Jesus’ lesson in this chapter might well be called: How To Live Forever 101.

Jesus has fed more than 5000 people with 2 donated sardines and 5 barley rolls.

John includes this very important detail of the response of the crowd to this miracle:

“When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”
‭‭John‬ ‭6‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭ESV‬‬

When they say, “This is indeed THE Prophet,” they are referring to Deuteronomy 18:15-18 where the LORD has told Moses that He will raise up a Prophet like him (that is, like Moses).

They were thinking this because of how Moses prayed and God provided manna for the children of Israel. But there is a LOT implied in comparing Jesus to Moses.

We should pause and ask “What was unique about Moses?” Why would God tell Moses He would raise up a prophet like him? Like, don’t all prophets speak on God’s behalf? Don’t all prophets perform miracles? What makes Jesus “like Moses” and not like, say, Elijah or Daniel?

🤔 Was it because Moses saw God?

Well, what about Isaiah?

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭6‬:‭1‬ ‭ESV‬‬

😐 Oh… Yeah. Forgot about that.

Daniel saw Him too. And Ezekiel. The Word of the LORD came to Samuel and Nahum and all of them. In fact, you couldn’t be an OT prophet without first having some kind of supernatural encounter with Yahweh, the Angel of Yahweh, or the Word of Yahweh.

😐 Hmm. I guess that’s not it then.

No. We need to maybe think about what Moses experienced that no other prophet experienced. Or maybe, how he was used by God in a way that no other prophet was.

😯 Ooo, was it the parting of the Red Sea?

Well, God parted the water of the Jordan for Joshua and both Elijah and Elisha smacked the Jordan River with Elijah’s cloak and the water parted, so I don’t think it’s that.

☝️🤓 Was it the plagues of Egypt?

🤔 The Ten Commandments?

Now you’re cookin’.

And why did God send the plagues on Egypt?

🤓 So Pharaoh would let God’s people go out of slavery.

And did God only give Moses TEN Commandments?

😐 Well… No. There were a bunch of them.

And was it only laws or did God and the people enter into an agreement?

🤔 I think it was an agreement. Because the people said they would follow Yahweh and Moses sprinkled them with blood.

💡😲… (gasp) sprinkled them with blood….

So how might Jesus be uniquely like Moses?

🤓 Did Jesus send a plague of grasshoppers?

😲 No, Doofus.

🤨 I’d like to solve the puzzle.

Go ahead…

😌 “Jesus freed the slaves and gave the covenant.”

Yes! Jesus does for all men what Moses did for the children of Israel. Jesus is the Passover Lamb AND the Prophet who leads mankind out of the slavery of sin (i.e. “doing it my own way.”) Jesus is the true (and final) mediator between God and man, like Moses and Aaron and the priesthood used to be the mediator between God and Israel. Jesus made the New Covenant between God and men which was sealed with His own blood.

Obviously, the people who ate the loaves and fish don’t have any clue that Jesus is going to do all this. They’re just making the connection between Jesus-and-bread, Moses-and-manna.

Jesus sends the clamoring crowd away and crosses the lake that night. But the crowd followed Him, and within a day or so, they found Him in Capernaum and (as John 6:59 says) they crammed into the synagogue to hear Him teach. And Jesus doesn’t coddle them.

“Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs.”
‭‭John‬ ‭6‬:‭26‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The implication is that the miracles are signs pointing to something that may be understood. Namely, that Jesus is the promised Messiah and King of Israel.

Jesus is saying that the crowd wanted to make Him king – not because they really understood Who He was, but because He provided miraculous free food. And Jesus straight-up tells them that they’re chasing the wrong thing.

“Don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.” They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?” Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.””
‭‭John‬ ‭6‬:‭27‬-‭29‬ ‭NLT‬‬

You would think that seeing piles of food appear out of nowhere, plus the many healings and miracles Jesus has done would be plenty of “signs.” But no. They ask for another sign before they can believe that Jesus is telling the truth about being sent by God to give eternal life.

This is the catalyst for what scholars call “The Bread of Life Discourse.” In verses 26-59 Jesus compares Himself to manna, the original “bread of life.”

CHARACTERISTICS SHARED BY JESUS AND MANNA:

• Provided by God
• Descended from Heaven
• Only available for a limited time
  • Must be gathered “in the morning.” If you look at human history as a week of millennia, Jesus arrived before dawn on the 4th day – the time when dew and manna falls. He had to be “gathered” (His message collected, written) before it grew “hot” (the idiom for persecution in the parable of the soils).
  • Does not appear on the Sabbath. That which was gathered stays fresh during the time of rest. The writer of Hebrews says that those who believe in Christ enter into His Sabbath rest, (Heb. 4:1-11). And Christ our Manna has been fresh for 2000 years. There is no repeat of the manna during the time of rest. Jesus has appeared and we have gathered Him and we feed upon Him during the time of rest.
  • Ceases when the people enter the Promised Land. When Joshua (Yeshua) leads His host in to drive out the wicked inhabitants of earth, the “manna” that sustained the Church is upgraded to a full feast. We know Christ only in part now. But when He returns, He will be more than manna. He will be the whole “food pyramid.”
• Complete nutrition. No additional food is required to sustain life.

