazed. I looked around that cabin. There were young men. in some middle-aged men, two big strong fellows, and not one of them, he said, had the decency. Not one of them had the decency to get up and offer their seat to any one of these ladies. He said, I just sat there amazed. And you know, so often we say it would be very nice to the preacher would speak to this person about their soul.
But you know, there are people that you are next to, and that I am next to you, that I've got in with them. Go on to thy friend, the people that know you, and tell them what great things the Lord had made for thee, had done for thee, and it made thee glad. Well, he said... there's a little lad here and he's got five small bugs and two little fishes but boy oh boy he says what are they among so many over five thousand men and one of the gospel says beside women and children there but fifteen thousand people are there more what in the world are you going to do with that little there's no God delight to take the little things of the world, the things that are nothing, to confound the things that are mighty.
We have sung since we've been here some of Charles Wesley's hymns. They had a maid that worked for him. And this little girl, she wanted to testify to the Lord to Charles Wesley, but she was just sort of bashful, just sort of hesitant. One day she talked to her brother and anyway she screwed up her courage as she spoke to Charles Wesley and God used her testimony to bring that man to Christ. He'd been brought up in a Christian home but he wasn't saved at that time. Nobody ever hears about her. Everybody hears about Charles Wesley.
We don't hear too much about Andrew in Scripture but we hear a lot about Peter. He first bindeth his own brother and brought him to Jesus. Alfred Gibbs used to like to tell. I was younger brother. They were twins. But his younger brother Edwin trusted Christ and was the means of leading Alfred Gibbs through the war. Most of us have heard a lot more about Alfred Gibbs than we heard about Edward Gibbs. But God uses his people.
He likes to use the little things that confound the things that are mighty. I was at the conference out in Lyman, Colorado earlier this year. One of the ladies there, Grace Watson, some of you know her, originally from Appletown, Wisconsin. She was telling me about a little boy. when she was about ten years of age. And this was the extent of his wish. He asked her one day when she was about ten years of age, are you saved? And she said, those real words for that young boy, just about her own age, was just like Luke, that she'd get in a fish and she just couldn't shake it loose.
until ultimately and shortly afterwards he trusted Christ. We never know. It isn't the greatness of our witnesses, the greatness of our God. He should take the least witness and use it to the saving of the soul. This little boy didn't have very much to offer and I suppose he might have said that. Listen, my mother packed that for my lunch. It is much and I'm a hungry boy and I remember One of our boys, Brett, I remember when he would come home from school, when he was about fifteen years of age, first thing he'd do is go in the refrigerator, and he'd make him about five, I'm not exaggerating, he'd make him about five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and he'd down every one of them.
And I wanted this kid having a bigger stomach anyway. But I imagine this little fellow said, you know, I want to part with my lunch. Or maybe he might have said, I don't have much, but I'm willing to put it in the hands of the Lord. So Andrew brings it to the Lord and the Lord says, he always asks us to do what we can do. You know, we can't feed people. You know, we can pass on the bread of life, but the Lord is the food of his people.
We can't feed them. make the man sit down now I know that's the first step really that people have to learn that in order to get God's salvation you have to sit down first thing that God did after he had created the world he made the world in six days made man on the last day and somebody said because he didn't want man to tell him how to make the world he made it last so it couldn't interfere with anything And then he said, tomorrow is a holiday. Tomorrow is a holiday. And I want you to rest and done anything but rest in my holiday. God said, not God didn't rest because he was tired. He rested because the work was done. Because I want you to enjoy my rest.
That's what God has done in salvation. The Lord Jesus has done all the work. And that's what I want you to rest. The work's done. It's finished. telling to me all your labor and every late and I will give you rest. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to pay for it. Just receive it. Rest. Finish me our soul to rest. His work and never fail. By him. Our sacrifice and free. We enter through the veil. The Lord Jesus took the load. He gave thanks for them. He distributed his disciples. From the boy to the father of thanksgiving. to the disciples through the multitude. I can assure you this, the Lord did not give those men a great big gunny sack with a hundred and fifty pounds of bread and fish in it.
Do you know what he did? Oh, that's your hand. Whatever the capacity of their hand was, he put enough in it to fill that hand. They went around, they said, would you like to have some bread and fish? Hopefully so. And they help you? You're the friend. Help yourself. Help yourself. And they discovered this fact. The more you give it away, the better you keep it. John Weston said, What I gave, I have. What I kept, I lost.
