Song (Click to listen): Bread of life, sent down from glory. Many things you were on earth: a holy king, a carpenter. You are the living word.

Jesus is the currency of the Kingdom of God.

Belief is a spiritual concept. To believe in something and then to stand by what you believe is faith and is a spiritual tradition. Beliefs and ideas are a part of what makes people human. The part of the human psyche that can reason. The reasoning goes: you cannot follow a belief that you do not know.

We believe in working for a living because we know the currency that we are compensated with is accepted at all points of sale. Houses require money, food requires money, so it benefits us to be compensated for labor in money. If money had no value but we were still compelled to work, that labor would have to be compensated in a way that meets our needs for food and shelter. In historic times having a homestead and working in agriculture was a way that one’s labor was compensated by whatever you were able to produce. If you could build, that work gave you shelter, if you could plant food that labor gave you sustenance. So we know that all work is preceded by a belief, belief that work will be rewarded in some form.  

Belief in Jesus is the same. You have to do the work that is required in the Kingdom of God to reap the benefits associated with belief in Jesus. Jesus is the currency of the Kingdom of God and the work that you must do is: believe in him. But since you cannot follow a belief that you do not understand, then getting to know Jesus is also the work. Some Christian spiritual leaders have opposing views about the work that is accepted by God to receive the blessings of God. In John 6:29 Jesus makes it clear what the work of the Kingdom of God is. “Then they asked him, what must we do to do the work God requires? Jesus answers, “the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

Jesus gives more life than working for a living.

Belief in working for a living is a contradiction because we know that working for money does not always provide basic needs to live. Society says, if you do not work, you do not eat. Basic reasoning and observation reveals the fallacy of this belief. Many people do work, hard, until they have exhausted all of their strength and still do not eat. Many people work under conditions where they do not have sufficient compensation for their labor or adequate shelter. This is a truth found in all industries where laborers around the world work but do not receive enough to live. Jesus is also saying something that is contrary to the belief system of society. In John 6:35 Jesus says, “whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”.

In John 6:30-31, the people who are listening to Jesus do not believe that the work of believing in Jesus is enough to meet their needs and ask Jesus, “what sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” They are asking Jesus for a miracle and saying, will you give us bread everyday as Moses did in the wilderness as compensation for our belief in you? If the work is to believe you, what sign will you show that we will see and believe? Will you give us resources out of thin air as a result of our belief? And Jesus says, the provision of food is not a miracle. God‘s faithfulness is the miracle. God provides even when there is no source of provision. Whatever comes from God is miraculous, not the food itself. God responds to belief with provision. This is why the work is to believe.

In John 6:35 Jesus says, I am the bread of life. “Very truly I tell you it is not Moses who has given you the bread from Heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from Heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:32-33). Everyone who seeks to understand who Jesus is and believes in him finds a provision of physical and spiritual food.

Nothing on earth is promising what God in Jesus promises. This is why belief is difficult. Jesus is saying, the words that I have spoken, the promises and truth of who God is, is the meal that sent you looking for me not because you saw signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill (John 6:26). Jesus is saying food is not the miracle. Jesus as the provision from God is the miracle. Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world.

It is not Jesus’ desire to perform miracles but ‘to do the will of him who sent me’ and he says, ‘this is the will of him who sent me. That I shall lose none of all those he has given me but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:38-40).

The gift of eternal life and salvation is the bread, compensation and reward for the work of believing and getting to know Jesus. Nothing else on earth has the power to fulfill this promise. If Jesus is the foundation of your belief all of your needs will also be met. Meeting basic needs is not the compensation for belief, those are the things that perish, the kind of food that Jesus says ‘do not work for food that spoils, work for food that endures to eternal life’ (John 6:27). Jesus is the living bread. Whoever consumes him, works to know who he is and believes in him is alive and has the promise of eternal life.

Song (Click to listen): I am praying that you open our eyes, praying that you open our eyes again, Father please open our eyes. Father, please open our eyes again.

God opens our eyes to believe in Jesus.

In John 6:44-45 Jesus tells those listening that, ‘no one can come to me (believe in Jesus) unless God draws them and they are taught by God’. Everyone who knows who God is believes in Jesus. Jesus is saying that he is the only way to hear, learn and know about God the Father because he is from God and has seen God, which no one else has done (John 6:46). Jesus says, I’m telling you, from God, if you believe in me you have eternal life and will never hunger or thirst because, I am the bread of life (John 6:48).

In John 6:49, people are asking Jesus for a sign like the manna that fed the children of Israel, so that they will believe in him. Jesus says “your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.” Not only a physical death because everyone dies, but Jesus is saying they saw the provision of God firsthand, every day for forty years and still did not believe in God, they turned to other gods, images they made with their own hands. Even after seeing the sign, the manna, and eating it (Exodus 32:1). In John 6:50-51 Jesus says, “but here is the bread that comes down from heaven which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven, whomever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

Jesus is saying, do not wish for the signs of your ancestors because a better promise is being given. Manna from God was not sufficient for the children of Israel to eat and believe, so Jesus is saying eat of my flesh or consume the truth that I am the provision from God that is greater than food. My death has brought life, eternal life with God which is more valuable to your life than abundance. God also provides for your basic needs, but those things are not the source of life and cannot give you eternal life. The basic necessity that is of more value than food, water and shelter is the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for forgiveness of the world, to bring everyone who believes into communion with God, to save from God’s judgement and the promise eternal life.   

Jesus is saying whoever believes in working for a living will die spiritually. Whatever compensation you receive from your labor cannot be compared to the reward of belief in Jesus. Belief in Jesus is real provision. Jesus is telling us that people who are alive do not live because they work, eat and have money. They live because of the grace and mercy of God. Jesus’ sacrifice has given us access to the life that the Kingdom of God provides to all who believe in Jesus.

“You may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth and so confirms his covenant.” Deuteronomy 8:17-18

Do not worry

In Luke 12:22-31 Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the wildflowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you –you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

Song: Jireh by Elevation Worship & Maverick City (Click to listen)

Prayer: God, open our eyes, hearts and minds to believe in Jesus, your bread that gives us life.