Deuteronomy 4:1 “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”

Here are the two advantages to keeping God’s commands. First, you get to live. Sometimes the connection between God’s commands and not dying are obvious. “You shall not murder,” he says in the fifth commandment. Obviously, people will live longer if we don’t go around killing each other.

With some commandments, the connection with life may be a little more subtle. I have read news stories about the rise of sexually transmitted diseases that don’t respond well to antibiotics. You can end up blind, maimed, or dead. In my lifetime AIDS has become a big deal. Last year alone nearly a million people died of HIV worldwide. Here’s a novel solution: “You shall not commit adultery,” the sixth commandment. Marry and stick to one sexual partner your whole life, and suddenly the fear of these diseases disappears.

In the fourth commandment, “Honor your father and mother,” God himself promises “that you may live a long life on the earth.” That’s not just because obedience makes your dad less likely to kill you. It’s because people who learn to obey their parents learn to obey their teachers, the police, their employers, and their government. They are far less likely to end up in poverty or a life of crime–both of which can seriously shorten your life. They are far less likely to die of some stupid risky behavior their parents told them not to do.

But bigger than all these specific examples is our general relationship with God. Through the prophet Isaiah the Lord once said to his people, “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear” (59:2). Something like a million and a half of these Israelites died in the desert during their forty years due to their rebellion. You don’t want to face eternity with the Almighty on your bad side.

Second, Moses makes note of the effect of commandment-keeping, not on the length of life, but its quality. “Follow them that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.” Following God’s commands would allow them to take possession of the land. It would give them success. Each specific commandment, without exception, can be shown to improve the quality of your life. There may be some discipline involved, some apparent “sacrifice.” It’s not a promise that nothing will ever go wrong–no heartache or sadness. But life lived according to God’s commandments is just better, because they guide and direct us the way the world is supposed to work.

You see, the life God gives us comes with some assembly. We spend our lives putting the parts together. You’ve bought a piece of furniture that didn’t come fully assembled before, haven’t you? You can ignore the instructions, and sometimes you will put together something that sort of works. Financial Peace University founder Dave Ramsey talks about the kitchen table he put together when he and his wife were first married. It was functional, but for the first year the table rocked. If he had read and followed all the instructions, he would have discovered that the table had levelers under it. Sometimes ignoring instructions can even leave you with broken parts and a twisted mess.

We live in a world, we are part of a world, that thinks it is smarter than the God of the Bible who designed it. It finds certain commands irrelevant. Sometimes it even accuses them of being repressive (as if we fallen creatures of God could somehow come up with ideas that are more moral than our Creator).

We tend to think of this as a “modern” problem, but it almost as old as time itself. Moses was certainly familiar with the tendency. It’s why he says, “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.” They serve us only if we keep them. And they are worth keeping for their value to our life.

John 6:67-69 “‘You do not want to leave, too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy one of God.’”

How does Jesus maintain his hold on the hearts he has won? The same way he won them in the first place. “You have the words of eternal life.” There is one world faith in which living an exemplary life on earth doesn’t get you life in the world to come, not necessarily. It only gets you a chance to compete for that life, a little like a good regular season gets you into the playoffs. Then you have to complete nearly impossible tasks to reach heaven’s door. Islam can’t promise you what Jesus does.

There are a number of world religions in which the grand prize at the end is that everything makes you a unique individual disappears, and your life force gets absorbed into the universe like a drop of water falling into the ocean. There is no self at the end, no you, only a vast emptiness. That’s the good outcome! The religions of the Far East—Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism—don’t offer you what Jesus does.

Only one faith has God loving us so passionately that he could not bear to lose us all. So he moved from heaven to earth. He made himself human, so human that even though his conduct was perfect and he performed miracles, most people had trouble detecting any difference. He gave himself no advantages. He put up with all the things we put up with, and more. He gave this body of flesh, and the soul that went with it, for the life of the world. He died to erase every sin, to forgive every fault. He asked nothing in return, no payment for his services.

When he was done he took his life back again, and offered eternal life to all who believed him–real eternal life, in your own perfected body, as the unique person God made you to be, basking in God’s unending love, free from even the slightest discomforts we know now.

That’s the “word” Peter was learning from Jesus, the life he was watching Jesus live, the Holy One of God in whom he was believing. It isn’t just information. It is the word of eternal life. This is still the reason we believe in him today.

John 6:60-65 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and the are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”  

The crowd wasn’t complaining about Jesus’ teaching because it was confusing, though they had suffered some confusion along the way. As Mark Twain once quipped, “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me. It’s the parts I do.” This was a hard teaching in the sense that it was hard to accept. Jesus’ words were unbending, unyielding, incapable of being bent or twisted into an idea they might find more appealing or sensible.

