An Overview of the Bread of Life Discourse - John 6:22-71

0:54Before we jump into that, I want you to look at John chapter 20, verse 30, and remind you what John's purpose for this gospel is. Verse 30, therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these, speaking of these signs that he's written in this book, these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. So understanding the purpose of John, if you work backwards, From John chapter 20 and verse 31, first thing you notice, it's evangelistic. John's purpose is evangelistic. He wants his readers to hear, believe, and be equipped to have life. Second, he makes it clear that this life comes through faith. That this life comes through faith. Believing. But it's not just believing. In general, there's something very specific here. Believing in Jesus, the Son of God, that one from God, of God, of the same nature as God, and in Jesus the Christ.

2:10Jesus the Christ, that is, the anointed one. That the Christ is Greek for the Hebrew equivalent, Messiah, which involves kingship, which involves Savior, which involves the leader, the anointed one, all that in a grand title. But John's gospel is how to be saved. It's evangelistic and it is directed to the Jew. It's not limited to the Jew by any means, but it is certainly directed to be evangelistic to the Jew. He's writing sometime in the late first century, around 80, 85, maybe a little later, 85-ish. And I believe that John's gospel is going to be a very key instrument that God is going to use in the future to open the eyes of God. The Jewish people. But it's directed to the Jew, though not limited to the Jew. But to have eternal life, one must believe in the true Christ. If you are going to have eternal life, you must believe in the true Christ, not the Christ that you have conjured up in your own imagination, not the Christ of popular theology or philosophy, not the Christ of the political correctness of our days, not the Christ of many false ideologies, but the Christ of scriptures. And so, if you're going to have eternal life, you have to believe in the true Christ, and this Christ had to die for his people. He had to die for you and me. And we're really going to have to come to grips with that and what that says about us individually to have a need of somebody so holy, so perfect to come and be utterly crucified on our behalf. Well, it's an issue that the people struggled with in Jesus' day for sure. In fact, it's primary reason why he's rejected. One of the primary reasons why he is rejected. You know, John, keep in mind, John has a unique perspective on the nation of Israel at the time he's writing this. He had witnessed all those changes that took place in the first century. Great changes took place. Among the Jewish people, and he not only saw the changes, he knew why they happened.

4:37The Jewish war destroyed Jerusalem, along with it the temple. So, both the capital of the Jewish people and the center of worship for the Jewish people utterly destroyed. And John knew why. John heard the crowd cry out, His blood shall be upon us and upon our children. Matthew 26 and verse 25. John also heard Jesus' words spoken to the Jewish nation in Luke 19, verses 43 and 44. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw upon you a barricade and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another. And then he says, and let me tell you why, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation. Very important to know when God is drawing you, when he comes to you, when he speaks to you. You see, John had a unique perspective, and he knew why Jerusalem was destroyed. He knew for sure that the Jewish Messiah had come.

6:01But they didn't recognize him, and they crucified him, and they were again sent out into exile, which will be the longest exile in their history. But John understood all this, he knew the whole picture. He knew why. And so he writes with this big objective on his mind: he wants to reach his fellow Jewish countrymen with the gospel of Christ. He knew that God's blessing upon Israel was not permanently lost, but he knew that they would have to recognize Jesus as their Messiah and the one they crucified. Now, that's a big obstacle. I mean, there's a lot of hurdles you're going to have to get over, a lot of mental blocks, and to this day, a lot of mental blocks into the Jews accepting Jesus as their Messiah. But there are three major obstacles they're going to have to get over. Number one, they're going to have to understand why Jesus is to be preferred over every other Messianic contender.

7:10Second, they're going to have to understand why the Messiah would have to be crucified. And third, they're going to have to get over or come to grips with the guilt in crucifying their Messiah. You see, a crucified Messiah is an absolute contradiction in terms. They have to come to grips with, once they understand that, okay, a crucified Messiah is possible, they have to come to grips with the fact that they crucified their Messiah. So, John's whole gospel is aimed at helping his Jewish people over these obstacles. He demonstrates, number one, that Jesus can do the things that only God could do, that Jesus is God in the flesh. So, why is he a better candidate than any other? Because he can do things that only God can do. Second thing, John wants to impress upon his readers is that his crucifixion was no accident, but the very purpose of his ministry. That is why he was crucified. That is why he was betrayed.

