Title: Seven Tests for Leadership
Author: V Wages
Last saved by: Jeanne Clark
Company: Toshiba

Will Believe for Food
The Life of Jesus Vol.2 (True Religion) Part 15 (Revised)
John 6:21-35       11-20-11

Summary: The Seeker philosophy is to draw people to Christ by appealing to their felt needs. But felt needs are in competition with Christ. Jesus rebukes this crowd for coming to Him as a waiter rather than as bread. Those who come to Him must come to Him as bread, which is done through faith. Faith is believing the truth about Him and trusting Him to the point of entrusting your whole life to Him. And that involves coming to Him as your bread (that to which you look for satisfaction of your soul), which is also how you live the Christian life. 

Introduction
Does Motive Matter?
The Seeker Philosophy of Ministry
Review – the second Truth about Jesus (this one the crowd missed)
The Wrong Motive
No More Miracles for the Crowd because they Are Responding Wrongly
Motive Does Matter
Missing the Sign
Stuck on Food
Doesn’t Work
The Right Motive
The meaning of bread
The Right Method
We Have Obscured the Way to Come
The meaning of Faith
Believing in
Looking to Him as your Bread
Faith = Eating and Drinking
Living by Faith
Why not both?
Conclusion
 
John 6:21 Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading. 22 The next day the crowd that had stayed on the opposite shore of the lake realized that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not entered it with his disciples, but that they had gone away alone. 23 Then some boats from Tiberias landed near the place where the people had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. 25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" 26 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval." 28 Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" 29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent." 30 So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" 32 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, 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. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." 34 "Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread." 35 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. 

Introduction
Does Motive Matter?
When you first came to Christ, what was your motive? See what you think of this statement: “It doesn’t matter why people initially come to Jesus, what matters is that they come.” When a person first comes to Jesus, it does not matter what his motive is. Wrong motives can be straightened out later on – all that really matters initially is that one way or another we get people to come to Christ. Ask yourself if you agree with that statement.

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The Seeker Philosophy of Ministry
If you do agree, then you are in the majority in the evangelical world. That quotation comes from the book Purpose Driven Church, which, more than any other book, has shaped the philosophy of ministry of church planters over the past fifteen years. For well over a decade that book has been like the church planter’s Bible, and the fundamental premise of the book is a two-part idea. The first part is that quotation I just gave you: “It doesn’t matter why people first come to Christ, only that they come.” The second part is summed up in this next statement: “Anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart.” It does not matter what motive people have when they come to Christ, and if you just find the right technique, you can get anyone to come to Christ. That philosophy has fueled the church growth movement for many years.

p.219

This is now the strategy of thousands of churches. Reach people through whatever desires they already have. If they are not interested in Christ, and they are not interested in forgiveness of sins, or holiness or righteousness or heaven or anything like that; then find out what they are interested in, and preach about that. If they are interested in making lots of money, preach about that. If they have marriage problems, preach a sermon designed to help them smooth out their marriage. If they are interested in entertainment, show movie clips during the worship service, and play music that matches the style of their favorite music. In Purpose Driven Church there is an example of one pastor who took a survey and discovered that the number one felt need in his community was potty training for preschoolers. So he preached about potty training.

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Proverbs 22:6 Train a child in the way he should…go.

Whatever it takes to get them to come into the church.  
The idea is that people’s felt needs are the key to their heart. So you give them the gospel the same way Tracy gives our dog medicine. Our dog is taking these pills, so Tracy puts a pill inside a glob of peanut butter and gives it to the dog. The dog would never just swallow the pills by themselves, but if you hide them inside something she likes, then she swallows all of it together. In this method, the gospel is like the pill, and the felt need is like the peanut butter. You wrap the gospel inside a glob of whatever felt need the person is interested in, and it all goes down together. This is the philosophy that drives what is commonly called the “seeker-sensitive” movement. The idea is to attract seekers into the church. And a seeker is someone who is not really interested in church, they are not interested in Christ or spiritual things; but they are willing to come to church if you have something that they are interested in.
	
Review – the second Truth about Jesus (this one the crowd missed)
So, what do you think – is that a good strategy or not? Let’s see what Jesus has to say about it in John 6.

