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Living by Faith

Bread from Heaven (4): God’s Economy

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“He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted.”

It’s a much taught-on topic, but we cannot move on from the sign of the Bread of Life without considering the fact that the miracle happened in the hands of the disciples, not just through the hands of Jesus. For those who walk by faith Jesus is waiting with provision for the needs of the multitude, saying: “Take this, and give it out in my power.”

Riches in Glory
Imagine what it felt like for the disciples to have a small chunk of bread and a little bit of fish in their hands, to break pieces off, and see it just reappear in their hands, like water coming out of a tap. I wonder what it looked like? What it felt like? An unending flow of provision from Heaven pouring onto Earth by the Spirit to meet every need, in abundance. 2 Cor 9:8 comes to mind: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” Count the “abundance” words in this verse: all grace, abound, always, all sufficiency, all things, abundance, every good work. Seven times in one sentence, the Holy Spirit spells out just how sufficient are the riches in glory according to which our God will supply all our needs. (Phil 4:19)

So why can it so often feel that we are behind the door when the abundance is handed out? We can bring any number of spiritual “reasons” to why our need can seem to remain no matter how much we tell God that we are believing for His sufficiency, but I think we can find a key in James 4:3. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James is not one to pull any punches. Does he mean that God is a Killjoy and doesn’t want us to have any pleasure? If God made all things for His pleasure (Rev 4:11), then surely we get to share in some of it? ! Tim 6:17 tells us that God “gives us richly all things to enjoy,” so it is certainly in His will that we have pleasure in our lives.

Pleasures and Priorities
The whole of 1 Timothy 6:17 says this: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.” It’s not that God doesn’t want us to have “things to enjoy;” but in this verse we see that He wants to have the pleasure of giving them to us Himself, rather than see us try to by-pass His will for our lives and help ourselves to the things that we want. It’s a matter of trusting Him to Know what’s best for us, rather than asking for our inheritance like the prodigal son and spending it on carnal foolishness.

But it’s also a matter of priorities. It’s when we seek first the Kingdom of God that “all these things” are given to us. It’s when we give, that “pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men pour into your lap.” (Luke 6:38) God’s economy is the reverse of the world’s. When we live as servants of Christ (which we are: 1 Cor 4:1, Col 3:24) our responsibility is first to Jesus: what does He want us to do with what He has given us? Like the unprofitable servants in the parable (Luke 17:10) our job is to do what we are told, and it’s the Lord’s job to reward us. He puts the loaves and fishes into our hands for us to distribute.

When I’ve read this story in the past I’ve tended to focus on the multiplication aspect: the boy’s lunch becoming food for the crowd, and all that we can learn from that. The teaching that I have listened to or read has tended to have the same emphasis, and the twelve baskets left over have been a bit of an aside. I’ve come across references to them being symbolic of the twelve tribes, and I’ve seen the instruction to “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost,” (v. 12) as referring to the theme expressed in v 37, where Jesus talks about gathering “all that the Father gives me.” But what I haven’t seen so often (if at all?) is that this is quite simply a demonstration of God’s economy in practice.

The Kingdom Equation
I see it like this: Jesus gives a visible handful of resources to His disciples, with the instruction to distribute what they are holding to the needs He has shown them. What they see in their hands is ludicrously insufficient, but what they need to believe and see in the Spirit is Philippians 4:19 and 2 Cor 9:8. When they obey and step out into the crowd, Jesus fulfils His part of the Kingdom equation, which, broadly expressed, is “His abundance always equals our need.” So far so familiar. But once the ministry is over, there are twelve baskets of fragments that weren’t needed by the crowd to gather up. And they may well have a symbolic and spiritual significance: as with all of the Word, there are many layers to every detail. But I think there is a more concrete and immediate application to this part of the story: twelve baskets, twelve disciples. One basket each. They began with crumbs, which, like the widow of Zarephath, (1 Kings 17:12) they shared out; and they ended up with plenty, pressed down, running over, poured into their laps.

We know God’s promises are true, but I think there is more to receiving God’s abundant supply than just knowing the words and declaring them. Jesus Himself tells us why: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11: 28 NIV) In these days of crumbling world systems and collapsing international order we are increasingly going to find ourselves in the place where Jesus is our only source of supply. And this isn’t just so that we can keep what He gives us for ourselves: it’s so that we can feed the hungry crowd with it first.

