October 5, 2025 • 41 mins
In this sermon delivered by Pastor Slaveck Moraru at City on a Hill North Shore on October 5,
We explore the powerful truth of John 6, where Jesus declares Himself the Bread of Life.
Discover what it truly means that Christ gave His life for the life of the world, and how this passage reveals the heart of the Gospel.
This message calls believers to seek spiritual nourishment in Christ alone, to abide in Him daily, and to live in gratitude for the One who satisfies every hunger of the soul.
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Episode Transcript
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Well, it's good to be back. I'm excited to be here.
We are going to stay in John 6 and we're going to pray and then
we're going to start again. It's it's awesome.
If you were here last time, lastSunday, Pastor Alex did an
amazing job talking about the names of God.
And I want to just kind of continue on that.
So if you have your Bibles open to John 6.
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And also, again, Pastor Alex kind of alluded to it in the
opening, but this is a pretty long chapter, but there's a lot
of really good things here. And as you open, we're going to
start in John. We're going to talk about John.
We'll go a bit literally in history, and then we'll come
back to how should we live now? So let's go ahead and pray and
then I'll read. So Lord Jesus, I thank you for
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your presence here today. Lord, we want to hear from you.
Lord, we don't want my words, Lord, we want your words.
Lord, I pray right now that I befaithful to that Lord, I, I pray
that your presence may be palpable in this, in this house,
Lord, be felt and Lord, that we would walk out of this place,
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change into this form. Lord, let the words of our
mouth, my meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, Lord,
my Savior and my Redeemer. And then, well, this is an
amazing chapter. This is where Jesus proclaims
that he is the bread of life. So I'm going to read from verse
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one to verse 15 says this. Sometime after this, Jesus
crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee that is the site
the Sea of Tiberias. And a great crowd of people
followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by
healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on the
mountainside and sat down with his disciples.
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The Jewish Passover festival wasnear when Jesus looked up and
saw a great crowd coming towardshim.
He said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to
eat? He asked this only to test him,
for he already knew what he already had in mind, what he was
about to do. But Philip.
Philip answered it would take more than half a year's wages to
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buy enough bread for each one tohave a bite.
Another of his disciples, AndrewPeters, Andrew Simon Peters
brother spoke up. Here's a boy with five small
barley loafs and two small fish.But how far will they go for so
many? Jesus said have the people sit
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down. There was plenty of grass and in
that place and they sat down. About 5000 men were there.
Jesus then took the loaf, gave thanks and distributed to them
to those who are seated as much as they wanted.
He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to
eat, he said to these disciples,gather all the pieces that are
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left, let nothing be wasted. So they gather them and fill the
12 baskets with pieces of the five barley loafs leftover by
those who had eaten. After people saw that Jesus,
that the sign that Jesus performed, they begin to say,
surely I want you to pay attention to that.
Surely this is a prophet who hascome into the world.
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Jesus knowing they had intended to come and make him king by
force withdrew against again to a mountain by himself.
It's an amazing story because here you have people seeing
signs that Jesus is something special.
And by the way, he has this little trick that he can produce
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food out of nowhere, right? He, he, he can do things for us,
right? So they came to Jesus and, and
we are told that this is right close to Passover.
And if you know anything about Passover, this is, this is,
there's a lot of a lot of theology there in the Passover.
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And Jesus is asking the discipledisciples to find enough bread
to kind of like feed everybody. Now.
Bread is awesome. I have an addiction to bread,
any form of bread. I love bread, right?
Bread is good food, but food in general is good, right?
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Food without food. Like we can probably survive if
we have no shelter. We'll find a way to find shelter
as long as we have food, right. Food is what sustains us.
And I think maybe God made us towant food every single day to
remind us that we are not that self-sustaining.
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We have to go to God for food, right, But food is is awesome.
People say things like you are what you eat, right.
There's actually a, a physician along, he's kind of considered
like the, the, the long ago, the1st doctor, right?
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He says this, he says let your food be your medicine and your
medicine your food. You've heard things like an army
marches on their stomach, right?Meaning that if you don't have
food, you're not going anywhere,right?
Even like when you got sick and man, bless our moms, our moms
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made us chicken soup and and somehow just her presence and
somehow just that soup made us feel better instantaneously.
We also didn't want to go to school, but that's besides the
point. Just that food alone made us
feel better. Actually, somebody took that
whole idea and they turn it into, do you guys remember this?
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The chicken, chicken, chicken soup for the soul.
There you go, right. Food is good.
And The thing is, a lot of timeswe forget that God is the
provider of everything that is good in our lives, including
food. Now, Alex talked quite a bit
about the names of God, and one of them is Yahweh Yire.
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The one that we couldn't pronounce last time, I think it
was the anglicized version of that is Jehovah Jireh, right?
God, our provider. God is a provider and we get in
so much trouble when we start tolook at other things in our
lives as the provider. When we look at money as our
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security, when we look at our job as our provider, we tend to
forget, and I would call this the ABCDE of the cycle of
brokenness where A stands for apathy.
Usually the way we get into a cycle of brokenness is we just
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kind of stop caring. We go into apathy and then
apathy leads to bondage, right? And we give in to too much
drink. We're into some addiction,
right? And that bondage is, is
overbearing because any God outside of our God is a horrible
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God. That bondage turns turns
overbearing for your life and then you cry out to the Lord.
So that's the C in the ABC. And then God delivers you and
that's the D. And then there's a time of ease.
And then you will again go back to apathy bondage, crying out to
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the Lord, confessing your sin. Then God delivers you right?
And there's a time of ease again.
And that experience as a human being is not just our
experience. This has been the experience of
the Jewish people for thousands of years.
God delivers them from Egypt. And after a while, after so
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enthralled with what God has done to deliver us, they start
to become apathetic. And then they start to complain
and their apathy turns into bondage.
God allows them to be enslaved for 110, a hundred, 400 years.
And then they crowd to the Lord.And that when they crowd to the
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Lord, God delivers them. And there's a time of ease.
And you can see this pattern over and over and over,
especially when you get to the book of Judges, The book of
Judges. It seems like this cycle of
brokenness happens every 40 years.
God raises up a judge, delivers them.
It's a good time. And everyone is so amazed at the
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work that God has done. And there's a time of just start
caring and there's apathy. And then God says somebody else
and conquers them. And now they're in bondage.
And then in bondage they cry outto the Lord and God delivers
them. And when God delivers them
right, there's a time of ease and goes back to apathy.
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And it's cycle after cycle aftercycle.
And when we get to the book of Judges, the end of the book of
Judges, it says that everyone gets to a point where they do
whatever is good in their eyes. Does that sound familiar for our
modern day? What everyone starts to do
whatever is in their life. And maybe for you it's a bit
different. You used to be passionate about
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the Lord. You used to attend church in the
morning. But one day you're like, I'm
just gonna stay in. I'm just stay in and just watch
the game. Because that's what I mean.
The game is good, right? Like it's good family bonding.
And that that leads into apathy,right?
And you become more and more apathetic and then you start
drinking too much or giving in to any kind of like bondage.
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And then you realize, OK, this is this.
I need to, I need to cry Outbackto the Lord.
This is not any new to us. This has been the going, the
going thing for for thousands ofyears.
Now going back to Jewish people after the book of Judges, they
have a time of what we would call the golden years.
When you have the Davidic sort of dynasty, right?
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You have David and Solomon and everyone looks at this time of
of great with a great king, right, God's great power.
But then they're enslaved by theAssyrians, and Assyrians are
cruel people. These people get this.
These people skin their enemies alive.
