The Origin of Jesus
By Woodrow Kroll
John 6:34-60
"Well, where does it come from?" That's a favorite question for the young child still exploring his world. It's a question used by astronomers, biologists, historians, and others. In our highly mobile world, it's one of the first things we ask a new acquaintance, "Where did you come from?" It was also a question asked of Jesus during His time on this earth. Not everyone was happy with His answer, though.
As we return to an extended study of John's Gospel, we're discovering that it really does matter what we know--especially about the Person and work of Jesus Christ. Today our attention is directed to a conversation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders about His origins. They had one idea about who they considered the Master to be, and they weren't very comfortable with the Truth Jesus presented to them.
That's often the way people respond to the claims of Christ, even today. But it's important that you and I understand who Jesus is and where He came from.
Today I invite you to look at John chapter 6, because I want us to know something about Jesus' origin. Where did Jesus come from? What is it that you and I today can know for sure about the Lord Jesus? There is just a delightful passage here, John, chapter 6. This is the passage in which Jesus introduces Himself as the Bread of Life, but it's the context in which He does that, that amazes me.
John chapter 6, let's begin about verse 34. John 6:34, "Then they" that's the crowd who was talking with Jesus "they said to Him, 'Lord, give us this bread always.'" Now He has just said that He could give them the bread of life. And you remember, every time Jesus introduced a spiritual principle the people interpreted it in a physical way.
When He said to the woman at the well, "I can give you eternal life, water that lives forever, I can give you living waters," she said, "Give me this water so I don't have to come back to this well and ever draw again." People are constantly hearing God's Word and applying it physically but not spiritually. And that's exactly what these people did.
Jesus says, "I am the bread of life. I can give you eternal life if you partake of this bread." And they said, "We'd be delighted to have that bread." Now, here's the problem, friends. Everybody wants the bread, but they don't want to take the Savior who gives the bread. So, Jesus is going to make some pretty outrageous claims here.
Look at the claim, verse 35, "Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I say unto you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.'"
Now let's think about the outrageous claims that Jesus makes here. First of all, in verse 35, Jesus makes the outrageous claim that He is the bread of this world and His bread would eternally satisfy. "If you partake of the bread of life you will never be hungry again. If you drink from the fountain of life," Jesus said, "you will never thirst again." And, of course, these people didn't understand that any more than you and I would understand it today if we think about this physically.
You ate a meal here yesterday, and I notice some of you ate again this morning--twice! Because you get hungry. You know, you did all that physical labor between last night and now, and you get hungry! And we just cannot conceive of having bread in which we would never hunger again.
But listen, friends. When you come to the Bread of Life and you trust Jesus Christ as Savior, you never look for another Savior. Because you have gotten the Bread of Life that satisfies forever. So He makes this outrageous claim that He is bread in which you would never ever hunger again, that's verse 35.
Look at verse 38, here's another outrageous claim by the Lord Jesus. He says, "I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." Now, why does He make a claim like that? Well, go back before the verses we read, look back at verse 31. The Jews are speaking here and they say, "Our fathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"
Now you see what Jesus is doing is, they have made the statement that their fathers, their forefathers, God protected them, God took care of them in the desert because He gave them this manna to eat and the manna came from heaven and they were satisfied. And that's all they needed. Why do they need Jesus, then, if they had this manna from heaven?
Now, isn't it interesting how people have a short memory? I mean, it's been generation after generation after generation since they had this manna. And let's think about that manna for a minute, friends. Sometimes we have a tendency to think of manna from heaven as big loaves of bread, you know, like french bread or pumpernickel or Wonder bread. Some way we have a way of thinking of God's manna as coming down from heaven, being nicely wrapped, all they had to do was go out with their shopping cart, pick up the manna and there it was.
But let's think. The manna as described in the Bible was not the size of a loaf of Wonder bread. The manna was the size of a coriander seed. Now, let me do a little experiment here today. How many of you women know how big a coriander seed is? Would you raise your hand. Look. Most of you. How many of you men know how big a coriander seed is. One, two, three, four. See, we don't do the baking, men. So we generally don't know.
A coriander seed is very, very tiny, maybe the size of the head of a pin. So, let's think about what this bread is. This is not a loaf of Wonder bread we're talking about. This is a very tiny particle of manna.
Let's also think about where the manna is. It's on the ground. And it's not the parking lot paved with pavement. This is the sand of the wilderness. How would you like to have to go out every morning and sift through all that sand to pick up something the size of the head of a pin? This was not a particularly good deal! But it's all they had.
And Jesus uses the manna that they thought was so wonderful and He compares Himself to this manna. And they said, "Look, the manna came down from heaven." And Jesus said, "So did I." That must have shocked them. What an outrageous claim that is! "You came down from heaven? You are the Bread of Life. You can give us bread in which we'll never ever hunger again?"
Well, look at verse 40. Here's another outrageous claim. He says, "And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son [Jesus] and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day." Jesus had a way of shocking His audiences. He made these outrageous claims. Nobody could make claims like this and back them up unless they were God and these people aren't quite ready to believe that Jesus is God.
So, in the passage, we move from the outrageous claims to the complaints of the Jews about those claims. Look at verse 41. They begin to complain immediately. "The Jews then complained about Him, because He said, 'I am the bread which came down from heaven.'" Now, these are people who are experts at complaining. They have a history of murmuring.
The word for complain or murmur there, is a word that in the Greek language, it is gogguzo, (something you put on a salad, it sounds like, I know) it means to mutter. It means to grumble. You know, it's kind of an undertone--you can hear some talking over there and you know they're complaining. And that's what these people are doing.
