It seemed as though Jesus couldn't get a moment's rest. The curiosity-seeking crowds had had their bellies filled by His miraculous feeding of the 5000, and now they were looking for Him again. Their frantic chasing around the lake and back again is almost comical. They track Him down one more time in Capernaum.

Jesus uses the occasion to, confront them about what it is they're looking for, and takes the opportunity to reveal more about Himself. Jesus wasn't into the numbers game. Think about it: He had them eating out of His hand, hanging on His every word, following Him from pulpit to pulpit, and then He scares them away by preaching a sermon about the cross and election.

But Jesus knows who He is and what He's about, and these people must know it too. He confronts them with the fact that they trot around like a herd of cattle, but are hungering and thirsting after the wrong things. You want signs, but aren't interested in what the signs are saying. They think Jesus is kind of a neat act to follow because He fills their bellies, but there's something far more important than food.

"So what do we have to do?" they ask. Basically, Jesus says, you need to believe in Him whom God has sent (John 6:29).

But their unbelief continues: "So what are you going to do now Jesus?" Hadn't they seen Him heal countless diseases, hadn't they just eaten of the loaves? Apparently it wasn't enough. What Jesus did was just a one shot deal. Moses had seen to it that for forty years every day except the Sabbath there was manna from heaven to eat.

Did they forget that throughout their forefathers' sojourn in the desert they could do nothing but complain about that manna? Now Jesus is warning them they are in danger of treating the true bread from heaven with the same kind of contempt.

They respond: "Lord (Sir), give us this bread always."

Calvin suggests these are words of cynical unbelief, in effect: "Yeah right! Like there's such a thing as bread that gives life forever, whatever you say!" These hearers of Jesus weren't looking past their noses, laboring for the things that perish, content to leave it there. Jesus is teaching about human nature We know we need life, were created for such life, but we look for it in all of the wrong places. We hunger and thirst after the right relationship, the right car, the right home, we seek happiness in the things we can get for ourselves. We seek to eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die. But that's not life.

"Most assuredly I tell you your fathers ate of the manna and are dead." Not that eating was wrong, but there has to be something more.

Jesus then makes the revelation: "I am the bread of life."

There's no beating around the bush. Hear it well: "I AM." And His wording is emphatic: I am the bread of life. There simply is no life apart from Me. "Whoever comes to Me shall never hunger, whoever believes in Me shall never thirst."

With His bold words Jesus is effectively saying: "I am" the fulfillment of Isaiah 55:1, 2, so that everyone who thirsts should come to Me. It's in listening to Me, that you eat what is good.

That's not all. Repeatedly Jesus stresses, this bread comes down from heaven, that is to say: I have come down from heaven. Is He making Himself equal with God? You'd better believe it.

That was too much for their ears. "We know where He's from, we've seen Him grow up and work in the carpenters shop, this is Joseph's boy."

He goes on to say that it is He Himself who gives this bread. "The bread that I shall give is My flesh" (verse 51).

Now they'd pretty well had all they could take they begin to mumble and murmur among themselves. "Does He want us to eat His flesh? That's disgusting!"

No, that's not what Jesus meant. But He was beginning to teach them that if there was to be life, it could only come at the expense of His own life. There would have to be a cross. This made no sense to those who saw no need for such life in themselves, had no concept of their own sinfulness and need of a Saviour, whose only concern seemed to be their belly and being entertained with some nifty tricks.

The reaction of many of those who had been following Him was: "This is a hard saying, who can hear it?" (verse 60). As if to say: "We don't have to listen to this!"

And from that time many of those "disciples" turned back and no longer followed Him. They didn't ask questions for clarification, they just threw off His teaching, they didn't have the stomach for it. They weren't hungry!

But when Jesus asked the twelve if they want to leave too, Peter responds for them, "Are you kidding, where else can we go — you have the Words of eternal life!"

Surely these men didn't understand all that Jesus had just revealed about Himself either, but they will stay with Jesus because they had been given a hunger, they know there's nowhere else to go, nowhere else to find life. They will stay with the Word.

There will always be those who are looking for the spectacular, to be entertained, to have their egos stroked and their tummies filled, but have no stom­ach for the Word. "We don't have to listen to this," they say. But if we are to feed on Christ we must come to Him, if we are to hear and learn from God we'll need to stay with His Word. He is the Bread of Life.