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They mutilate them. And just in case you wonder why
Jonah doesn't want to go to speak in Nineveh is because
Nineveh is their capital. So he wakes up on that faithful
day with a forecast of maybe, I don't know, a thunderstorm and
maybe, maybe get eaten by a fish, right?
And God is calling him to go preach the gospel to some wicked
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people and he, he's not having it.
Not only these people are horrible, but God, why would you
save them? Turns out God cares for the
wicked and he goes, he goes and preaches, you know, for, for for
a long time, for 40 days, right?And and then he steps back and
he watches the city and he, it worked.
God saves them. He's like God, why would, why
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would you save them? They're wicked.
And God says he made a plant to grow, and then that plant died.
And he was so distraught becausethe plant was covering him for
shade. And God's like, you care more
about this plant than these people.
And the Syrians are horrible to the Jewish people.
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But then they were overcome by anew, a new empire called
Babylon. You've heard so much about
Babylon from Daniel, right? And they're somewhat better to
the Jewish people. But it's what's awesome is that
God is still at work even this when they're taken to Babylon.
There's this prophet, his name is Jeremiah.
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And Jeremiah knows that even though we are taken into
captivity and there's not reallyhope for us right now, we
believe in the God that keeps his promises.
And one day he is going to bringus back to this land.
You know what he does? He goes and buys a plot of the
land and takes the deed, digs a hole and buries it.
Not because he needs land, because he trusts that the same
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God that has delivered the people from the Egyptians, he'll
deliver from Babylon. And then Babylon, we get the
story of Daniel and Daniel, right, The dream.
Remember the, the king Nebuchadnezzar, great king of
Babylon has a, has a dream and he's asking everyone, you got to
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tell me what my dream was and you have to interpret it.
And everyone's having a hard time with this because you can
kind of like know what people dream about.
And Daniel gets this revelation from God.
And in Daniel too, we have this amazing, amazing discovery,
which is a dream that God reveals to a king about what
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will happen in the future. Now, if this is a lot of history
for you, just stay with me, OK? Because it's going to get it's
going to get it's going to hit home close to home.
And this dream is the statue. The statue is made out of a head
made out of gold, a chest that'smade out of silver, a thigh and
hip hop made of of bronze. Then you have legs made out of
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iron, right? And then the the feet are iron
mixed with clay. And now we know that this is
something that is kind of amazing in theology, at war, in
the history. These things are representing
the Kingdom that will follow Babylon.
The way we know that is because Daniel says that.
And if we study in history, that's exactly what happens.
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Now keep in mind Daniel's speaking about 600 years before
Jesus is incarnated here on earth.
It's an amazing revelation. So when we get to Daniel 39, it
says this, but after your Kingdom, he's speaking to
Nebuchadnezzar here. After your Kingdom comes to an
end, another Kingdom inferior toyours.
This will be the Kingdom of Persia where King Cyrus the
Great allows the Jewish people to go back to the their land.
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He says inferior to yours will rise up to take your place after
that Kingdom has fallen. Yet 1/3 Kingdom.
This is the Kingdom of Greece orGreek Kingdom led by Alexander
the Great represented in bronze will rise to rule the world.
Following that Kingdom there will be a fourth one we know now
to be Rome. Rome is the 4th Kingdom.
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The Kingdom will smash and then it says after the 4th Kingdom as
as strong as iron the Kingdom will smash and crush all
previous empires just as iron smashes and crushes everything
is strikes. The feet and toes you saw were a
combination of iron and baked clay, showing the Kingdom of God
will be divided. Sorry, the Kingdom will be
divided like iron mixed with clay.
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You will have some strength of iron, but while some parts of it
will be strong, other parts willwill be weak.
The mixture of iron and clay also show that these kingdoms
will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances
with which other through throughintermarriages and so on, but
they will not hold together justas iron clay during that reign
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of those kingdoms, the God of heaven.
Now I want you to listen to this.
This is the fourth Kingdom. During that Kingdom, right
During the reign of those kingdoms, the God of Heaven will
set up a Kingdom that will neverbe destroyed, a Kingdom there
will never be conquered. You will crush all these
kingdoms into nothingness and you will stand forever.
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That is the meaning of the rock cut from the mountain.
That's part of the dream, though, not by human hands.
The crush to pieces, the statue of iron, bronze and clay, silver
and gold. The great God was showing the
king what will happen in the future.
The dream is true and the meaning is certain.
Now, I encourage you if you're ahistorian or a theologian to go
study this passage because, well, Daniel says exactly that
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happens in history. And what happens during the 4th
Kingdom, which is Rome? Jesus is born, and Jesus talks a
lot about the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here, the Kingdom
has arrived, and this Kingdom destroys all the other kingdoms.
What happened? What do we know about Assyrians?
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Well, we don't know much about them other than what we know
from history. They don't exist today.
What happened to Babylon? They're gone.
What happened to Persian Empire?They're gone.
What happened to Greek Empire? This is the intertestamental
period between Old Testament andNew Testament.
Alexander the Great Who? Probably have realized by now,
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right? He conquers a lot of things and
God uses his conquest for everyone to start speaking
Greek. And that's why we have the New
Testament in Greek, right? He's somewhat pretty good to to
the Jewish people. And then he dies and then
there's two other kings to rise up in his place.
One of them is Ptolemy and the other one is Seleucid.
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And Seleucid is horrible to the Jewish people.
Seleucid's kings actually go andstart to defile the temple.
They offer a pig as a sacrifice.This has happened in 167 BC.
Now, why am I telling you all ofthese things?
Because you see, by the time Jesus comes on the scene,
meaning not Jesus always existed.
We know that. But when he's incarnated here on
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earth, right? The Jewish people have been
through so much. They've been through so many
ABCDE of bondage, crying out to the Lord, deliverance a time of
years, over and over and over. And right before Jesus is born,
about 167 years before that, they have their temple, the
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place of worship, defiled and God rises up.
A guy by the name of Judah Maccabee.
You probably heard of Hanukkah, right?
And this, this, this king is theguy who, if you think about Palm
Sunday, the the way they welcomed Jesus in Jerusalem is
because that's how they welcomedJudas Maccabe, because he's a
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rebel, but he's a rebel king andhe overthrows some of the Greek
rulers and now he becomes that like king, the Messiah king.
Now all of that to say this is that when Jesus is born,
everyone has different expectations.
Some people that people think that Jesus is a prophet, he's
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like Moses. Some people are thinking he's
obviously the Judah Maccabee, hewill overthrow the Roman Empire.
So that's why they always keep on pushing Jesus.
Jesus, are you going to restore the Kingdom now?
Jesus, are you going to revolt now?
And Jesus starts talking and saying, look, my Kingdom is not
of this world. I'm not here to conquer Babylon.
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I'm not here to conquer Nineveh.We're Athens.
I'm here, my Kingdom is not of, I'm not here to conquer
Jerusalem. I'm here to conquer the human
heart because God's Kingdom is not set in, in, in maps or
places where geography is set inthe human heart.
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That's why when the woman, the, the, the well, she's like you
after Jesus kind of calls her out.
He's like, you have 5 husbands and the one you're with now,
it's not your husband. And she gets very theological
and she goes, yeah, but see, I see you're a prophet.
So should we worship in temple? In the temple?
Where should we worship? On this mountain, Right.
And Jesus says what? There comes in time and it's
already here that you won't worship there.
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We're there. But you will worship in what?
In spirit and in truth. We now know that the Holy Spirit
is the temple. I'm sorry.
Our bodies is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
We know that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us.
