What Jesus Really Meant by "Eat My Flesh

All right, a little bit later on the bedtime Bible study tonight. Had a late-night meeting. So when last we were together, it was— where were we here? John 6. And we had done the Bread of Life, or we had done the start of the Bread of Life. Um, so we were talking a little bit about how Moses, um, gave them physical bread, and he's got something deeper and better to give to them. Um, and these people that had followed him from the fishes and the loaves across the water were just looking for more physical, like, give us the thing that our belly needs right now. And he's saying, I've got something so much more. Like, I didn't just come to give you guys food. I came to give you something more. And that's kind of where I had stopped for the night. Let's see if we can't finish through this section though. So Jesus— John 6:35 is where we're at. I'm reading from the ESV. Follow along in whatever translation you guys want to follow along in. But let's get going here. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life, and whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered them, Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give you for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed 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 and I live, Because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he will also 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. Jesus said these things in the synagogue as he taught on Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying. Who can listen to this?" And that's where we'll stop. We'll stop at sixty. Imagine somebody coming in who had just fed you. He just, you know, you just had dinner and he goes, dinner was great, but the reality is you need to eat my body and drink my blood. It's gonna come probably out of the left field a little bit. It's gonna be a bit of a haymaker. It's gonna knock you for a bit of a loop. For the average person who's there, they're looking at him like there's There's not a lot to go around. You're not really that big of a guy. For us to have to eat you literally raises some ethical questions. Should we be eating the flesh of a human being? Do you want us to actually drink your blood? How does this work? There's not a ton of details here. And of course, later we find out he's talking about communion. He's talking about, uh, just having that understanding of the, the Passover meal, uh, as he does the Last Supper. We, we get some of that understanding later, but for right now— This is just kind of an intro to that and giving them the understanding that God gave life through me. And if you are going to be a part of me, when you take that, you, you get the life that came with. What's interesting about this, though, is he repeatedly says a couple of times, That he came down from heaven, did not do his will, but the will of his Father who sent him. And whoever God gives him, he's, he's gonna get. Like, this is a— if God gives him these folks and, and they're able to listen and they're able to, to understand this, there are people that are going to grumble about this. There's people that are going to argue about this. There's people that are having a hard time with this. There are people that hear this and go, okay, like, I, you know, I don't understand what you're saying. Maybe I don't get it right out the gate, but you haven't led us astray so far. So I'm just going to— I'm going to go with you. I just am like, it's where we're going. It's what we're going to have to do. I don't know how it's going to actually play out or how it's going to work, but I trust you. You're right. Like, we watch you raise people. We've watched you heal people. We watch you cast out demons. We watch you do miracles. If you say this is the way it's going to go, then this is the way it's going to go. There are people that just believe. So it's a really challenging passage of even when things don't make sense, you look around, you can look at what God's doing in your life. You can look at maybe teachings that you're seeing in your daily devotions you're doing that you're wrestling with and trying to figure out like this just doesn't make sense to me. What am I? What am I supposed to be doing here? That doesn't. I don't understand. Sometimes faith is just there. Sometimes you won't understand in the moment. Sometimes you won't understand right now. But he never leaves you hanging. When the time comes for you to understand, you will. And we see that over and over and over again. For those of you who've been following along with Daniel in the morning, Nebuchadnezzar Gives him a caution, tells him something's gonna happen, gives him dreams. He doesn't listen. Time comes where he understands exactly what Jesus was gonna— or what God was telling him. This is what's gonna happen. Now I understand. I'm in the wilderness. I've lost my kingdom. And don't worry, it'll be restored. And he doesn't understand what that means until it happens. There's just— there's a lot of times where God is doing a work in your life, when God has given you something, a teaching and an understanding. Or a lack of understanding and instruction, and you're just wrestling with it. It just— it doesn't make sense what you're being asked to do or how you're being asked to do it, where you are, where God is with you. And it's hard. It's hard. Those seasons are hard. But we can always trust in who God's character is. We can always trust in who Jesus is and the things he does. He doesn't love— The things He does, He does for a purpose. And it's never His intent to mislead. It's never His intent to hurt. He loves you. And there's purpose in what, what's going on. There's purpose in what He's doing with you. If you don't understand right now, pray for understanding. Go to Him, ask Him the questions that you need to, but know that He's going to have an answer for you. Amen. And it may not come right away, but there will be an answer. It will make sense down the road. 6 months, a year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later, 40 years later. It's going to make sense. It's going to click at some point and you're going to go, okay, now I get it. Now I get it. Sarah and Abram, right? You've got, you've got these elderly folk where God says, don't worry, you're going to be the father of all nations. And, you know, They're so old that there's no way that they could have kids. How is this going to actually happen? It does though. It does. They can't understand how God intended that to work and how it did work. Sometimes you just have to trust, and I know that's so hard. And I'm not talking blind faith. I'm not talking just believing because you have to believe. I'm talking believing because you know who Jesus is. You know what the Word says he is. You know who he's been in your life, you know what he's done in the past, you know what he's accomplished, you know the authority he's had. Trust because of what you know to be true. That's it. It really is that. There's a whole thing about communion here, but wrestle that out, I guess, as you will. But this one for me is very much— there can be times when something's really confusing. It's a really hard, confusing thing to understand, but there's purpose there, and Jesus will come to explain it. You won't be left that way forever. That's it for tonight. Good night.