26 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me… 

So according to Jesus these people are seekers. And we get to see in this chapter how He responds to them. But first let me get you up to speed on what is going on. The day before this Jesus had spent the entire day miraculously healing people in the crowd. And at the end of the day He fed them an all-you-can-eat, Messianic Banquet-style feast from five biscuits and two fish. That miracle was designed to teach two very important truths about who Jesus is. The first was that Jesus is God. That is the one the Disciples missed and Jesus had to correct them in Mark 6. The other one the crowd missed. Besides the fact that Jesus is God, that miracle proved something else about who Jesus is, and that second truth was lost on the crowd. They did not get it, and Jesus spends about forty verses trying to explain it to them in John 6, but they never do get it.

The Wrong Motive
No More Miracles for the Crowd because they Are Responding Wrongly

24 Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. 25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" 

“How do you miss the boat, and then still end up on the other side of the lake?”
The answer is simple – He walked on the water 3.5 miles out to the boat. But that is not what Jesus says.
Jesus completely ignores their question. These amazing miracles of the night before – those are for the Disciples. They are not for the crowds. What this crowd needs right now is not more miracles – what they need is to understand the miracle they did see. Exposing them to more miracles would just do more harm than good because they are responding the wrong way. And you can tell they are responding the wrong way and failing to understand the meaning, because of their motive in coming to Jesus. So instead of answering their question about how He got across the lake, Jesus responds by rebuking them for their motive in coming to Him.
Motive Does Matter

26 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 

So Jesus answers our question about whether motive matters. This crowd is coming to Jesus out of a felt need. They feel the need for food. They really want an endless supply of free food, and to get it, they are willing to bow the knee to Jesus. In fact, look back up at verse 15. They want to make Jesus king. They want Him to be their personal Lord and Savior. They are passionate about Him being their king, so that He can meet their felt need for food. These people are the ultimate seekers.
They are so interested in seeking Jesus that they literally run eight miles around a lake to see Him, spend all day with Him, then follow Him back across and track Him down the next day. These have to be the seekingest bunch of seekers there has ever been. But instead of welcoming them, Jesus rebukes them for seeking with the wrong motive
Missing the Sign 
First He points out what their motive is not.

26 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs 

How can that be? Obviously they are there because of the miracle, and the miracle was a sign, so how can Jesus accuse them of not being there because of the sign? The answer is in the meaning of the word “sign.” What is a sign? A sign points to something. Jesus did not do miracles just for the sake of doing miracles. He did not do miracles to gather a crowd. He did not do miracles just for temporal purposes – to feed people or get people healthy as an end in itself. Jesus’ miracles were all signs. They were big, flashing, neon signs pointing to a spiritual reality – namely, the truth about who He is.
Suppose two cars are driving down the road, and they both see a sign saying, “Danger – bridge out ahead.” The first driver just glances at the sign for about one second, hits his breaks and does a U-turn to avoid the downed bridge. The second driver is mesmerized by the sign, pulls over, and spends three hours just fawning over every detail of that sign. He marvels over the lettering, and the craftsmanship, and the colors and texture. He takes a picture of it and posts it on Facebook. He calls friends and family and pleads with them to come and see this sign. Finally, when he is done, he jumps in his car, steps on the gas still going straight ahead, and when he sees that the bridge is out it is too late to stop and so he plunges to his death in the canyon below. Tell me – which driver paid attention to the sign? The first guy glanced at it for one second, but he is the one who actually heeded the sign. The second guy obsessed over the sign, but he did everything but the one thing he should have done, namely, read it. And that is exactly how these people (and many people today) approach the signs and wonders the Jesus performed. They look at the miracles and marvel at them and celebrate them and get all excited about them and seek more of them and do everything except the one thing they should do, namely, understand them. They don’t read the sign. Jesus fed five thousand families with one little boy’s lunch – a miracle of creation, and a sign pointing to who He was; and all they could see was one, giant meal ticket. It was a sign pointing to two crucially important truths about who Jesus is:
#1 – Jesus is God (that is the one the Disciples missed)
#2 – the one this crowd missed. 
What is that? What is the second thing about who Jesus is that is clear in that miracle? Jesus answers that question repeatedly throughout this entire chapter, but the people never do get it because all they can think about is how to get Jesus to give them more free food.
Stuck on Food
Instead of looking at the bread and seeing a sign, they looked at the sign and saw only bread. They are so focused on getting what they want, they could not be more deaf to what Jesus is telling them.

