Seeing Christ the Prophet in John 6Sample

The Prophet Speaks to the Grumbling

John 6:40 contains language similar to John 3:16, that verse so familiar to us. Those within earshot must now heed the will of the Father and listen to God’s anointed prophet who himself feeds God’s people. The prophet of God regularly speaks to rebellious, grumbling people who have ignored God’s message. Just as many complained against Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, and others, when the messianic prophet issued his proclamation, “the Jews started grumbling about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:41-42).

The Bible classifies grumbling as one of the worst and most subversive of sins. The children of Israel in the older generation grumbled in the wilderness, and that led them to God’s judgment and a state of perpetual wandering in the wilderness until they died. Because of this, Jesus’ answer, “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” demonstrates the seriousness of his statement (John 6:43). Rejecting Christ as the bread of life is a rejection of God himself. To reject Jesus and his ministry is to be like the wilderness generation once again.

Notice the repetition of Jesus’ bread of life statements. Three times in this section he tells them he is the bread of life. They are told once, twice, even three times, and still grumbling unbelief is in their heart.

Though this generation is like the wilderness generation, they are also unlike them. For while their fathers ate of a heavenly physical provision, that bread could not sustain them eternally. This is where Jesus turns in the third of his declarations. After saying “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48) Jesus says, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that came down from heaven. So that anyone may eat of it and not die.” (John 6:49-50) Jesus’ listeners responded to physical food yet ignored the infinitely more significant spiritual food.

On our own, human beings tend to reject the greater and choose the lesser. We have very real appetites. We experience very real hunger in our stomachs. We are tempted to choose the temporary over the eternal. We are satisfied for a moment with bread even when we are presented with the bread of life.