John 6:22-29
"On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone--
however, other boats came from Tiberias, near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks--when the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor His disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.
And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, "Rabbi, when did You come here?"
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 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."
Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."

Message:
The multitudes had been fed...
Jesus had thwarted their plans to make Him king...
The disciples had gone ahead of Jesus, sailing the sea into a storm...
Jesus comes to them walking on the sea...
Peter requests Jesus to let him come to Him...
And now...
the multitude start their search for Jesus.
The crowd had lingered on the far side of the lake. In the time of Jesus people did not need to keep office hours. There were no factories, offices or shopping centers...most were just people of little means making their living from the ground and selling their crops. They had time to wait until He came to them. They waited because having seen that there was only one boat and that the disciples had gone off in it without Jesus, they deduced that He must still be somewhere near at hand.

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Two)

After they had waited for some time, they began to realize that he was not coming back. Into the bay came some little boats from Tiberias. No doubt they had taken shelter from the storm of the night. The waiting people embarked on them and made the crossing of the lake back to Capernaum.
When the crowd finally found Jesus, they asked Him the question, "Rabbi, how and when did you get here?"
Jesus' reply was to ignore the question and instead deal with the manner of their seeking.
He did not praise them. Instead He replied, "I tell you the truth, you are seeking for Me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him has the Father placed His seal of approval" (vv. 26-27)
Although the crowd was obviously seeking Jesus in one sense, at the same time it is obvious that the minds of the individuals were on themselves. Jesus knew their hearts! "But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man" (John 2:24-25).
We must remember that the crowd had been hungry when they were with Jesus the night before. He had fed them so that they had all they wanted. The twelve baskets of leftovers are evidence of the fact that they had been fully satisfied...maybe for the first time in a long while! Still, the night had gone by and now part of the morning. It was time for a late breakfast or lunch: they were hungry again. Obviously their minds were primarily on their stomachs as they sought Him.
Jesus did not talk about His journey across the lake, He did not answer their question as to the time when He arrived...He went straight to the heart of the matter!
"You have seen wonderful things. You have seen how God's grace enabled a crowd to be fed. Your thoughts ought to have been turned to the God who did these things; but instead all that you are thinking about is bread. You cannot think about your souls for thinking of your stomachs."
"Men" as Chrysostom said, "are nailed to the things of this life."

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Three)

Here were people whose eyes never lifted beyond the rampart of the world to the eternities beyond!
Once Napoleon and an acquaintance were talking of life. It was dark; they walked to a window and looked out. There in the sky were distant stars, little more than pin-points of light. Napoleon, who had sharp eyes while his friend was dim-sighted, pointed to the sky: "Do you see these stars? he asked. "No," his friend answered. "I can't see them." "That," said Napoleon, "is the difference between you and me." The man who is earthbound is living half a life. It is the man with vision, who looks at the horizon and sees the stars, who is truly alive.
The crowd that day had missed the sign...the demonstration of the power and glory of God in multiplying the bread and fishes. If they had given consideration to the sign, they might well have learned an important spiritual lesson and have come to believe in Jesus!
THROUGHOUT THIS GOSPEL, FAITH THAT IS BASED ON THE MIRACLES IS NEVER SEEN AS THE HIGHEST KIND OF FAITH, but it is better than no faith at all. But these people did not even have that kind of faith. They were interested in having their hunger satisfied, and it was that that kept them talking to Jesus. It was their need as they themselves saw it and not as Jesus saw it that occupied their whole attention. It is easy to make the same mistake! Most of us are so sure that we know what we need in this life that we pursue it single-mindedly and never stop to ask whether it is this that is important, this that matters in the sight of God.
Do we do almost the .same thing when we seek Jesus? Do we come with our minds filled, not so much with Jesus and His all-surpassing worth, but with our needs or with what we imagine our needs to be?
I am convinced that one of the major steps to achieving good spiritual mental health is getting our mind off ourselves entirely and on the Lord instead. The author of an old English classic, THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING, was aware of this. He wrote in his volume, "Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love, and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in they will, but only God Himself. This is the work of the soul that most pleaseth God."