27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval." 28 Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?" 

What they are doing there is basically hanging out a sign: “Will work for food.” They hear that word work, and say, “OK, if that’s what we have to do to get the food – just tell us what to do. What is this work?”

29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

Now, in verse 30 it almost sounds like they finally give up on the food and start tracking with what Jesus is saying. 

30 So they asked him, "What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?

So they say, “Oh, You’re claiming to be the Son of Man who has the Father’s seal of approval – OK, prove it.
Prove it with a sign. Just perform some kind of miracle. It could be anything you like – any kind of proof – for example, maybe… oh, here’s one –

31 Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" 

You are making claims about being from God; prove it by doing a Moses. Moses supplied the people with bread not just once, but every day – dropped right out of heaven. Just do that and then we will have adequate evidence, and we will be able to believe with intellectual integrity.
So they pretend it is all about evidence and proof, but all that is a very, very thin disguise for their real agenda. They just want free food – period. They package it into a bunch of religious language, but the bottom line is they want food.
Doesn’t Work
This is the problem with the whole seeker-sensitive philosophy. When you draw people in through felt-need preaching, those people will remain focused on that thing, not on Christ. Look what happens at the end of this conversation. Not only does the whole crowd get upset and leave, but…

66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. 

Everyone leaves except for the Twelve. Jesus causes a pretty severe church split here. Thousands leave, and twelve stay.
This is what happens when people come to Christ to get their felt needs met – it does not last. Last weekend Tracy tried that peanut butter technique, and she put the glob of peanut butter in the dog’s mouth, and the dog is licking and swallowing and chewing (takes forever for her to get all the peanut butter down) – then spits out the two little pills. And that is exactly the same thing that happens with felt-need preaching. The people swallow the human wisdom part that they like – the music, the marriage tips, the potty training seminar, etc.; and spit out the gospel.
This is the problem not only with the seeker philosophy, but also the heresy known as the prosperity gospel. People like Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and countless others become rich by preaching a gospel that promises people wealth and prosperity if they follow Jesus. The appeal that they use to bring people to the Jesus they preach is people’s love for the treasures of this world. And when you do that what you are doing is leaving people’s desires untransformed, and teaching them to use Jesus as a tool to gain earthly treasures. And that makes them less likely to be saved, not more likely. 

The Right Motive
So if coming to Christ with the wrong motive does not do any good, then when we tell people about Jesus, it is important that we do so in a way that helps them come to Him with the right motive. And to do that, you have to understand the miracle of the loaves so you know exactly who Jesus is. I told you that there are two truths about who Jesus is revealed in the miracle of the loaves.
#1 – Jesus is God.
#2 – Jesus is Bread.
This crowd’s conception of Jesus was that He was a waiter, and His job was to bring them their food. And so Jesus explains, “No, I’m not the waiter. I’m the food.”

32 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, 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. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." 34 "Sir," they said, "from now on give us this bread." 35 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. 

That is very clear – Jesus is the bread. But the people refuse to understand what Jesus is saying, because they are still focused on getting literal food. And the more they resist what Jesus is saying, the more Jesus says it in increasingly hard to accept terms. When He first says it, it is clear and understandable. But as you move through the passage, as they reject what He is saying He puts it in harder, more offensive terms until they are finally driven away.

48 I am the bread of life. 

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."

53 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. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

Saying it that way was so offensive that it finally drove them all away.
The first crucial truth about Jesus (that He is God), the Disciples missed. But when Jesus corrected the Disciples on the lake, they worshipped Him. They accepted His correction. But when He corrects this crowd, they just keep resisting. They are determined to come to Him as waiter or not at all. And so Jesus says, “OK, not at all then.” You cannot come to Christ as your cosmic waiter, or heavenly bellhop to bring you the things you regard as the true bread of life. You must come to Him as the bread or not at all.
The meaning of bread 
Your bread is whatever you look to in life to sustain your life and bring you satisfaction for the cravings of your soul. People look to hundreds of different things as their bread: money, relationships, sex, food, adventure, fame, work, leisure, recreation, drugs, alcohol, television, music – the list goes on and on. But in this passage Jesus makes it real simple for us. He boils it down to just two categories.