8:23It wasn't because he wasn't the Messiah that he was betrayed, but because he was the Messiah that he would die for his people. And the third thing that John makes sure his readers understand is that Jesus is extremely gracious and extremely forgiving, thus helping anyone who is guilty of sin, even crucifying the Messiah, come to him and expect forgiveness and reconciliation. So now, if you're in John chapter 6, we come to this section, and this is very key. This is the very turning point in the ministry of Jesus. At the beginning of John chapter 6, Jesus is extremely popular. At the end of John 6, he has been deserted by the crowd and even many of his own disciples. Big change. Let's just pick up the narrative. I want you to see this.

9:22Keep in mind that the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, really 20,000, has just taken place. Many of those are looking for Jesus. Jesus withdraws from them because he's not going to be made king by force. And so he slips away. The crowd continues to look for him because there's still an intense fascination for Jesus. Look at verse 22. The next day, the crowd, this is after the feeding of the 5,000 had taken place. The next day, the crowd that stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other small boat there except one, and that Jesus had not entered with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples had gone away alone. There came other small boats from Tiberias near to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the small boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you get here? So there's this fascination with Jesus that's very strong.

10:30Is searching for him. They find him. They're surprised. How did you get here? So there's still great excitement over Jesus at this point. But now flip over and look at verse 60 of this same chapter. The crowd has totally changed their opinion. Beginning in verse 6, you start to see the disgust with Jesus. Therefore, verse 60, many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, This is a difficult statement. Who can listen to it? But Jesus, conscious that his disciples grumbled at this, said to them, Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who it was that would betray him. And he was saying, For this reason I have said to you that no one comes to me unless it has been granted to him from the Father.

11:37So by verse 60, you know, they're disgusted. They're disgusted with him and his teaching, and this disgust leads to a mass defection. Look back at verse 66. As a result of this, many of his disciples withdrew and were not walking with him anymore. So Jesus said to the twelve, you do not want to go away also, do you? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. Jesus answered them, Did I myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil? Now he meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him. So at the beginning of John chapter 6, you have an excited crowd. At the end of John chapter 6, you have a very disgusted crowd. What happened? What happened? What caused this dramatic shift in Jesus' popularity? Well, the answer is the bread of life discourse. That's what happened. His teaching. They didn't receive his teaching. So what, you know, look at this. What is the, look at the beginning? Brilliant observation here, right? The beginning of chapter 6 and the end of chapter 6 is connected by what? The middle of John chapter 6, right? Absolute, brilliant connection, right? But it's in this middle section, the content of Jesus' teaching that's going to evacuate his following. So what did he say? What did he say that was so offensive? Well, we plan to answer that question. More in depth over the next few weeks, as you can imagine. Today, I just want to give you an overview of the bread of life discourse. So, I'll do a little more than read the whole thing and make a few comments. But as our pattern, when we come to a monumental portion of Scripture like this, we first like to survey the whole mountain to use the Laramie, Wyoming plan. And then we go step by step, we hike through the mountain verse by verse, right? And then before we break camp, we survey the mountain one more time and look. Well, that's what we plan to do with the bread of life discourse. We plan to look at it in big picture to begin with, and then we'll walk through verse by verse over the next several weeks, working through this and going deeper into the theological truths that is contained here. But for today, I just want to do a broad overview. I want you to get the big picture so that you will be better prepared to receive the Father's gift of his Son, that we can all be prepared to better receive this gift, this bread of life that God has given us in His Son. So, I want to look at three major elements, or you can think of them as movements in the bread of life discourse that will prepare us to go deeper into this teaching. So, the three major elements, I'm going to look at Jesus. Jesus's exhortation, Jesus' revelation, and Jesus' explanation. So first, Jesus's exhortation, beginning in verse 25 and through verse 33. Now this section of Scripture, this exhortation, comes from a series of question and answers. In fact, there's three sets of question and answers. Question answer, set one, question answer, set two, question answer, set three. So look at verse 25, and you see the first question. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you get here? Striking. Fascinating.