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Pursuing Love

Bread from Heaven: 2

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Make the people sit down
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that what matters most of all is “faith working through love.” So here we are on the mountainside. We have kept in step with the Spirit; we have lifted our eyes with love, we are aware of how God has led us to and provided for this moment, and so we believe that Jesus wants to meet the need that is now before us. Even though He knows what He is going to do, we don’t. What next?

Jesus says, “Make the people sit down.” Some miracles require preparation, and that preparation has to be in obedience to what the Lord has asked us to do. The disciples could not see with their natural eyes what might happen next, but they got their instructions and complied with them. Like the unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10), they simply did what they were told to do. And more than that, they had to do so with authority. 12 men had to exercise crowd control on 5000, many of whom had their families with them, and all of whom were ravenous and will have wanted to be first in the queue for whatever goodies Jesus was going do dish out. We have probably read and heard the story many times, but if you imagine the scene and do the maths it’s not hard to see that the first miracle was actually getting that crowd ready to receive the food in the first place. When I was a teacher I found it hard enough to control a group of thirty, so I needed to exercise authority – and that was when I knew what it was I was going to deliver.

The disciples could organise the crowd because the Lord had clearly given them the mandate to do so, and they put their trust in His authority without question. I wonder what they thought He was going to do? Elijah and Elisha both worked miracles of multiplication, but the nearest thing to supernatural provision of food at this level that they would all have known of was the manna in the wilderness. It was a story that they would have heard many times, and it was deeply embedded in their culture. Maybe when they heard it they wondered what it was like, and now they were thinking, “Wow, we’re going to see manna! Awesome!” How often we have one expectation, and God does something completely different, often meeting our need at a deeper level. But one thing we do know, is that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” (Eph. 3:20) We can be expecting manna when God has multiplication in mind.

Authority follows the Anointing
So when God gives us an instruction, we don’t know what we are being prepared for: all we know is what we have heard and the One who is doing the preparing. But because we have had the instruction, we have the authority to carry it out. I have a friend, Andrew, who tells the story of a meeting when he stepped up to preach at a conference towards the end of the worship time, and the Holy Spirit said to him “The anointing isn’t on you; it’s on the lady who is ministering with the flags.” He knew the Lord’s voice well enough and had the humility to obey, laying down his message and releasing the flag ministry to become the focus of that part of the conference. Authority followed the anointing.

In how many churches, every Sunday, is manna on the programme when God has multiplication planned? Our meeting this week will be basically the same format as last week. And the week before, and next week. We know what to expect, and we know what we will do: it’s time to gather the manna.  We prepare our sermon or our worship set and it’s what we do. If we are Pentecostals or charismatics we probably ask God to anoint it, but what we are much less likely to do is to ask Him to replace or change it if He wants to. If it’s a smaller group we might be more likely to be flexible, but a hungry crowd at a conference, waiting to be fed? Will we put down the important message we have spent a week preparing and praying over, and move aside for the flags? Andrew did just that, the power of God fell, His manifest presence came into the room, and lives were changed. Andrew didn’t know what was going to happen: he just “made the people sit down.” If we will hear God’s word in faith and act in authority, He will provide more than we can ever ask or imagine. All we have to do is lay down our lives.

Manna, or Mission?
We have sometimes hosted gap year students from Germany who have come to spend the year as interns working with the children and young people in our church. We have kept in touch with most of them, and recently one of them, David, invited us over to his wedding. We accepted the invitation, and decided to visit two of the others while we were in Germany. We weren’t driving and it meant quite complicated travel arrangements, but we knew they would like to see us, and we wanted to see them. (We were actually hoping to arrange a visit to a fourth family, but the travel arrangements just didn’t work in the time we had available. There was no grass in that place…) One of our friends referred to our trip as a “mission.” That’s a bit high-sounding, I thought – we are just going to a wedding and visiting a couple of other young friends and their families. But God had plans that we knew nothing of, because we walk in works prepared beforehand. (Eph 2:10)

What God had prepared for the young man we visited first of all was to organise an outreach in his town three days after we arrived, which gave us time to prepare and pray with him and spend time with his family. We went into the town with the outreach team, met some of his friends in his church, identified a spiritual stronghold over the town and pulled it down in prayer.  Next we moved on for David’s wedding. We had two days there, but couldn’t stay at the venue on the night of the reception because it was fully booked, and we were going to have to stay in another hotel a few miles away. But God! The owner/manager of the venue gave a free room, already paid for by guests who had not shown up, and even arranged to collect our luggage from the other hotel, where we had already taken it that afternoon. This enabled us to have a precious time of prayer with David and his new wife the following morning as well as some good conversations with his unsaved aunt and uncle, which wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been able to stay there on the second night.

