David: [electronic music] Well, welcome everyone to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. We are continuing to walk through the Book of John, and this one is particularly interesting because the occasion for it is perhaps a little bit different than the normal occasion for a podcast because Christine and I were working on writing the devotionals for updating our John content online and on our Bible reading plans. We're, we're just kind of going back through John and rewriting it and trying to go a little bit deeper this time. And as we've been working through chapter six, we realized there's no earthly way that we could possibly fit 10% of what we're seeing in John six into a 700 to 1,000-word devotional. And so we were like, "Well, we could indulge ourselves a little bit here and maybe invite our friends and listeners along with us on the journey and talk about everything we're seeing in John six on the podcast so at least it has some place to live since it can't live in a devotional." And also, this allows you all listening to get a little bit of a glimpse into what it feels like we almost have to do every time we write a devotional, is we have to leave so much out 'cause we're trying to focus on a core idea and a small thesis statement, and we can't include all the ways that the Bible's talking to itself and all the things that we are seeing for how it reveals the gospel of Jesus. And so this is also an interesting thing for you to see a little behind the scenes of what else is going on. So what, what did I miss in ways of introduction, Christine?
Christine: I think that's good. It's kind of the conversation that we get to have with just about every devotional, but as you said, this is a time when we're actually putting microphones between us [laughs] and saying-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... "Well, what if we just shared b- the behind-the-scenes conversation that happens behind a devotional?" And yeah, and to your point, we just, we can't exhaust this text. We won't exhaust it here either.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: There is ... This is gonna be but scratching the surface of everything that is John six and everything that Christ is and the scriptures are revealing-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... and he's revealing. So I'm excited to jump in a little bit deeper than, than usual, at least for-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... yeah.
David: And so there's a bit of this that is unique not only in the occasion for it but in the format because this will be a little bit of our study time together that we typically spend in a, a passage, but we were like, "Let's do it live and invite our friends in." So ...
Christine: We kind of did this for Acts too, but-
David: We did in bits of that, yep
Christine: ... that was specifically for the purpose of the podcast.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And here we're just like, "There's too much for a devo. Let's make it a podcast." [laughs]
David: Yeah. We were like, "We're gonna have this conversation anyway. Let's get the mics out." So welcome, everyone. We're glad you're here. So we are in John chapter six as the late numbers go [laughs] added on. Soapboxes aside, how did we get to this part of the narrative in John?
Christine: Well, we started with in the beginning, so back in chapter one, John opened with his prologue about who the Word is and what he has done in the world and was coming into the world to do and how he took on flesh and was revealing the glory of God. And so we started there, and we see this Word made flesh walking around and this other man proclaiming the way before him. So we have John the Baptist with his baptism getting Israel ready to receive her king, Jesus, and her God, Jesus. And we see Jesus performing signs and gathering followers. And so Jesus gathers followers at the end of chapter one, some of whom were John's disciples, and then Jesus goes to Cana where he performs his first sign. And if you don't know why a sign is so significant and beautiful-
David: We have a whole ridiculous episode on that. [laughs]
Christine: There's ... Yeah, we nerd out about signs in another episode. But Jesus turns water into wine. He clears the temple later. We don't have time to go into all the significance of these. He has a conversation with Nicodemus in chapter three about being born again and being born from above, one or the other or both.
David: [laughs]
Christine: Probably both 'cause it's John. And there's a whole other discourse about baptism again, so there's a water theme going through and-
David: Which we have a whole ep-
Christine: We have-
David: ... two episodes on. [laughs]
Christine: We have two episodes on water in John [laughs] and the Bible, which gets us to conveniently Jesus speaking with the woman at the well about living water flowing up inside you. And just to continue with the water theme, Jesus heals more people. He heals the man at Bethesda, which is another water moment, and talks about life through the Son. He heals an official's son just before that, and that is kind of how we get to chapter six.
David: Yeah. As I'm listening to you kind of very quickly talk back through how we got here in John, obviously there's lots of themes I could pull on and go, oh, this is standing out, but the two main things are water and life just are, pardon the pun, gushing out and filling this. And it's, it, it's so appropriate that these are some of the themes that Jesus is going to continue to engage with here in John's gospel, is that it's this image of the presence of God, which is life itself, filling the earth like water so that vegetation and, and life would spring out of the earth and respond to the life-giving water of God's presence with more life. And we see this in the Garden of Eden. We see this in the water that gushes out of the, the temple in Ezekiel. And there's this theme that we talked about in our water episodes about how God's presence comes to earth to water it and bring life into dead places.
Christine: Yes.
David: So like, that's like a quick summary of two episodes.
Christine: Yeah. [laughs]
David: But-
Christine: And the, yeah, and the theme just gets compounded 'cause life and water are connected to finding woman at the well, and-
David: That's right
Christine: ... it's also connected to creation, which those two are stacking on. So it's sort of the flywheel that we talked about that everything's talking about everything but not in a chaotic way. [laughs]
David: Yeah.
Christine: But everything is connected very beautifully, so.
David: Yeah, and so Jesus was just in Jerusalem in John's gospel, and after this, he comes back out to the region of Galilee, which he does this a lot in John's gospel. Where instead of like some other gospel writers who kind of have a quote-unquote linear path for Jesus, he's moving toward a direction the whole time. John has him moving back and forth between Gentile, Galilee, Samaria regions, and then in Jerusalem, and he's moving back and forth. And so now he's back out in the Galilean territory, which is a mixed territory. It's not purely Israelite. It's not as scandalous as Samaria, but it's this mixed territory, and it's on the border of a lot of Gentile territories. And Jesus is going out there, and a large crowd gathers around him. And what we want to do as we jump into this story that hopefully will be familiar to a lot of you listening, this is the story in John's account of Jesus feeding the 5,000, walking on water, and then talking about how he is the bread of life and that you need to eat his flesh and drink his blood if you want to have life in you. And so this is like a very popular, famous, and extremely important story. And what we want to do is we want to walk through it, but we want to make sure we are seeing it, we think, in the way that John is presenting it, which is as an echo of the story of Exodus that we have.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And so just to briefly lay out a sketch for us, we have three core parts of the story here in John. You have Jesus feeding the 5,000. You have Jesus walking on water. And then you have Jesus talking about how he is the bread in the wilderness, the manna that fed the people of Israel after Exodus. And this can be clearly mapped onto the story of Exodus, where you have God feeding his people a Passover meal, walking through water to get to the wilderness where he feeds them with manna. And so John is mapping the story of Jesus onto the story of Exodus in order to make layered points about who Jesus is, what he's come to do. So we're going to walk through each of those three story beats in Exodus, mapping them onto John kind of verse by verse. But that's the meta-narrative of where we're going here. Is there anything inside of those three kind of moves, Christine, that you think are important to front-load this conversation with?
Christine: I think you laid it out well. I think I might only add that for the last part with the discourse on Jesus being real bread from heaven is that we need to think like Sinai themes.
David: Oh, because he goes on a mountain.
Christine: He goes, well, he's, yeah, he's teaching a new covenant maybe.
David: Hmm.
Christine: And, um, I think something that is just helpful context maybe for just John's gospel and audience too is that you'll notice when you read through John that he- at his account of the Last Supper doesn't record Jesus inaugurating the new covenant or, or the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper. He doesn't say, "This is my body and blood." And John, in a way, doesn't have to because-
David: He's-
Christine: ... there are several gospels-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... already circulating that tell of Jesus doing that. So this is John choosing another location to show Jesus unpacking and explaining what feeding on him means, what this new covenant is. And so if we have Sinai as the covenant sprinkling with blood where God and his people become one, that is what is probably in John's mind here as, because it is interesting that he, you know, almost interrupts the narrative of feeding the 5,000 and the explaining of the miracle with this crossing. But it's because of that Passover, Exodus, Sinai, and covenant, new covenant that he's making those moves, I think, so.
David: Really helpful. So to say back as we're looking at a higher level and framing this discussion, John is showing and unpacking the way Jesus taught his disciples to understand the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist, the end of Jesus' earthly life right before his Passion, but here in the middle of his ministry, as it were, because, one, maybe because there's plenty of other oral traditions and gospels that were emerging at that time that told the story that way, but also because John wants to unpack things in a different way, or not different in terms of it's other than, but it's deeper. It adds another level of color and imagination and intertextuality to what he's talking about. And so because this is, since we're talking about the Exodus and we're talking about the covenant, this is the Passover meal-
Christine: It is
David: ... that he's talking about.
Christine: And John talks about that. This is the second time. It is from John's gospel that we get that Jesus' ministry was three years long because he mentions three different Passovers.
David: Wow.
Christine: This, uh, the first Passover was r- in John 2 around the water turning into wine. And here is John flagging again, "Now the Jewish Passover feast was near." So the Lord's Supper was inaugurated at the Passover in the other gospels, but John is like, "I know Matthew, Mark, and Luke covered this."
David: [laughs]
Christine: "Here, let me give you another Passover moment in the middle here where I'll unpack it even more."
David: It's important for us to remember that the meal that Jesus inaugurates that we know as the Lord's Supper, this new covenant meal that he has with his people, he didn't invent that meal, which I'm, I'm sure most of our listeners know. This is the Passover meal that he was sharing, which has its own history, its own meaning, and John is going to add layers to what we know as the Lord's Supper by putting it in this context and mapping it onto the Passover, the Exodus, the time in the wilderness and at Sinai, in order for us to understand what is this meal that we come to on Sunday when we gather as a church and we eat the body and blood of Jesus in the Lord's Supper meal. So I think that's the framing that we have here. So it starts off, and Jesus is out in Galilee, and a large crowd is following him. This is chapter six, verses one and two, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. And Jesus went up the mountain. There's a mountain, like at Sinai, and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" And he said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. [laughs] Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?" Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now, there was a great deal of grass in the place. So they sat down, about 5,000 in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten, they filled 12 baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, "This is indeed the Prophet who is come into the world." And when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Christine: There's so much going on here.
David: Let's dive into it.
Christine: Well, one thing that's just fun is that he tells the entire Passover story in miniature in just the first four verses. Did you catch that?
David: Ooh. No, unpack that for me.