27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life

There are really only two kinds of food. When you are unhappy, unfulfilled, empty, depressed, bored – all those are the hunger pangs of the soul. And when it comes time to satisfy that hunger, there are only two basic options. You can try to satisfy them with temporary, created things; or you can satisfy them with something that is eternal. All those things I listed – food and money and sex and work and all the rest – those things all have one thing in common – they are temporary. They are the food that spoils. And the thing about temporal food is, when you eat it, the effect is temporary and later you get hungry again. The feelings of satisfaction you get from those things are superficial and temporary. And so Jesus tells them not to work for that kind of bread. Instead we are to go after the kind that gives eternal life, which is Jesus. 

The Right Method
How do you do that? How do you come to Christ? We have talked about the right motive; now let’s talk about the right method. The wrong motive is to come to Him as a waiter; the right motive is to come to Him as the bread. But now what does it mean to come to Him as bread? It is not a geographical coming. You do not actually travel anywhere when you come to Jesus. The coming involves no muscles – it all takes place in the heart. So how is it done?
We Have Obscured the Way to Come
You would think that every Christian would instantly know the answer to that. In fact, in a country like ours, where Christianity is so prolific and there are so many churches, you would think the answer to that question would be common knowledge for everyone. Whether people agreed with Christianity or not, you would think that in a country like ours even unbelievers would say, “Oh, Christians – those are the people who believe that the way to be saved is by...”
Tragically, that is not at all the case. Very few people can accurately complete that sentence: “The way to be saved is by…” And it is no surprise when you listen to the way the gospel is often presented. People preach the gospel and they are very clear about sin, and guilt and God’s wrath. They are very clear about who Jesus is, and why He came. They wax eloquent about Jesus living a perfect life, then dying on the cross in our place to pay for our sins, and then rising again on the third day so we could have newness of life in Him. They talk about regeneration (being born again), being justified, sanctified, glorified, living the Christian life and going to heaven and receiving eternal reward. Clear, detailed, explanations of all that. And then the question comes, “OK, so how do I get all that? How do I become a Christian?”
“Oh, how do you become a Christian? Well, you just accept Jesus……”
When people get to the part about how to actually become a Christian, suddenly everything becomes extremely vague. In a recent Christian movie the question of how to become a Christian was reduced to one word – “accept.” Just accept salvation. It is like He is begging to save you, and all you have to do to become a Christian is say, “OK, Jesus – You have my permission to save me.”
Do we really believe people will do what Scripture says they must do to be saved if we just give them that one word (accept Jesus)? Is that the best we can do? Is that really the clearest we can make the message upon which the eternal destiny of all people hangs? People are going to spend eternity in hell if they do not understand how to become a Christian; are we going to just give them one vague word that could be taken several different ways and say, “Hope you can figure it out. See you on Judgment Day”? If you walk into the average church and ask how to become a member, they will give you a very clear, detailed explanation that anyone can understand. Ask them how to join a small group; they will spell it out for you. Ask how to get on the worship team, or a cleanup crew, or the prayer chain; and you get a full explanation. But ask how to get into the kingdom of God and you are lucky if you get one complete sentence. And even then, good luck making heads or tails of that sentence.
And what really drives me crazy is we make it even harder for children. We figure it is too hard for kids to understand the word “accept,” so we tell the kids “invite Jesus into your heart.” There was a Bible camp that used to invite me up to speak every year. One year I went up there and started my message by saying, “I do not believe in inviting Jesus into your heart.” (That was the last year I got invited.) That is the gospel we give kids. Somebody needs to wake up to the fact that children do not develop the capacity for abstract thinking until around the beginning of high school. Kids are concrete, literal thinkers. I was at that same camp one time with a room full of middle school kids singing worship songs. We were singing “Open the Eyes of My Heart,” and so I leaned over to my kids (who were in middle school at the time) and asked if they knew what that song meant. And to my amazement, they had no idea. So I started going around the room and was not able to find a single kid who knew what that song meant. It is too abstract for a child’s mind. If you tell a child he is saved by inviting Jesus into his heart he thinks of one thing: an invisible guy with a beard going inside their chest. That is all it means to them.
If you let your little children look at the toy isle in WalMart, and you tell them where to meet you in the store when they are done, you would explain it in terms they could understand. You would not put it into some cryptic, symbolic, metaphorical abstraction that they could not understand. When we tell them how to meet the Lord in heaven, shouldn’t that be the clearest thing we ever say to them?
The meaning of Faith
OK, I have gone on and on about the importance of being clear on the question of how to come to Christ, so let’s go right to the source and see what Jesus said on the subject. In verse 28 the people ask Him point blank, “What do we have to do?”