After the wedding we went to see our third and most recent gap-year student, to find that her father, an elder in their village Lutheran church, was considering leaving it because, as he put it, ‘the pastor just gave history lessons and didn’t preach Jesus.’ We prayed with the family and were able to encourage them, and we had a lovely day together on a Rhine cruise, which further cemented our friendship. The mission didn’t end there, because we called in to see our daughter on the way home back in the UK, and our visit coincided with a visit from one of her friends who had been planning to go to her house for months, who had been wanting to meet us, and who, again, was in need of prayer.

No-one got dramatically healed, no-one got saved – although someone did on the outreach – but love took us to Germany, we did what we were told, there was “much grass in that place” (including a free hotel room), and Jesus did some building in His church from plans that we knew nothing of. A bit like the disciples, who were probably just expecting some time out with Jesus in the hills and found themselves managing a large-scale outreach, we just thought we were going on a trip to celebrate David’s wedding and visit two other families; but it turned out that God had planned the three sets of circumstances to coincide in different parts of Southern Germany for us to walk in a mission that He had prepared beforehand. Potentially, every day can be a mission where loaves and fishes are ready to be multiplied. So are we in the promised land yet? Because when we arrive, the manna stops.

Living by Faith

Bread from Heaven

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After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples. Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. (John 6: 1-6)

Jesus lifted up His eyes
When Jesus saw the crowds coming towards them and asked Philip “Where shall we buy bread, these might eat?” (John 6:5), He knew not only the eternal words that the Holy Spirit had spoken through Isaiah hundreds of years previously, but He also know what He was going to say to the Jews the following day, and, more significantly, what He wanted His church to learn from it from that time until His return.

John introduces the narrative by presenting Jesus on a mountain with His disciples. This must be every believer’s favourite place: a mountaintop experience with the Lord, in the company of a few close friends. When we are in that place, we want it to go on for ever. Eventually it will, but John also tells us that “a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased.” (John 6:2) If we are spending time with Jesus on Earth, the crowds are never going to be far behind.

It’s all about the harvest
When He met the Samaritan woman, Jesus said to His disciples: “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (John 4:36). Now John echoes this exhortation in his account of the fourth sign, reminding us that it is not just about the significance of the Lord’s supernatural power to multiply bread, or even about His compassion for the hungry: it’s all about the harvest. Jesus lifted up his eyes. So one challenge to us as we consider this sign is this: how much time do we spend with our eyes on the ground instead of lifting them up to the harvest?

If you are the same as me, you probably equate ‘lifting your eyes’ with Psalm 121 – lifting our eyes to the hills, and seeing that our help comes the Lord “who made heaven and earth.” Although Jesus clearly does get help from heaven here- a lot of help – He is not looking away from His circumstances and comforting Himself, as we do, with eyes of faith: He is looking at the circumstances with eyes of love so that He can comfort the people He can see. If I was on a mountain and saw a hungry crowd below me, I would either want to go further up the mountain, or round to the other side, and down. Quickly. But He is not thinking about how the circumstances affect Him; He is only thinking of how He can affect the circumstances. This is a standout Kairos moment of His ministry, and He knew what He would do.

Facing the hungry crowd
As for us, there are times when we are on that mountain and there is a “hungry crowd” coming towards us. It might only be one person, but we know what it will mean: they will make demands. Certainly our time and energy, quite probably our money and/or resources, possibly our emotions, but one thing we know is true: they are hungry, and we’ve only got a few loaves and fishes. But the other thing that is true is that we are there with Jesus. We know that He only did what the Father told Him to do and didn’t always minister to everyone He met, and it might be that the He tells us not to get involved and to get down off the mountain. But assuming He doesn’t, how do we face the “hungry crowd” with the crumbs that we have to offer?

“He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.”

I don’t think that He was testing Philip on his knowledge of Isaiah 55. Jesus wanted to know if Philip was starting to see with the eyes of the Spirit, or if he was still limited to the material world. At this stage, it looks like his score was zero (which is encouraging for us, as the same Philip completely by-passed all the confines of the material world in the power of the Holy Spirit when he preached the gospel to the Ethiopian Eunuch!). I think Jesus is regularly testing our faith. Since He said “Will the Son of Man find faith on earth when He comes?” (Luke 18:8), it makes sense that He will be putting us in situations where He can see where we are on the faith-o-meter. He wants all our readings to increase.