Christine: So just to go back on what you were reading, Jesus is at the Sea of Galilee with a great crowd that followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick, and then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. So we see God at the sea-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... crossing be- with a crowd that had seen all these miraculous signs that he performed, and then he sits down with his people.
David: So that's the ... Oh, that's the whole Exodus story in miniature.
Christine: That's the whole Exodus story in miniature.
David: You have ... I see.
Christine: Yeah.
David: You have, you have a prophet of God who's doing signs, gathers a large crowd, crosses a sea to the other side, only to sit down with that prophet on a mountain and hear his words.
Christine: Yes.
David: I see. That's cool.
Christine: So that's just fun.
David: So it's cuing us in then to the fact that in these three beats, it's giving us these three beats in the first section of the story before it even starts to go, th- this is the table of contents for the story we're about to dive into.
Christine: Yes. Yes.
David: Very cool.
Christine: So cuing you into, okay, there's a multitude that's coming in haste to Jesus. The Passover is near. Okay. And then Jesus wants to sit down and feed these people and give them bread, and these two leaders with him, uh, whether Jesus is the new Moses here or Jesus is God, and there's Moses and Aaron figures in Philip and Andrew, we can, we can play around with that.
David: [laughs]
Christine: But there's this moment of feeding his people right around the Passover, and it's kind of this eating in haste, or this crowd came to him in haste, and so they didn't have provisions with them-
David: Mm
Christine: ... except for this one boy that grabbed his lunch. And [laughs] so there's a miraculous feeding that happens.
David: Wow. Yeah. Okay. And with the Exodus story in miniature that's happening here, God in the flesh is talking about providing food for the people, and yet his followers [laughs] that have crossed the sea, you know, with him have this doubt and grumbling among them that not even six months could feed this many people just a tiny bit. And so this is kind of like in the Exodus stories and even in Numbers when God's people are grumbling and saying like, "Oh, we have no food. There's not gonna be enough food. How are we going to feed, you know, our great multitude? We should have stayed in Egypt." And so that seems to be stacking on here, too.
Christine: Yes, and it reminds me of Numbers 11, where, kind of like how you were saying, the people are complaining, or in this case, in Numbers 11, it's Moses who is complaining-
David: Mm
Christine: ... because the people are complaining. They grumbled about, "We don't have any food that we like, at least. We never see anything but this manna." And then Moses gets troubled as he sees all this and hears all this, and he is kind of an exhausted parent [laughs] in this story. But he asks God, "Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth?" And a little bit later, "Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, 'Give us meat to eat.' I cannot carry all these people by myself. The burden is too heavy for me."
David: Mm.
Christine: And he goes on. But there is a doubt that even Moses shows in giving the people what they demand.
David: Yeah, and it's setting up for the fact that there's only one who can provide food at this scale [laughs] for his people. It's setting up this narrative device where the only one who could answer this question and provide this food is Yahweh, [laughs] is God himself.
Christine: Yeah, the one who feeds every creature.
David: Yeah. The prophet who is to come into the world. [laughs]
Christine: Yes.
David: Right?
Christine: Yes. Which-
David: As we'll, as they'll say later.
Christine: Yeah, so we can go into w- how Jesus provides for these people because he doesn't rain manna down from heaven.
David: Mm.
Christine: He uses bread and fish that is provided. So it's a little bit like his first sign, which was water into wine, and giving enough for everybody to enjoy [laughs] themselves at the wedding. Here, Jesus takes something that is already offered, the boy's lunch, and multiplies that until there are even some left over-
David: Mm
Christine: ... which there are lots of cool things to unpack there.
David: Yeah.
Christine: But-
David: S- y- so they, you have a little boy that has five barley loaves and two fish.
Christine: Which is-
David: Just a random historical detail with no meaning.
Christine: [laughs]
David: [laughs]
Christine: I can hold it in. [laughs] Yeah, completely coincidental. Or quoting 1 Samuel and 2 Kings.
David: Let's go.
Christine: So what's cool about the barley loaves, that reminds me of The story in 2 Kings where Elisha multiplies bread, he is the prophet other than Moses that multiplies food or that causes food to multiply to feed 100 in his case. And it's a very short story in 2 Kings 4. It spans about three verses, and there's a man that comes bringing 20 loaves of barley bread.
David: [laughs]
Christine: So it's the same word in the Septuagint, barley bread baked from the first ripe grain, along with some heads of new grain, and then Elisha says, "Give it to the people to eat." And the servant asks, "How can I set this before 100 men?"
David: It's like the same exact questions being asked.
Christine: Yes. [laughs] But Elisha answered, "Give it to the people to eat, for this is what the Lord says. They will eat and have some left over."
David: What do you know?
Christine: Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over according to the word of the Lord. We've talked about the word of the Lord.
David: [laughs] We have. Hmm, so according to the word of the Lord, according to the fact that Jesus was there working among them.
Christine: So business as usual-
David: [laughs]
Christine: ... feeding people, multiplying bread, and this obviously is a much greater sign than Elisha because E- Elisha fed 100, albeit with 20 barley loaves. That's miraculous, but this is that times, you know-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... do the math. I don't know the math.
David: 5,000, yeah, 5,000 people-
Christine: 5,000
David: ... and five loaves, not 100 people with 20 loaves.
Christine: Yes, yes.
David: Yeah.
Christine: And so the barley, the evidence that it's barley loaves, I think, is supposed to tee us into that story, along with all the-
David: Along with the fact that [laughs]
Christine: ... narrative details. But-
David: Put it before them-
Christine: But I like the-
David: ... and have some left over. Yeah.
Christine: Yeah, yeah. John's like, "In case you missed it, it's barley loaves."
David: Oh, my gosh.
Christine: But yeah.
David: And what's going on in that story with Elisha, or Elijah, sor- Is it Elijah?
Christine: Elisha.
David: Elisha. I was right the first time. What's going on in that story with Elisha that would make John want to stack those on top of each other?
Christine: I am guessing that it's because John the Baptist is the new Elijah, which would make Jesus the new Elisha.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: That's something I heard in a Mark sermon once.
David: Oh, it was [laughs]
Christine: [laughs]
David: Is that from one of my sermons?
Christine: That was one of David's sermons-
David: Oh, good. Okay
Christine: ... everybody. [laughs]
David: It's one of those moments where you forget more than you learn or whatever-
Christine: I was listening
David: ... the turn of phrase is. [laughs]
Christine: I was listening. [laughs] It was impactful. Yeah, so I think there might be something there of, like, he must increase, I must decrease, and Elisha's ministry is double that of Elijah. Even though Elijah's the somehow paradigmatic prophet, there's a successor greater than he, and we can hold those. And here, too, John the Baptist, as said of Jesus, no man born of woman is greater than he, and here he supersedes that man.
David: That's right.
Christine: So it's, I think that is going on, but what else are you seeing?
David: When I think about Elijah and Elisha's miracles and their ministries in general, especially with where Jesus is geographically, I tend to think about how they did a lot of their ministry outside of Jerusalem-
Christine: Mm
David: ... as a meta sign act against Jerusalem's idolatry, and that as they performed life-giving miracles to the dead nations and surrounding peoples that were not God's covenant people, God was showing them that they can't control God by having the temple in Jerusalem or having a king in Jerusalem, but that they need to obey His word, His prophet, they need to repent, they need to follow Him, and that as they build this idolatrous way inside of this, yes, promised land and kingdom that God gave them, that's not ultimately what gives them life. What gives them life is being united with Him, and they're going and uniting themselves with idols. And so God sends his chief prophets to go outside of Jerusalem and perform these miracles where He's giving life to the nations.
Christine: Hmm.
David: And so you have Jesus just now leaving Jerusalem, where He is talking about how He's given testimony to the fact that He is the Son of God who's come to give life into the world, and He only ever does what He sees the Father doing, and He's healing a man in a pool at Bethesda, just like Elisha in 2 Kings is about to heal Naaman in the Jordan River. And it's like all these things are coming together where He's like, "Fine, I will take my healing to the nations. I'll take my healing to Galilee. I'll take my healing out here, and that if you want to come and be a part of this life-giving kingdom that I have, it's not gonna be found in an institution necessarily, or in-
Christine: Or a land
David: ... or a land, thank you, but in me. I am the fulfillment of all of this, and if you want to be in life, you need to be in me wherever I am." So-
Christine: You can't have the kingdom without the king.
David: Yeah. The king is here. In a sense, they get that, and they're like, oh, they try to make him king by force, you know, later on, which we'll dig into I'm sure.
Christine: Yeah.
David: But they're getting the royal overtones here is, like, here's the king. Here's the prophet. This is the ruler. He needs to lead us.
Christine: Yes.
David: And, like, they're picking up on that, but in the wrong ways [laughs] we'll learn.
Christine: Yeah.
David: Yeah. So I don't know. That's the, every time I think about Elijah and Elisha not being in Jerusalem, I think about that-
Christine: Hmm
David: ... kind of prophetic sign that they always do. So yeah. What else? Uh, w- that was one, one place that we see food multiplying in 5 or 20 barley loaves, but what about the five-
Christine: I like the five detail, too, because that reminds me of another story about bread in 1 Samuel, where David goes and asks for five loaves of bread. Do you remember that story? [laughs]
David: Yes, I do.
Christine: He's on the run, too, so he is, this is also none less than Jesus' ancestor here. But yeah, David is in a hurry, and in 1 Samuel 21, he asks Ahimelech, the priest, in verse 3, "Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever you can find." [laughs] And the-
David: [laughs] And whatever they could find in John's gospel was five loaves of bread.
Christine: Exactly. But the priest answered David, "I don't have any ordinary bread on hand. However, there is some consecrated bread here-
David: Hmm
Christine: ... provided the men have kept themselves from women." So there's this consecrated bread moment.
David: And this is the show bread in the-
Christine: The bread of the presence
David: ... the bread of the presence.
Christine: Yes.
David: Yes. This was the, the bread that the priests would eat that would give them, right, that would give, the, the idea was that it would, it was God sustaining His priests for the work of His kingdom to His people.
