“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. 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.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ So they said to him, ‘Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’ 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. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ 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. 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.’”

John the Baptist has been arrested and executed by Herod Antipas. Jesus’s Galilean ministry has essentially drawn to a close, and the path to the cross that He’s been on all this time is moving into its final stretch. The entire ministry has had a calculated quality, divinely orchestrated to unfold according to God’s will. Jesus has moved throughout Galilee, venturing into Judea at times and Samaria at least once. His declaration of the truth is an open challenge to the religious authorities, and He’s on the radar of Herod and the political powers that be as well. During His movements throughout the regions, and in His miracles, and teachings, we always see that He’s not afraid to rile or upset those in charge. Acts like cleansing of the temple at the Passover in John 2, His repeated healings on the Sabbath, and His declaration of being the Son of God had the religious leaders seeking to kill Him. Yet Jesus typically doesn’t afford them the opportunity, slipping away or moving from one region to another before they mobilize against Him. While He never lies about His identity, there are times where He’s more selective about sharing it, or charges people not to speak of the miracles He’s performed. While we still have chapters to go before we see Jesus arrive in Jerusalem for the week leading up to His crucifixion, there’s a shift in tone around the feeding of the 5,000 and afterward. We see Jesus go from performing the miracles that give credence to His station, to explaining the truth of what it is that He can provide. We’ve seen Him multiply food beyond comprehension, feeding thousands from an amount of bread and fish that was sufficient for one person. We’ve seen Him walk on water, defying the chaos of the world and even calling Peter out on the waves with Him, showing the hope and triumph we all can have in Him. We’ve also seen a crowd, fed miraculously from the loaves and fish, who can’t seem to grasp Jesus’s position as the Christ. As they continue to pursue Him for material gain, we see in today’s passage as Jesus addresses them and explains that He is the fulfilment of more than they could ever hope for – whether they can see it, or not.

1. The Law and the Prophets

“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. 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.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’”

There is nothing recorded that Jesus has said that can be disregarded – but if He starts off with “truly, truly” it seems appropriate to pay extra attention. This section begins with the pleasantries and false pretenses set aside. The day prior they addressed Him as the Prophet, now He’s still respected, but reduced to “Rabbi.” They ask about His arrival in Capernaum when no one witnessed His departure from Bethsaida, but Jesus knows what they’re seeking, and cutting to the truth of the matter, He addresses it.

Matthew 6:31-33,

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Jesus says this during the Sermon on the Mount, relatively early in Matthew’s gospel. We see in John 6:27 that while across Jesus’s ministry the locations have varied, the miracles have had unique qualities, and the lessons have taken different forms, the aim has remained constant. As from the very start of His ministry, His message of, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” hasn’t changed. Christ always points us to God, that which is holy and eternal, rather than that which is sin stained and temporal. Jesus counsels them to work for the food that endures to eternal life, that which He, the Son of Man, the One on whom God has placed His mark of approval and authenticity, can provide. Their question in response again shows that there’s a disconnect in their understanding. “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” These people were part of a crowd of thousands who were following Jesus, they’ve seen His miracles and what’s more, they’ve heard Him teach. They shouldn’t have to ask what to do to be doing the work of God. But this is something that we do, even now. Like a child that gets an answer they don’t like from one parent and proceeds to go ask the other, we’ll look to different sections of scripture, not seeking truth, but looking for validation for what we want. Despite the fact that we’ve read the Word and heard sermons preached on certain topics, there’s a degree of Biblical amnesia that we sometimes display when the Bible doesn’t give us what we want in our flesh. And so similarly, we see Jesus asked a question that He’s already provided the answer to. His response, while patient, seems to underpin this, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” The takeaway from this is that to do the work of the Father is to listen to and obey what the Son has told you. In Matthew 22, the teachers of the law are trying to test Jesus and trip Him up on legalistic matters. After the Sadducees fail spectacularly, one of the lawyers of the Pharisees steps in to try. Verses 36-40 say,

“’Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’”

“The Law and the Prophets.” The entirety of the Old Testament. The Law of Moses, the records of Israel’s establishment as a nation, their triumphs and defeats, their victories at the hand of God and their brokenness when they abandon Him. Every prophecy and every promise. The hand that parts the sea and makes a way through the desert; the same one that brings fire from heaven and pestilence upon inequity. It all rests on these two commandments. Without them, the foundation is not laid, and the rest will not stand. Jesus says in Matthew 5:17,

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

His words do not rewrite or destroy the Old Testament, but give clarity and affirmation to the spirit of its teaching. When Jesus tells those who have followed Him to Capernaum that, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’” He points to His own authority in the Father and that in this, the Law and the Prophets rest on Him.