This is a good place to pause and ask Jesus’ question of ourselves. “Does this offend you?” Constance began crying in my class. It had just dawned on her that Jesus not only died. He died because of us, because of her, for her sins. She didn’t want Jesus to die because of her, to think that somehow she helped kill him. She was objecting to the whole arrangement. She wanted out of it. It offended her.

Peter pulled Jesus aside. Jesus had just revealed for the first time, plainly, that he had come to die. This would be no accident, no mistake. It was his mission, his purpose. Peter pulled Jesus aside and started rebuking him. Jesus’ death would rob him of his dearest friend and destroy his dreams of earthly glory. It offended him.

Jesus offers a bitter pill to swallow. What does his death say about us? How horrible must we be for that to be the solution! At least when I am sick, I take the medicine until I am cured and can stop taking it. Jesus talks about remaining in us and we in him: something all the way to the end and eternal life. We never stop this feeding. We never lose our need.

Author Brennan Manning dedicates his book The Ragamuffin Gospel, “for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker…for poor, weak, sinful men and women with hereditary faults and limited talents…for the bent and the bruised who feel that their lives are a grave disappointment to God…for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.” And if we take Jesus’ words here seriously, Manning may have even understated our condition. Does this offend you, Jesus’ gift to address such a need?

Do we want to connect ourselves so closely to the one whose gift is his flesh, which he will give for the life of the world? Like Master, like disciple; like teacher, like student. Those who follow the dying Savior will find no earthly glory for themselves. Will we so easily let go of our earthly dreams for him? Does the very thought make us feel a little like George Banks in the movie Mary Poppins, after he is sacked by the bank?

“A man has dreams of walking with giants,
To carve his niche in the edifice of time,
Before the mortar of his zeal,
Has a chance to congeal,
The cup is dashed from his lips,
The flame is snuffed aborning,
He’s brought to rack and ruin in his prime.

My world was calm, well ordered, exemplary,
Then came this person, with chaos in her wake,
And now my life’s ambitions go
with one fell blow,
It’s quite a bitter pill to take.”            

What about this crowd’s problem with Jesus’ call for such utter faith and trust in him–that we take Jesus in whole, not just the parts we like? Following him like that means saying “no” to ourselves over and over again. Following him like that might make us a stranger, an oddball, in our own culture, our own circle of friends, our own family. We should not be surprised that many still won’t accept what he is giving today.

John 6:51-55 “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.” Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks by blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”

Jesus’ true gift is not just his ideas, his teaching. It is himself, his life, and what he did with all of that. You may think you want a teacher. He wants to be your Savior, your Lord, and your God. That’s what he is giving. Jesus illustrates this with the picture of eating his flesh.

Some of the people in the crowd seemed to miss the picture, as though he was advocating cannibalism, and he himself was going to be the main course. The wider context of his teaching here helps us see that this is not what he means. For the moment I think it is clear enough to us that cannibalism has never been an acceptable practice in the Bible faith.

Some people today have seen a reference to communion or the Lord’s Supper in Jesus’ words here. And there are some parallel expressions between John 6 and Jesus’ words with the disciples at the Last Supper that make such an idea understandable. But the Lord’s Supper didn’t exist yet. It was still over a year away. How could anyone be expected to get what he was saying if that is what he meant?

In spite of the potential for misunderstanding his picture, Jesus does not abandon it. He doubles down on it. He drives it home. But as he does, he helps us connect the dots to what he has said earlier, and understand what his picture means.

Refuse to eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood, and you have no life in you, not the kind that matters with God. You are a spiritual corpse. Eat Jesus flesh and drink his blood and you will live forever, and Jesus will raise your physical corpse from the grave. At least four times in the earlier part of the conversation, Jesus had told these people that he gives eternal life either to those who “come” to him, or those who “believe” in him. It is clear that the eating he describes here is a picture of that coming, and that believing.            

Again, that is more than believing some random statement of Jesus is true. “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” This is more than sitting in class for a few minutes, or in church, and learning a few tidbits to think about this week. This is an unbroken, unending connection, a mystical union, the combining of two lives, your two beings. It is a relationship you take with you at all times, wherever you go. Jesus doesn’t want to be your acquaintance. He intends to become your life.

John 6:47-51 “I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. 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.”

People who have money live longer, statistically speaking. In the United States, the richest men will outlive the poorest men by 15 years. They eat better food. They get better medicine. They live healthier lives. They live longer. But they don’t live forever. You know that the day is coming, no matter how much money you have, when the doctor can’t put you back together and keep you going, no matter how much you pay him.

The nation of Israel ate manna from heaven in the wilderness every day for forty years. They weren’t malnourished. They ate, perhaps, better than any people in the history of the world. But they all died, every last one of them.