And what Daniel prophesied is true because some 2000 years
later all these kingdoms are destroyed.
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I don't know if you know this ornot, but there's 2.3 or 2.4
people that maybe they're not great Christians, but they claim
Jesus as Lord and Savior. That is, that is 2 point
billion. Thank you.
That is 1/4 of the people alive.That is the Kingdom that has
lasted the last 2000 years. That is the Kingdom that Jesus
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is talking about. Jesus is not here to be the king
of a region. He's the king of the heart.
He's the king. He sets up a Kingdom inside the
person. So when we get back to this,
then what? We started right when they see
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that he has food to offer and says that they were trying to
force him to be king. And you're like, like, what in
the world? Why would you?
Why would you do that? Well, because they got into a
pattern. We have a problem.
We need a king. A king needs to rule over us, be
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Saul or David, right? We have a problem in the church.
We need a new pastor. The pastor's going to fix it,
right? We have a problem.
The company, we need a new CEO, right?
They, they are in this mentalityand we have a problem.
Well, apparently this guy can provide finances for us.
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So if you're a pastor, if you can preach well, well, guess
what? That's what the people want.
They want good bread. And Jesus says something
completely out of the ordinary. Jesus says this, this thing
where he's like, actually, I'm not just giving bread.
Keep in mind, he just fed 5000. And a lot of liberal theologians
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will say, well, they just sharedtheir lunch.
No, this was a supernatural miracle.
There's no if if you if you don't think this is supernatural
miracle. Well, he walks on water right
after that. So good luck with explaining
that one away. No, this is a supernatural
miracle God where Jesus takes the, the the bread and the fish,
right? And he multiplies it.
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And yes, a God who can create the universe out of nothing can
make more bread. Trust me on this one, right?
It's not as a logical stretch tothink that.
So he just fed to 5000 and you know what happens next after he,
he withdraws, 'cause they're trying to make him king, right?
He withdraws and you have the whole thing.
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Him walking on water. Disciples are very like, are
very kind of kind of excited about that 'cause there's two
miracles on walking on water. He walks on water and then they
just like the Bible says that they just kind of arrived to the
place and that's a miracle in itself again.
But then the next day, look at verse 22.
So this is the next day. The crowd that has stayed on the
opposite shore of the lake realized the only one boat had
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been there and Jesus had not entered with his disciples, but
they had gone away. There's some boats from Tiberius
landed near the place where the people had eaten and the bread
after the Lord had given thanks.Once the crowd realized that
neither Jesus nor disciples werethere, they got into their boats
and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.
When they found him on the otherside of the lake, they asked
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Rabbi, when did you get here? Hey buddy, how did you get here?
That's their response. Jesus answered and Jesus calls
their bluff because you know what they want?
They want more bread. You know that trick that you did
yesterday? Can you, can you just do that
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thing again? And Jesus says very truly, I
tell you, you are looking for menot because you saw the signs I
performed, but because you ate the loafs and had your fill.
Do not work for good the spoils,but for food that endures their
eternal life to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give
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you for on him God the Father has placed the seal of approval.
So look, I know you came here because you just want more
bread, right? They asked him, what must we do?
Now that's not so crazy to ask because a people that were so
trained for so long to do anything just to get the kings
of kings of kings approval, right?
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What must we do? And a lot of times when it comes
to Jesus, we have the same attitude.
What? What do we need to do right?
So what must we do? The works of God requires, Jesus
answered, the work of God is this to believe in the one who
has sent? So then they asked him, what
sign will you give that we may see and believe you?
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What will you do? Our ancestors right?
A man in the wilderness, as it is written.
He gave them bread from heaven to eat, which is insane to say
because Jesus just gave you bread yesterday.
But what they're saying is, well, when we were in the
desert, God fed us every day. You just did it once, right?
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So, so they're having a hard time with this.
And Jesus says very truly, I tell you, it's not Moses that
gave you the bread from heaven, but he's my Father who gives you
the bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the
bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the
world. Now, if you're taking notes and
you wonder what this message is about and you want to title for
this is for the life of the world, Jesus is the bread for
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the life of the world. Now they don't get it for a
while and Jesus keeps on saying,guys, the bread we're talking
about, he's using a spiritual metaphor, right?
The bread that I'm talking about, it's me.
And he uses the same phrase thatGod used with Moses, the when he
says ego and me right I am that I am or the, the, the bread of
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life I am. I am the bread of life.
What Jesus is doing here, he's making a claim to divinity.
He's saying I am God. And they're having a hard time
with this now. They turned from seekers to
complainers to grumplers to deserters, because that's what
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you get when all you pursue is the hand of Jesus, not his face,
right? If you come to Jesus because
what he has to offer you, then you're going to go from seeking
Him to complain when you don't get your way to grumble and
after grumpling is to go into complete desertion because
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they're having a really hard time with this.
When Jesus says I am the bread of life, they're like, like,
like, and she's like, oh, by theway, you have to eat my body,
you have to drink my blood. And a lot of them are like,
that's a really hard saying. Who can understand it?
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Now? A younger me, I'll probably
think, well, Jesus, you're kind of being a little bit way too,
too vague here and it's causing them to to walk away.
And I think Jesus response wouldhave been good, right?
Jesus is making very, very clear.
Now look at this. Verse 59 says this.
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He said that while teaching a synagogue in Capernaum, many
disciples deserted him. So after this a lot of his
disciples leave him. On hearing this, many of his
disciples said this is a hard teaching, who can accept it?
Aware of his disciples grumblingabout this, Jesus said to them,
does this offend you? And what if you see the Son of
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Man ascend to where he was before?
The Spirit gives life and flesh counts for nothing.
The words I have spoken to you, they're full of the Spirit and
life. Yeah, there are some of you who
do not believe. For Jesus had known in the
beginning of the ones that will not believe who betray him.
He wanted to say, This is why I told you, no one can come to to
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me unless the Father enables them.
From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no
longer followed him. And look at what Jesus says to
the 12 that remain, right? We know that he had a lot of
disciples. Some of them leave and his
disciples still stay. He says you do not want to leave
too, do you? And Jesus asked the 12 and Simon
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Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words to eternal life.
No, it's a long chapter. It's a lot packed in there.
But if you're going to get something out of this chapter,
this is what I want you to get is that Jesus is the bread of
life. Now you already knew that.
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And this bread of life is there to bring life to the world.
This bread of life is to bring you life to make you alive.
And when Jesus saves you, then you should ask yourself, yes, he
has saved me. He has made me so I don't have
to die. But what also has he saved me
for, right? Because here's how we respond a
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lot of times when we hear that we are called to be part of
God's Kingdom. People have different ways of
dealing with the Kingdom. Now we are told that we are part
of the world. And Jesus is what we call high
priestly prayer. Right before he's about to be
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crucified, he prays for the church and he says this.
I want them to be united, but I want them to understand that
even though they're part of thisworld, they're not of this
world. You've heard this phrase a lot,
but most people don't know what it means.
What does it mean to be part of the world but not of the world?
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What does that mean? And over centuries, we've tried
different things. And I would say there's at least
a few different ways people approach this.
A way to do this, and I don't recommend it, is to fortify your
position. I'm going to go and buy myself
A20 acre lot in Snohomish County.
I'm going to build a house therethat's 5000 square feet.
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I'll put a huge fence around it,maybe get a couple dogs because
couple security cameras and the world is crazy.
The world is going to hell in a handbasket and I need to protect
me and my family. Well, there's been Jewish people
that have done that about 200 years before Jesus.
And you can get so enthralled inthat.
You can get so into preparing for the apocalypse.
