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Sermons

Subject 16 : The Gospel According to JOHN

[Chapter 6-13] How Can We Eat The Flesh of Jesus? (John 6:41-59)

How Can We Eat The Flesh of Jesus?
(John 6:41-59)
“The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, ‘I am the bread which came down from heaven.’ And they said, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, ‘I have come down from heaven’?’ Jesus therefore answered and said to them, ‘Do not murmur among yourselves. 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, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 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.’ The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, 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. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.’ These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.”
 
 
What it is that we should do to really love our neighbors and help them? Would it be really beneficial to them if we help them financially? My advice to you, my brothers and sisters of faith, is not to give free handouts to your unfortunate neighbors. This actually does not help them at all. Assisting them to stand up on their own feet is the real help. Of course, we can’t just ignore when someone extends his hands to us asking for our help, and so we should help that person in anyway possible, but before we do so, we need to first consider carefully whether or not our assistance would really be of any use to him. And ultimately, we have to preach the gospel of the water and the Spirit to him and free him from all his sins. That is the real help and love. 
John chapter six speaks about the bread of life. Jesus said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever” (John 6:51). Why did Jesus say to the Jews that He was the bread that came down from Heaven? And why were the Jews drawn to this Word? 
When Jesus came to this earth, Israel was a tributary state to Rome. So it was a constant struggle for the Israelites to just survive and meet their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. Because many Jews were starving to death, when the Lord spoke about bread, it was probably inevitable that this would draw their attention. They thought that it was in their interest to gather around Jesus, since they thought that He would fill them with bread.
In John chapter six, Jesus at first said that He was the bread that came down from Heaven. And then He said, “I am the bread of life.” In verse 51, Jesus also said, “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.” Like this, Jesus explained gradually how He gave us everlasting life. 
Taking one step further, in John 6:53-57, Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, 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. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” In other words, Jesus explained in progressive detail how He saved us, and how He thus gave us everlasting life.
Why did Jesus say that He is the bread of life that came down from Heaven, and that anyone who eats Him will receive eternal life? Jesus said that His flesh is food and His blood is drink. Why did He say this?
Just as our Lord said, we must eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood. The people who heard Jesus might have thought that He was saying something heinous, thinking, “Does He regard us as cannibals?” But there was nothing dreadful about what He said. We must actually eat the flesh of Jesus by faith. And we must also drink His blood by faith. Only then can we live in both body and spirit. Unless we do so, we cannot live.
Let’s turn to John 6:53-54: “Most assuredly, I say to you, 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.” 
We must eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood without fail. The Lord made it clear that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life. Since Jesus said that we must infallibly eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to attain life, we must indeed eat His flesh and drink His blood without fail. 
 
 

Why Must We Eat the Flesh of Jesus?

