Our reading of the Word of God is from the Gospel of John, chapter 6. This is one of the passages of the Scripture to which the Reformers returned again and again for the richness of its teaching and the clarity of its presentation of the Gospel. In 1530, Martin Luther preached a series of sermons on John, chapter 6. and declared in those sermons, I think rightly, that John, of all the gospel writers, proclaimed the gospel most clearly and most faithfully, and urged people to turn again and again, particularly to John chapter 6. So we do that today, and take up our reading of John 6 at verse 32. Let us hear God's own word. Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that comes down from heaven. They said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus answered them, Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, and they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone who has seen the Father except him who is from God, He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus said these things at the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken are spirit and life. So far, the reading of God's Word. In John 6, Jesus is talking about salvation in terms of bread. And that may initially be a bit of a surprise. Why is he talking about bread here? Why is he talking so pointedly and in such a prolonged way about bread? Well, the subject of bread has come up because at the beginning of chapter 6 of John's Gospel, Jesus fed 5,000. and it was a remarkable miracle. 5,000 people were following Jesus, and they were out in the wilderness. There was nothing to eat, and Jesus said, how are we going to feed these people? And one of the disciples, being practical, he was clearly in training to be a deacon, said, you know, if we had 200 denarii, it wouldn't be enough to feed these people just a little. 200 denarii was what a normal worker made in a little more than two-thirds of a year of work. It's a lot of money. And they didn't think the benevolence fund would stretch that far. Well, Jesus had them sit down, and Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish, and not only was able to feed them all a little, but was able to feed them until they were full. He satisfied their hunger, and there was 12 baskets of food left over. Jesus was pointing to his power, to his divinity, to his provision, to his abundant provision, to his superabundant provision, so that we would never doubt his abilities to supply our needs. And this people, who are dumb so often, weren't dumb that day, and they said, wow, this guy is something. Maybe he's the prophet prophesied in Deuteronomy 18 for whom we've been waiting. Let's take him and make him king so he can feed us every day. And Jesus walks away. And then Jesus comes back to the subject of bread because he wants these people to move beyond thinking about physical bread and daily provision, as important as that is. As much as we all have to think about that. But he wanted them to think about something even more important. Not bread for the belly, but bread for the soul. Not bread that feeds for one day, but bread that feeds for eternal life. And so Jesus has taken this occasion of talking about bread to try to get them to move beyond and to think more deeply and more profoundly. Of course, the truth is that most people don't want to do that. Luther, in preaching on this, said most people never get beyond thinking about their belly. And when you try to get them to think about their soul, they just walk on by. And Luther, in a remarkable statement, then said, who cares? had been asked to take over preaching for his friend, Johannes Bugenhagen, in 1530. Those of you who may yet have children should think about naming a child Bugenhagen. I think it's a name to be preserved. And Bugenhagen had left town. He was reforming another city. He was doing a very good work. But it meant that his preaching responsibilities in Wittenberg had to be taken over by somebody. And Luther, sick and overworked, took over the preaching. in John and happened to be at John 6. So he's grumpy. You've got to be aware of a grumpy preacher. You never know what you're going to get. So the world walks by and ignores Jesus. Who cares? What Jesus means, what Luther means by that, of course, is not that he didn't care or we shouldn't care or Jesus didn't care, but what he meant by, there's nothing you can do about that. The people who will ignore Jesus are going to ignore Jesus. Here, Jesus is the preacher. If you want to ask, you know, what are the right words to speak to attract people? If there were just right words to attract people, nobody would have known him better than Jesus. But he starts out with 5,000 people following, and he ends up with 11. You'd never have called him to be a minister. I've sometimes called this passage Jesus' Great Church Shrinkage Seminar. There's no money in church shrinkage seminars. But what Jesus is saying here, the point that Jesus is making here, is that He wants people to hear the truth. And if they won't listen, they won't listen. But the church gains nothing by not preaching the truth clearly. The church gains nothing by watering down the truth. Luther and Calvin were not used by the Holy Spirit to reform the church by watering the truth down and making it palatable. Jesus