29 Jesus answered, "…believe in the one he has sent." 

Believe. If we have to reduce it down to a single word, let’s make that the word Jesus used – believe. But thankfully we do not have to reduce it down to only one word. We can do what Jesus did and explain what He means by “believe,” which is important because there are different kinds of believing, right? James says the demons believe and tremble. We do not want to follow their lead. So what kind of faith does Jesus have in mind? What exactly does believing in Jesus look like?
Believing in
There are two things we need to do to answer that question. First let’s look at the phrase itself, then let’s take a look at the explanation Jesus gives in the verses that follow. When you see the phrase “believe in” in Scripture, it does not mean the same thing as people in our culture typically mean by that phrase. Usually when we talk about believing in something, all we mean is believing that it exists. If someone asks if you believe in Santa, they are not asking if you trust him to take care of you or anything about your relationship with Him - all they mean is “Do you believe that he exists?” But in the Bible, the phrase “believe in” never means that. It means to trust in the person, and entrust yourself to that person. Proverbs 26:25 tells us not to “believe in” a malicious man, because his heart is full of sin. That does not mean do not believe the man exists – it means do not entrust yourself to him.

Numbers 20:12 But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you did not believe in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them."

Trusting in God means being so convinced that His Word is true, and His way is best, that you will follow that way no matter what the cost. Most people read the Bible with the attitude, “I’ll see what it says, and if I agree, then I’ll accept it.” That is trusting in your own wisdom. Trusting in God is when you say, “Whatever it says, I will do – no matter what the cost. I am not going to worry about protecting my interests anymore; I am entrusting all that to Him.”

The phrase first appears in Genesis 15.
Genesis 15:6 Abram believed in the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
It would be hard to overstate the importance of that verse – Genesis 15:6. That verse is the basis for the whole book of Romans. Paul wrote the whole book of Romans all about salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and it all came out of Genesis 15:6. Abraham’s faith in this verse is held out as the model for saving faith in Romans 4, in Galatians 3, in Hebrews 6, in Hebrews 11, and in James 2. That Hebrew phrase occurs five times in the Old Testament, and each time it refers not to believing information, but rather to trusting someone or entrusting yourself to someone or something. 
Trusting in God means being so convinced that His Word is true, and His way is best, that you will follow that way no matter what the cost. And the phrase “believe in” or “trust in” means the same thing in the New Testament. 
Sometimes in the New Testament the word “believe” by itself refers to people believing, but it refers to a false faith. But this phrase “believe in” – that phrase is never used of a false faith. It always refers to a level of trusting God that results in salvation.

If you were taught that you can become a Christian just by agreeing to some information, you were misled. That is part of it – you do have to agree with the truth of the Gospel. But the demons agree that the facts are true. Beyond mere intellectual agreement there must be an entrusting of yourself to Jesus, and a trust in Him to be all that He claims to be.
Looking to Him as your Bread
So that is the meaning of the phrase itself. Now let’s look at Jesus’ explanation that fills out that idea even fuller.
Faith = Eating and Drinking

John 6:35 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. 