Christine: It's the priests' portion.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yes. And it's consecrated. It's set apart 'cause it's for the holy ones.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: It's the consecrated food for the consecrated people. And so the fact that there's five here, going back to the John story, and you can finish the story in 1 Samuel. David does take the bread for h- himself and his men, which again, I'm like, does five loaves go for his men? I don't know, but-
David: Yeah, right. Is there another multiplication miracle?
Christine: I don't know. He goes there alone, but he also says he has men with him, so I don't know. That's- that's a podcast for another day.
David: That's right.
Christine: But-
David: Five loaves of bread hardly feeds my crazy five and seven-year-old boy-
Christine: [laughs] Fair
David: ... boys, so.
Christine: Fair. But we have five loaves there that are five holy loaves.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And just remembering where we're gonna end up in John 6 about Jesus talking about how the bread of his body is holy bread, and it's for his holy people, I just, I see that connect-
David: Oh, yeah
Christine: ... so strongly.
David: Well, yeah, John is clearly making the point that the bread of the presence that feeds the priests and gives them life is Jesus himself. Like, he's clearly stacking onto that, and that the bread that is being multiplied and given to many is, finds its origin and is only the bread of Christ. It's not different bread. [laughs] It's- it's just him, and that he is the Holy One that's being multiplied out to feed the nations.
Christine: He is our daily bread. Yeah, so that's what I was seeing there with the detail of the barley loaves and the number of them and the fact that these are multiplied and there's some left over. I kind of see that in-
David: Mm
Christine: ... Samuel and Kings.
David: Uh, definitely. What about, is there anything like that with the two fish, or... [laughs]
Christine: I haven't found anything, like, specific about the two fish. It might be old covenant, new covenant, I'm not sure, or the fact that it's fishermen that are handing it out-
David: Yeah, that's what I was wondering
Christine: ... and feeding the people.
David: Well, it reminds me of the motif that we've already seen a little bit in John, if you read through it, that Jesus goes to the house of fishermen to rest- to call fishermen unto himself. And the reason he uses fishermen is because fishermen draw life out of death. They go into the waters of chaos and death that humans can't inhabit, and they pull life out of it, not only living fish, but then they cook and eat that fish, and it becomes their life.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And so the idea, I think, here is that, how is Jesus going to feed the world his life through death and resurrection-
Christine: Yes. And the f-
David: ... and in the waters of baptism? [laughs]
Christine: Yeah, and fish, the fish has been a symbol of Christ himself, too, because it gives itself for food for people.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And so yeah, and there's sort of this ascension out of the watery mire as well, and so there are a lot of, even the idea of the Grail, like later medieval times-
David: No, what- what's that?
Christine: ... like the Grail of, well, the Holy Gr-
David: I mean, I know the, the Holy Grail, the cup that Jesus drank out of.
Christine: Is it a cup?
David: I don't know.
Christine: It's not always a cup.
David: What is it?
Christine: No, the Grail is a fish platter.
David: What?
Christine: Yeah. [laughs]
David: A fish, what's a fish platter?
Christine: It's a grail. [laughs]
David: [laughs] Wait, what?
Christine: [laughs] The whole point of the-
David: Indiana Jones lied to me?
Christine: Yes. [laughs]
David: [laughs]
Christine: Indiana Jones lied about a lot of things.
David: And Monty Python, they both lied to me?
Christine: I don't have any-
David: You don't have context.
Christine: I don't have any context for that.
David: Okay.
Christine: But with the-
David: What's a grail?
Christine: The grail is, like, this flat, you could maybe call it a tray.
David: Okay.
Christine: Although the Holy Grail, as it appears in, like, the legends and stuff, it appears as different things.
David: Okay.
Christine: So it's kind of like, well, what's the grail? 'Cause sometimes it's a chalice, but most of the time you see it like it's a platter for, with like a fish on it. And so [laughs]-
David: Sorry, I just gave Christine-
Christine: I can't-
David: ... the weirdest look.
Christine: [laughs] I can't wait for your Google to explode with grail and-
David: I'm Googling it right now
Christine: ... fish, fish platters. But the idea is that, yeah, the fish is a symbol of Jesus, the symbol of the Eucharist because, um, the fish gives itself for the life of people.
David: Yeah. I just Googled it, and I'm, like, looking at, like, a fresco of Mary holding the Holy Grail, which is this platter with, like, fish or fish bones coming out of it. Okay, so wait, hold on. I'm so confused. [laughs]
Christine: We're way off-topic, but maybe not.
David: Are, are we? Are we?
Christine: [laughs]
David: The, I, I mean-
Christine: I guess not, 'cause the grail is, yeah, it's, yeah.
David: So you're gonna have to indulge me here as much as you can, 'cause now you've just piqued my interest. So the Holy Grail, was this, like, w- was it, was it this thing that was at the Lord's Supper, or no?
Christine: Yes, kind of. It, I am, I am horribly deficient in-
David: Ha, def-
Christine: ... history and legends, and-
David: ... deficient.
Christine: Wow. [laughs] Wow, that was nice. So sometimes it's hard to know what is the grail, and so did the person at- at- attain it or find it or not. In some ways, the most popular image of it, or yeah, visual we have of it, is the chalice, the cup that-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... Jesus drank from. But more commonly, it is this platter, this flatter dish, I guess, this broader, flatter dish that is supposed to represent, like, the fish, Christ's body given for the world.
David: Yeah. Etymologically, the word, it's from the medieval French word graal-
Christine: Uh-huh
David: ... which is a deep, wide dish-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... used at a banquet.
Christine: Yeah. I think it, with, when Percival goes in, there's, like, a, the first time he s- I think the first time he sees the grail, it's that fish dish. [laughs]
David: So okay.
Christine: But- [laughs]
David: For everyone who's like, "Why did we start talking about this?" One, because my brain hurts now, and I had to explore it. The other is, uh, uh, to get back on track, [laughs] the idea here is that in Christian thought throughout the ages even, right, throughout centuries, the idea that Christ feeds his church with fish, like people are fed with fish-
Christine: Yes
David: ... is a normal Christian symbol that I have completely lost [laughs] as a 20... Yeah, I know the ichthus that people put on their car, but that's, I don't know. The, I don't think about that as some, a fish I eat. I just-
Christine: They're connected.
David: Well, now I know that, but I didn't know it was connected earlier. [laughs] Okay, so in, so-
Christine: Fishermen.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Jesus, the fish.
David: Yeah, yeah.
Christine: Death and resurrection.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Baptism.
David: But now the Holy Grail. [laughs]
Christine: The Holy Grail. I'm telling you, it's-
David: In there, that's breaking my brain. Okay, so five loaves. I just have to, let me, let me, let me bring us back. Five loaves, this is the show bread, the bread of the presence that David, the King of Israel, fed his people with. [laughs] It is the meal that the prophet multiplied to feed people, and they had some leftovers to show that he was a true prophet of God, to provide for people whenever they didn't have provision for themselves. All of this is stacking off, and then the fish is this image of death and resurrection that is Jesus himself, who went into the watery abyss of the grave and rose again in order to feed his people life, like fishermen fed people with life.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
David: Ah.
Christine: We're not even gonna go to eating Leviathan, but that's a whole other [laughs] story.
David: Oh, yeah.
Christine: [laughs]
David: That's, we, we-
Christine: That's in the prophets.
David: Why would you do this to me?
Christine: But-
David: Yeah, we have to put a pin in that one.
Christine: [laughs]
David: Okay. If you want to go down that rabbit trail yourself, dear friends and listeners, you can. But yeah, getting fat on trials. Okay, moving on.
Christine: [laughs]
David: All right, that's five loaves, two fish. I'll never, ever see that the same again, and hopefully everyone else won't either. I'm gonna go find a grail now.
Christine: [laughs]
David: Like, I'm, I'm gonna get a, I'm, I'm gonna get a-
Christine: Welcome to the quest
David: ... I'm gonna get a ser- no, I just want to get a-
Christine: I hope you come in with armor tomorrow morning with a, like-
David: Oh, like I'm about to go-
Christine: ... with a charger and stuff
David: ... I'm about to go on a quest for the Holy Grail. [laughs]
Christine: You, everyone heard it. You are gonna start looking for the Grail.
David: [laughs]
Christine: So-
David: Here's what I need to do. I need to go, I need to dress up like a knight, and then I just need to go to Target and get a serving platter for fish and be like, "This was my quest for the Grail." [laughs]
Christine: Of all places the Grail can be, I-
David: It's not Target
Christine: ... don't think it's at Target.
David: Yeah, you're probably right.
Christine: You missed the Target.
David: Yeah, I missed the Target. All right, that was five loaves and two fish. And what are they among so many, but Jesus, verse 10.
Christine: More than enough.
David: Make the people sit down, and in this place there was a bunch of grass, and there were 5,000 people. Anything you want to break my brain on there now that I'm just a Grail mess?
Christine: A Grail mess. [laughs] Well, it reminds me of Psalm 23.
David: That's what I always think of, too. It's so beautiful.
Christine: Jesus is feeding his people. It also reminds me of Exodus 24, which makes me melt every time I even think about it, and this is, you know, Sinai area, Sinai territory, where 70 elders go up with Moses and Aaron. God invites them up to the top of the mountain.
David: Yeah.
Christine: They're on a mountain here, and they sit down and they see God and they have a meal.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: That's what's happening here.
David: That's right.
Christine: People are eating with God. God does not raise his hand against them. He sets a table before them, and he feeds them, and they see him.
David: Yeah.
Christine: And that's where I want to be for my whole life.
David: Yeah, that's kind of the goal.
Christine: I really, really love that meditation, but anything, anything else you're seeing there?
David: Yeah, I always like the meditation of the 5,000, which I can't remember if we published this one, my Mark sermon, on the podcast or not when I talked about this.
Christine: Not what we should.
David: But yeah, this is, uh, like Roman army language, and Mark really unpacks it, gets in, in more detail about it, but the idea here is that this is a, a number by which a large number of Roman army troops would be organized, and this is Jesus' new kingdom that he is building. These are his new, his new army, I'll say carefully, knowing that later in John, he'll say that his kingdom is from another place, which is why his army is not fighting and killing to release him. [laughs] Instead, they will suffer and die and lay down their lives to provide bread for the world as well. [laughs] And so it's a s-
Christine: There's a sermon for him
David: There's a sermon right there, but that is why the 5,000 thing is happening here, and then if you connect it to the idea of the green grass that Psalm 23 is referencing, that you have Jesus, the good shepherd, bringing his sheep in, having them sit in the green grass in the presence of their enemy, surrounded by Roman armies, and here they are having this meal with God.