15:39Wanted to know how he made it there. Look at Jesus' answer. Verse 26. Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. So the first thing Jesus does is he exposes their motives. Interestingly enough, look at this crowd. They're not interested in the signs, but they're interested in what? Food, right? Good Baptist, right? Right? But they are interested in the food. Interesting. There's another crowd, remember, back at the Palace over there, all excited about the signs. Here's someone. This crowd is interested in being fed. That was a great miracle over there. Brought some friends this time. Let's see if you can do that again. We're kind of hungry, you know. By the way, it took a long time to catch. Up with you, you know, it's a lot of work, you know, just catching up with you, right? Look at what Jesus says: Do not work, in verse 27, for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, for on him the Father God has set his seal. So there are two kinds of food, right? The food that is perishing, speaking of the physical food, that is used up, and then it's gone, perishes, and then you need more food, right? A different food. But then there's another food, and that is the food that is enduring. And it's the kind of food that isn't exhausted, and it will be given freely. So this leads to another question of the people. Verse 28, therefore they said to him, What shall we do so that we may work the works of God? A very logical question, right, in connection to what Jesus just said. He said, you know, what must we do? If we're not to be expending ourselves for physical food, what must we do to be working the works of God? How must we be expending ourselves on the works of God?

17:39Look at Jesus' answer. So we get to that. We're in that second set, question and answer. Jesus in verse 29 says, Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. We'll drill into that a little deeper when we get there, but for right now, it's sufficient to say this is what God wants you to be doing. Believe in the one he has sent. That's the work. That's what he wants you to be doing, is spending your energy understanding, believing, and obeying the one he has sent. Work for that kind of food, not the food that is perishing. So this leads to another question from the people. Look back at verse 30. So they said to him, What then do you do for a sign, so that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Interesting to note that the crowd absolutely makes the connection. In verse 29, Jesus says, This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he sent. And it's clear that in verse 30, the crowd knows that Jesus is referring to himself. What then do you do? Do you see that? What do you do so that we may believe?

18:55And so, verse 31: Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread out of heaven to eat. Okay, keep in mind, this group isn't so much interested in the sign. What are they interested in? Food. So, this, our fathers, let me give you an idea, Jesus. Let me tell you the kind of sign we're looking for, right? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. He gave them bread to eat. Now, this group has already seen, they've already seen miracles, they've already taken part in the miracles. Miraculous feeding, but their interest is in the food.

19:37They just want to, you know, and look at Jesus' answer. Verse 32. Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world. So Jesus wants to correct any misconception about who the real giver is.

20:07It was the Father who gave the manna in Moses' day, and it is the Father who currently gives the true bread. And the true bread is not to be misunderstood with the manna that was given after the Israelites came out of Egypt. So here's Jesus' exhortation. Work not for the food that is perishing, but work for the food which is enduring. And that exhortation is very much applicable to us today, right? Very little modification, right? It is the message to us.

20:43You know, physical bread is perishing. Jesus is enduring. Physical life. In fact, look around you. Pretty much all that you see is perishing. Everything we see and take in with our eyes is. Pretty much going out of existence. The things seen are passing. The things you will eat today will be gone. The car you drive today will be gone one day, even if it is a Ford. It's going to die, right? Our organizations are going to pass by, save one, the church. It's the only one guaranteed. Our activities are going to come to nothing. Even our bodies are going to perish.

21:36Our memories will fade. Even our minds will go. All the things seen are passing, perishing. But it's the things that are unseen right now that are enduring, right? Jesus endures. And because He endures, all His promises endures endure. And all of His and His kingdom endure. And His people endures, right? And these things you can see by faith. So you have the opportunity in whatever hours, days, weeks, years, decades that God gives you to trade your life pursuing something. You can pursue that which perishes. Or you can pursue that which endures. And Jesus' exhortation: be about the things that endure. Be about the one who endures.