There was a “last day” when the manna fell. And it was Passover.

“While the Israelites were camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, they celebrated Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month. The very next day they began to eat unleavened bread and roasted grain harvested from the land. No manna appeared on the day they first ate from the crops of the land, and it was never seen again. So from that time on the Israelites ate from the crops of Canaan.”
‭‭Joshua‬ ‭5‬:‭10‬-‭12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

That Passover was the “last day.”

The very next day they began to be sustained by the food of the Promised Land.

FOUR TIMES in this discourse, Jesus tells the people POINT BLANK that the resurrection will be on “the last day”. And the resurrection is when the harpazo happens.

🤓 What’s a har-pod-zo?

That’s the Greek word translated as “caught up,” “catching away,” or, via Jerome’s Latin translation, “the rapture.”

Jesus says of the one that comes to Him and believes on Him for eternal life, “I will raise him up at the last day,” (vv.39, 40, 44, 54).

We know from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-54 that the resurrection of the dead and the transformation of the living are concurrent events. This fact will become very helpful as we move through the NT. When we see passages about the Resurrection, we’re also reading about the harpazo; the snatching away.

Incidentally, if you want to read a fresh and thorough treatment of the harpazo, AND if you can handle some Greek and are a dedicated enough reader to work through nearly 800 pages, get the book Harpazo by James Jacob Prasch. It’s also available as an eBook on Amazon. Even if you think you’ll disagree with the author’s perspective, you’ll learn things about this much-debated future event that you won’t get anywhere else. It’s refreshingly devoid of conjectured timelines, speculation, and adapting the text to a pre-determined eschatological view.

Now… Let’s do some math.

🤓 To find when the last day is going to be?

No. To understand Jesus as the Bread of Life.

🤓 That’s math?

😐 I thought you didn’t like math?

As long as it doesn’t involve numbers, I don’t mind too much.

🤔

Jesus = Manna, the “Bread of Life”

Eating the bread = believing, (trusting Christ)

Believing = Eternal Life

Eating the bread = Eternal Life

Eating = consuming, taking into oneself

Taking Christ into oneself = Eating Christ, the Bread of Life

Believing = Taking Christ into oneself

The disciples and the synagogue audience did not do the math. They turned left and got lost at cannibalism. Jesus wasn’t talking about eating His literal body and blood. He was talking about believing and receiving.

This whole discourse (as I said at the beginning) is about How To Live Forever. It’s about obtaining eternal life.

There is only ONE eternal life in the universe.

YAHWEH, the Creator, is eternally, self-sustainingly, outside of time, space, and matter, ALIVE. He IS life.

There is no life outside of Him. And He doesn’t dispense it apart from Himself.

IN HIM was life.

Humans were once connected to His life; joined to Him and living in His presence in Eden.

Then we got disconnected. 🔌

Jesus invites humanity to be reconnected to the Divine Father through Himself. Jesus is (if you will) the electrical socket where lifeless humanity meets the power of God. And when the life/power of God flows into our beings and we are joined to Him, we become alive and functional as we were meant to be.

It’s like a hair dryer. Does it exist without being plugged in? Sure. But is it functional as a hair dryer? It is being what it was meant to be? No.

Being a Christian is not primarily about attending Church gatherings and doing “Christian” things. It’s about being joined to Christ in our innermost being. Welded. Connected. United. One. (That’s why marriage is the most profound idiom for the relationship between Christ and the Church).

When a person is united to Christ, he is united to everyone else who is one with Christ. That’s what the Church is. It’s not a human organization one joins like the Rotary Club. It is the living Body of Christ. The “body” language is more than a metaphor. It’s spiritually true. That’s why the reality of the Church is totally independent of buildings and programs. The Church is the people and nothing but the people.

Even though the 12 disciples didn’t really understand this yet, they knew enough to believe that Jesus was the One sent to bring the Kingdom of God to earth. A lot of the other people who had been following Jesus, were like…

👳🏻‍♂️ Ummm… Jesus is talkin’ some kind of cannibalism crazy talk. I’m out.

Jesus was speaking of spiritual realities and their minds were stuck in a physical-gear.

It’s like Paul told the Corinthians:

“But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.”
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭2‬:‭14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

As these unspiritual, former followers bail out, we’re watching the seeds on hard and rocky soil wither in real time.

“Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you also going to leave?” Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.”
‭‭John‬ ‭6‬:‭67‬-‭68‬ ‭NLT‬‬

When it gets really hard to follow Jesus, and the path He leads me on is not making a lick of sense, I think of this text.

I can’t leave. To whom would I go? Buddha? Mohammed? That New Age manifest-your-millions-vision-board guru? No. Only Jesus has the words that give eternal life.