Christine: Their king.
David: With their king. So it's, it's really beautiful. And so j-
Christine: Yeah, this could be David distributing his, you know, the bread-
David: That's right
Christine: ... to his people.
David: The new king-
Christine: Mm-hmm
David: ... distributing bread to his, yeah, to his mighty men. Yeah, his army. Oh, wow.
Christine: Yeah.
David: Okay, well, there you go. [laughs]
Christine: And it's also, since we're gonna be getting here, and this can also be, you know, Jesus giving his own body, the bread, through his disciples, distributing through his apostles. That's where we'll get to. So there's this idea of fishermen feeding the world with-
David: Mm
Christine: ... the bread that God gives them, and so.
David: Yeah. Oh, it's so good. So after Jesus takes the loaves and gives thanks and distributes them, you... Oh, stop there.
Christine: He gives thanks.
David: Give thanks.
Christine: Translate that into Greek. He-
David: He euchar-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... is where we get the word Eucharistic.
Christine: Eucharist, yes.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Uh-huh. Yeah.
David: Which is-
Christine: It's a thanks-
David: It's a thanks-
Christine: ... meal
David: ... a Thanksgiving meal.
Christine: Mm-hmm.
David: Yeah, Israel had meals of thanksgiving and praise, and so this is a, this would be a normal thing to do with a sacrificial meal, that you would accompany your meal with thanks and praise to God, and some of the sacrifices, I'm not saying it's this one, were accompanied, or their sole purpose was to give thanks to God, a thanks offering, a thank offering.
Christine: And then Jesus did that before meals all the time.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Like, he gave thanks even on the road to Emmaus, and that was how he revealed himself.
David: Yeah, there's something-
Christine: Which is another Eucharistic-
David: Oh, yeah, there's-
Christine: ... rabbit hole to go down into
David: ... well, there's something here, too, about when we, what do we do when we bless the food that we eat? [laughs]
Christine: We invite God to be-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... present.
David: It's a little thank offering meal that we can have with God, a meal with God.
Christine: Mm-hmm. I can't remember where I learned this, and I'm not sure if it's correct, but I remember hearing that first you bless the food at the beginning of the meal, and then at the end of the meal, you thank God for it.
David: Hmm.
Christine: Is that-
David: I've heard about-
Christine: ... a dichotomy?
David: ... a beginning and an end blessing and thanks thing, but I can't remember the order or the reason. But yeah-
Christine: Okay
David: ... I've heard that too. Someone look it up and send us an email at [email protected] or leave us a, a message at speakpipe.com/spokengospel. Da, da, da, da. That was my commercial for we want to hear from you. Okay, there you go.
Christine: Wow.
David: Thank you. I got that in there very naturally.
Christine: Impeccable
David: And so after he gives thanks and distributes the food to all who are seated, everybody eats as much as they want, and they're satisfied, and then he tells the disciples to go gather up what's left so that nothing may be lost.
Christine: Yes. And so the same disciples that were worried about not feeding everybody or not getting enough pieces out to everybody now are coming back to Jesus with a basket full each of morsels left over.
David: Yeah, and there's 12 baskets left over.
Christine: Yep, one per disciple.
David: One per disciple-
Christine: So
David: ... and representing the new people of God that he feeds with his life, the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 disciples that facilitate the blessing of God's life to the world that, yeah-
Christine: It-
David: ... bring all the people in.
Christine: Yeah. It's like God is all you need in the wilderness to provide for you. It's like Exodus and Numbers were telling us something, and sadly, that is not the interpretation that the people get at the end. They want to make him king because they're like, "Oh, my gosh, here is an endless source of food." And they fail to recognize God in Jesus, who just fed them with bread.
David: Yeah, and I've always ... I've heard this too as, like, this is a miracle worker. If he can do this with bread, you know, surely he can do what we need him to do to emancipate our people and, and free us from the oppressive grip of Rome.
Christine: Yes, and they do recognize Moses in Jesus in the sense that they do say, "Oh, surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world."
David: Or a prophet like Moses.
Christine: Yes. They're referencing Deuteronomy 18, where Moses says, "The Lord, your God, will raise up for you a prophet like me among your own brothers. You must listen to him." And a little later, "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him." So when they say, "This is the prophet," they're referring to that prophecy that God-
David: That's right
Christine: ... spoke through Moses, that there'll come a prophet from their own brethren. And here Jesus is in Galilee, where he also grew up, and is feeding people. And so they're like, "Oh, this, we wanna make him the prophet, the king. He'll fill our bellies every day. It'll be great."
David: It makes me wonder if there's something more saccharine, like something that's, that's less bad happening here, where when they originally tried to get a king by their own will, they were replacing a prophet of God that they had given him in Samuel and wanted a king like the nations. Well, now God has revealed to them a prophet that's clearly from God, and they want him to come be their king.
Christine: Oh, that's an interesting connection.
David: You know what I mean?
Christine: Yeah.
David: Like, to be purely the wrong thing, although it, it is ultimately.
Christine: It's the wrong ... Yeah, it's the wrong motives-
David: Yes
Christine: ... but it can be understood why they would get there or want that.
David: Right. It's like, okay, we're gonna undo the sins of our ancestors and put a prophet on the throne, [laughs] which is what God wants. This is his, the one he chose, not the one we chose. So there's something interesting there, but that is clearly not what Jesus has come for, to, to rule on an earthly throne and fill people with food for a little while so that they die.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And he's come to inaugurate a different kind of eternal kingdom.
Christine: Yeah. He came to give them something more than meets the eye, which is why he, when he realizes they're fixated on what met the eye and what filled their stomachs, he withdraws, 'cause he's like, "I have come to be your king, but not by those standards." And it is an interesting theme just, yeah, for later study and meditation, just the interplay between visible, invisible, seen, and unseen-
David: Mm
Christine: ... in John and how people are always misunderstanding Jesus's actions or his words, and they always take it a little too literally or a little too sideways, and-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... they're always misunderstanding [laughs] Jesus.
David: Yes.
Christine: But not always, and not maliciously.
David: No.
Christine: Like, "Lazarus has fallen asleep. I'm going to wake him up." "Well, Lord, if he sleeps, he will recover." And Jesus is like, "He's dead." [laughs]
David: He's dead. [laughs]
Christine: And so, um, he has-
David: Yeah, or Nicodemus, whenever he says, "You have to be born from above," he's like, "So I have to be born from the top? I have to be born again?"
Christine: Yeah.
David: He's like, "No, no, no."
Christine: Clarifying question.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yeah.
David: "No, born in the Spirit, in water." "Oh, that's different."
Christine: Yes.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Which is ... Yeah, and it's not an either/or. It's a both/and-
David: Mm
Christine: ... but with emphasis on the visible reveals the invisible-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... by accepting the visible. And Jesus asked people, "Believe the sign so that you can believe me. And I have come to reveal the Father. You can't see the Father, but you can see me. And if you've seen me, you've seen the Father." And they try to, like, pull that apart in ways that-
David: Mm
Christine: ... don't really, don't really help get there.
David: And so what you're saying is he's doing this visible sign here, showing how he is, he is the source of life for his people, the 12 tribes, and yet they are like, "Ooh, good food."
Christine: Yes.
David: "Make king. Good king. Me follow."
Christine: Yes. [laughs]
David: And they're just, like, missing the invisible reality for the visible sign.
Christine: Yes.
David: Which is interesting. I think we, just to soapbox a little bit, we do the same thing with scripture all the time. [laughs] We're like, "Well, look-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... it's just about Jesus performing a miracle." And it's like, no, there's so much going on. There's an invisible, quote-unquote, "reality" to what Jesus is trying to reveal in this story. And to that end, and maybe this is a bad question, but I, I w- I have it in my head, which is if this is mapping on to the three-part structure of the Passover, where you have the Passover meal, the crossing of the Red Sea, and then the wilderness in Mount Sinai, what is John showing us about the Passover itself, the meal of Passover that Israel had before they had escaped Egypt, which, you know, protected the firstborn and brought them into a home of life under the blood, and all of this before they crossed the Red Sea? Is there anything that John is, like, stacking into that story or vice versa of the Passover meal here, or is that kind of later as Jesus is talking about how he is the manna, you have to eat his body, drink his blood, or is that not a good question?
Christine: I'm gonna sound like I'm contradicting our framework right now, but I don't know if Chronology and beat for beat are-
David: Right
Christine: ... doing the same thing.
David: No, I don't think they are.
Christine: Or if he even has beat for beat here.
David: No.
Christine: He's not, like we didn't have any sort of Passover lamb sacrifice-
David: Right
Christine: ... or anything like that. Or he didn't have any mention of firstborn either. So the connection is still there without beat for beat-
David: Yes
Christine: ... equivocation. So their resolve to make Jesus king by force, I don't know if it's talking to something prior to the Red Sea crossing, if that's what you're asking.
David: Yeah, I was.
Christine: Okay.
David: Uh, which is just another way of sitting with John's paradigm and going, "Is there something else I'm missing here?"
Christine: Probably, but I am missing it too. [laughs]
David: Yeah. But okay, great.
Christine: So I don't know. But we can move to, unless there's anything else, we could move to the-
David: Oh, I'm sure there is, but we should move on
Christine: ... crossing of the sea.
David: Yeah. And so Jesus withdraws to the mountain by himself so as not to be made king by force, and [laughs] because they're misunderstanding what he's, what he's teaching and saying. And so when evening comes, his disciples go down to the sea. They get into a boat, and they start across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. But he said to them, "I am. It is I. Do not be afraid." Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going. Crossing of the sea.
Christine: Yes, and it is I, God speaking over the waters. So-
David: Mm
Christine: ... Jesus says nothing short of, "I am Yahweh," to his storm-tossed, troubled disciples, which are a group of 12 in the water. And so there's a sort of repetition of the 12 tribes of Israel, or Israel intact crossing with God to the other side. And miraculously, 'cause Jesus crossing as on dry ground, and he is Lord over the waves that are tossing his disciples back and forth. And they get to the other side of the shore because Jesus gets them there.