There was much grass in that place.
God knows what our faith is ready for, and He also knows whether or not this is a Kairos moment for us, where He has got everything lined up for us to operate in the power of the Spirit. Wisdom says “ponder the path of your feet.” (Prov 4:26) The hungry crowd is approaching. Where has the “path of our feet” led us? Are we on a rocky slope, or is there “much grass?” People will be filled if they are in a place where they can be sufficiently at peace to receive from the Lord. If they are struggling just to keep on their feet and stay upright, it is less likely that we are going to reach into their situation, and that God hasn’t planned for us to try: if that moment hasn’t yet arrived we are just going to be emptied ourselves, and no-one is going to get any bread.

Verse 10 tells us that “There was much grass in that place.” For the miracle to take place the crowd needed somewhere to sit down and rest so that they could receive and partake of what Jesus was going to give them. Jesus hadn’t yet drawn on His heavenly resources, but the natural setting was in place – indeed it had been developing ever since that grassy plateau on the mountain had been created through Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16) at the beginning of time. Part of the convergence of that moment was that the hungry crowd should be there with Jesus just where there was provision for them to stop and sit down: not on a rocky slope or a narrow path, but on a flat area where “there was much grass.” If God can provide that visible abundance in the earthly realm just at the right time, how much more are heavenly resources available?

The Kingdom of Abundance
Paul writes to the Ephesians: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3:20) Jesus is Lord over a kingdom of abundance. “God does not give the Spirit by measure,” (John 3:34) because there is no limitation in the Kingdom of God. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that the earthly tabernacle and its rituals were a “copy and a shadow of heavenly things.” (Heb 8:5). There are clues in Scripture that this applies to the rest of the earthly creation as well, and that the temporal is a shadow of the eternal. The earthly Jesus is the Son of Man who goes to the cross, and we get a glimpse of the heavenly Jesus when He appears on the Mount of Transfiguraton. We have the Jerusalem of Israel, and the “New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven;” (Revelation 21:2) and we have John’s revelation that “it does not yet appear what we shall be.” (1 John 3:2).

The disciples could only see five loaves and two fishes, but Jesus could see the bread of heaven. When we pray for the Kingdom of God to come “on earth as it is in heaven,” we are praying for limitless heaven to come to limited earth. So when we lift our eyes and sense that Jesus is showing us a need that He wants to meet, and we know that there is “much grass in that place,” we can look with the eyes of faith and see that the single packed lunch which is the most our brains can grasp will convert to 5,000 by the power that works within us. At least.

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The Multitudes Are Coming

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“After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.” (John 6: 1-3)

When Jesus saw the multitude coming, what did He do? He went up the mountain and sat there with His disciples. If there is one theme that has common to what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches through His prophets today, it is that the multitudes are coming. There will be a revival such as the world has never seen before. Smith Wigglesworth prophesied it in 1947; Rick Joyner had seen it when he published The Harvest in 1997; Jarrod Cooper saw it in 1996 and wrote about it in Days of Wonder. Many less well-known prophets all around the world have had visions and words about this coming revival.

The multitudes are coming. Are we ready? As Smith Wigglesworth wrote (his prophesy is published in many places online), the prophesied glory will be nothing like the world has known. The glory of God has flickered briefly throughout the ages, but the new wine has always burst the old wineskin. In the past there was still hope in the world systems. There have always been signs of decay, but the grass was green, the water flowed, economies grew, and families looked forward: the future held promise. But today is different. The environment that seemed strong enough to bear the weight of its increasing population is now as fragile as wet paper, the debt-ridden international economy has about the strength of a cobweb, the most powerful nation in the world is governed by a senile old man, and moral confusion is so rife not even the basic polarities of gender are no longer a certainty in a child’s world. The multitude are coming, because promise has gone from the world.

Where do we go? Do we shore up our Church systems to prepare ourselves (or maybe, in some cases, to hide…)? Do we run to meet them in missionary fervour? Do we build great platforms from which we can address the crowds? No. We go up the mountain and we sit down with Jesus. We wait in His presence, and while we are waiting, we renew our strength and learn what it is to rise up on Eagles wings, because when the multitudes arrive He will give us our instructions, and one thing that we can be certain of is this: whatever He tells us to do it will not be what we expect, and it will be nothing that can be bought from the world, any more than the disciples could have bought enough bread from the local villages. Nobody will minister to the crowds from a platform built by human hands.

