Bro. Eddie Ministries Reading Plan: The Word Gives HopeHalimbawa

Entrust our lives to Him

They saw Jesus doing miracles. They saw how the diseased became well. So they went to follow Him. They tread on towards the mountain where He was and His disciples were. From there He saw them coming to Him.

They were about five thousand men. The Passover was already near so He let them eat. They were amazed to see how He fed them through five barley loaves and two small fishes only. So they said He might be the Prophet who is to come into the world. (Deuteronomy 18:18)

They thought He might be the Messiah who will establish a perfect world on earth. Or He might be the answer to the continuing food crisis in the world. Hence they were determined to take Him by force to make Him their King. But that has nothing to do with His mission.

They sought Him the next day and found Him at Capernaum. But He knew what was on their mind. They sought Him not because they saw the sign but because they ate of the loaves and were filled. (John 6:26)

He told them they should not work for the food that perishes. They should work for the food that endures to everlasting life. What then they must do to do the works of God? He told them to believe in whom God has sent, referring to Himself.

They challenged His claim. What sign can He perform so they would believe Him? God poured out bread to feed their fathers in the desert for forty years. Can He do better?

Jesus told them, “My Father 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.” (vv. 32-33)

But they did not catch what He meant. “Lord, give us this bread always,” was all they had to say.
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst…I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world…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 My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” (vv. 35, 51, 53-56)

They were sickened to hear Him. It was a hard saying that they could not accept. So they went, not believing what He said. He might have sounded absurd to them.

We will not take in what Jesus said if we would just figure it out with our minds. But His Spirit can make us grasp what He meant.

The Jews were fond of giving credit on their works for God. Likewise it was easy for them to believe God through signs or miracles He does. Yet they would not believe Jesus and His claims about Himself.

Jesus did not make cannibals out of men. So where is the wisdom to command these people to eat His flesh and drink His blood? Jesus rather told them a deeper truth, which they hardly understood. He spoke of His death, which will give hope to all men. He wanted them to trust that the life He would

give up on the cross would make them alive in the spirit. That is why He said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63)

All men have died because of sin. What have died in them is their spirit, the component that is made to commune and have fellowship with God. To make their spirits alive, Jesus needed first to conquer sin and the curses it brought upon their lives. And that He did through His death on the cross. But the freedom it offers will be ours only when we begin to trust Him. This is the greatest miracle that God would ever do in people’s lives. It is more than receiving our daily bread.

But Jesus also wants that we keep in our mind what He did. So He gave us the ordinance of the Holy Communion. Through this, we remember how He traded in His life for us – that we might live. (Matthew 26:26-29)

Reflection:
1. What does flesh and blood of Jesus imply? How did you react on what He said the first time you heard it? “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.”
2. What makes it hard for many people to entrust their lives to God?

Jesus knows how poor in the spirit the people are and how much they need Him.