John 6:32-35
I asked Jennifer Barten to bring a couple of students to our Optimist meeting a couple of weeks ago. I knew that there are a number of students from other countries attending PCC, and I was interested in how those students acclimate to life in Pratt, Kansas.
One of the students is from the Democratic Republic of Congo. If you follow any news coming out of Central Africa, you know it is not good news. This young man's father owned a shop in their town. But things got so bad, they had to abandon their shop, abandon their home town, in the middle of the night, basically leave everything behind that defined them, and get across the boarder into Uganda as refugees.
His was an amazing story of gratitude as a Christian young man. He has become a student refugee in America, coming to Wichita, and now Pratt. One of the things he said about life in the DRC and then Uganda I'll always remember. He said, "The main thought my family had, everyday, was, Will we be alive at the end of the day?" He was so grateful to God for keeping his family safe, and his good fortune to get to the USA so he could get an education.
But getting here meant having to live life at its most basic level--just existing another day. Keep me alive another day.
I've never experienced anything like that. I'm guessing most of you have not either. To be so needy in your desire to have another day of life. To so eagerly desire just one thing--to be alive the next day.
Imagine that, if you can. To desire that one thing that is essential: daily life.
There are only two things needed to sustain life at its most basic level: food and water. Without food, a body can last around 3 weeks. Mahatma Gandhi lasted 21 days one time on a total starvation diet.
Water is a different matter. At least 60% of our body is made of water, and every living cell in the body needs it to keep functioning. Water acts as a lubricant for our joints, regulates our body temperature through sweating and respiration, and helps to flush waste. Without replenishing our body's water we would die in 3 to 4 days. Quicker if it was the middle of a hot summer.
When Jesus said, "I AM the bread of life," he is saying, "I am what fulfills your basic need in life." Just like our bodies need food and water on the most basic level of survival, so Jesus sustains us on our most basic spiritual level of survival. Jesus knows that life is about more than just existing from day-to-day. Life must be awful if a person is simply existing on bread and water.
But isn't life just as awful if you are simply existing on spiritual bankruptcy? What drives us to Jesus should be the same as what drives us to sustain our basic existence.
Let's look at this through another question. What do we all hunger and thirst for? Let's say your basic needs of food and water are taken care of. So what do we all hunger and thirst for?
Jesus said, when the basic stuff is taken care of what everyone wants is life. "I AM the bread of life," Jesus said. Life. All hunger and thirst comes down to living life. In the Bible life is defined in at least four different ways: vitality, fullness, blessedness, and genuineness.
Let's start with vitality. Vitality is defined as the continuation of a meaningful and purposeful existence. Life isn't about just existing. It is sad when life is reduced to that, like the young man at PCC from central Africa. Worrying about if you will exist at the end of the day. Thank God we are not experiencing that.
But Jesus is saying, I AM the bread that is fueling your meaning and purpose. Because that's what life is about. A vital life is one with purpose and meaning. You gain that purpose and meaning by feeding on the bread of who Jesus is.
There is one word in the definition of vitality, and I was wondering if you caught it. Listen again: vitality is the continuation of a meaningful and purposeful existence. Did you catch it? It's the word "continuation." Vitality, life, is something that is sustained over the entirety of your life through Jesus.
Jesus wants to be the bread of your vitality over the long haul. But you can't continue something you haven't started. You can't continue having a life of meaning and purpose if you never started. And you can't start until you let Jesus be your bread. Really, let Jesus be your bread.
Secondly, in the Bible life is described as fullness. An overflowing fullness. Jesus, in another place in John's gospel, said, "I came that you might have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). Abundantly means overflowing fullness.
We talk about people who see the glass as half full or half empty. That won't do, said Jesus, when the glass can be overflowing. Who wants half a glass of life? "Whoever comes to me," said Jesus, "will never hunger and never thirst." There will always be more than enough life with Jesus as the bread of that life. It's like God rains bread out of the clouds upon us. But you have to let Jesus be the only bread that fills that overflowing life of purpose and meaning. Can you do that? is the question.
Thirdly, what we all hunger and thirst for is a blessed life. Not a happy life. A blessed life. The Women's Bible Study that meets at Dona's house on Wednesday's got into a discussion about this when they were studying the Beatitudes a couple of weeks ago. Is it blessed or happy? What's the difference?
The word in Greek for blessed describes a joy which has its secret within itself. That secret is a joy which is serene and untouchable. Blessedness is a joy which is completely self-contained from all the chances and changes in life.
The word happiness has as its root word, hap, which means chance. Human happiness is dependent on the chances and changes of life. Thus happiness is something that life can give and something that life can destroy.
But Jesus' blessedness is a joy that is completely untouchable and undefeatable. A change in fortune, a collapse of health, the failure of a plan, even the change in the weather can take away our happiness. But serene and untouchable blessedness comes only from walking continuously in the company of Jesus, and feeding on him as the bread of life.
Lastly, life in the Bible is about that which is genuine. It's about not being counterfeit as a person. Things that are counterfeit look real. They have the appearance of being real. But under closer scrutiny, the falsehood of that appearance is revealed.
(My $500 bet with Tyler)
It's one of the main tactics of the devil--to offer us counterfeits of the good things of God. Paul describes the counterfeits of evil so well in his letter to the Galatians. This is his list:
sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
But the list of that which is genuine, that which is about life, of those things of God the devil counterfeits, is much different. In this list, Paul says is:
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
When you look at the two lists side-by-side in Galatians 5, it is so clear to see how the one list is a counterfeit for the other. And it makes you wonder why it is we choose the counterfeit over the genuine so often. Why do we sacrifice being genuine people, when deep down, that's what we all hunger and thirst for? Why do we let the devil sucker us into being frauds? What do we get out of it? Empty and counterfeit lives, leaving nothing but a hollow and lifeless person.
Again, my question: What do we all hunger and thirst for? Does not all our hunger and thirst come down to living a vital life of meaning and purpose? Does not all our hunger and thirst come down to living a life that is genuine to the core? Does not all our hunger and thirst come down to living a life in which you not only feel that deep blessedness, but that you are also a blessing to others? Does not all our hunger and thirst come down to living a life that is not just half full but overflowing?
That is what we hunger for, and that hunger can only be satisfied by the bread of life, Jesus our Lord.
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