They didn't come right out and confront the Lord Jesus, saying, "You're nuts." What they said was to themselves, "He's nuts. What does He think He is? He came down from heaven? Who does He think He is anyway?" And so they begin to complain and murmur about what the Lord Jesus said. This is a very common problem for these people.
Same chapter, John chapter 6, look at verse 60. "Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, 'This is a hard saying; who can understand it?' When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, 'Does this offend you?'" Same word, by the way, for complained, murmured. So the idea of murmuring was something that was pretty common then, just like it's something pretty common today. Jesus makes outrageous claims. The people respond to those outrageous claims by murmuring, by just kind of chewing under their own breath, saying, "Jesus is crazy. He can't be who He thinks He is."
Well, notice the next verse, verse 42, "they said, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, "I have come down from heaven"?'" Now this sounds pretty illogical, doesn't it? They say, "Now wait a minute, Jesus. You claim not only to be the Bread of Heaven, of which we will never ever hunger again, You also claim to have come down from heaven. But we've got you this time because we know that you are the son of Joseph. We know your mother, we know your father, we know you came from Nazareth. You can't hide your pedigree, Jesus."
Now, that's really only partially true, isn't it? Sure, Jesus was the son of Joseph, but He was not the physical son of Joseph. He was only the legal son of Joseph. Just put your hand in there, John chapter 6, and turn back to the first chapter of Matthew. Interesting chapter, the first chapter of Matthew, all these genealogies.
Matthew 1:1 says, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." And in verse 2, "Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brothers." Read down through the passage. There's a whole lot of "begotting" going on there. And the word for begot, it's the Greek word gennao and it means, if it's talking about a male it's talking about "fathering, giving seed to." If it's talking about a female, it's talking about "giving birth to." You could use it either for male or female.
But notice when you get down to verse 16 of Matthew chapter 1, after everybody begot everybody else, in verse 16 it says, "And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was begotten [same word] Jesus who is called Christ." See, Matthew is very careful not to say, "Joseph fathered Jesus"--because he did not.
Now these people don't understand that. They don't know anything about the eternal Sonship of Jesus. They don't know anything about the divinity of Jesus. They don't know anything about His coming down from heaven. They know Him as a boy who grew up in a carpenter shop. So they begin to complain about Jesus.
Now here's the key, though, friends. It says, verse 42, "And they said, 'Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we [and here's our key word] know?'" See, they thought they knew Jesus because they knew His mother and father. Jesus fully knows they don't really know Him.
What I want you to see from this passage of Scripture and from the others we've looked at this week, is how frequently people thought they knew Jesus and didn't really know Him. They had never become intimate with Him, they knew Him as a human being, they knew Him as a person, they could identify Him as this carpenter's son, but they did not really know Jesus.
And the world is just filled with people today who do not really know where Jesus came from. Well, you want to find out? The Bible tells us right here. Let's look at knowing Jesus' origin. Jesus has made these outrageous claims. The people have now made these vocal complaints against Jesus. Now Jesus is going to contrast Himself and the manna that they were used to. Look down at verse 43, "Jesus therefore answered and said to them, 'Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.'"
Now what Jesus is saying here, He is just simply correcting their understanding. He doesn't rebuke them for murmuring. He doesn't say, "Cut that out." What He does instead is, He knows that the reason they're murmuring is they cannot understand Him. They cannot know Him. No one comes to the Son except the Father draws him. Verse 44 makes that pretty clear.
And then Jesus returns to the theme of "The Bread of Life," look at verse 47. He says, "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life." Now, to believe in the Lord Jesus and to know the Lord Jesus are one and the same thing. And what He is saying is, "If you come to faith in Me the way the woman at the well came to faith in Me, if you come to trust Me as Savior the way the men of Samaria came to trust Me as Savior, then you really know Me." You'll really know where He came from.
And Jesus will demonstrate His superiority over the manna that they were used to. In fact, in verse 49 He does that. He says in verse 48, "I am the bread of life." Now, look at this. I love this. You may not think this is very spiritual to say this, but after all, I didn't say it--I'm just reading what Jesus said, so be careful what you think is spiritual or not. He says, "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead."
That's Jesus' one-upmanship for these other people. He says, "Look, you think the manna is so great, they all ate the manna and they're dead! But I want to contrast that manna that you think is so wonderful with the bread of life that I can give you, in which you'll live forever and never die, spiritually never die."
So He makes the contrast, verse 50. "This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. 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."
Do you think knowing Jesus' origin is essential for our understanding of Jesus? Is it okay for us to just to accept Jesus as the carpenter's son? Is it okay for us just to know Jesus in a way that you know the other brothers and sisters of Jesus, the sons and daughters of Joseph and Mary? Or is it necessary for us to see Jesus as a different kind of person, with a different origin, with a different agenda?
See, faith is essential for salvation. But not the kind of faith that you believe in Jesus of Nazareth, or not the kind of faith that you believe in Jesus who is a good teacher, or not the kind of faith that you believe in Jesus who was a Rabbi. The kind of faith that is essential--that brings you to salvation--is to believe that Jesus came down from heaven specifically to give you eternal life. And that's why He says, "I am the bread of life."
And if you have that kind of faith in Jesus today, it's going to transcend all the murmuring the world does about what Jesus teaches. It's going to transcend all the things in the Bible you don't understand, because there are just thousands of things in God's Word I don't understand.
It's the things I do understand that make me believe that Jesus is indeed, the Father's own Son. He is indeed, the Son of God. And He indeed, did come down from heaven. And He indeed, did provide for me eternal bread, through eternal life in which I will never, ever hunger again. Now that's the kind of Jesus you can believe and chew on forever and ever.
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