2. The Bread from Heaven

“So they said to him, ‘Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”’ 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. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’”

These men were part of the mass of people following Jesus because of His miracles. They then witnessed Him multiply bread and fish to feed thousands – food that they themselves ate from! I can’t quite come to terms with someone having the stupidity or audacity to bear witness and partake of those things, and then say, “what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?” But we see in their blindness toward the things of God and pursuit of what is worldly, that they show themselves to be of the same misaimed spirit as their fathers. Despite His wonders and His teaching, they seek another sign from Jesus, citing the manna that was given to the people of Israel while they were in the wilderness. But Jesus corrects them, taking their focus from Moses who interceded for the people, and pointing it back to God, who provided the blessing. Because of the lack of trust the people placed in God, the manna proved to not just be a blessing, but also a test that brought severe repercussions. Psalm 78:21–31 outlines a series of events that unfold throughout Israel’s time in the wilderness,

“Therefore, when the LORD heard, he was full of wrath; a fire was kindled against Jacob; his anger rose against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power. Yet he commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven, and he rained down on them manna to eat and gave them the grain of heaven. Man ate of the bread of the angels; he sent them food in abundance. He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind; he rained meat on them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas; he let them fall in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings. And they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved. But before they had satisfied their craving, while the food was still in their mouths, the anger of God rose against them, and he killed the strongest of them and laid low the young men of Israel.”

The people complain with hunger – not altogether unreasonable, as our earthly bodies are built to consume food. But the pattern that’s established is not just one of expressing a physical need, but whining, complaining and doubting God in their distress. It’s not just that they say, “we need food,” but that they’re continually lamenting about being taken from Egypt, and questioning, despite the provisions that God has made for them, why they were freed from slavery just to die in the wilderness. When God provides them with the manna, they eventually come to complain about that. Part of what Psalm 78 references unfolds in Numbers 11:4-6, where God provides quail, giving the people the meat that they crave.

“Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, ‘Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.’”

Just in case it’s not clear, it’s never okay to belittle the blessings of God because it’s not what we sought in our flesh. In Numbers 11:31-32 the people greedily gather the quail,

“Then a wind from the LORD sprang up, and it brought quail from the sea and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, around the camp, and about two cubits above the ground. And the people rose all that day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail. Those who gathered least gathered ten homers. And they spread them out for themselves all around the camp.”

We’re told that those who gathered least collected ten homers, which based on weight, works out to roughly 1,900 birds. Playing a little loose with this number and the censuses taken of the able-bodied men in Israel, this would put us at around 1.14 billion quail collected in total. This could be a literal number, but given the intense volume, it also may very well be an exaggeration to point to the severity of the greed of the people. Numbers 11:33 says,

“While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck down the people with a very great plague.”

The hearts and minds of the people we fixated on satisfying their cravings, on lamenting the worldly benefits they’d enjoyed while slaves in Egypt, and in this they overlooked the blessings and provisions of God. We see the same nature from those who now ask Jesus for another sign. Their hearts and minds are set on worldly things, and they ignore the spiritual truth that stands before them.

“They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’ 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. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.”

Their eyes are fixed on the physical, and so when Jesus speaks of eternal, life giving bread from heaven, they desire it for physical gain. This parallels with Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4:13–15

“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’”

What Jesus offers her is spiritual, and she doesn’t quite get it. The difference between her and those who we see seeking Jesus in John 6, is that, as Jesus provides her with a sign (and a relatively small sign compared to those who witnessed the feeding of the 5,000), her eyes become open to the spiritual matters at hand. She begins to hope, abandoning her water jugs and running back to town and sharing her testimony and her wonder, “can this be the Christ?” However Jesus tells the group He addresses in John 6:36, “But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.” Like their fathers, their eyes are set on worldly things and their hearts are hard. They come seeking physical bread, but the Bread of Heaven stands before them, and they are deaf to His words.