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I wouldn't recommend it because you're called to be part of the
world but not of it. That's right.
And then some people might take sort of the domineering approach
where the conquest approach, like all these other kingdoms,
we got to go and take the politics.
We got to take the business, we got to take the schools started
a few decades ago called the seven mountain mandate.
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You probably heard of that, right?
We have to go conquer religion, right?
Christianity has to be everywhere.
Family has to be like these are the priorities in family, right?
We have to conquer government, put our people in place, and
then we put our people in place and we realize these people go
really kind of off the rail and you're like, but I voted for you
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because because I thought you going to like right now, Full
disclosure, I tend to vote Republican, but when I see the
Republican Party starting to endorse abortion and
homosexuality and all these things, I'm like, what are we
doing here? Right?
Putting people in media, If we can just take over the movies
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and the music, taking over the. Arts world now I'm.
Part of I teach at our high school, right?
I'm part of education, right? Business.
Now, maybe you're sitting here, you're thinking what's wrong
with all of that? There's nothing wrong with
trying to do that. But I think it's missing a big
concept here. And the concept here is do you
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trust the sovereignty of God is.Jesus.
Your bread or not? What is it?
The levers of power and government?
That's your That's your bread. But is.
It your fame, that's your. Levers of of power.
What is it, Jesus? Your bread, right?
Because here's the. Thing this could start.
Really good. What's wrong with going and
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doing this? What's wrong with doing?
There's nothing wrong with that.But if Jesus is not?
If our allegiance is not Jesus, if our allegiance is a political
party, if our allegiance is is as a company or all these
systems fail. I think over and over I just
proved to you how many kingdoms,empires fell.
Where are they? They're the ash pile of history,
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just like every company and all the other things that are
temporary. Or you can go.
With the more liberal route, right?
We can reach the World. We have to.
Be relevant to. Them.
We have to reach them. So we going to open all these
things and slowly by slowly the gospel gets deluded and the.
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Medicine that you're offering? The world has no power
whatsoever because it's nothing.It's just motivational speaking.
It's it's it's, you know, self help cloaked in some spiritual
language. And that is we find ourselves.
In and you have a choice my friend, to be.
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Part of God's Kingdom. You can trust Chariots.
You can trust your systems. We're going to trust Jesus.
For your daily bread. You have a choice.
Now, is that to say that we should draw back and not be part
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of culture? No the.
Best thing that you can. Do if you're a husband is
there's a lot of areas of influence that God is giving you
to store those well. No, a lot of times.
Preaching. We're teaching theology, right?
We think of these things as spiritual jobs.
But there's part of my job like data entry when I graded
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students and I put their grades in the book, right?
Like there's not a lot of spiritual things about that.
But if you follow. Jesus then all work.
Is for His glory. It's interesting I.
I don't have any kids. I'm not married.
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And I lived in Bellevue this time and I ran into a friend of
mine who I haven't seen for six years.
And he looked at me like, man, you're just living the dream.
You live in Bellevue, you're single.
Like you're not married. You can do as much ministry as
you want. Isn't this great?
And I look at him, I'm like, andI see his kids kind of running
around. His wife is getting coffee and
I. Look at him.
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I'm like. But you can too, right?
And he's like, what do you mean like?
You you can do as. Much ministry too, right?
And I don't think he understood what I was.
Trying to say but like bro your your kids are ministry, your
wife is ministry, your family isministry, business is ministry.
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God is giving you a level. Influence.
If you're a student, that is ministry.
That is how you honor God. That is how you glorify God.
If you're a pastor, that is ministry.
If we're cleaning a building, that's ministry.
Everything. That we do we.
Do for the glory of God. It's not just preaching, we're
(36:00):
singing, worship, everything, every part of our lives, right?
Your words are ministry if you're a.
Husband one of the best. Things you ever do in ministry?
One of the greatest things to doin ministry is to love your wife
well. If you're a father, is to raise
your sons well. If I'm a son, one of the best
way I can do in ministry is to honor my parents.
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Everything. That we do.
Jesus. Does not want us to.
Take this approach of isolation and withdraw from the world and
go to a monastery or build a fortress somewhere in Snohomish
County. Jesus does not advocate for
that, or Jesus is not advocatingfor us to embrace the sort of
conquest to conquer everything. You know, you're serving Judah
(36:43):
Maccabee. You're not serving Jesus in that
point. Jesus is also not trying.
To, to, to, to, to ask you to compromise on your convictions
and on the word just so you can reach people.
What Jesus is asking? Whatever you're entrusted with
is to redeem, that is, to look at every.
Single task. Before you and say God, how can
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I honor you and it's not so muchabout making God the the the the
first of everything where where the beginning of everything but
making God the center of everything that you do if you're
washing dishes you're washing dishes in these dishes for the
Lord in everything we see God's redemption at work.
That is what. Being.
Part of God's Kingdom is. It's not isolation.
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From the world, it's not this mentality that we could kind of
conquer everything we. Have a conquered.
It's funny. Because I was at Bellevue, City
Hill, Bellevue, I was preparing a message and we're going to.
Call this to reverse. Shortly, but I was preparing a
message and I have a mentor He's73 years old married for 53
(37:48):
years amazing guy right He's like, what is your message
about? I'm like, I'm going to preach.
I'm. Standing in the gap.
You know, like that. Verse in the.
Old Testament and he's like, like, how do you mean that?
Like praying for people and theydon't know like standing between
God and people. And he's like, OK, well.
Can you stop by my? House and I'm like that's
(38:08):
probably not good so. I stopped by my by.
His house and he's like Savik. What do you what do you mean
standing like like praying. I'm like no, like standing like
doom. The work of ministry in between
God and people. You know he looks at me and he
goes like Jesus. Slavic Jesus, did that you?
(38:30):
Know Slavic, get off the cross. Jesus stood in the gap between
humanity and God, right He. Says if you.
Be lifting him up, he will draw everyone unto himself.
That is the king that we serve. That.
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Is the king that sustains. US that is the king that that
nourishes us, and if we take in his bread, we you are what you
eat. So.
If we take in his bread, we get.On his agenda?
Not our agenda and. Everything becomes.
(39:16):
A holy moment. How you love your wife, how love
your kids. How you raise your kids.
How you disciple your kids. How you preach, how you are
boss, how you're an employee, how you're a student, how you're
a son in all things, God looks for redemption.
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I love how going back to Jeremiah, it's an amazing moment
where he's giving advice to the people.
Who will be? In captivity, he says, also seek
the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have cared, the
to which I have carried you in exile.
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Pray the Lord. For it because if you prosper,
you'll also prosper. I think those are amazing words.
Now. We live in exile, this.
Place Peter makes it very clear that this place is not our home.
Second Peter, First Peter 2 nines is this.
But you are chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
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God's special possession, that you may declare that the praises
of Him will called you out of darkness into his wonderful
light. Once you are not a people, but
now you are the people of God. Once you have not received
mercy, but you have received mercy.
Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners in exile to abstain
from sinful desires and wage waragainst your own soul that wage
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you a war against your soul. Live such good lives among the
pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see
good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits.
That's good advice seek to make.The city that you live.
In Prosper. So whatever influence.
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God has given you this morning. Submit that to the Lord.
Be the. Best employee.
That you can be and seek redemption in every single
circumstance. That is the.
Kingdom of God so. Would you stand with me?
We're gonna pray.
Well, it's good to be back. I'm excited to be here.
We are going to stay in John 6 and we're going to pray and then
we're going to start again. It's it's awesome.
