GLUTEN-FREE BREAD TO EAT - (3)

John 6: 1-69 – Part 3

”Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” John 6:58

Read the story here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:35-69&version=NIV

Listen to story here:  http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/dramatized/niv/John.6

Everyone wants to live forever.  So why – as soon as Jesus said: “Whoever eats this bread will live forever”—did the crowds desert him?

It was because of one simple word: eats.  Jesus’ Jewish audience was very careful with what they ate and with how they ate it.  There were ceremonial food laws that covered all the “dos and donts," and Jesus was breaking several of them. 

First off, Jesus switched from saying “eat this bread” to saying “eat my flesh.”  That is where his faithful Jewish followers got off the train. They had very strict rules about eating flesh.  Some meats were kosher and some were not.  What Jesus seemed to be proposing wasn’t kosher!

Second, no Jew would consume the blood along with the flesh, because the life was in the blood.  And here was this man telling them to “Drink my blood.”  What was he, a vampire!?

And finally, was this man insane!  What person in his right mind would insist that people must “eat his flesh and drink his blood.”  If he really did mean this as a figure of speech, then why did he keep repeating it and driving home the point?  He KNEW how angry and upset this audience would become if they took his words literally, so was he trying to drive them away?

Good question.

No, Jesus wasn’t driving them away, he was separating them.  He knew that many in the audience didn’t believe him, and that is why they kept grumbling and arguing. They were offended and scandalized, when they should have been amazed and transformed.

First, they got offended when he told them he came from heaven.

Then they were scandalized when he seemed to be proposing cannibalism.

They weren’t really listening.  If they had been, they would have heard and accepted his explanation: “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are spirit and life.”

The ones who had already written him off, left; the ones who really believed who he was, stayed.

Which one are you?