 
That we must eat the flesh of Jesus means that we must believe that Jesus took upon our sins on His body by receiving baptism when He came to this earth. In other words, only when we believe that our sins were passed onto the body of Jesus can we attain everlasting life. If we don’t believe that our sins were passed onto the body of Jesus through His baptism, even as we profess to believe in Jesus, then we will starve to reach spiritual death. Just as our bodies would die of malnutrition unless we eat everyday, our souls will also face spiritual death unless we eat His flesh as frequently as possible.
To eat the flesh of Jesus is to believe that He bore all our sins on His body. Only if we believe that our sins were passed onto Jesus can our souls be filled and attain prosperity. If you don’t believe that your sins were passed onto the body of Jesus, then even if you believe in Him, you will still starve spiritually and waste away. 
Is it because of our own merits that we have been saved? No, of course not. It’s because God loved us that He has saved us with His power. It is entirely by the grace of the Lord that we have been saved from all our sins. If we were saved because of our own goodness, then we wouldn’t have to eat the flesh of Jesus. However, we humans have absolutely no real virtue. There is nothing good whatsoever to mankind. Therefore, it is impossible for us to reach our salvation unless the Lord Himself saves us. Had God not written this Word of salvation in the Bible, none of us then could be saved.
My fellow believers, take a look at yourself and see how you were remitted from your sins. Do we have any virtue at all? It’s because the Lord has saved us that we reached our salvation and became God’s people; if our salvation had required our own perfect acts even slightly, then we could not have been saved. We humans are utterly evil. You yourself are an exceedingly evil person. If you think that’s not the case, then it’s only because your circumstances have not yet fully exposed your wickedness. The reality of mankind is such that when the circumstances are ripe to expose its wickedness, a parent would even devour his own child.
Do you think it’s impossible for a mother to cannibalize her own son? As described in 2 Kings chapter six, when Ben-Hadad king of Syria gathered all his army and besieged Samaria, a great famine followed and the people inside the city were all starving to death. Among the starving people in Samaria, two women talked to each other and reached an agreement. “We will all die if we don’t do something. An idea struck me; today, we will eat your son, and tomorrow we will eat mine. What do you think of this plan?” “Okay. That sounds good.” 
So they ate one woman’s son, and the next day, it was the other woman’s turn to give up her son. But this woman hid her son and refused to give him up. So the woman who had first given up her son sought justice from the king. “Your majesty, that woman suggested that we should eat our children, and so yesterday we ate my son, and today we are supposed to eat her son, but she is refusing to give him up.” When the king heard these words, he tore his clothes in agony. 
My fellow believers, this event written in the Bible is a true story. God recorded this so that we would admit the fact that mankind is more than capable of committing such atrocities when faced with extreme conditions. This shows just how evil mankind is. There are parents who kill their own children if they give them too much trouble, and there are also children who kill their parents to take over their wealth. Yet to save such people like us, our Lord came to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man, His creature, and bore all our sins on His body.
You must believe that all your sins were passed onto the Lord Jesus when He was baptized. Not to believe in this fact is for you to starve to death. Just as you would die unless you eat food, if you don’t believe that all your sins were passed onto the body of Jesus, then you will starve to death spiritually. That is why Jesus is saying that we have to eat His flesh. It is written, “The bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (John 6:51). The only way for our God to enable us to live forever was to shoulder our sins on His body. So by believing in this, we must eat the flesh of Jesus. When Jesus said, “My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed,” He meant, “Eat My flesh and drink My blood, or otherwise you will die. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood will receive everlasting life.” Have you eaten the flesh of Jesus?
The Lord has given us His flesh. However, when He said to the Jews, “Eat My flesh, for it is your food,” they only derided Him, saying, “What? Aren’t You Joseph’s son? How can a man be bread?” The Jews just could not understand what Jesus was saying when He told them, “Eat My flesh and drink My blood.”
Even now, many people still do not know what Jesus meant when He said that one should eat His flesh, and so they believe in a fabricated hypothesis called “Transubstantiation,” which claims that the bread and wine prepared for Holy Communion actually turn into the flesh and blood of Jesus through the blessings of the presiding priest. Such people believe like this and eat the wafer with all piety, saying that Jesus told them to eat His flesh. 
However, this is not what Jesus meant. When Jesus told us to eat His flesh, He meant that we should believe in the following: By shouldering all our sins and their curses on His body in our place, Jesus has truly enabled us to avoid condemnation and destruction. Even after being saved, we cannot help but continue to sin, for we are still weak in our flesh. However, to ensure that our souls would never die for such sins, Jesus took all our sins upon His body by being baptized. This is what Jesus told us to believe when He said that we must eat His flesh. In other words, Jesus has saved us perfectly by shouldering all our sins on His body.
 
 
Are Today’s Christians Then Truly Eating the Flesh of Jesus?
 
Among today’s Christians, few really know and believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. That’s why Jesus told us to eat His flesh and drink His blood. By drinking only the blood of Jesus, we cannot live. Only when we eat the flesh of Jesus does it turn into our food, thus enabling us to live forever. This Word of God is the Truth. Every Word of God is the Truth. We must all infallibly believe in this Word about the flesh and blood of Jesus with our hearts. 
We commit sin constantly. As we are weak and insufficient, we think evil and we commit wrongdoings. Nevertheless, Jesus shouldered all the sins that we commit while living on this earth, and that is why we can live. He has shouldered all the sins of both those who have received the remission of their sins and those who have not. Had Jesus not borne our sins on His body, then we who have received the remission of our sins would not be able to live either. If that were the case, our hearts would lose the strength of faith today, even though we may have believed yesterday. In other words, since we are still committing sin every day out of our weaknesses, we may suffocate to death under the weight of sin because of our wickedness if the Lord had not taken away all our sins when He was baptized. 
That is why the Lord said to us, “My flesh is food indeed.” Whenever we are weak, we believe that our Lord has saved the entire human race from sin by taking away all the sins of the world, and this is how the Lord becomes our food.
We must always believe with our hearts that the Lord is our Savior. In other words, even though we are weak, we must nevertheless believe resolutely based on the Word that the Lord is our Savior. When we have this kind of faith, we can live without shame even though we are living in a corrupt world, for we have the righteousness of God and eternal life in our hearts. Because the Lord has given us His flesh, by taking it as our food, we carry on with our lives boldly today and tomorrow. 
 