In my ministry as a missionary pastor in a “start-up” congregation, I have made a number of outreach calls at homes where I have heard the rather jarring words. “We don’t go to church. We aren’t religious. We are atheists. We aren’t interested.” These are very nice homes, worth at least twice as much as my own. Luxury cars sit in the driveway. Swimming pools sit in the backyard. It’s a good life, apparently.

But this is the closest thing to heaven any of them are ever going to know. And it is all going to last only a few more years. Then they are going to die, just like me, and for them there is no better life to follow.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” people often say. But that isn’t always the case, is it. Doting parents are shown undeniable evidence of their favorite son’s wrongdoing, but they just can’t believe it. “He’s such a good boy, you know.” The doctor confronts a patient with test result after test result that says the mysterious lump is cancer. But the patient wants another test, and another opinion. He can’t believe that he is so sick, so close to facing his own mortality.

The people to whom Jesus was speaking in John 6 had every reason to let down their guard, their resistance, and trust him. We still do. So few ever do, and those who do still struggle with their doubts that Jesus is their Maker come to redeem them.

We are here as Jesus’ Church to confront their refusal to believe. It stands in the way of everlasting life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” Jesus says. “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.” Jesus gave his life to save ours. This gift is worth everything, but it doesn’t cost a penny. It is free for the believing. It does what no supplements, no diet, no doctor or medicine could ever do. It gives us life forever.

John 6:41-46 “At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They said, ‘Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’? Stop grumbling among yourselves,’ Jesus answered. ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: They will all be taught by God. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father”

What do we think we know? Have you ever shared a story you received by email or social media because it seemed sensible, only to find out later it was an urban myth? Those of you who are old enough to remember, were you taken in by the Y2K scare at all? There were all kinds of apocalyptic predictions about the fall of civilization when New Year’s Eve 1999 gave way to New Year’s Day 2000. Computers were supposed to be confused by the year being rendered “00″ in their systems. Would they think that we had gone back to the year 1900 and crash? I don’t remember hearing of a single problem.

Examples of relatively smart people believing relatively dumb things due to incomplete information can be multiplied many times over. The history of science is full of such stories, right up to the present day. Theology and faith are no exceptions. My way of trying to understand Jesus’ two natures as God and man through my teens and early twenties turned out to be an ancient Christian heresy called Apollinarianism. I learned about my error in a college class on the Nicene Creed. I wasn’t trying to be a heretic. I just wasn’t familiar with some of the Biblical material yet that made my idea wrong. I’m not saying we can’t know anything, but, as Donald Rumsfeld once observed, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” A little humility is always in place, no matter how much we think we know.

That was the problem for the people grumbling at Jesus, wasn’t it. You know the answer to their question, “How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven?’” because you know the Christmas story. Joseph was only his stepfather. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. But that wasn’t widely known by most people during his lifetime. Maybe they should have asked. Then their refusal to believe in Jesus wouldn’t have been made worse by their spiritual ignorance.

Jesus hints at this in his response to them. Maybe if these people had looked more carefully at what the prophets wrote about the Messiah; maybe if they had learned what God had told them in the Old Testament Scriptures; maybe if they had come to Jesus with open hearts and minds and asked him, he could have explained it to them, since he is the only one who had actually seen the Father. But they hadn’t been taught by God. They hadn’t listened to the Father. They hadn’t learned from him. They hadn’t come to Jesus. So they lived with their spiritual ignorance and they refused to believe in Jesus.

We aren’t saved by how much we know. Simple little children often have a stronger, healthier faith than their smarter, skeptical parents. But spiritual ignorance and biblical illiteracy still get in the way of faith for many people today. It leads them to take offense at things they only think the Bible teaches. It leads them to see Bible contradictions that don’t really exist. There are too many examples to try to create a list.

But the solution doesn’t start with pointing the finger at them. It starts with listening to what God the Father says in his word ourselves, learning from him, and coming to Jesus in faith. Then we will be prepared to confront spiritual ignorance, in love, for people who refuse to believe.

John 6:37-38 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.’”

If the evidence of Jesus’ power does not convince people. If his words of promise are challenged or ignored, what hope is left? “All that the Father gives me will come to me.”

We like to think of ourselves as free and independent. Like most teens I was in hurry to get my license, and then my own car, so that I could come and go as I wanted. I found the girl of my dreams when I was in high school and married her by the time I was twenty-three. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life in grade school and pursued my goal until I graduated from the seminary with a masters of divinity. I was senior pastor of a large congregation with a school by the time I was twenty-eight.

No one “made” me do any of this, and it felt like I was behind the steering wheel driving this life the whole way, making my own choices, doing my own work. Maybe your own life feels the same way, or did at one point in time.