presses in this passage to make people face the real issue of their souls. Who will feed their souls? Who will save their souls? What is the bread of God that provides eternal life? And the answer Jesus gives is that he's the bread of God, that he provides eternal life. And people were shocked to hear him say that. We've been raised in the church, we've been in the church a long time, we've lost our shockability. But here is Jesus, this ordinary looking man who is looking out on this crowd and said, I am the bread of life. I am the one who can feed your soul. I am the one who can save your soul. I am the one who can give you the life you can never have on your own. And we have to stop and ponder that because this is at the very heart of the Reformation. That Jesus is the one who provides life for his people. And the life he provides, he's teaching here in John 6, is an eternal life. Jesus twice says, your fathers ate manna in the wilderness. Can you imagine how often they'd heard the Exodus story read in the synagogue? Maybe how often they'd heard rabbis preach on the Exodus story. How often they'd thought of the glorious provision of God of giving manna every day for 40 years. Well, six days a week for 40 years. and how the fathers had been sustained in the wilderness by that heavenly bread. And Jesus says to them, your fathers ate manna and they all died. What you need is a bread that will enable you to live forever. And then he says, I am that bread. I am that bread. That bread of eternal life. And that bread of eternal life, that eternal life, is yours now, if you believe in me. You don't have to wait until the end of life and until the final judgment. You don't have to wonder whether you're going to live forever. You can have eternal life and the assurance of eternal life right now, because I'm here right now to give it to you, Jesus said. That's the message he's bearing here. He is the bread of life. He is the gift of life to His people. And Luther in his sermon says, this is the most remarkable thing. Said so clearly. It is Jesus who gives life, not your works who give life. It is Jesus who dies to save you. Your works don't die to save you. Luther says, what could be clearer? And Luther is right. Jesus calls us away from looking at ourselves and worrying about ourselves or rejoicing in ourselves. And he calls us to look at him, to trust in him, to rest in him, because he is the bread of life. The great message of the Reformation is that life is a gift, not a goal. The whole medieval church had taught that your whole life is lived for the goal of getting eternal life at the end. And if you work hard enough at it, you might realize the goal. And the Reformation came and said, no, life is not a goal that you kick, that you achieve. Life is a gift given to you by Jesus Christ. He's the bread of life. He's the life of the soul. He's the one who provides a certain life. Jesus says here in this passage, you notice that I lose nothing of all he gives me. I lose nothing of all he gives me. He accomplishes his purpose. And that's the greatest comfort to us. If our salvation went in our hands, we'd make a mess of it. I know you people. I know me. But our salvation is in Jesus' hands, so it's secure, it's certain, it's fixed. It's accomplished. He's the bread of life. And he's the bread of heaven. Where does Jesus come from? Well, there are several answers to that question, aren't there? He comes from Bethlehem. He comes from Nazareth. He comes from Mary and Joseph. Those are true answers. But there's a profounder answer. There's a deeper answer. He comes from heaven. He's the eternal son of God. who has come to live among us. That's the profound answer. That's the answer that he insists on here. I am the bread come down from heaven. And so I'm not just like everybody else. I'm a unique person in the history of the world. And I am my Father's gift to you. You know, a lot of people who heard him on that day stood around wondering I wonder what God really makes of this guy and what he's saying and what Jesus is saying here very emphatically is you don't have to wonder if God is thinking something different from what I'm saying because I've come to do the father's will I'm the father's gift to you and what I say the father says what the father says I say I am here to make known the Father to you. This is sometimes a bit of a problem for some Reformed people. There's a temptation among some Reformed people to say, well, you know, it's really nice that Jesus preaches the gospel, but, you know, what's the Father really think about me? It's nice that Jesus offers the gospel, but has the Father elected me? And Jesus is providing an antidote to that kind of thinking. You don't have to worry about whether you're elect when you hear Jesus speak. And he says, believe in me. If you believe in me, that's a sign that you're elect. Because there's no distance between the Father's purpose and Jesus' purpose. He's come down from heaven as the Father's gift to you. And he assures you that what he says and what he wills and what he invites is what the Father is inviting and saying and willing. You don't have to be in any doubt. We have to just recognize Jesus as the bread of life and the bread of heaven. And then very remarkably, the bread of flesh. This is where the sermon got really dicey. bread of life, okay, maybe, bread of heaven, okay, maybe, but bread of flesh? Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you are none of me? Come on, that's kind of over the top. That's what the people there thought. What's Jesus mean? What he means is, salvation comes in a man of flesh and blood. The cost of salvation is the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ being offered on the cross. And those who will not see God at work on the cross have no part in Jesus. It's a declaration about His crucifixion and the centrality of His crucifixion. We are not saved by principles. We are not saved by laws. We are not saved by spirits. We are saved by the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ offered up on the cross for the sins of his people. And Jesus is pressing here to say, do you really believe that? Do you really believe that your only hope of eternal life, your only hope of heaven, your only hope is to be found in my flesh and blood? and your connection to me in that flesh and blood. And how do we connect with that flesh and blood? How do we eat the flesh and drink the blood? Well, Luther said, and the whole Reformed tradition has said, you do that by faith. You do that by trusting Jesus. You do that by turning to Him. Over and over again in this passage, Jesus appeals to people to believe, to trust. That's what eating Jesus is. That's what drinking his blood is. It's trusting in him that what he has done on the cross is our salvation. And that because he died, we will live. And although we will die physically, he will raise us up on the last day. It's the most remarkable thing, isn't it? It's not easy to believe. For 2,000 years, Christians have been burying loved ones. and it's not easy to believe that on the last day, God will raise them all up, but he will. He's promised it, and Jesus doesn't break his promise. That's our hope. That's our confidence. That's what orients our whole life. If for this life only we've believed, we're of all people most to be pitied, but it's not for this life only that we have believed. and Jesus has promised that to everyone who believes there is eternal life now and forever one of the greatly debated verses at the time of the Reformation was verse 63 it is the spirit who gives life the flesh is of no avail and some interpreters said well what does Jesus mean there he's just been talking about how important his flesh is and now he says the flesh is of no avail. Well, Luther got it exactly right, as he usually does. Not 100%, but usually. He got it right. He says what Jesus means here is, your flesh is of no avail. Your flesh can't do anything, but my spirit can do it. It's the spirit who gives life. It's the spirit who draws you to me. It's the spirit who gives the gift of faith. And when the Spirit gives you the gift of faith, you belong to me. You have eternal life. No one can pluck you from my hand. That's the great promise of the Gospel. And that's what we come to the Lord's table to be strengthened in believing. We hear the Word, and here we can see the Word. We can see the word that it's in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ that our salvation is made. Not because bread and wine become the flesh and blood of Christ, but because the bread and wine are promises of Christ. Promises of His great saving work and promises of His presence by the power of His Holy Spirit so that we truly partake in him, true God and true man. And so on this Reformation Sunday, we think not so much about the Reformation as we do about the truth of the gospel. And we hear that call, not to trust our senses or to trust the lies of this world, but to trust the promises of Jesus Christ. And let me read from one of Luther's sermons on John 6, where he issues that call not to trust our senses, but to live by faith. Luther said, Meanwhile, do not let your judgment be influenced by your senses. Externally, you will feel death and sin. Your heart will trouble your conscience, your evil life will accuse you, the law will terrify you, the Lord will persecute you, the devil will put evil thoughts into your mind and assail you. But do not fear. Be patient. All these things are but outward masks which test and exercise your faith to teach it about eternal life and its source. Even though I were to die, Even though a bear were to consume my head, a fish were to devour my belly, and a wolf my hand, or if I were torn into a thousand pieces, yet I know that I would have eternal life. Here you can see what it means to believe. It may seem an easy matter, but it is in fact a high and great art. It's a struggle every day to believe. But the promises of Christ are laid out so beautifully, both in the Word and in the sacrament, that we're all called to believe, to trust, to know that Jesus is eternal life for those who know him and that he will raise us up at the last day. May God grant that each one of us has that confidence. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, how good and kind you are to us beyond our deserving. How we do thank and praise you for the gift of Jesus Christ. And our earnest prayer is that every heart here might know true repentance and true faith and find eternal life in Christ and in him alone. Hear us, for we pray in his name. Amen.