When Jesus Wept - By Bodie Page 0,42
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never hunger. He who believes in me will never thirst. You’ve seen me … and yet you don’t believe. Everyone the Father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me I will never cast out. I’ve come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. Of everyone the Father has given me, I won’t lose even one. I will raise them up on the last day.”
The questioners began to mutter among themselves, “Who does he think he is? How does he know God’s will?”
“He will raise us up from death on the last day?”
“Who does he think he is?”
Jesus replied, “This is the will of my Father … that everyone who sees me and believes in me may have everlasting life. I will raise him up on the last day.”
The seas of opinion begin to stir. The Pharisees mocked him, and the mocking spread among the crowd.
“Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”
“He says he is the bread that comes from heaven!”
“Son of Joseph …”
“How can he tell us that he comes down from heaven?”
Jesus let the storm of opposition build and then answered. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
I noticed that Jesus was making a particular point when he said for the third time, “And I will raise him up on the last day.”
I pondered his words. Surely Jesus was speaking of the resurrection of those who had died. Yes, I had witnessed the return to life of Jairus’s daughter, but she had not been dead long. She had not been laid in a tomb to decay. How could Jesus raise to life those who were long dead and decayed?
Jesus continued, “It’s written in the Prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ That means that everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Only I have seen the Father. This is truth … anyone who believes in me has everlasting life.”
A gasp went up at Jesus’ claim that he had seen the Father. Everyone understood the significance of this claim. God the Father was surrounded by a thick cloud called the Cloud of Unknowing. To enter it meant instant annihilation. Only the Angel of the Lord came and went from that cloud—doing the will of God the Father, speaking only the Word of God the Father. Jesus had just told us all that he was the Angel of the Lord … the visible manifestation of the Almighty. Jesus was the one who dwelt within the Cloud of Unknowing and came out to proclaim the Word of the Almighty. There was no mistaking that Jesus clearly told us that he was the Word, the tangible expression of the Word of God. Jesus was the only knowable form of a God so powerful that none in heaven or earth had ever seen him. I believed the miracles of Jesus bore witness to this. How could mere man do the things Jesus did?
I heard them whisper, “Blasphemy!”
Jesus heard it too, but he did not draw back. Instead, he brought the lesson full circle: “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they’re long dead … I am the living bread which, like manna, came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he’ll live forever. The bread that I give is my body. I give it for the life of the world.”
The storm of the onlookers increased to violent fury. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus set the keel of truth deep and sailed on into the storm. “Unless you partake of the body of the Messiah and drink the wine of 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 on the last day. For my body is bread from heaven and my blood is wine from heaven …”
A shudder and a howling gale increased among his accusers at his words.
He taught us that life-giving manna provided in the wilderness had come directly from God. A heaven-sent meal giving life to those who partook. Now Jesus had also fed miraculous bread to a multitude.
In a glimmer of recognition, I remembered again the wine at the wedding; extraordinary wine