22:45Work for the food which endures. The sustenance, which in our modern environmental term is sustainable, right? There is a sustenance that is sustainable. And that is why you work for that. And that individual is Christ. So the exhortation, we've looked at Jesus' exhortation. Next, I want you to see Jesus's revelation. Jesus' revelation. Look back. Now we have another, you have a formal request in verse 34 of the people. In light of Jesus' exhortation, they say this in verse 34. Then they said to him, Lord, always give us this bread. Okay, so right now, so far, so good, right? Just like the woman at the well, they're tracking. Remember, Jesus offered the woman at the well living water in John 4:15, and then she says this, right? Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty. So just like that, the crowd asks Jesus to give them this heavenly bread, right? However, unlike the woman who received the living water at the well, this crowd is going to reject the bread from heaven.

24:00So look at what Jesus' answer is to this formal request beginning in verse 35. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. In fact, underline that, and also underline that same statement in verse 48. I am the bread of life. He says it twice, and that brackets his explanation of himself and revelation of himself, I should say, revelation of himself as the bread of life. So Jesus said in verse 35, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will 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 the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me, that of all he has given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up the last day.

25:18A lot of deep truth in this passage. One of the things right now I want you to come away with is that the bread of life is a person here. Okay? Bread of life is living, it is alive, and it gives life. It's expressed in terms of coming down from heaven. It's expressed in receiving those who come. It's expressed in doing the will of the Father. It's expressed in raising the dead. That is the work of a person. The bread of life is clearly a person. And the response that the Father expects to this person is: Coming to him.

26:06Come to him. This is who the Father has revealed him to be. Therefore, you come to Him, and if you come to Him, He certainly will not cast you out. So look at the people's response to this revelation. I am the bread. People start grumbling, complaining. Look at verse 41. Therefore, the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, I am the bread that came down out of heaven. They were saying, Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down out of heaven? In other words, they're saying, Look, he grew up with us. So, how does he say he came down out of heaven? No, we know his father, we know his mother. He didn't come down from heaven. Grew up. What's going on in his thinking?

27:05Back to Jesus' response to them in verse 43. Jesus answered and said to 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 shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.

27:45So Jesus' exhortation is: do not work for the food that is perishing, but be working for the food which is enduring. Ask, what is that food? Jesus' revelation is, I am that food which endures. You must take me into your being in order to live. So what does it mean to work at the food? Well, just real quickly, working, what Jesus is saying here is work at understanding me. Don't work in just coming and getting the food and spending all that energy chasing me across the lake and around. Work in understanding me. Work at understanding me. Hearing me, work at believing me, work at obeying me. And it's going to take work to understand. It's going to take work to get your mind around, to understand the implications of his words, to let his words shape you. It's going to take some work. Come, that's where you spend your work. Understanding him, believing in him, and obeying him.

28:52Same application for us today, right? All right, that's it. Well, third element, let's keep moving. Looked at Jesus' exhortation, we looked at Jesus' revelation, and now I want to look at Jesus' explanation. And what Jesus does here in these verses, beginning in verse 49, is he makes a comparison. He makes a comparison between the manna and the bread from heaven. First of all, verse 49, your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. You notice he speaks about the inferiority. He's going to compare and contrast the inferiority of the manna to the superiority of the bread from heaven. And he's saying, Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. You see, the manna that they ate was insufficient to keep them from dying. That's the limitation of it. And he goes on in verse 50, This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread also which I give for the life of the world is my flesh. So Jesus is saying, I am sufficient to give a person eternal life and all that goes with it. The environment that is necessary, the new body that is necessary, the right standing with God, all aspects of it. He says, I am sufficient. I am superior to the manna in Moses' day.