Notice the parallelism. “Whoever comes” = “Whoever believes.” Coming so as not to hunger and believing so as not to thirst are the same thing.
Beyond mere intellectual agreement there must be an entrusting of yourself to Jesus, and a trust in Him to be all that He claims to be. And one of the things He claims to be is bread – food and drink – the source of satisfaction for the appetites of the soul.
You do not become a Christian by going to a concert, getting stirred up from the music, walking down to the front and signing a card. You do not become a Christian by raising your hand when someone says, “How many of you want forgiveness for all your sins?” You become a Christian on the day when you look at this world and all that it offers, and then you look at Christ; and your heart and soul say, “I would rather have Him. Christ looks more satisfying to me than the world.”
That is why you can never manipulate people into becoming Christians by finding the right technique. You can manipulate them into singing a card or raising their hand or getting baptized, but you cannot use any human ingenuity to cause a person to see Jesus Christ as more delightful than this world. That is a special work of the Holy Spirit in a person’s heart. And the only thing we can do to make it more likely that the Spirit will do that work is preach the Word of God. Faith comes through hearing the Word of God – NOT through catering to someone’s felt needs and schmoozing them into accepting Jesus. So – how do you become a Christian? Believe the truth about Christ in God’s Word, trust Him by entrusting your life to Him completely, and look to Him as the food and drink for your soul that is more desirable to you and satisfying to you than the food and drink of this world.
Living by Faith
And that is the key not only to becoming a Christian, but also to living the Christian life. That is how you please God; that is how you overcome sin; that is how you carry out your calling.
John Piper: “This is a huge discovery when you make it. You never read your Bible the same again. You never think about the obedience that flows from faith the same again. You never fight for purity and holiness the same again. When you see that saving faith is being satisfied with all that God is for you in Jesus, the “good fight of faith” (as Paul calls is in 1 Timothy 6:12) becomes a fight for joy. And from then on, everything is different.” That is exactly right. Pick a sin in your life that you are fighting against. What are you doing to fight that sin? The world’s way to fight it is to grit your teeth and try harder. The Christian way to fight it is with this kind of faith. You defeat that sin by doing whatever you can possibly do to see Jesus for who He is so that you desire Him above whatever that sin offers. If you need to change something in your heart, change it by opening your eyes wider to His glorious, wonderful, majestic, awesome, beautiful, soul-transforming attributes so that when you see how wonderful He is, you actually prefer Him above any earthly pleasure or treasure. And seeing Him that way, and then actually experiencing those attributes, and having that experience satisfy the cravings of your soul – that is what Jesus means by eating and drinking Him. And that is faith. That is what it means to trust in Him.
The crowd wanted to come to Him as their waiter, whom they could use to gain access to temporal food that rots. And Jesus said, “No, come to Me as the food from heaven who will satisfy your soul forever.” And when you come to Him that way – that is faith. And that is how you become a Christian. That is how you enter the kingdom of God. That is how you get all your sins forgiven and gain eternal life. That is how you make Judgment Day the best day of your life instead of the worst day of your life. And that is also how you have success in every area of the Christian life. Everything in Christianity is by faith, and faith is coming to the Lord Jesus Christ not as your waiter, but as your bread.
One of the reasons God created bread is so that when Jesus Christ came into the world, He would be able to use the enjoyment of bread to teach us what faith is. Bread exists to help us know what it is like to be satisfied in Jesus. Whenever you walk by a Subway in the morning and you smell all that fresh, baked bread – let that smell always send your heart racing toward what it means to receive the true Bread through faith.
Why not both?
Let me close with one final question. 

27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life

My question is, “Why not both?” Why not store up treasure in heaven and on earth? That is what the prosperity gospel promises – eternal bread and earthly bread. What is wrong with that? If Jesus gives them free food and the gospel, then just imagine the platform He would have. People would come by the millions. Why doesn’t He do that?
He does not do it because doing that would accomplish the opposite of what Jesus wanted to accomplish. Jesus wants people to be saved, and they can only be saved when they see Him as their great treasure. So why would He do something that would make them more likely to see some earthly thing as their great treasure? Suppose you are a man, and you are trying to win the heart of a woman you want to marry. The problem is, she keeps going back and forth between you and her old boyfriend. And you are trying to figure out how to win her heart. So you figure, “Well, she’s attracted to this other man – I’ll use that to win her heart.” So you write her a letter all about the things she finds so attractive about that old boyfriend. And then you end the letter by saying, “Will you marry me? Marry me, and I will become a useful tool that you can use to get this other man through me.” You would never do that. If you are trying to win her heart, why would you say things to increase her love for the other man? What you want is for her to forsake that other man. When we call people to Christ we are calling them to forsake this world as their treasure. It is insanity to try to accomplish that by offering them the pleasures of this world as an incentive for coming to Christ!

Conclusion
Do you understand about the loaves? Is Jesus a tool to get earthly treasures, or is Jesus your treasure? Is Jesus your waiter to bring you earthly bread, or is He the Bread you seek?

Benediction: Joshua 24:14 "Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. … 15 choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, … But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."