 

We Will Die If We Do Not Eat the Flesh of Jesus and Instead Only Drink His Blood Everyday

 
Everyone has to have both food and drink for energy and metabolism. You have to have them both; if you have only one, then you will surely die. The same goes for your spiritual life. You and I eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood everyday. We must have them today, tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives. Whenever we fall into weaknesses, we believe, “The Lord took away my sins. He bore all my sins,” and this is how we feed on the bread of life. Whenever we are insufficient, we must remember that Jesus took away all our sins by being baptized at the Jordan River, and once again eat this bread. That is how we live without hunger, but always filled. The flesh of Jesus constitutes our food. Yet despite this, most Christians are starving to death, all because they do not eat the flesh of Jesus.
When we eat Jesus’ flesh, we are filled and strengthened. Jesus described His body as bread. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and the word Bethlehem means “a house of bread.” Jesus said that He is the bread for our food that came down from Heaven. That is how He has enabled everyone to live by eating His flesh. We are living on the true bread of life.
Verses 49-50 in today’s Scripture passage say, “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die.” The people of the Old Testament died even though they had eaten the manna. The manna, which was like white coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey (Exodus 16:31), was the pure food that God brought down. This manna refers to the Word of God, Jesus Himself. In other words, the Israelites still died even after believing in God’s Word. However, now, if you eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood, then you will receive eternal life. This passage means that when we believe in the Word of God, we must both eat the flesh of Jesus and drink His blood by faith.
The life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11). This means that by offering His life for us and bearing our condemnation in our place, the Lord has given us life, for His blood is His life. In other words, even though we had to die for our sins, we were saved precisely because Jesus gave us His life. 
The Lord said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56). Many people say that they can be saved just by drinking the blood of Jesus without eating His flesh, but that is completely wrong. You are not saved simply by believing only in the Jesus who died on the Cross. You can live only if you eat the flesh of Jesus. Even today, I live by eating the flesh of Jesus. I will eat His flesh tomorrow also. Of course, this does not mean that I eat the flesh of Jesus like a cannibal, but it means that I believe that Jesus took all my sins and blemishes upon His body by being baptized. To believe is to eat. I have to eat His flesh everyday as long as I live on this earth. There is no one who can live without eating the flesh of Jesus. 
However, almost all Christian believers are only having drinks. Why don’t they eat the flesh of Jesus, when the Bible clearly states that they should eat it also? By being baptized by John the Baptist, the representative of mankind, Jesus accepted the sins of the world once and for all, and by being crucified on behalf of the entire human race, He bore its condemnation. It is by believing in this that we have attained our salvation and received everlasting food. Everyone is saved only by believing that Jesus took upon all his sins through His baptism, and that He was condemned in his place. This is the very Truth that Jesus spoke in John chapter six.
In verse 57 of today’s Scripture passage, Jesus said, “He who feeds on Me will live because of Me,” and in verse 58, He said, “He who eats this bread will live forever.” Those who have accepted Jesus by faith have eaten this bread. Those who believe in what Jesus has done for them will live forever. On the day of our Lord’s return, He will raise all such believers from their graves and have them live forever. 
Our Lord has become the true bread for us. The reason why I preach the gospel of the water and the Spirit is because it is our everlasting food. Because the Lord has blotted out all our sins with the gospel of the water and the Spirit, we have reached our salvation simply by believing in this Truth. It’s only because the Lord has saved us that we’ve received our salvation. Had He not really saved us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit, there would then be no way for us to be saved. Had the Lord not taken upon Himself all our sins, then we could not have been saved. Therefore, only the fact that Jesus has saved us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit is the true bread that makes us live forever.
Is there any virtue or merit to us? No, there is none. We were completely insufficient creatures, nothing more than piles of sin, who could receive the remission of our sins only if the Lord came to this earth incarnated in the flesh and take away all our sins to save us. It is only because Jesus has saved us through the gospel of the water and the Spirit that we have received our salvation. Our salvation is completely devoid of our own efforts or merits, not even 0.001 percent. It is attained 100 percent by the grace of the Lord.
We have received our salvation because of the Lord. I praise the Lord. Even though we were inevitably bound to be condemned, our Lord has still saved us. Were it not for the Lord, we would all be cast into hell. We would all lose life. Had the Lord Himself not given us His flesh and blood, how could we live otherwise? It’s only because the Lord has saved us that we’ve reached our salvation. He has become our bread of life. Because we have eaten the bread given by the Lord, we live for Him today and tomorrow, for eternity. 
Because the Lord has given us His flesh and blood, we have received everlasting food, and because the Lord has become everlasting food, we will live with Him forever. I give all my thanks to our Lord.