30:38Well, then the people get and begin to argue again. Look back at verse 52. Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Very good question, right? You remember Nicodemus chapter 3? How can a man be born again? His question was, how, how, how can these things be? The same thing here. How? In John 6, the analogy is eating and drinking in what God has given. John 3, it's rebirth. Here it's eating and drinking in what God has given to impart life to the world. So as this argument with the Jews is raging, Jesus reiterates the necessity and superiority of what he gives. Look back at verse 53.

31:33So Jesus says to them, said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh, and it gets really descriptive here, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourself. Now that's offensive. You know your Hebrew history. The one thing they were not supposed to eat was anything with the blood in it, right? Okay. 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 yourself. He who eats 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. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. He who eats this bread will live forever. Verse 59 closes out the section, these things he said in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum.

32:53So the reason Jesus exhorts the people to work for the food which endures. Is here again stressed because those who work only for the food which serves the body they died and they remain dead. But those who work for true food live and remain living, even though their body dies. So what Jesus is saying, He's saying, Look, I am the Father's offer to you to invigorate, to strengthen, to nourish, and to sustain life. So Jesus's exhortation: do not work for the food that is perishing, but for the food which endures. Jesus' revelation: I am the food which endures. His explanation is that those who only work for the food which serves the body will die, but those who receive me will live and remain living.

34:04So as we wrap this, wrap our minds around this, and we're going to come back, like I said, and go verse by verse through and drill deeper into each of these verses. But it's important to understand that Jesus wants us to think of God's gift to us not as something you go around and physically just pick up and eat and then move on with your day. It's not Something you pick up and eat and ingest into your body, but Jesus is a reality that you must spiritually assess and ingest into your spiritual being.

34:42Jesus is God's living gift to you. And you receive Christ by believing in Him as the one the Father has sent. So, this is what Jesus is basically saying here to His Jewish people. He says, Look, I am the reality that must be taken into your spiritual DNA for you to live. There's something fundamentally wrong with our DNA. And he says, You must take me into your DNA in order to live. And this reality involves my death for your sake. You're that bad off.

35:33That's what he says. You need a Messiah that's going to pay for your sins. You can think about the crowd at that day. It's like, no, we don't need a Messiah that's going to die for us. That doesn't even make sense. We need a Messiah that's going to go conquer the Romans for us. We've got several things that we need a Messiah to do for us. And here they are. How many of us think that way today, right? We've got such an agenda. For our little Messiah that we've created in our mind, right?

36:04But if you're going to know the true Messiah, he's the Messiah of the Scriptures. You see, sinners need an absolute holy sacrifice in order to live with God. We'd like to tell ourselves we're not that bad, right? That's certainly our popular culture today. Boy, we don't like the doctrine of sin. The very fact that we're so bad off that somebody who's perfectly holy has to come and suffer immensely for us in order to give us life.

36:39We don't like that, right? Certainly our culture doesn't today, but basically they didn't either. He said, we're not that bad. Jesus says, oh, yes, you are. You are that bad. You see, our problem is we do not have a comprehension, we have no comprehension of the infinite standard of the perfection that God expects of us. It is infinite. He has got a mind. He thinks through every detail. His standards for perfection are high. And we have a limited ability to even grasp that. Listen, there are two kinds of gods that you can view. Two kinds of gods, or two kinds of perspectives on God. Let me put it this way. Their first perspective is, you pay me for my affection. Kind to God. You pay me for my kind of affection. That's one perception of God. You know, last night I had a privilege of taking my kids out on two little daughters on a daddy-daughter date. And the evening was going swell. It was really neat. It was great. They gave me a nice list of questions to ask my daughters, and they had flowers, and it was really beautiful, and all this stuff. And everything was working great until they got the list to ask me. So they got a list of questions to ask me. And one of the first questions they asked: here's the questions that they started asking me: was, what's one piece of advice you wish someone had shared with you when you were my age? That's some deep thought here. I'm just over here eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich, and I'm not thinking that we're going to get into this kind of profound stuff. I think about a minute, and I say, well, you know what? I wish somebody had sat down and communicated to me the importance of being kind to those around me.