But it is all largely an illusion. People were shaping and influencing me. Some doors opened, while others closed. God was at work, guiding and shepherding me on the path that brought me to this very day.

If that is true of the content and features of our external lives, how much more so the inner life of faith. Jesus made it amply clear that none of us comes to God under our own power on our own terms. A few verses later he tells this crowd, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” It is an interesting word he uses for “draw.” This is not draw in the sense of urging or enticing. In secular Greek, this is the word you use for dragging a boat up on shore. Have you ever tried to handle a boat like that? It doesn’t exactly help or cooperate in the process. It’s awkward and heavy. Although we don’t want to say that God forced us to faith against our will, he was still the one at work forming and shaping that will, working the miracle by which he dragged us to Jesus and his grace.

So Jesus sees our coming to him as the Father’s work, not our own. “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” We may doubt, and challenge, and question, like the skeptics in this crowd. But God the Father still has the final say over our hearts and lives. As a gift of his grace to us, he makes a gift of us to his Son. By directing our lives and exposing us to his word and sacrament he drags us to Jesus and makes us his own by faith.

And Jesus isn’t disappointed or embarrassed by the gift his Father gives him, “And whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” Jesus is nothing but pleased to have us, no matter who we are, no matter how we have come. In the book The Hammer of God there is a scene in which a younger pastor is telling an old pastor, a little too proudly, that he is a believer, and that he has given Jesus his heart. “One does not choose a Redeemer for oneself,” the old pastor tells him, “nor give one’s heart to him. The heart is rusty old can on a junk heap. A fine birthday gift, indeed! But a wonderful Lord passes by, and has mercy on the wretched tin can, sticks his walking cane through it and rescues it from the junk pile and takes it home with him. That’s how it is” (p. 147).

So God’s own intervention has made us to belong to him. He has changed our hearts, which are inclined to refuse to believe.

John 6:34 “‘Sir,’ they said, ‘from now on give us this bread.’ Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.’”

For a moment, a crowd that had been asking Jesus all the wrong questions seemed to get some clarity. They finally ask Jesus for something that made sense.

This was a wholesome and helpful request. Just give us the bread we need from God. Perhaps they didn’t understand yet what it was, but at least they asked for the right thing.

Jesus confirmed rather than confronted the wholesome request. “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” I have often said that when I first experienced a hospital devotion on the receiving end, when my son was in the hospital as a baby fighting for his life, having that Word of God was like food. Then my pastor was not teaching me theological truths I had never heard before. He didn’t come and teach a Bible class. He certainly wasn’t there to attempt a miracle and heal my son.

 He brought me and my family Christ. For a few precious minutes he led us to the foot of the cross, where Jesus disposed of all our sins and restored our place in God’s family under his love. He took us to the empty tomb where we could be sure that whether my child lived or died, he would live forever, and we would live forever with him. In those brief words of promise I was not looking for an education, or advice, or proof. I just wanted my Savior. I wanted Jesus. And that is what I found, enough bread to fill my hungry soul and drink to satisfy its thirst.

That is still the reason worth coming to Jesus for. May God give us an appetite always hungry for this Bread of Life, and always satisfied by the Savior who meets our need.

John 6:30-33 “So they asked him, ‘What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who 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.’”

Jesus called for these people to put their faith in him. But before they were ready to do that, they wanted more proof. They wanted a sign. They were seeking wonders, a spectacle to convince them Jesus is the one they should trust.

This crowd says they want a sign. Really? It wasn’t good enough that Jesus just turned five loaves of bread and two fish into a feast for thousands? It wasn’t enough that he had spent the morning and afternoon before that miraculously healing sick people? It wasn’t enough that they had seen him drive out demons in this very synagogue in which they were sitting at this moment? If none of that satisfied them, what sign could possibly be good enough?

The problem was not that Jesus had failed to confirm his claims or his commission with miracles. The problem was that these things can never satisfy the truly skeptical. They aren’t focused on the right thing. They don’t need wonders. They need a relationship. They need love.

They need what a young pastor told an argumentative member of his inquirers class some time ago. “Instead of arguing about all these questions you have, you need to listen like a child for a little while. Just listen like a child. Take it in. Hear the story. Hear what it is saying to you.” And within a few weeks, his argumentative friend didn’t have any questions anymore, at least none he needed to start a fight about. He had gone from skeptic to student, denier to disciple.

As so often, Jesus’ answer did not go where their questions wanted to lead. He takes them away from signs to the thing that can truly feed their faith and nourish the soul. “It is not Moses who has given you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who 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.” Don’t seek signs and wonders. Seek what God himself wants to give you. Seek the One who comes from heaven. Consume his words, his grace, his forgiveness, all freely given.

He can give you life. Listen humbly, simply, and you will find what you are looking for.