David: Mm.
Christine: So that's all a lot of fun. [laughs]
David: That's a lot, yeah. He says, "I am," which is the, the name of God, God's proper name, over the waters, kind of like a Genesis 1, God's voice speaking over the chaotic waters.
Christine: Yeah. Well, and the wind in the Exodus story. There's a strong wind that drives the-
David: That's what piles it up.
Christine: Yep.
David: Yep.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And then I think it's Psalm 77 or 76 that talks about the waters being stirred up, which is the same word John uses to describe the water being stirred up at Bethesda.
Christine: Oh, cool.
David: And the water piles up, and then the angel walks, you know, with the people of God through, uh, the Red Sea, but his footsteps aren't seen in the, the ground underneath.
Christine: Oh, funny.
David: And here too. There'd be no footprints on the sea, [laughs] but he's walking with them through the Red Sea to bring them safely to their side. The angel of the Lord that accompanied the people of Israel through the Red Sea is now [laughs] Jesus, uh, revealed as the person of Jesus walking on the sea to bring his people safely to the other side.
Christine: That's amazing.
David: And then there's also my, one of my favorite things about the walking on water is the smack talk it is against the rival demons and powers of the sea that he ... This is mentioned in Exodus 15, right, the Song of Moses, how he treads on the heads of the beasts of the sea and, like, conquers them and smashes them down.
Christine: Well, and he throws Pharaoh into the-
David: Hmm
Christine: ... into the heart of the sea, and all of his chariots and all his horse down to where they belong. And the, you know, the a- agents of chaos belong in chaos, and so it's sort of this doing of righteousness and delivering God's people at the same time. And there's, we didn't read this, but, uh, right afterwards, the next day, the crowd that 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 he had gone away alone. And it goes on to say that they go in search of Jesus and his disciples and are confused as to how did, how did you guys leave? And that just reminds me also of Pharaoh's pursuing horde, and there's a crowd that gets in and goes after the 12 [laughs] or the tribes of Israel led by God. And here too, these are not malicious like Pharaoh's hordes, but there is a, a second crowd that follows the exodus. And so I, I just like that detail.
David: Yeah. Well, yeah, and by the end of the story, they end up kind of falling under the weight of the proclamation that Jesus makes about his body and blood. They end up walking away from him. They don't join the people of God in this moment.
Christine: You could say there's a mixed multitude by the time we get to verse 25, where Jesus begins to address the people, both his disciples and everyone there, and that gets us into the big discourse [laughs] of chapter six, which parallels, as we said, to God leading his people to Mount Sinai and bringing the, or inaugurating the new law or the covenant-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... with his people.
David: Maybe we should talk about that briefly.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And so after the Red Sea, God brings his people to Mount Sinai s- and before they get to Sinai, they are fed with manna in the wilderness.
Christine: That's right.
David: But through that sustaining work of feeding them in the wilderness, he brings them to Mount Sinai, and the first thing he does is he, he says, "I'm going to be your God, and you're going to be my people." And he establishes this covenant of belonging with them, that they are his people, and he seals that covenant with a sacrifice. And it, that sacrifice is then sprinkled, the life of the animal is sprinkled on the people to seal them with this sacrifice, and they become the covenanted people of God, sealed with the lifeblood of the sacrifice, and they now belong to God and will be his people, and God will be their God. And this is the story that Jesus is pulling on through John's story here. To show the meaning, at least another layer of the meaning of what we will call the Lord's Supper.
Christine: Yeah. There are tons of references. I mean, already we were in Numbers, we were in Exodus, we were in Deuteronomy, we're in Kings and Samuel, and we're about to get into Prophets too. So that's why we were saying there's, there's just so much in here, and we are definitely only scratching the surface.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: But yeah, in light of that covenant language and context that you were mentioning, we can jump into what's next. 'Cause I think here Jesus kind of unpacks why he left the people who tried to make him king. In verse 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. 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." So there's a seal here. It almost seems contradictory what Jesus says, because he says, "You're not looking for me because you saw a miraculous sign, but because you ate loaves and had your fill." Well, isn't that the sign?
David: Mm.
Christine: Like-
David: That's kind of what you were talking about, where they were experiencing the, the visible sign and were astonished by it, but they missed its meaning.
Christine: Yes. They're like, "Oh, we got food." And Jesus is like, "This is a sign."
David: Yeah.
Christine: That means it's-
David: It wasn't that they didn't witness a miracle-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... it's that they missed the sign.
Christine: Yes.
David: And it's what we talked about in the signs episodes, that not all miracles are signs and not all signs are miracles. [laughs]
Christine: Yes.
David: Is that a, a sign points to something beyond itself. Usually it's a visible representation pointing to an invisible truth or reality. And so he's like, "Yeah, you understood the miracle, that I could feed you forever if I wanted to, but you're missing the point of it, which is that I..." Which is what he's going to go in to talk about here.
Christine: Yeah.
David: "That I am the one that God has put his seal of approval on to give you eternal life."
Christine: Yeah. Then he says, "Do not work for food that spoils." So again, like, like the bread that you ate, "but for food that endures to eternal life." Again, 'cause this is a sign, "Which the Son of Man will give you." And then they kind of ask a legitimate question after that. It's like, "Well, what must we do to do the works God requires?"
David: Yeah.
Christine: He just told them, "Work not for food that spoils, but for-
David: Right. So how do I work for the food of eternal life?
Christine: And Jesus answers, "The work of God is this, to believe in the one he has sent." I think that's significant that works God requires turns into work in Jesus' answer, which there's a lot to unpack there, which I [laughs] don't quite know where to start.
David: Yeah. There's several things that I love about this passage. One is there is a visible, invisible reality here happening again. He says, "Don't work for food that perishes." There's a very clear picture here. If you leave bread out too long, it will mold and rot and eventually just disappear, or maggots will come, or ants or whatever. That food inherently perishes. And so you are what you eat. [laughs] If you eat food that perishes, you will perish. And so instead, eat eternal life food. Well, what's eternal life food? I've got to eat something that doesn't perish. Well, what is that? Well, it's got to be a different kind of food.
Christine: Yes.
David: It's got to be bread not from Earth, but bread from Heaven.
Christine: Yes. And it's playing on the what kind of life am I giving you here too, which I think I might just be saying differently what you said. But yeah, normal bread will give you another day of life.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: It will sustain you for another day. And Jesus seems to be talking about bread that will sustain you forever, that will give you eternal life. So that's not anything I have ever made or could find in a store. That's-
David: No, not even the elves of Lord of the Rings could, could give you bread that lasts that long.
Christine: Unlikely. [laughs] Yeah. So it does bear asking, well, okay, I'm a mortal human feeding on mortal things. That's all I have. And in fact, the first time bread even appears in the Bible is in God describing to Adam, like, "In toil and sweat will you earn your bread." And so bread is, even like the earning of bread and the sustaining of yourself is kind of in the context of this struggle to survive, this mortality that we've had.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And it's interesting that here Jesus produced tons of bread with no toil at all. So I'm like-
David: That's right
Christine: ... did that just get healed? I don't know. But here's the new Adam just like, "Here's bread." [laughs]
David: Yeah, I don't have to toil for it.
Christine: Yeah. Also, I am the bread.
David: Yeah.
Christine: And so there is something, again, inherent that, that might be two invisible things, 'cause I'm just thinking about like quote, unquote, "normal life" versus quote, unquote, "eternal life." I can't really see life. Life is not something that I can-
David: Mm
Christine: ... see or put my hand on, but I can see signs of it. Like, I know you are alive right now because-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... you're moving and talking and responding. But I don't know if you have eternal life. [laughs]
David: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christine: You know? Like, even mortal life or life that will terminate and life that is eternal is not apparent in, in the moment.
David: Yeah. Well, it reminds me too of what Jesus said to the woman at Samaria. He says basically the same thing, but with water.
Christine: Yeah. [laughs]
David: "You have to keep coming to this water and filling it, but you're gonna get thirsty again. But I will give you water that gushes out to eternal life."
Christine: Yes.
David: Same thing.
Christine: Yes. And we'll see that in chapter 7 too. Jesus says, you know, he calls himself the bread of life here, and then he invites everyone to come to him and drink eternal water or water welling up to eternal life in chapter 7. So-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... it's, yeah.
David: Well, and then-
Christine: He's our sustenance. [laughs]
David: Yeah. And then they ask him, "Well, what, what must we do? What works of God must we perform?" And then Jesus flips it and says, "Well, it's not the, the works you need to do to eat this food, but the work of God is this, that you believe in him who he has sent." And later on, he's gonna talk about, and this is a very John theme, that no one comes to Jesus unless the Father bids him and enables him and moves him, that the work of God is the life of God coming into you and, and bidding you to the Son and actually enabling you to come and eat and feast and partake of the Son, that it is God Drawing you into himself to fill you with himself, that you might be drawn to God. And so they're like, "Well, what do we have to do?" And it's like, "No, no, no. Let me show you what God is going to do, and your job is to trust in that, give your life to that, believe in that, in the one that he has sent, which is me. And you know that I'm the one he sent because he has sealed me. He's put his seal upon me." Which at the very least has to be talking back to the beginning of John, where the Holy Spirit comes, because other times in the Bible where this is used in the New Testament, this seal is the seal of the Holy Spirit.
Christine: I was looking at this this morning. That is such a strongly Johannine term.
David: Mm.
Christine: It appears, like, maybe four times elsewhere, and then a billion times in Revelation, and then-
David: Yeah, the seals
Christine: ... a few times in John. Yeah.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yeah. Well, even just as a verb, too.
David: Yeah.
Christine: It's not even the seals that are-
David: It i- it is those, but yes
Christine: ... open, but-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... well, okay, may- it's a different word than which obviously semantically those are still related.
David: Yeah.
Christine: But yeah, this sort of choosing and setting apart-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... and confirming with approval is something that John likes to talk about a lot.
David: Yeah, he does. And so, yeah.
Christine: And the saints are sealed, too.