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Four)

The food in which these people were interested was a perishable commodity. There was nothing lasting about it. They had had a good meal of bread and fishes but now they needed another meal. Their very hunger was evidence that the food of which they were thinking has no lasting results. They should not keep working for what is at best temporary (v27). The verb WORK has a continuous force...Jesus is saying that they are constantly working for what is not lasting.
Jesus puts His command in one sentence. "Don't work for the food which perishes but for that which last for ever and gives eternal life."
Long ago a prophet called Isaiah had asked: "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" (Isaiah 55:2)
There are two kinds of hunger. There is physical hunger which physical food can satisfy; but there is a spiritual hunger which that food can never satisfy. A man may be as rich as Croesus and still have an incompleteness in his life.
John warns: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For that is in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world.
And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever." (1 John 2:15-17).
"What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt. 16:26)
"Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap" (Luke 21:34).
"Set your minds on things above, and not on earthly things." (Col. 3:2)
"It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." (Titus 2:12)
"You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (1 John 2:15)

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Five)

In the years just after A.D. 60 the luxury of Roman society was unparalleled. It was at this time that they served feasts of peacocks' brains and nightingales' tongues; that they cultivated the odd habit of taking emetics between courses so that they next might taste better; that meals costing thousands of dollars were commonplace. It was at this time that Pliny tells of a Roman lady who was married in a robe so richly jeweled and gilded that it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was a reason of all this, and the reason was a deep dissatisfaction with life, a hunger that nothing could satisfy. They would try anything for a new thrill, because they were both appallingly rich and appallingly hungry. As Matthew Arnold wrote:

"In his cool hall with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian Way;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast;
He crowned his hair with flowers;
No easier nor no quicker passed
the impracticable hours."

Jesus' point was that all that these Jews were interested in was physical satisfaction. But there are hungers which can be satisfied only by Him. There is the hunger for truth--in Him alone is the truth of God.
There is the hunger for life--in Him alone is life more abundant. There is the hunger for love--in Him alone is the love that outlasts sin and death. Christ alone can satisfy the hunger of the human heart and soul.
Matthew Henry in his great commentary writes:
"The things of the world are meat that perishes. Worldly wealth, honour, and pleasure, are meat, they feed the fancy (and many times this is all) and fill the belly. These are things which men hunger after as meat, and glut themselves with, and which a carnal heart, as long as they last, may make a shift to live upon; but they perish, are of a perishing nature, wither of themselves, and are exposed to a thousand accidents; those that have the largest share of them are not sure to have them while they live, but are sure to leave them and lose them when they die."
Jesus counsels His hearers to look instead for "the food that remains into eternal life." There are things

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Six)

that last, and they are more important than the transient things on which we spend so much time and energy.
The Amplified New Testament has translated this passage in our text (vv. 26, 27) as follows: "Stop toiling, and doing, and producing for the food that perishes and decomposes in the using, but strive and work and produce rather for the lasting food which endures continually unto life eternal. The Son of Man will give or furnish to you that, for God the Father has authorized and certified Him and put His seal of endorsement upon Him."
THE SOURCE OF THAT WHICH LASTS IS Jesus! Our verse assures us..."The Son of Man will give or furnish" that which endures continually unto life eternal.
"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher (perfector) of our faith." (Heb. 12:2)
Man should be interested in Christ, the Messiah, for who He is and not for what he can get out of Him. Very simply...as with any person, the Lord wants to be sought and loved for who He is and not for what He can do for a person. The Lord (Messiah) is not a tool to be used; He is a Person to be sought and loved. The crowd should have seen that such a miracle of multiplying the bread and fish could have been done only by the Son of God Himself. Therefore, seeing and standing before the Son of God, they should have fallen down before Him in all humility. They should have humbled themselves to recognize and acknowledge Him to be the Son of God, to worship and praise Him for who He is, to offer their lives to Him, to see that all things belonged to Him and all worship was due Him.
ETERNAL LIFE IS HIS GIFT THAT COMES TO US AS A GIFT WHEN WE PUT OUR TRUST IN JESUS CHRIST AS SAVIOR AND LORD!
And then Jesus adds this important confirmation of His ministry, and His person..."BECAUSE GOD THE FATHER HAS SET HIS SEAL ON HIM."
The Father has sealed Jesus! There is a wealth of meaning in the phrase: GOD HAS SET HIS SEAL UPON HIM. H. B. Tristram in EASTER CUSTOMS IN BIBLE LANDS has a most interesting section on seals in the ancient world. It was not the SIGNATURE, but the SEAL that authenticated. In commercial and political documents it was the SEAL, imprinted with the signet ring, which made the document