If you were here last time, lastSunday, Pastor Alex did an
amazing job talking about the names of God.
And I want to just kind of continue on that.
So if you have your Bibles open to John 6.
(00:22):
And also, again, Pastor Alex kind of alluded to it in the
opening, but this is a pretty long chapter, but there's a lot
of really good things here. And as you open, we're going to
start in John. We're going to talk about John.
We'll go a bit literally in history, and then we'll come
back to how should we live now? So let's go ahead and pray and
then I'll read. So Lord Jesus, I thank you for
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your presence here today. Lord, we want to hear from you.
Lord, we don't want my words, Lord, we want your words.
Lord, I pray right now that I befaithful to that Lord, I, I pray
that your presence may be palpable in this, in this house,
Lord, be felt and Lord, that we would walk out of this place,
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change into this form. Lord, let the words of our
mouth, my meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, Lord,
my Savior and my Redeemer. And then, well, this is an
amazing chapter. This is where Jesus proclaims
that he is the bread of life. So I'm going to read from verse
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one to verse 15 says this. Sometime after this, Jesus
crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee that is the site
the Sea of Tiberias. And a great crowd of people
followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by
healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on the
mountainside and sat down with his disciples.
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The Jewish Passover festival wasnear when Jesus looked up and
saw a great crowd coming towardshim.
He said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to
eat? He asked this only to test him,
for he already knew what he already had in mind, what he was
about to do. But Philip.
Philip answered it would take more than half a year's wages to
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buy enough bread for each one tohave a bite.
Another of his disciples, AndrewPeters, Andrew Simon Peters
brother spoke up. Here's a boy with five small
barley loafs and two small fish.But how far will they go for so
many? Jesus said have the people sit
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down. There was plenty of grass and in
that place and they sat down. About 5000 men were there.
Jesus then took the loaf, gave thanks and distributed to them
to those who are seated as much as they wanted.
He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to
eat, he said to these disciples,gather all the pieces that are
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left, let nothing be wasted. So they gather them and fill the
12 baskets with pieces of the five barley loafs leftover by
those who had eaten. After people saw that Jesus,
that the sign that Jesus performed, they begin to say,
surely I want you to pay attention to that.
Surely this is a prophet who hascome into the world.
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Jesus knowing they had intended to come and make him king by
force withdrew against again to a mountain by himself.
It's an amazing story because here you have people seeing
signs that Jesus is something special.
And by the way, he has this little trick that he can produce
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food out of nowhere, right? He, he, he can do things for us,
right? So they came to Jesus and, and
we are told that this is right close to Passover.
And if you know anything about Passover, this is, this is,
there's a lot of a lot of theology there in the Passover.
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And Jesus is asking the discipledisciples to find enough bread
to kind of like feed everybody. Now.
Bread is awesome. I have an addiction to bread,
any form of bread. I love bread, right?
Bread is good food, but food in general is good, right?
(04:26):
Food without food. Like we can probably survive if
we have no shelter. We'll find a way to find shelter
as long as we have food, right. Food is what sustains us.
And I think maybe God made us towant food every single day to
remind us that we are not that self-sustaining.
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We have to go to God for food, right, But food is is awesome.
People say things like you are what you eat, right.
There's actually a, a physician along, he's kind of considered
like the, the, the long ago, the1st doctor, right?
(05:08):
He says this, he says let your food be your medicine and your
medicine your food. You've heard things like an army
marches on their stomach, right?Meaning that if you don't have
food, you're not going anywhere,right?
Even like when you got sick and man, bless our moms, our moms
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made us chicken soup and and somehow just her presence and
somehow just that soup made us feel better instantaneously.
We also didn't want to go to school, but that's besides the
point. Just that food alone made us
feel better. Actually, somebody took that
whole idea and they turn it into, do you guys remember this?
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The chicken, chicken, chicken soup for the soul.
There you go, right. Food is good.
And The thing is, a lot of timeswe forget that God is the
provider of everything that is good in our lives, including
food. Now, Alex talked quite a bit
about the names of God, and one of them is Yahweh Yire.
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The one that we couldn't pronounce last time, I think it
was the anglicized version of that is Jehovah Jireh, right?
God, our provider. God is a provider and we get in
so much trouble when we start tolook at other things in our
lives as the provider. When we look at money as our
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security, when we look at our job as our provider, we tend to
forget, and I would call this the ABCDE of the cycle of
brokenness where A stands for apathy.
Usually the way we get into a cycle of brokenness is we just
(07:00):
kind of stop caring. We go into apathy and then
apathy leads to bondage, right? And we give in to too much
drink. We're into some addiction,
right? And that bondage is, is
overbearing because any God outside of our God is a horrible
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God. That bondage turns turns
overbearing for your life and then you cry out to the Lord.
So that's the C in the ABC. And then God delivers you and
that's the D. And then there's a time of ease.
And then you will again go back to apathy bondage, crying out to
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the Lord, confessing your sin. Then God delivers you right?
And there's a time of ease again.
And that experience as a human being is not just our
experience. This has been the experience of
the Jewish people for thousands of years.
God delivers them from Egypt. And after a while, after so
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enthralled with what God has done to deliver us, they start
to become apathetic. And then they start to complain
and their apathy turns into bondage.
God allows them to be enslaved for 110, a hundred, 400 years.
And then they crowd to the Lord.And that when they crowd to the
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Lord, God delivers them. And there's a time of ease.
And you can see this pattern over and over and over,
especially when you get to the book of Judges, The book of
Judges. It seems like this cycle of
brokenness happens every 40 years.
God raises up a judge, delivers them.
It's a good time. And everyone is so amazed at the
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work that God has done. And there's a time of just start
caring and there's apathy. And then God says somebody else
and conquers them. And now they're in bondage.
And then in bondage they cry outto the Lord and God delivers
them. And when God delivers them
right, there's a time of ease and goes back to apathy.
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And it's cycle after cycle aftercycle.
And when we get to the book of Judges, the end of the book of
Judges, it says that everyone gets to a point where they do
whatever is good in their eyes. Does that sound familiar for our
modern day? What everyone starts to do
whatever is in their life. And maybe for you it's a bit
different. You used to be passionate about
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the Lord. You used to attend church in the
morning. But one day you're like, I'm
just gonna stay in. I'm just stay in and just watch
the game. Because that's what I mean.
The game is good, right? Like it's good family bonding.
And that that leads into apathy,right?
And you become more and more apathetic and then you start
drinking too much or giving in to any kind of like bondage.
(09:54):
And then you realize, OK, this is this.
I need to, I need to cry Outbackto the Lord.
This is not any new to us. This has been the going, the
going thing for for thousands ofyears.
Now going back to Jewish people after the book of Judges, they
have a time of what we would call the golden years.
When you have the Davidic sort of dynasty, right?
(10:16):
You have David and Solomon and everyone looks at this time of
of great with a great king, right, God's great power.
But then they're enslaved by theAssyrians, and Assyrians are
cruel people. These people get this.
These people skin their enemies alive.
(10:37):
They mutilate them. And just in case you wonder why
Jonah doesn't want to go to speak in Nineveh is because
Nineveh is their capital. So he wakes up on that faithful
day with a forecast of maybe, I don't know, a thunderstorm and
maybe, maybe get eaten by a fish, right?
And God is calling him to go preach the gospel to some wicked
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people and he, he's not having it.
Not only these people are horrible, but God, why would you
save them? Turns out God cares for the
wicked and he goes, he goes and preaches, you know, for, for for
a long time, for 40 days, right?And and then he steps back and
he watches the city and he, it worked.