David: Mm-hmm. Yeah, as I was looking it up, it, it's this idea of kings are sealed, and so this is the language of a king, that after he's anointed, he's sealed. And so this is, like, a king's signet ring is one idea, that the king receives the seal, and that we wondered, you know, well, who is this one that John the Baptizer is proclaiming? Well, it's the one that the Spirit comes upon and remains in. And so at the very least, and Jesus has just talked about the testimony that John the Baptizer gave him in the chapter just before this as one of the testimonies by which they should believe that he is who he says he is. And so this is the seal that he has, is that he has been anointed as king and sealed with the Spirit. And so he is the one who can provide life to his people. He is the one doing the work of God, which he said in the last chapter, too, that his works are to do the will of the Father who sent him, and that he's working on the Sabbath because God's working on the Sabbath.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And so Jesus is doing the work of God right now by feeding the people, and he can do that 'cause he is their king. He is the one who can give them the spirit life, and they need to trust that, have faith in it, believe it, and take it into themselves, and that is their relationship to the work of God among them. Those are some of my favorite things to see.
Christine: That's really cool. Yeah. It's so much. I feel like my brain is splitting right now. As we keep going, they ask him, again, they're, they seem to be missing the point 'cause they ask 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 manna to eat." And-
David: He's like, "That is the exact sign-
Christine: From heaven
David: ... I just gave you." [laughs]
Christine: Yes. Well, and Jesus even corrects them. Again, it's like, "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." So it wasn't Moses. Moses was the visible agent of God working there. But again, you're missing even Moses and manna for your Father in heaven who gave you that manna, and your Father in heaven is giving you manna again, not one that will cause you to die or that will still let you perish, but one that will sustain you to eternal life. Yeah.
David: So it's like they gathered too much food. What did it do? It perished.
Christine: Yeah.
David: It's just interesting we were talking about this food that perishes-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... can only lead to a life that perishes.
Christine: Yes, yes. And then there was also that weird thing with, maybe this is unrelated, but where the way Paul interprets what happens when he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. There seems to be this divine distribution again-
David: Yes
Christine: ... where everyone's getting exactly what they need, and no one is left wanting, and no one's left with excess.
David: Yeah, everybody had their fill.
Christine: Yeah.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yeah.
David: Jesus is doing this miracle.
Christine: Yes, yes. And so the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. You can help me here 'cause I didn't look at the Greek here, but the bread just turns into a he-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... who comes down from heaven.
David: Oh, yeah. Let me look, let me look at that. The bread of God is hakata bion ek tou ouranou, out of heaven. So to translate it literally, it would be for the bread of God is the coming down one out of heaven. So there's not a he who came down. There's not, like, an-
Christine: Mm
David: ... an autos in there, like a pronoun.
Christine: Oh, helpful.
David: But it, it-
Christine: Okay
David: ... but a lot of times Greek does this, is, is the one who comes, and it can be impersonal or personal. So, like, my NRSV has it comes down, which comes down-
Christine: Okay
David: ... not he who comes down. So both are valid translations, but it is the coming down one.
Christine: Yes.
David: Either way, Jesus is clearly talking about himself, which makes it personal. [laughs]
Christine: Yes. Yes, indeed. And they respond just like the woman at the well. "From now on, give us this bread."
David: That is exactly what she says. [laughs]
Christine: It is. Yeah, I have 4:15 in the margin right there-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... 'cause I'm like, "That's the same request. We are thirsty. We are hungry."
David: And then does it, and then does he say, "I am the water," in the- or is it, is that later in 7?
Christine: Yeah, so I won't have to get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He says, "Go and call your husband." [laughs] He's like, so he's a b- so kind of, but he, he leads up to it by asking her to go call her husband, and then introduces himself as her new one. [laughs]
David: [laughs]
Christine: So as her seventh Sabbath, new creation, water gushing, ever-satisfying one who comes from heaven and will sustain her forever, so-
David: Regardless
Christine: ... kind of?
David: Jesus, yeah, Jesus says, "The, give us this bread always." He's like, "It's me, guys. I am the bread of life." And I think that's where he first calls it that.
Christine: Kind of, yeah, 'cause he, he doesn't say it that explicitly in verse 27.
David: Yeah, he says, "Eat food that leads to eternal life."
Christine: Yes.
David: And then, "I am the bread of life."
Christine: Yes.
David: But this is the tightest formulation of it here. Jesus says, "I am the bread of life, and whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." This is something Jesus repeats both about water and food-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... about himself that John is really trying to drive home for us, that we drink physical water and get thirsty again. We eat physical food and get hungry again. And both, if we stay in the flesh and in the world and of the earth, from below, as John will talk about, we have only death and want and need, and yet he has come to give us something in our world, in the flesh, in the earth, that we could not have without him.
Christine: Yes.
David: It's the heaven life, the heaven water, the heaven bread-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... that he is bringing us that leads to something other than perishing and lack of satisfaction and death.
Christine: Yeah. And it's so good that he gives us those things too. Like, in this perishing world, every morsel you've ever eaten comes from God.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And we need bread to survive. If we are like, "Well, I'll just have, you know, eternal life food or whatever," it's like, yes, you need that, but you also ... Like, living a long life is very Torah-fully [laughs] and so ... And it's a very good idea, and you shouldn't stop drinking water and do nothing but read your Bible. I mean, if you are super holy and can attain to that, then okay, but that's not what you probably should try at home [laughs] kids. And so Jesus doesn't say, "Don't drink water and don't eat perishable food, but work for what will give you eternal life, 'cause I sustain you forever." And that is what-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... I think he's, like, going back to what he created us for at the beginning, but.
David: Yeah, and he says that he is the bread who has come down from heaven. This is heaven-
Christine: That's manna.
David: Yeah, manna. Heaven food that feeds Earth people. [laughs]
Christine: Yes.
David: But the manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness, they died still.
Christine: Yes. He says that in verse 58, "This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." So even contrasts the heavenly manna with the forefathers that ate it, were sustained by it for 40 years, but still died.
David: Mm.
Christine: He's saying, "This is the difference between me and that manna. Like, I am the bread that comes down and feeds you to eternal life, and that's what you should work for."
David: And Jesus gets really granular [laughs] or really ... Granular's the wrong word. The rubber meets the road where in 48, Jesus says again, "I am the bread of life. Your ancestors," as you were saying, "ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die, and it is me. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh."
Christine: Oh my gosh, there is so much going on here. [laughs]
David: And they rightfully ask a question, [laughs] "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Christine: Yeah, rightly, but they're also arguing and grumbling. Like, the part that you read here is bookended by, in verse 41, "The Jews began to grumble about him and said, when he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.'" Because just as a side note here, 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'"? Again, the seen and unseen.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: They think he's Jesus, the son of Joseph.
David: Right.
Christine: We know he's Jesus, the Son of God. He has an unseen father. He has unseen origins, and so they cannot stomach the fact that he came down from heaven.
David: Stomach.
Christine: Ha. He is the bread that came down from heaven, 'cause they think he's just another guy with another human father.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And so they're barred from accepting even those words. But this arguing that bookends that is grumbling like you see in Exodus-
David: Yes
Christine: ... and Numbers. It's what God's people, the Jews, always did in the wilderness while God was feeding them with heavenly bread.
David: Exactly.
Christine: So again, John is just cluing us in, like, think Sinai, think desert. This is God dealing with his grumbly people again, and not understanding and missing his signs and hardening their hearts. But yeah, go ahead.
David: Yeah, and so he says, "If you want to eat this bread that comes down from heaven, it is my flesh."
Christine: Now, that is rough for a Jew to stomach, again, 'cause cannibalism is forbidden.
David: Absolutely forbidden.
Christine: And drinking blood is forbidden.
David: Absolutely forbidden.
Christine: So what is Jesus saying here?
David: Yeah, well, and to double down on it, just to get to what, what you said, they say, "Well, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Hard to stomach, right? I like this turn of phrase we're using now. And Jesus-
Christine: [laughs]
David: ... doubles down on it. He says, "Very truly, I tell you. Amen. Amen." Is that [laughs] what he says there, I think?
Christine: Mm-hmm.
David: "I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."
Christine: So that's two taboos he's now inviting the people into, and naturally they are flabbergasted and are like, "Can you-
David: These are ... Yeah, these-
Christine: ... can you water this down a little bit?" And he's like, "Nope. You heard me."
David: This is one wine that's not getting watered down.
Christine: [laughs]
David: No, but it, it is real- it's important to bring up that Jesus is, at the flat meaning of these human words, is contradicting scripture. He's telling them to break scripture. I'm saying at the-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... flat earthly meaning.
Christine: That is what they're hearing.
David: That's what they're hearing-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... is what I'm trying, I'm get- trying to get us to hear. Like, there are anathemas pronounced against cannibalism and drinking blood in the Torah and the larger scriptures of the Hebrews, and no prophet of God would tell them to do something like this, if that's flat out what he meant.
Christine: Yes. So what does he mean? [laughs] Yes, that, and [laughs] can we circle back to that? Because I think a part we skipped over will help shed some light on the development of where we are in history, just so that we can, like, get back to the taboo thing.
David: Anything to help with the taboo thing, yes.
Christine: [laughs] Well, Jesus says in- 44, which is not the first time that he has said that, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." Then he says, "And I will raise him up at the last day." Okay. Something about life after death. We've been talking about mortality and immortality here already. And then he says, "It is written in the prophets, 'They will all be taught by God.'" Now, this is where you drop a bookmark in your Bible and go straight to where that is in the Old Testament-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... so that you get the context-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... or it won't make sense. Yeah, so that comes from, possibly it's most directly coming from Isaiah 54, which just pop quiz, David.
David: Oh, boy.
Christine: Isaiah 54, what is Isaiah talking about? What was he talking about before Isaiah 54? What is he talking about in Isaiah 54?
David: The suffering-
Christine: What about Isaiah 55? [laughs]
David: The suffering servant. The suffering servant.
Christine: Okay. [laughs]
David: Which our, our favorite Bible example saint loved to teach the Ethiopian eunuch about in Acts 8.
Christine: Oh, you're thinking of Philip.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yes, yes. The Ethiopian eunuch was reading Isaiah 53, right?