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Seven)

valid; it was the seal which authenticated a will; it was the seal on the mouth of a sack or a crate that guaranteed the contents. The seal was fixed on clay and the clay attached to the documents.
The Rabbis had a saying: "The seal of God is truth." "One day," says the TALMUD, "the great synagogue (the assembly of the Jewish experts in the law) were weeping, praying and fasting together, when a little scroll fell from the firmament among them, They opened it and on it was only one word, AMETH, which means, TRUTH. "That," said the Rabbi, "is the seal of God." AMETH is spelt with three Hebrew letters—ALEPH, which is the first letter of the alphabet, MIN the middle letter and TAU the last. THE TRUTH OF GOD IS THE BEGINNING, THE MIDDLE AND THE END OF LIFE.
That is why Jesus can satisfy the eternal hunger. He is sealed by God, He is God's truth incarnate and it is God alone who can truly satisfy the hunger of the soul which He created.
"BECAUSE GOD THE FATHER HAS SET HIS SEAL ON HIM."
Paul writes to Timothy and says:
"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentile; Believed on in the world. Received up in glory" (1 Tim. 3:16)
These were the words from an early hymn of the Church. It opens with a declaration of the incarnation, God coming in human flesh, and VINDICATED IN THE SPIRIT. Jesus' claims were vindicated by the action of the Spirit who dwelt in Him. When Jesus was accused by the scribes and Pharisees of effecting cures by the power of the devil, His answer was: "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come upon you" (Matthew 12:28).
The power that was in Jesus was the power of the Spirit, and the mighty acts He performed were the vindication of the tremendous claiming which He made. Men took Jesus and crucified Him as a criminal upon a cross; but through the power of the Spirit He rose again; the verdict of men was demonstrated to be false, and He was vindicated!
Paul opens his great book of Romans, and this is what is declared concerning the person of Jesus Christ:
"Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which He pro-

***PAGE BREAK***
(Page Eight)

mised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:2-4)
The Davidic descent of Jesus was clearly an element in early Christian preaching and confession. The word rendered DESIGNATED is used in Acts 10:42, 17:31 of Christ’s appointment as judge of all. Paul does not mean that Jesus became the Son of God by the resurrection, but that He who during His earthly ministry 'was the Son of God in weakness and lowliness' became by the resurrection 'the Son of God in power.' Similarly, Peter at Pentecost concludes his proclamation of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ by calling on 'all the house of Israel' to 'know assuredly' that God has made the crucified Jesus 'both Lord and Christ' (Acts 2:36).
"According to the spirit of holiness" means that it is the one and the same Son of God who appears as the earthly Jesus and as the heavenly Christ; but his Davidic descent, a matter of glory 'according to the flesh', is now seen nevertheless to belong to the phase of His humiliation, and to be absorbed and transcended by the surpassing glory of His exaltation, by which He has inaugurated the 'age of the Spirit." The outpouring and ministry of the Spirit attest the enthronement of Jesus as 'Son of God in power."
When Jesus (in our text in John 6) had made this declaration of His ability to give spiritual food that would result in everlasting life and that His heavenly Father had set His seal upon Him with power and holiness, the crowd then ask: WHAT SHALL WE DO, THAT WE MAY WORK THE WORKS OF GOD?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."
This was the earnest inquiry of men who were seeking to be saved. The idea of doing something to merit salvation is one of the last that the sinner ever surrenders. Jesus makes it very clear that what pleases God most is to believe that He is the Messiah, the Sent One of God, and in putting one's trust and faith in Jesus, this pleased God and the gift of eternal life was His gift.