God saves them. He's like God, why would, why
(11:19):
would you save them? They're wicked.
And God says he made a plant to grow, and then that plant died.
And he was so distraught becausethe plant was covering him for
shade. And God's like, you care more
about this plant than these people.
And the Syrians are horrible to the Jewish people.
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But then they were overcome by anew, a new empire called
Babylon. You've heard so much about
Babylon from Daniel, right? And they're somewhat better to
the Jewish people. But it's what's awesome is that
God is still at work even this when they're taken to Babylon.
There's this prophet, his name is Jeremiah.
(12:02):
And Jeremiah knows that even though we are taken into
captivity and there's not reallyhope for us right now, we
believe in the God that keeps his promises.
And one day he is going to bringus back to this land.
You know what he does? He goes and buys a plot of the
land and takes the deed, digs a hole and buries it.
Not because he needs land, because he trusts that the same
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God that has delivered the people from the Egyptians, he'll
deliver from Babylon. And then Babylon, we get the
story of Daniel and Daniel, right, The dream.
Remember the, the king Nebuchadnezzar, great king of
Babylon has a, has a dream and he's asking everyone, you got to
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tell me what my dream was and you have to interpret it.
And everyone's having a hard time with this because you can
kind of like know what people dream about.
And Daniel gets this revelation from God.
And in Daniel too, we have this amazing, amazing discovery,
which is a dream that God reveals to a king about what
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will happen in the future. Now, if this is a lot of history
for you, just stay with me, OK? Because it's going to get it's
going to get it's going to hit home close to home.
And this dream is the statue. The statue is made out of a head
made out of gold, a chest that'smade out of silver, a thigh and
hip hop made of of bronze. Then you have legs made out of
(13:34):
iron, right? And then the the feet are iron
mixed with clay. And now we know that this is
something that is kind of amazing in theology, at war, in
the history. These things are representing
the Kingdom that will follow Babylon.
The way we know that is because Daniel says that.
And if we study in history, that's exactly what happens.
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Now keep in mind Daniel's speaking about 600 years before
Jesus is incarnated here on earth.
It's an amazing revelation. So when we get to Daniel 39, it
says this, but after your Kingdom, he's speaking to
Nebuchadnezzar here. After your Kingdom comes to an
end, another Kingdom inferior toyours.
This will be the Kingdom of Persia where King Cyrus the
Great allows the Jewish people to go back to the their land.
(14:19):
He says inferior to yours will rise up to take your place after
that Kingdom has fallen. Yet 1/3 Kingdom.
This is the Kingdom of Greece orGreek Kingdom led by Alexander
the Great represented in bronze will rise to rule the world.
Following that Kingdom there will be a fourth one we know now
to be Rome. Rome is the 4th Kingdom.
(14:42):
The Kingdom will smash and then it says after the 4th Kingdom as
as strong as iron the Kingdom will smash and crush all
previous empires just as iron smashes and crushes everything
is strikes. The feet and toes you saw were a
combination of iron and baked clay, showing the Kingdom of God
will be divided. Sorry, the Kingdom will be
divided like iron mixed with clay.
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You will have some strength of iron, but while some parts of it
will be strong, other parts willwill be weak.
The mixture of iron and clay also show that these kingdoms
will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances
with which other through throughintermarriages and so on, but
they will not hold together justas iron clay during that reign
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of those kingdoms, the God of heaven.
Now I want you to listen to this.
This is the fourth Kingdom. During that Kingdom, right
During the reign of those kingdoms, the God of Heaven will
set up a Kingdom that will neverbe destroyed, a Kingdom there
will never be conquered. You will crush all these
kingdoms into nothingness and you will stand forever.
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That is the meaning of the rock cut from the mountain.
That's part of the dream, though, not by human hands.
The crush to pieces, the statue of iron, bronze and clay, silver
and gold. The great God was showing the
king what will happen in the future.
The dream is true and the meaning is certain.
Now, I encourage you if you're ahistorian or a theologian to go
study this passage because, well, Daniel says exactly that
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happens in history. And what happens during the 4th
Kingdom, which is Rome? Jesus is born, and Jesus talks a
lot about the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here, the Kingdom
has arrived, and this Kingdom destroys all the other kingdoms.
What happened? What do we know about Assyrians?
(16:33):
Well, we don't know much about them other than what we know
from history. They don't exist today.
What happened to Babylon? They're gone.
What happened to Persian Empire?They're gone.
What happened to Greek Empire? This is the intertestamental
period between Old Testament andNew Testament.
Alexander the Great Who? Probably have realized by now,
(16:53):
right? He conquers a lot of things and
God uses his conquest for everyone to start speaking
Greek. And that's why we have the New
Testament in Greek, right? He's somewhat pretty good to to
the Jewish people. And then he dies and then
there's two other kings to rise up in his place.
One of them is Ptolemy and the other one is Seleucid.
(17:15):
And Seleucid is horrible to the Jewish people.
Seleucid's kings actually go andstart to defile the temple.
They offer a pig as a sacrifice.This has happened in 167 BC.
Now, why am I telling you all ofthese things?
Because you see, by the time Jesus comes on the scene,
meaning not Jesus always existed.
We know that. But when he's incarnated here on
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earth, right? The Jewish people have been
through so much. They've been through so many
ABCDE of bondage, crying out to the Lord, deliverance a time of
years, over and over and over. And right before Jesus is born,
about 167 years before that, they have their temple, the
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place of worship, defiled and God rises up.
A guy by the name of Judah Maccabee.
You probably heard of Hanukkah, right?
And this, this, this king is theguy who, if you think about Palm
Sunday, the the way they welcomed Jesus in Jerusalem is
because that's how they welcomedJudas Maccabe, because he's a
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rebel, but he's a rebel king andhe overthrows some of the Greek
rulers and now he becomes that like king, the Messiah king.
Now all of that to say this is that when Jesus is born,
everyone has different expectations.
Some people that people think that Jesus is a prophet, he's
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like Moses. Some people are thinking he's
obviously the Judah Maccabee, hewill overthrow the Roman Empire.
So that's why they always keep on pushing Jesus.
Jesus, are you going to restore the Kingdom now?
Jesus, are you going to revolt now?
And Jesus starts talking and saying, look, my Kingdom is not
of this world. I'm not here to conquer Babylon.
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I'm not here to conquer Nineveh.We're Athens.
I'm here, my Kingdom is not of, I'm not here to conquer
Jerusalem. I'm here to conquer the human
heart because God's Kingdom is not set in, in, in maps or
places where geography is set inthe human heart.
(19:25):
That's why when the woman, the, the, the well, she's like you
after Jesus kind of calls her out.
He's like, you have 5 husbands and the one you're with now,
it's not your husband. And she gets very theological
and she goes, yeah, but see, I see you're a prophet.
So should we worship in temple? In the temple?
Where should we worship? On this mountain, Right.
And Jesus says what? There comes in time and it's
already here that you won't worship there.
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We're there. But you will worship in what?
In spirit and in truth. We now know that the Holy Spirit
is the temple. I'm sorry.
Our bodies is the temple of the Holy Spirit.
We know that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us.
And what Daniel prophesied is true because some 2000 years
later all these kingdoms are destroyed.
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I don't know if you know this ornot, but there's 2.3 or 2.4
people that maybe they're not great Christians, but they claim
Jesus as Lord and Savior. That is, that is 2 point
billion. Thank you.
That is 1/4 of the people alive.That is the Kingdom that has
lasted the last 2000 years. That is the Kingdom that Jesus
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is talking about. Jesus is not here to be the king
of a region. He's the king of the heart.