David: That's right.
Christine: And he was confused about is this talking about the prophet or someone else.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Anyway, so Isaiah 54 is couched in something the servant of God will accomplish.
David: Yes.
Christine: Which is a turning point in history, but it's also couched between... So I confess, I don't even know where to begin 'cause we do not have 10 hours to spend here. Isaiah 53, just go and read it. It's about the suffering servant and how he cleanses a people for God through his death and resurrection, 'cause he shall prolong his days, and we can't get into that. But then that comes down to Isaiah 54, where we see life springing from unlikely barren places, like the woman who is barren but is now singing for joy because her maker is her husband, and she is being brought back, having compassion showered on her by God, her redeemer. I'm paraphrasing-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... severely here. But I guess in 54 verse 10, it talks about how all the mountains will be shaken, and, "My unfailing love," says God, "for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the Lord, "who has compassion on you." And then the afflicted city who's storm-tossed and not comforted will be built up in, well, just go to Revelation 21. There's a city, Jerusalem, that's built up in all kinds of jewels. And then verse 13, "All your sons will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children's peace. In righteousness you'll be established. Tyranny will be far from you. You will have nothing to fear," and so on and so forth. And so there's this renewing, there's this new life, there's a rebuilding, a return from exile, a homecoming between God and His people.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: Only to be followed with, and again, I just have to, like, fly through this, but Isaiah 55 opens up with, "Come, all you who are thirsty."
David: Yeah.
Christine: "Come to the waters, and you who have no money, come buy and eat." What did Jesus just do? He invited His people to come and buy without money and have their fill. So that's the context in which Jesus is saying, "They will all be taught by God," or that's what He's cuing His listeners into, that-
David: Yeah, that's right. And this is not the only place that the prophets talk about this.
Christine: No.
David: That Jeremiah 31 talks about it as well.
Christine: Yes.
David: That in those days, no one's going to teach one another and say, "Hey, know the Lord," 'cause they're all gonna know me from the least to the greatest, and the Lord will forgive them their iniquities and remember their sins no more, and He will stir up the sea and do all these things. Anyway, this is a promise of... When it's talking about no one will teach the people to know the Lord, but they will all know me and be taught by me, this is prophetic language of the institution of the new covenant by God's Messiah that He will accomplish through a sprinkling and cleansing that will clean His people up and make them His own again.
Christine: Yeah.
David: Ezekiel talks about it, too.
Christine: Yeah. New spirit will be in you.
David: That's right.
Christine: You will be my people. You will have a new covenant, an everlasting covenant that will not be revoked. All this is what Jesus is kind of-
David: Yes
Christine: ... saying here.
David: And the reason this is important, if you're not making the connection explicitly, is because the first covenant we were talking about was the covenant that God made with His people at Sinai. I'll be your God, you'll be my people. And now we've talked about at the Lord's Supper how Jesus says, "This is the blood of a new covenant." And this is how John is showing us this new covenant. I- instead of showing it at the Passover meal right before Jesus' Passion, he's showing it here at the feeding of the 5,000.
Christine: Yes.
David: This is His new covenant because He's saying everyone will be taught by the Lord.
Christine: Yes. And this is also a new covenant that is in the last day, which is the day of the Messiah coming, the day of the Lord, and you will pick up on that by seeing how many times r- raised up at the last day is mentioned. I think it's four that I found. And different things happen, but raise him up at the last day is a, is end of Daniel-
David: 12
Christine: ... Daniel 12:2 that says, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever." Again, we could be here for 10 hours. But Jesus is referencing that resurrection, that in these last days, and He even tells Daniel there, like, "We'll seal this up. It will happen later." Sealing.
David: A seal. What do you know?
Christine: Interesting. Okay. So what will happen or how will He raise up in the last day? Well, He'll raise up those whom the Father gives Him, 6:39, those who look to the Son and believe in Him, 6 verse 40, those who the Father draws, 6 verse 44, and whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood unto eternal life, 6:54.
David: Yeah.
Christine: So there's a lot there [laughs] that He's unpacking.
David: Yes.
Christine: That He's referencing this is not food that is gonna end in you perishing one day. This is gonna raise you up at the last day.
David: This is resurrection food.
Christine: Yes.
David: Life from the dead food. Fish food. Right?
Christine: Yes. [laughs] Fish.
David: Fish drawn out of the water.
Christine: Yes.
David: Life from death.
Christine: Yes.
David: Jesus just quoted this passage too in the previous dialogue that he had in chapter five. Chapter five, verse 25, "Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Do not be astonished at this. The hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and will come out, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation."
Christine: Fascinating. Maybe there's a sign about that. Oh.
David: Oh, there is.
Christine: John 11. He fulfills that. Hears the voice of the Son of Man and-
David: That's right
Christine: ... rises, and then everyone in their grave will hear, and that's Daniel 12.
David: We got talking about this because we had skipped this section, and we talked about Jesus saying, "Eat my flesh. Drink my blood." This is a really hard saying. People are like, "How can we do this? We're not supposed to do this. This is not what the Bible says." And you're like, "Well, let's go back and talk about how Jesus is talking about resurrection and how he's talking about a new covenant." How are these talking to each other?
Christine: So Jesus is pretty convinced as he's teaching that this has been foretold by the prophets all along. We looked at Isaiah, we looked at Jeremiah, we looked at Daniel, and Jesus honing in on this idea that there is something that will feed you into eternal life, and it's me. And I will raise you up at the last day. Daniel, this is part of the new covenant. This is part of life coming from death, Jeremiah and Isaiah. Well, where was the last time we saw something that you ate? 'Cause again, the weird thing I he- I am hearing or the weird part here is we still have to eat someone-
David: Mm
Christine: ... or we have to eat something to gain this eternal life. Where was the last time, and in fact, the first time, but the last time where we saw something you ate and could get eternal life?
David: I know this one.
Christine: Okay.
David: The tree of life.
Christine: That's right.
David: I got it.
Christine: That's right. [laughs]
David: Okay. So it was always ... Let me just try. It was always God's plan to have eternal food to feed His people with. Yeah? I mean, or, I mean-
Christine: It was always God-
David: ... that's the image.
Christine: Yeah, it was always God's plan to give His people eternal life-
David: Eternal life
Christine: ... for us to live forever with God.
David: Yep. And as Daniel said, to become like the stars, to receive the glory that He has and dwell with Him-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... and do His works.
Christine: Yeah. To not have death on us, in us-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... but to have life in us.
David: Yeah.
Christine: And we sadly did not get to the tree of life 'cause we took of the tree of knowledge before it was time-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... and lost paradise [laughs] in that sense. We had to leave Eden. Adam and Eve had to leave Eden because they could not exist in that. It would've been terrible to live forever in a state where they were in rebellion against God.
David: Right.
Christine: So God's like, "For your sake, you're gonna leave the garden, and it is out of death that you will be brought to life." And we see that in, like, the fact that, okay, we shall return to dust, but the-
David: That's what we were made from in the first place.
Christine: Yes. We shall return to dust, and there's this keeper of dust, the serpent, but his head will be crushed. So that's like an end of death kind of in-
David: Yep
Christine: ... Edenic terms.
David: And then a new spirit and water will come and fill the dust again-
Christine: And then-
David: ... and bring us new life
Christine: ... new humanity inspired by the Spirit
David: And we'll get to eat from the tree again?
Christine: And so there's this thing that, okay, Adam could not partake of the tree of life in the garden, but something you eat from and live forever is a garden picture. And here Jesus is saying, "Come and eat of me."
David: So Jesus is the tree of life.
Christine: He is on the tree of life.
David: He is-
Christine: I would say the cross-
David: Whoa
Christine: ... is the tree of life that was meant for death, but Jesus turned it into life, and we take from what is on the tree of life and live forever. That's His broken body and poured-out blood. [laughs]
David: Ow. Uh-huh. We'll be back in an hour.
Christine: [laughs]
David: Uh-huh. Okay.
Christine: Yeah. That's how we live forever. Y- we eat His flesh and drink His blood, which means I have to go to the tree of life. Yes, it's Calvary. [laughs] That's my body and my blood poured out for you. And we see water and blood poured out from Jesus' side. That is our baptism. That is our sustenance. That is how we live forever.
David: Okay. So let me go back to the confusion of the Jews, 'cause I think I'm with them right now.
Christine: Okay.
David: Is they're like, "How can we do that?" H- you know, one, how, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" You know, and the, and the answer, "I'm gonna put it on the tree of life." That's, that's the answer. But there's this tension of I'm not supposed to eat human sacrifice, and I'm not supposed to drink blood. And it sounds like what you're saying is look at the whole context here, and it's what He's going to talk about. They're gonna be like, "You're asking us to do something that the scriptures forbid, and how dare we go against Moses." And He's going to say, "No, no, no. Everything that Moses has written and everything in the scriptures is about me, and you've just gone to Daniel and to Isaiah and to Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Genesis 1," and we're like, "You guys are talking about one way to understand one command. I'm saying that I am the fulfillment of all of scripture. And if you look at it through the lens of what I'm telling you, you'll see that I'm actually fulfilling scripture, not breaking it."
Christine: Yeah. And I don't even think He's asking them to understand.
David: Mm.
Christine: He's asking them to believe.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Just receive it. It's not for you to figure out mechanistically.
David: Right.
Christine: It's ... And he, in this part at the end that I think you're talking about when the disciples are like, "This is hard teaching. Who can accept it?" And then Jesus says in 61, "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 they are life, yet there are some of you who do not believe." So he's not saying s- there's some of y- you who do not understand. It's about receiving the Spirit. It's about being born from above, water and the Spirit. It's receiving something that is Not earthly, but heavenly. And he said-
David: Is, is he saying there, "I'm not asking you to come take a bite out of my arm right now. The flesh counts for nothing." Is he saying, like, there's a, there's something real beyond the sign that's gonna happen? Why does he say the flesh counts for nothing here? The flesh is useless.
Christine: I think he's contrasting... He's not talking about his flesh specifically-
David: Mm
Christine: ... there, 'cause he did say, "Come and eat my flesh."
David: Right.
Christine: So I don't think he's contrasting that with his flesh, otherwise he would be contradicting himself, as like, "My flesh counts for nothing?"