Jesus is bringing a revelation of His glory to the Church. He is God, through whom the worlds were made; whereas “all the glory of man is as the flowers of the grass,” (Ps 103:15) and even the nations are “like a drop in a bucket, and are reckoned as dust on the scales.” (Isaiah 40:15) God will provide for the multitudes out of His glory, in the presence of which our greatest achievements are less than dust. All we can bring to Jesus is our faith and our thankful love, and our desire for His presence above all things.  He told the disciples to make the people sit down, even though they had still had nothing in their hands to give them, and they obeyed in faith.  Then He gave thanks for the loaves and fishes, and handed them to His disciples to feed the crowd.

Up on the mountain, Jesus is fashioning a new wineskin that will not burst. The multitude will be fed by the insignificant in the hands of the glorious, distributed by the obedient.

Pursuing Love, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

The Bread of Life

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“Unless you eat the flesh of the son of a man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise Him ap at the last day.” (John 6:53)

When Jesus said this to the Jews and the rest of the crowd that was following him, his listeners were variously puzzled or scandalized, and at that point the gospel account said “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.” (v 66) Verse 60 quotes many of his disciples as saying “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”

Taken literally and out of context it’s not hard to understand; it’s impossible. But pieced together with other verses I think the meaning is clear, and as we shall see at the end, carries a wonderful promise.

We’ll start with the idea of eating. This discourse follows the feeding of the 5,000. We must remember that John refers to the miracles of Jesus as “signs.” Jesus actually says to the crowd:  “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” This particular sign points to verse 51:  “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

If Jesus is the bread of Life, and his flesh “is food indeed” (v 55), how do we eat it? He has given us the clue already, when he was talking to the disciples after his meeting with the Samaritan woman; “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4:34)

If His food was to do the work of the Father and to finish it, what is ours? Again, He tells us. John 6:29 says “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” His food is to do what His Father says; our food is to do what Jesus says. Jesus came that we “may have life, and that in abundance,” (John 10:10) and His words  “are Spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63). When we obey His words our actions and decisions are imbued with His life. So it’s worth repeating: to eat His flesh is to do what He says. That is our food, that is the bread that came down from heaven. Our food is to do His work and believe in Him. Just as the Son didn’t do anything unless he heard it from the Father, we need our spiritual ears to be attuned to the whisper of the Holy Spirit so that we can hear everything the Son is saying to us; and, even more importantly, we need our hearts and our wills to be submitted and committed to Him so that we can obey what He says when we hear it.

But Jesus wasn’t just talking about eating His flesh; he also said that we need to drink His blood.  As we know from 1 Cor 11:25, the cup is the New Covenant in His blood. To drink His blood is to partake of the covenant by which He promises us His life, and the power and the provision to do His life giving work, because that’s why He came, and that’s what He send us to continue: for His life to irrigate the desert, for His light to shine in the darkness, for the glory of His love to fill the Earth. When we drink His blood, walking in the forgiveness and access to the throne that His covenant  promises – “remembering His death until He comes” – we can have faith to receive everything we need from Heaven in order to do His work and to take His kingdom back from the enemy who stole it. So we “do not labour for the food, which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:53)  The blood has paid the price of all our sin and it secures our inheritance and our access to the promises of His covenant.

John 6 Verses 56 to 57 says “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I and him. As the living father sent me, and I live because of the father, so he who feeds on me, will live because of me. This is the bread, which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”

Now we need to flick through a few chapters and land on John 15:7-10, because here the Word circles back to the same teaching, and here is where we find that wonderful promise that I mentioned at the beginning of this article:

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

The word “if” here does not denote a condition; it denotes a consequence. When, rather than if. It doesn’t mean that Jesus will love us as long as we obey Him, because He loves us all the time. But I think  He is saying that when we do what He says we stay (abide) in the place where His love is focussed at that moment for us to operate in – the person we are talking to that He wants to bring into His Kingdom, the person in the congregation whose broken heart He wants to heal, the prisoner He wants to set free –  the specific “works prepared beforehand for us to walk in” of Ephesians 2:10. When we do what He says and abide in His love we become the agents for that love to flow into the situations that He is leading us into. He shines the spotlight of His love on a need He wants to meet, and when we obey His instruction we remain in that circle of light ourselves.

So if we want to be active agents in His Kingdom, we need to hunger for His bread, which is to hunger for His commands. Because when we do what He says, drinking also the blood of His covenant and remembering His death and all it means for us until He comes, we move in the sphere of His love and truly walk in the Spirit, where all of His promises are yes, and they are amen.


Key scriptures from John 6 and John 15

Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6: 26-27)

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” (51)

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, 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 eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6: 53-54)

“He who eats 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 he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. (John 6: 56-57)

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6: 63)

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will [fn] ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15 7-10)