He's the king. He sets up a Kingdom inside the
person. So when we get back to this,
then what? We started right when they see
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that he has food to offer and says that they were trying to
force him to be king. And you're like, like, what in
the world? Why would you?
Why would you do that? Well, because they got into a
pattern. We have a problem.
We need a king. A king needs to rule over us, be
(21:16):
Saul or David, right? We have a problem in the church.
We need a new pastor. The pastor's going to fix it,
right? We have a problem.
The company, we need a new CEO, right?
They, they are in this mentalityand we have a problem.
Well, apparently this guy can provide finances for us.
(21:37):
So if you're a pastor, if you can preach well, well, guess
what? That's what the people want.
They want good bread. And Jesus says something
completely out of the ordinary. Jesus says this, this thing
where he's like, actually, I'm not just giving bread.
Keep in mind, he just fed 5000. And a lot of liberal theologians
(21:59):
will say, well, they just sharedtheir lunch.
No, this was a supernatural miracle.
There's no if if you if you don't think this is supernatural
miracle. Well, he walks on water right
after that. So good luck with explaining
that one away. No, this is a supernatural
miracle God where Jesus takes the, the the bread and the fish,
right? And he multiplies it.
(22:20):
And yes, a God who can create the universe out of nothing can
make more bread. Trust me on this one, right?
It's not as a logical stretch tothink that.
So he just fed to 5000 and you know what happens next after he,
he withdraws, 'cause they're trying to make him king, right?
He withdraws and you have the whole thing.
(22:41):
Him walking on water. Disciples are very like, are
very kind of kind of excited about that 'cause there's two
miracles on walking on water. He walks on water and then they
just like the Bible says that they just kind of arrived to the
place and that's a miracle in itself again.
But then the next day, look at verse 22.
So this is the next day. The crowd that has stayed on the
opposite shore of the lake realized the only one boat had
(23:03):
been there and Jesus had not entered with his disciples, but
they had gone away. There's some boats from Tiberius
landed near the place where the people had eaten and the bread
after the Lord had given thanks.Once the crowd realized that
neither Jesus nor disciples werethere, they got into their boats
and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus.
When they found him on the otherside of the lake, they asked
(23:24):
Rabbi, when did you get here? Hey buddy, how did you get here?
That's their response. Jesus answered and Jesus calls
their bluff because you know what they want?
They want more bread. You know that trick that you did
yesterday? Can you, can you just do that
(23:45):
thing again? And Jesus says very truly, I
tell you, you are looking for menot because you saw the signs I
performed, but because you ate the loafs and had your fill.
Do not work for good the spoils,but for food that endures their
eternal life to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give
(24:08):
you for on him God the Father has placed the seal of approval.
So look, I know you came here because you just want more
bread, right? They asked him, what must we do?
Now that's not so crazy to ask because a people that were so
trained for so long to do anything just to get the kings
of kings of kings approval, right?
(24:29):
What must we do? And a lot of times when it comes
to Jesus, we have the same attitude.
What? What do we need to do right?
So what must we do? The works of God requires, Jesus
answered, the work of God is this to believe in the one who
has sent? So then they asked him, what
sign will you give that we may see and believe you?
(24:51):
What will you do? Our ancestors right?
A man in the wilderness, as it is written.
He gave them bread from heaven to eat, which is insane to say
because Jesus just gave you bread yesterday.
But what they're saying is, well, when we were in the
desert, God fed us every day. You just did it once, right?
(25:16):
So, so they're having a hard time with this.
And Jesus says very truly, I tell you, it's not Moses that
gave you the bread from heaven, but he's my Father who gives you
the bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the
bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the
world. Now, if you're taking notes and
you wonder what this message is about and you want to title for
this is for the life of the world, Jesus is the bread for
(25:42):
the life of the world. Now they don't get it for a
while and Jesus keeps on saying,guys, the bread we're talking
about, he's using a spiritual metaphor, right?
The bread that I'm talking about, it's me.
And he uses the same phrase thatGod used with Moses, the when he
says ego and me right I am that I am or the, the, the bread of
(26:06):
life I am. I am the bread of life.
What Jesus is doing here, he's making a claim to divinity.
He's saying I am God. And they're having a hard time
with this now. They turned from seekers to
complainers to grumplers to deserters, because that's what
(26:28):
you get when all you pursue is the hand of Jesus, not his face,
right? If you come to Jesus because
what he has to offer you, then you're going to go from seeking
Him to complain when you don't get your way to grumble and
after grumpling is to go into complete desertion because
(26:52):
they're having a really hard time with this.
When Jesus says I am the bread of life, they're like, like,
like, and she's like, oh, by theway, you have to eat my body,
you have to drink my blood. And a lot of them are like,
that's a really hard saying. Who can understand it?
(27:13):
Now? A younger me, I'll probably
think, well, Jesus, you're kind of being a little bit way too,
too vague here and it's causing them to to walk away.
And I think Jesus response wouldhave been good, right?
Jesus is making very, very clear.
Now look at this. Verse 59 says this.
(27:33):
He said that while teaching a synagogue in Capernaum, many
disciples deserted him. So after this a lot of his
disciples leave him. On hearing this, many of his
disciples said this is a hard teaching, who can accept it?
Aware of his disciples grumblingabout this, Jesus said to them,
does this offend you? And what if you see the Son of
(27:57):
Man ascend to where he was before?
The Spirit gives life and flesh counts for nothing.
The words I have spoken to you, they're full of the Spirit and
life. Yeah, there are some of you who
do not believe. For Jesus had known in the
beginning of the ones that will not believe who betray him.
He wanted to say, This is why I told you, no one can come to to
(28:17):
me unless the Father enables them.
From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no
longer followed him. And look at what Jesus says to
the 12 that remain, right? We know that he had a lot of
disciples. Some of them leave and his
disciples still stay. He says you do not want to leave
too, do you? And Jesus asked the 12 and Simon
(28:40):
Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words to eternal life.
No, it's a long chapter. It's a lot packed in there.
But if you're going to get something out of this chapter,
this is what I want you to get is that Jesus is the bread of
life. Now you already knew that.
(29:01):
And this bread of life is there to bring life to the world.
This bread of life is to bring you life to make you alive.
And when Jesus saves you, then you should ask yourself, yes, he
has saved me. He has made me so I don't have
to die. But what also has he saved me
for, right? Because here's how we respond a
(29:26):
lot of times when we hear that we are called to be part of
God's Kingdom. People have different ways of
dealing with the Kingdom. Now we are told that we are part
of the world. And Jesus is what we call high
priestly prayer. Right before he's about to be
(29:46):
crucified, he prays for the church and he says this.
I want them to be united, but I want them to understand that
even though they're part of thisworld, they're not of this
world. You've heard this phrase a lot,
but most people don't know what it means.
What does it mean to be part of the world but not of the world?
(30:10):
What does that mean? And over centuries, we've tried
different things. And I would say there's at least
a few different ways people approach this.
A way to do this, and I don't recommend it, is to fortify your
position. I'm going to go and buy myself
A20 acre lot in Snohomish County.
I'm going to build a house therethat's 5000 square feet.
(30:32):
I'll put a huge fence around it,maybe get a couple dogs because
couple security cameras and the world is crazy.
The world is going to hell in a handbasket and I need to protect
me and my family. Well, there's been Jewish people
that have done that about 200 years before Jesus.
And you can get so enthralled inthat.
You can get so into preparing for the apocalypse.
(30:55):
I wouldn't recommend it because you're called to be part of the
world but not of it. That's right.