David: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Christine: "I just told you to come eat it."
David: Right, yeah.
Christine: I think it's talking about, again, the material, the perishing. The flesh is that which perishes, and the spirit is what gives life. And so I think that's kinda going back to what he talked about at the beginning of the food that perishes and the food that gives eternal life. That which comes from above, which is of the spirit, which is sent by the Father, myself, is what will give you eternal life. And he mentions he was ascended. Like, what if you saw the Son of Man ascend to where he was before? This is about being born from above, and you- it can't happen unless the Father has enabled. Like, "You can't come to me unless the Father has enabled you." So it's not the earthly stuff we're talking about.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: It's the heavenly stuff. I'm right there with you with Nicodemus [laughs] and the crowds. It's like-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... I, my brain doesn't know what's going on, but-
David: I was thinking, I was feeling very much like Nicodemus as you were talking, 'cause he, he goes, "No one can see the kingdom of heaven," which is the glorified Messiah in his rule and reign, "unless they are born from above." And Nicodemus is like, "How can I be born again? How can I go back into my mother's womb and come out again? I don't understand. I want to understand. I don't understand." And then he goes, "Well, if you want to have life in you, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood." How can you give me your flesh to eat and I not be a cannibal and I not break scripture? And his answer is the same in both places. It's, "I don't need you to understand it. The spirit, the wind moves the trees, and no one knows where it comes from, so it is with the spirit, that the flesh counts for nothing. I'm not asking you to understand this. I'm not asking you to grab it in your own earthly, from below point of view. But I'm saying that when I'm ascended to heaven at the right hand of God again, I will sustain you through my spirit in this meal that you can come to at this new covenant feast that we'll have together over and over again. The new Passover is how you will be incorporated into my life."
Christine: Yes. It's how we become one with God.
David: Okay, one thing that's clicked in my brain, and I might be jumping ahead, but we're also way deep into the episode, so I don't think that's possible. We were talking about Passover-
Christine: Yes
David: ... that John is mapping this onto Passover. Every Gospel author maps it onto Passover. Jesus himself mapped it onto Passover. It's when he chose to die.
Christine: Yes.
David: And so the Passover meal that people ate was a covenant meal. It was, "I belong to Yahweh. I'm gonna come under this, the lamb's blood, as a sign that I'm a part of the people of God." And you could do that if you were Egyptian or Israelite or any ethnicity. It didn't matter. It was, "Will you come and join the people of God?" And you did that by partaking of this meal, of the life of this animal and coming under this new life that he was giving you and this new home. And so now Jesus is saying, "If you want to come and be a part of the life family of God, this is how you do it, by eating this meal, which is my body and blood, that I'm putting on the tree of life, which will be my cross."
Christine: Yes, yes. And that maps onto Passover and the Exodus, 'cause what made you an Israelite? You ate the Passover-
David: Mm-hmm
Christine: ... and you crossed the Red Sea.
David: Yep.
Christine: What makes you a Christian? You are baptized and you partake of the Lord's Supper.
David: Yep.
Christine: It's the same thing. You are part of God's people by that association, that joining with God, and it's a death and resurrection thing. It's a communing with a meal that God prescribes. He goes through great lengths of how to prepare this meal in Exodus, and so it's a form of identification. Are you born from above? Yeah. [laughs]
David: Yeah.
Christine: I partake of food from above.
David: Yeah. Are you in Christ, or is he in you?
Christine: Yes.
David: Yeah, are you a part of this new covenant family?
Christine: Yes.
David: Right, that this is a covenant meal. This is the blood of the covenant, which is what Passover was. It was a covenant meal. And so he's saying, "If you want life in you, come join the life family." [laughs]
Christine: Yeah.
David: "Be in me."
Christine: Yeah. And he... Yeah, and that meal pointed to him, and so here is him offering the true Passover meal, you might say, and that meal is not just are you part of God? Are you God?
David: Right.
Christine: In, like, a way-
David: No
Christine: ... that's kind of scary [laughs] to say out loud.
David: No, but it's true, though.
Christine: But-
David: If you take his life into you-
Christine: Yeah
David: ... well, what's the result? Well, go back to Passover. If you take the Passover meal, I will be your God. You will be my people. You're incorporated into the Yahweh people, and the g- and the command is, "Don't take that name in vain."
Christine: Mm-hmm.
David: "Don't bear the mark of being Yahweh's per- person in vain, God's people in vain."
Christine: Yeah.
David: Jesus says the same thing. You eat his life and take it into yourself, and you are baptized. You go out of death and into his life, and then where are you incorporated? Into the body of Christ-
Christine: Yes
David: ... the church, and you become o- one with him.
Christine: Yes.
David: And you are becoming... This is, and this is a bit of the resurrection that you talked about when you quoted Daniel and that Jesus himself quoted in the last chapter, that there's this resurrection, this coming to life that occurs that puts us on this trajectory to become like the shining stars in the sky.
Christine: Yeah. If we died with him, we will also be raised with him.
David: That's right.
Christine: It's that joining Jesus in his life and in his death by making his body one with ours by partaking of his body and blood. It's a mystery, and there's so many images that God gives us to kind of help us grope in that direction.
David: Yeah.
Christine: But it is something that, yeah, we can't really understand or comprehend, and thank God he-
David: And he's not asking us to
Christine: ... thank God he's not. And Jesus asks, you know, his 12 disciples, "Do you want to leave, too?" And Simon Peter answered, "No, Lord, we get it. No." [laughs]
David: "No."
Christine: He said, "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. And that's so comforting. [laughs]
David: Yeah.
Christine: It's like, I don't know, and it- it's okay if that teaching is uncomfortable or if that is just weird at first. Thankfully, our comfort zone is not the litmus test for what's true.
David: Nope.
Christine: But it's about coming. It's like, well, even if this makes me very squeamish, there's nowhere else I can go.
David: There's nowhere else to go.
Christine: You're, you have the words of eternal life.
David: You are the word of life.
Christine: You are the life.
David: And you are the Holy One of God.
Christine: Yes.
David: You are the bread of the presence.
Christine: Yes.
David: The holy bread. [laughs]
Christine: Yes. You are the holy bread I partake of and live forever, and-
David: I don't have to understand that, I have to believe it.
Christine: Yes.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yes. You believe to understand-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... [laughs] as someone has said once.
David: Yeah.
Christine: And also, it's an invitation back into paradise.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Jesus literally just said, "I'm the tree of life."
David: I'm the tree of life.
Christine: Like, I-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... we can come back into paradise. We can be with God. We are in Eden again-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... partaking of the tree of life and living forever with God and people.
David: Uh, instead of doing that, let me understand it perfectly intellectually first.
Christine: No, let me get into a system first, and then I'll consider.
David: And then-
Christine: It's like, oh, my goodness.
David: Just give me that, I, yeah.
Christine: Get into paradise for goodness sakes.
David: Give me that bread always.
Christine: Yes. [laughs] Just give-
David: Just give me that bread always
Christine: ... let me feed this, let me feed on this all the time.
David: Yeah.
Christine: It's, yeah.
David: Well, we- we've got to land the plane. There's 20,000 of them in the air. Final thoughts here from me are just, uh, the image I have in my head is just of the cross as the tree of life, that Jesus puts the fruit of his life on the cross and bids us come and eat and partake and bring his life into us, and that John's view of salvation is union with Christ.
Christine: Yeah.
David: That we would be one with him, that we would have his life, share his life, that he would be in us as he is in the Father, and which is baffling, and so much so that he, he wants us to dine on him and with him, and to bring him into ourselves so that we might be sustained by his life, but also to bear his life out in our own bodies, and that we would live with him, live like him, shine his glory, and do what the disciples did, take that bread to others.
Christine: Yeah.
David: And that we then get to take up our cross and be little trees of life for people and sh- give them the fruit of Jesus through our own sacrifice.
Christine: Yeah. Although they don't feed on us like that, so.
David: No. No, not saying that.
Christine: We can't say we are the body and blood.
David: No, no, no, definitely not.
Christine: But, but by partaking of it, we can share in his life.
David: Mm-hmm.
Christine: And it's, yeah, and that's so encouraging. Yeah, I just love that invitation into Eden dwelling or fellowship with God, where God and humanity are living forever, enjoying that fellowship, that meal that is just l- love between God [laughs] and man, and we see that so clearly in Jesus and how he just gave of himself to people, and the fact that, like you said, he invites us into that, into that self-giving, into that partaking, that trust that God can and will raise us up at the last day. 'Cause the eighth sign here is new creation resurrection, so we partake of him, we will live with him, and this interplay b- that John loves so much of what we have seen, what we have looked at, what we are, what our hands have touched. It's like, well, what we have tasted and seen and know that the Lord is good, this, this we proclaim to you. [laughs]
David: Yeah.
Christine: So I love that.
David: Yeah. I would say this is a hard truth. Like, I would agree with the disciples here. This is a hard truth, and you don't have to understand it to accept it. So sit with this passage. Go read the other passages that we walked through. But ultimately, go be with the body of Christ on Sunday and partake of this meal. [laughs]
Christine: Join the feast-
David: Yeah
Christine: ... that is in heaven. [laughs]
David: Yeah. What are the works of God? Go eat this meal. [laughs]
Christine: Believe in the one he has sent.
David: Yeah.
Christine: Yeah. Be drawn by the Father and come to the table.
David: Mm.
Christine: The Son waits to have you.
David: Well, that is good.
Christine: And for you to have him.
David: Well, thank you all so much for joining us in this flyover that was somehow long but way too short in John 6. It was a joy to kinda invite you into me and Christine's little discovery process here, and you'll see the finished devotional that we end up writing out of this and see how much we left out. But, uh, what else are you seeing? We wanna know how are you meditating on John 6? What questions do you have? You can reach out to us by sending an, an email to [email protected] or going to the website speakpipe.com/spokengospel to record your question for us to play on air in dialogue with you. Thank you all so much for listening, and we will see you next time.
Christine: Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Spoken Gospel creates short films, devotionals, and podcasts like this one. Everything we make is free because of generous supporters like you. To see our resources, visit spokengospel.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for listening. See you next time. [outro music]