3. The Bronze Serpent in the Wilderness

“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.”

This isn’t the overarching direction I was looking to take things in, but as a brief (or maybe not so brief) aside, this verse, “… whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” Brought to mind what I think may be one of the more anxiety producing passages for Christians, Matthew 7:21–23,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

People tend to draw discomfort from verses 22 and 23, worrying about the quality of their faith and relationship with Christ and wondering if they’re missing something. In doing this, they have to skip over verse 21 and not see the same message that’s delivered in John 6:37. This isn’t something to be anxious about, but is something we can draw comfort from. Our salvation is not dependent on us claiming the name of God and going out into the world to assert our dominance. Jesus says that we’re to do the will of the Father, and that whoever comes to Him He will never cast out. Our assurance is in Him, not in our own power or the praise of the world.

Jesus references being raised up on the last day in this section. This continues the Old Testament ties ins, calling us back to Numbers 21:4–9

“From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.’ Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.’ So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”

In continuing to show a lack of trust in God, in speaking against Him and His servant Moses and for disparaging the bread from heaven He has provided, Israel is again punished. When the people go to Moses and acknowledge their sin and ask him to intercede for them, God gives him a set of instructions that may seem a bit odd. He doesn’t take the serpents away, removing the threat from the environment, but He provides a way for the people to be saved through the trial. A bronze serpent, set on a pole, and by looking upon it, you won’t be killed by the bites of real serpents. The clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson draws an interesting comparison between this account and the relevance of exposure therapy in psychological treatment today. Looking upon the serpent, facing the thing that you’re afraid of, the thing that can destroy you, provided freedom from that thing. This brings us back to Jesus, who tells Nicodemus in John 3:15,

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

This obviously points to the cross, but in referencing the serpent in the wilderness, what does this mean? What does “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…” mean and how does it bring us back to Israel in the wilderness and fiery serpents? The fiery serpents are our sin. They’re our grumbling and rebellion against God, our love of the world and dismissal of what is holy. Jesus’s glory is Him lifted up on the cross. Sentenced to death while entirely innocent, scorned and mocked while blameless. He gave up His life after enduring the brutal torture of the road to the cross and the crucifixion itself, and in His death is glorified. We look to the cross and see the most terrifying of possibilities: the fate we all deserved as sinners. Broken and condemned with the wrath of God poured out on Him, we look to the cross and see Jesus in our place. In understanding what we’re seeing, that His love for us was so great that He bore it all while deserving none of it, by accepting His sacrifice, we are redeemed. In looking upon the horrific sentence that we were spared, we are freed from the death that the sting of sin – the bite of the fiery serpent, is supposed to bring. Jesus was raised up on the cross, but ultimately raised back to life and lifted up to heaven with none of His glory diminished. This is the resurrection that He promises us, that we may be lifted up to eternity with the Father, that His shame has delivered our glory. The group that sought Jesus in Capernaum can’t see Him for who He is. Though they may observe the Law of Moses, they are blind to Jesus’s fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. They seek the blessings of their fathers, but overlook the pitfalls that caused Israel to stumble, and miss the spiritual blessing of the Bread of Life that stands before them. They fail to understand the purpose and the warning of the serpent in the wilderness, and therein cannot fathom the glory that awaits Christ on the cross. But in their blindness, they offer a powerful warning to us. They were hardened against the lessons provided through the suffering of their ancestors, and we must not make the mistake of failing to learn from the mistakes of ours. We do not determine the nature and blessings of God, and we try to force Him into worldly boxes at our peril. His will is not that we should continue to sin so that His grace may abound, but that we look upon the Son, and believe, and in this believing be raised up to glory on the last day.

Pastor Chris’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QSwbOnbt5g