Saturday, July 19, 2014
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
EAT THIS BREAD
Just the other day I ran across a quotation from Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand was a famous author and philosopher. In her book "Atlas Shrugged" she wrote, "Accept the fact that achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life." Really? What happens then when you're not happy? Do you then lose your reason for living? Sadly, there are a lot of people in the world who swallow Rand's type of "happiness doctrine" and many other spiritually bankrupt philosophies.
Jesus tells us in John six just what we need to swallow. He Himself is the living bread, and we need to eat of Him.
What does this mean? Earlier in the same chapter, we hear Jesus say that (v. 40) "My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life." Thus to "eat" the Bread from Heaven, Jesus Christ, means to listen to what He says and to trust that He is the One who will raise you from the dead and give you eternal life. Jesus is using picture language here. He could have said simply, "Believe in me," but instead He describes Himself as being like bread that we need to eat--and when we eat this Living Bread, we will live.
Only dieting on Jesus will give you the spiritual food you need to survive. Our real spiritual situation is that we are sinners. We have disobeyed a holy a righteous God and that situation has to be remedied or we will die only to face everlasting punishment, rightly deserved. Now you can't feed a sin-sick heart like that with junk food. You can't say to it, "Just try harder to be good and you'll be okay" (eastern religions) or "Don't worry, your guilt is just imagined in your mind" (secular humanists). This sort of spiritual food does not satisfy our deepest needs and longings such as: How can I know I'm right with God? How can know God cares about me? Can I know what will happen to me when I die? These are the sorts of questions the soul needs to have answered in order to be satisfied, and spiritual junk food won't do it. But eating of Jesus will.