38:37And then I got barraged with a whole other set of questions, and we kind of went on and came back and wanted to explain more my thoughts on this to them. But listen, don't go through life making people pay to play with you. As I look back and survey my life, I say, I see the reality of intense evil even in grade school. So if you're six years old, if you're seven years old, start listening to me. And if you're anything above that, keep listening to me, right? But one of the first things as I look back over my life, and I see with pain and I see the evil and I see the sin, goes back to grade school when certain new kids would come to school and they would want to be my friend. I mean, I had a couple friends, and we were kind of the cool group, right? And they would come and they would want to be included. But it always came at a price. You want to pay? Or you want to play? You pay. Maybe that, maybe it's candy. Listen to me, kids. This is a great evil. And we're all kids, right?

39:54Don't make people pay to have a relationship with you. There is something fundamentally evil at the core with that. And that's one perspective of God, right? Just this last week, somebody came up to me who wanted me to think well of them and they wanted to make a donation to the church so that they would get my affection, if you will, or goodwill. It's like, no, I have to go down that road, right? Well, that's one view of. God. What's your view of God? Right? Do you have to pay for his affection? Can you pay something to get? Can you be, do you have that capacity? I think about the prophets of Baal. Remember? I took on Elijah, right? They had to cut themselves. They had to scream. Many of the pagan deities had to sacrifice their children to get the good affection of God. What kind of a God is that? Demonic!

41:05That's not the God of the scriptures at all. Don't act like that, is what I was telling my kids. I wish somebody had taught me that at an early age. But then there's a whole nother kind, a whole other perspective on God, which the scripture tells us. And it's not the God who says, you pay for my affection. It's the God who says, I will give you my affection. It's the gift of Christ. I will give you my affection.

41:39You know, in high school, one of my things I liked to do was get old cars and fix them up and sell them, make a profit, paint them, go through all that. So I worked through several different vehicles, learned how to paint, learned how to do the body work, and take, I bought a Corvette, so I worked my way up to a Corvette. And many of you probably heard this story, but I had to take out a loan to make this Corvette, to buy the Corvette, and then spend all this money. And it looked great. And then I was going to sell it. I had this buyer that was going to buy it and pay a lot of money for it. A lot more than I'm a good cat, pay off the loan and all that stuff. Made one mistake. I left the keys in the ignition, and boom, it was gone.

42:30And I didn't have enough to have insurance on it, so the $5,500 note was mine to pay off. It was a debt at that age I just couldn't pay. You know, my dad saw all this, and as a father, you know, a father's heart goes out to his kids. He really feels sorry, right? Really moved to compassion. You know what he did? He said, son, I'll pay for that. I'll pay off the debt. Don't worry. And he does. And he said, I would, and if it ever comes back, I will keep the car. And I knew, I said, if it ever comes back, I know what you're going to do with it. You're going to let me have it, right?

43:14But you see the father's heart. It's like, you can't pay that debt, but I will be happy to step in and pay it for you. You see the difference between how we perceive God. And this is the kind of God that's revealed in Scriptures. Not one that you have to pay to play, but one that gives you his affection in his Son. This is a gift. You see, when you sin against infinity, guess what you need?

43:51You need infinity to cover the debt. I don't care how small your sin may be or how great your sin may be when compared to infinity, you have an infinite debt of righteousness that is owed to God. And the true bread is a person who had to die in your place. And Jesus' flesh and blood is for you to receive. That is your debt being paid. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do again give you thanks for your word. We give you thanks for the bread from heaven. Father, help us work at understanding your Son, hearing your Son, believing in your Son, and letting that shape our lives. Forgive us for all those areas in theology that we have protected. Father, forgive us for not being shaped by your Son. Forgive us for imagining or imposing or creating. Creating a Christ that doesn't exist in Scripture. Father, may we come, we come.

45:07Father, give us this bread. Always give us this bread. Help us to understand. Help us to be believing. Help us to be obeying in Jesus' name.