John 6 (Part 5) Preparing your Heart (John 52-59)

  John 6:52-59,

The Jews Disputed

This section is the 3rd escalation of Jesus teaching to the crowd He fed. 

1- Starts with them “Seeking Him” in John 6:22, they are frantic and intensely focussed on Him, He shocks them with instead of giving them a practical teaching or instructions, He points out how their motives are wrong. He says, “Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life”. John 6:27 

2-Starts with “So the Jews Grumbled” John 6:42

Over Him saying He is “the bread that came down from heaven” 

Here we revisited the Ex. 16 story about how God fed them mana in the wilderness through Moses. 

3-Finally starts with “The Jews then disputed” John 6:52 

“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

Here this week, we will consider the Ex. 12 story about the Passover and the terms used to explain how to observe it. Notice how Jesus is using the same terminology in this passage.

So in Ex. 12:8, we see in the instructions of the 1st Passover, they took the “blood of the lamb”and put on door post and the phrase “eat the flesh” is used to describe the eating of the lamb. So when Jesus says unless you “eat of my flesh” He is pointing them to the fulfillment of the Passover Lamb and this act that was foreshadowed in the “eating of the flesh” of the lamb, would have to be done in order to partake in the blessing that comes from the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. John 1:29 

This makes a bunch of the other statement make a lot more sense. For example, 

John 6:53, 

Eternal Life (earthly life and heavenly life)

Abide (connection, family)

The Father’s ate and died (true source of life)

I will address these in the next entry.