And then some people might take sort of the domineering approach
where the conquest approach, like all these other kingdoms,
we got to go and take the politics.
We got to take the business, we got to take the schools started
a few decades ago called the seven mountain mandate.
(31:16):
You probably heard of that, right?
We have to go conquer religion, right?
Christianity has to be everywhere.
Family has to be like these are the priorities in family, right?
We have to conquer government, put our people in place, and
then we put our people in place and we realize these people go
really kind of off the rail and you're like, but I voted for you
(31:38):
because because I thought you going to like right now, Full
disclosure, I tend to vote Republican, but when I see the
Republican Party starting to endorse abortion and
homosexuality and all these things, I'm like, what are we
doing here? Right?
Putting people in media, If we can just take over the movies
(32:00):
and the music, taking over the. Arts world now I'm.
Part of I teach at our high school, right?
I'm part of education, right? Business.
Now, maybe you're sitting here, you're thinking what's wrong
with all of that? There's nothing wrong with
trying to do that. But I think it's missing a big
concept here. And the concept here is do you
(32:21):
trust the sovereignty of God is.Jesus.
Your bread or not? What is it?
The levers of power and government?
That's your That's your bread. But is.
It your fame, that's your. Levers of of power.
What is it, Jesus? Your bread, right?
Because here's the. Thing this could start.
Really good. What's wrong with going and
(32:44):
doing this? What's wrong with doing?
There's nothing wrong with that.But if Jesus is not?
If our allegiance is not Jesus, if our allegiance is a political
party, if our allegiance is is as a company or all these
systems fail. I think over and over I just
proved to you how many kingdoms,empires fell.
Where are they? They're the ash pile of history,
(33:06):
just like every company and all the other things that are
temporary. Or you can go.
With the more liberal route, right?
We can reach the World. We have to.
Be relevant to. Them.
We have to reach them. So we going to open all these
things and slowly by slowly the gospel gets deluded and the.
(33:29):
Medicine that you're offering? The world has no power
whatsoever because it's nothing.It's just motivational speaking.
It's it's it's, you know, self help cloaked in some spiritual
language. And that is we find ourselves.
In and you have a choice my friend, to be.
(33:51):
Part of God's Kingdom. You can trust Chariots.
You can trust your systems. We're going to trust Jesus.
For your daily bread. You have a choice.
Now, is that to say that we should draw back and not be part
(34:12):
of culture? No the.
Best thing that you can. Do if you're a husband is
there's a lot of areas of influence that God is giving you
to store those well. No, a lot of times.
Preaching. We're teaching theology, right?
We think of these things as spiritual jobs.
But there's part of my job like data entry when I graded
(34:34):
students and I put their grades in the book, right?
Like there's not a lot of spiritual things about that.
But if you follow. Jesus then all work.
Is for His glory. It's interesting I.
I don't have any kids. I'm not married.
(34:55):
And I lived in Bellevue this time and I ran into a friend of
mine who I haven't seen for six years.
And he looked at me like, man, you're just living the dream.
You live in Bellevue, you're single.
Like you're not married. You can do as much ministry as
you want. Isn't this great?
And I look at him, I'm like, andI see his kids kind of running
around. His wife is getting coffee and
I. Look at him.
(35:15):
I'm like. But you can too, right?
And he's like, what do you mean like?
You you can do as. Much ministry too, right?
And I don't think he understood what I was.
Trying to say but like bro your your kids are ministry, your
wife is ministry, your family isministry, business is ministry.
(35:40):
God is giving you a level. Influence.
If you're a student, that is ministry.
That is how you honor God. That is how you glorify God.
If you're a pastor, that is ministry.
If we're cleaning a building, that's ministry.
Everything. That we do we.
Do for the glory of God. It's not just preaching, we're
(36:00):
singing, worship, everything, every part of our lives, right?
Your words are ministry if you're a.
Husband one of the best. Things you ever do in ministry?
One of the greatest things to doin ministry is to love your wife
well. If you're a father, is to raise
your sons well. If I'm a son, one of the best
way I can do in ministry is to honor my parents.
(36:22):
Everything. That we do.
Jesus. Does not want us to.
Take this approach of isolation and withdraw from the world and
go to a monastery or build a fortress somewhere in Snohomish
County. Jesus does not advocate for
that, or Jesus is not advocatingfor us to embrace the sort of
conquest to conquer everything. You know, you're serving Judah
(36:43):
Maccabee. You're not serving Jesus in that
point. Jesus is also not trying.
To, to, to, to, to ask you to compromise on your convictions
and on the word just so you can reach people.
What Jesus is asking? Whatever you're entrusted with
is to redeem, that is, to look at every.
Single task. Before you and say God, how can
(37:04):
I honor you and it's not so muchabout making God the the the the
first of everything where where the beginning of everything but
making God the center of everything that you do if you're
washing dishes you're washing dishes in these dishes for the
Lord in everything we see God's redemption at work.
That is what. Being.
Part of God's Kingdom is. It's not isolation.
(37:28):
From the world, it's not this mentality that we could kind of
conquer everything we. Have a conquered.
It's funny. Because I was at Bellevue, City
Hill, Bellevue, I was preparing a message and we're going to.
Call this to reverse. Shortly, but I was preparing a
message and I have a mentor He's73 years old married for 53
(37:48):
years amazing guy right He's like, what is your message
about? I'm like, I'm going to preach.
I'm. Standing in the gap.
You know, like that. Verse in the.
Old Testament and he's like, like, how do you mean that?
Like praying for people and theydon't know like standing between
God and people. And he's like, OK, well.
Can you stop by my? House and I'm like that's
(38:08):
probably not good so. I stopped by my by.
His house and he's like Savik. What do you what do you mean
standing like like praying. I'm like no, like standing like
doom. The work of ministry in between
God and people. You know he looks at me and he
goes like Jesus. Slavic Jesus, did that you?
(38:30):
Know Slavic, get off the cross. Jesus stood in the gap between
humanity and God, right He. Says if you.
Be lifting him up, he will draw everyone unto himself.
That is the king that we serve. That.
(38:53):
Is the king that sustains. US that is the king that that
nourishes us, and if we take in his bread, we you are what you
eat. So.
If we take in his bread, we get.On his agenda?
Not our agenda and. Everything becomes.
(39:16):
A holy moment. How you love your wife, how love
your kids. How you raise your kids.
How you disciple your kids. How you preach, how you are
boss, how you're an employee, how you're a student, how you're
a son in all things, God looks for redemption.
(39:36):
I love how going back to Jeremiah, it's an amazing moment
where he's giving advice to the people.
Who will be? In captivity, he says, also seek
the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have cared, the
to which I have carried you in exile.
(39:57):
Pray the Lord. For it because if you prosper,
you'll also prosper. I think those are amazing words.
Now. We live in exile, this.
Place Peter makes it very clear that this place is not our home.
Second Peter, First Peter 2 nines is this.
But you are chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,
(40:22):
God's special possession, that you may declare that the praises
of Him will called you out of darkness into his wonderful
light. Once you are not a people, but
now you are the people of God. Once you have not received
mercy, but you have received mercy.
Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners in exile to abstain
from sinful desires and wage waragainst your own soul that wage
(40:44):
you a war against your soul. Live such good lives among the
pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see
good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits.
That's good advice seek to make.The city that you live.
In Prosper. So whatever influence.
(41:08):
God has given you this morning. Submit that to the Lord.
Be the. Best employee.
That you can be and seek redemption in every single
circumstance. That is the.
Kingdom of God so. Would you stand with me?
We're gonna pray.
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