There is that, says the scripture, there is that which scattereth and yet increase. I remember years ago, going on the way to a missionary planning meeting, and on the way they had a radio, I had this car radio on, and some fellow was singing a song, and it went something like this, and said, My boomerang won't come back. My boomerang won't come back. And then another voice said, Your boomerang won't come back. The secret I know, and to you I'm going to show it. If you want your boomerang to come back, you've got to follow it. That's what God says. Cast thy bread upon the waters, and ye shall find it after many days.
Give that which has fed you, and you'll get it back. There is that which scatters, and yet increases. Lord Jesus used his disciples to feed the multitude, and not only that, but he prayed for these disciples. He said, neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe in me through their words. When they got all through with passing that bread around, then they, the little boy, He discovered that by giving away those five buns, those two small fish, he ate up to these absolutely stuffed.
That's what it says, it doesn't it? It says, everyone has just as much as they wanted, just as much. You want some more? Go ahead, help me some more. Go ahead. And the disciples, they might have been tempted when they looked at that little thing that was put in their hand that said, so I... That's just enough to feed me. You think I'm going to give that to somebody else? Nothing on your life. I'm going to use that. The more they share it, the more they receive it. You haven't met, or some of you haven't met, my brother Carol. I don't think he ever called me or practically never called me when he said something like this.
Have you heard this story? I went to tell stories too, and he's a great storyteller. We were in business together for about ten years, a few of us, and I early discovered how he had such a tremendous memory for stories. Somebody came in in the morning and told him a story that tickled him. If he had time, every other customer through the day heard that story. And by the end of the day he had that so indelibly impressed on his mind he couldn't forget it even if he thrived. He kept giving it away, giving it away, giving it away. And that's the way he kept it. And that's exactly the way it works. The more we give away the truth of God that has been committed to our cross, the better we keep it.
You know there were those that came to the Lord for the wrong reasons. He speaks of that in this chapter. They didn't come because of the miracles, he says, that you saw me do. You didn't come for that reason. But you came because of the loaves that you were filled. You became because of the bodily blessing that you got out of it. It came for the wrong reasons. And he said, labor not for the meat which perishes, but for that meat which endures to everlasting life. Someday you'll take your last meal on earth. I'm not saying he shouldn't work. Lord wouldn't say that either. But don't make that the supreme motive of your life.
Labor for that need which endures under everlasting life. I am the bread of life. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If I want to be like him, I have to feed on him. He's the bread. And as we feed on him, God transforms us more and more into the likeness of his Blessed Son, and his purpose for us will be fulfilled ultimately, because God's purpose is to fill heaven with men and women made life out of the Son of God.
No longer marred by lying. No longer barred by stealing. No more barred by hatred. But as God is light, as light and love, so our moral righteousness will have that stamp upon us. And it is God's ultimate purpose, but it's also God's present purpose. So Paul says, put away lying and speak truth to your neighbor. Put away stealing. Let him the soul feel no more. Labor, working with his hands to think which is good. That he may have to gift him that needed. And thirdly, he says, Put away hating.
Be kind. Tender-hearted. Forgiving one another. Even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. And when we think about greatly, we have been forgiven of God. Surely our hearts should go out in compassion for those who have sinned against us. Freely ye have received, freely did. Shall we pray? Our Father, we're thankful for this wonderful portion of thy word that shows us ever so clearly that the food that we need, the food that satisfies eternally, not just the food that eat today and go on to the draft tomorrow.
but that food which holds good for all eternity. May it be the object of our heart, just as the children of Israel fed on that manna, all through the wilderness, but died. We think that we who feed on the bread of life that has come from heaven will live forever. May it be ours to say as we sometimes think nothing but Christ as our only friends. the gift on Christ, God's living bread, with staff in hand and feet well shod, nothing but Christ, the Christ of God. Nothing save him in all our ways, giving the theme for speechless praise, our whole resource along the road, nothing but Christ, the Christ of God.
Let thy word chew us, we pray, let our fellowship together, let the food that is provided for us, and we pray that the remaining time of this conference together will be one of great blessing for thy glory and for thy people's health and encouragement. For we ask in giving thanks in the name of the Lord Jesus.