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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
John 6:35–40
Jesus said to them,
I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.
And whoever believes in me
shall never thirst.
But I said to you that you have seen me,
and yet do not believe
all that the father gives
me will come to me.
And whoever comes to me,
I will never cast out.
For I have come down from heaven
not to do my own will,
but the will of him who sent me.
And this is the will of him who sent me,
that I should lose
nothing of all that he has given me,
but raise it up on the last day.
For this is the will of my father.
That everyone who looks on the son and
believes in him should have eternal life.
And I will raise him up on the last day.
Hey, everybody, good morning
and welcome to Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Joe.
I'm one of the pastors here.
And, thanks for coming.
Last Sunday, I was able to preach
at a church down in southern Florida.
And, it was beautiful.
But I want you to know
that I would take this weather,
and you guys every week, but that week.
Right?
Because that's really nice.
But it's good to be back.
I love this place. Love
being a part of what God is doing right
here, right now.
We have a theme for this year, 2026,
and our theme is simply More Life.
More life.
And we're taking it from what
Jesus says in John chapter ten,
where he tells us why he came.
He says, I came that they might have life
and have it more abundantly.
Jesus is the secret for more life.
That's why we're spending ten weeks
looking at Jesus.
We believe that the more we know about
Jesus, the closer we get to them to him,
then the more we will experience
the life he has promised us.
And we are going to be looking primarily
at what Jesus says about himself.
I always find it
interesting that, the vast majority
of people in the world
have a positive view towards Jesus.
They look on him favorably.
If you're going to go around
your neighborhood and just ask people
what they think about Jesus.
Even the people that don't believe, is
are not Christians would say, oh,
I believe Jesus was a really good man.
I believe that he was a good teacher,
a great example.
Right?
And whenever somebody says that,
I always wonder if they have ever really
looked at what Jesus says about himself.
Because what Jesus says about himself
is just wild.
It is way over the top.
It's it's it's Trump-esque.
And
that's the most dangerous
thing I'm going to say today.
Jesus says stuff like,
I am the light of the world.
Who says that?
He says, I am the good shepherd.
He says, I am the vine and everyone else
you're you're just branches.
And if you're you're not connected to me,
you're dead
branch. Jesus said that.
Jesus says,
I am the resurrection and the life.
No one gets to God the Father
but through me,
right?
Jesus
makes these wild statements about himself.
There's a man named C.S.
Lewis who is an avowed atheist,
who then became a Christian.
He wrote a book called Mere Christianity.
We're just points out
that this weird contradiction
that people have about Jesus,
and I love the paragraph he writes.
This is from his book Mere Christianity.
He says, I'm trying here to prevent anyone
saying the really foolish thing
that people often say about him.
I'm ready to accept
Jesus as a great moral teacher,
but I don't accept his claim to be God.
That's the one thing we must not say.
A man who is merely a man,
and said the sort of things Jesus said
would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic on the level
with the man who says
he's a poached egg,
or else he would be the devil of hell.
You must make your choice.
Either this man was and is the Son of God,
or else a madman or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool.
You can spit at him
and kill him as a demon,
or he can fall at his feet
and call him Lord and God.
But let us not come
with any patronizing nonsense
about his being a great human teacher.
He has not left that open to us.
He did not intend to.
I love that last statement.
Jesus never intended
to leave that option open.
So that's why we are going to be
spending our time looking at
what are called the I am statements.
And this first one that we're going to
look at is from John chapter six.
So if you have your Bibles
and you want to turn to it,
you can turn to John chapter six.
If you want to use
one of our church Bibles on page 849,
or you can just wait for it
to come up on the screen.
What he says this week is
I am the bread of life.
Let me just read verse 35.
We have the passage read to us, says,
Jesus said to them,
I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me shall not hunger,
and whoever believes in me
shall never thirst.
All right, here are the three points that
I want to just use for our time together.
First is what you need.
Second, what?
Where you get it? Third, how you keep it.
What you need, where you get it,
how to keep it first, what you need.
Jesus uses the metaphor of bread.
He uses that for a reason.
I you have probably eaten something
already today.
If you haven't, then by noon your brain,
or even if you have by noon,
your brain is going to be telling you
it's time to eat.
The longer you go without food,
the stronger your urge will be your brain,
the stronger the message from your brain
that your body needs food.
You know, when I was young,
I got into cycling.
I still, cycle,
but not at the intensity that I used to.
But when I got into cycling,
they have a term.
Cyclists have a term
for when your body runs out of fuel,
where you've gone for a bike ride
that was longer
than the amount of food
that you had in you and you.
Your body gets depleted.
They call it bonking of all things.
I think if you're a runner,
you might call it hitting the wall.
I only bonked a couple of times,
and it's a fascinating thing
to have your body completely run out.
The last time I bonked was
when I was doing
a ride in the valley called the
The Teacup.
Which sounds benign enough,
but there are 14 hills out of the valley,
and the teacup is riding
all 14 of those hills.
It's a little over 100 miles.
I was on, the 13th Hill,
which was right out here on Terex.
When I bumped.
I was about halfway up the hill,
and it just it was like
my body went off like a light switch.
And you think that I could muscle
through the 14th hill
just to say I accomplished this feat?
But I got to the top of Terex,
and I got off my bike
and I laid down on the grass,
and I didn't move for an hour.
I was done until somebody gave me
a milky way and a Coke,
and that was enough sugar
to get me back on my bike
to just limp the three miles home.
But I never finish that ride.
I tell you that
because your body needs food,
if you go long enough without food,
you won't have to go for a long bike
ride to bonk you. Bonk.
Trying to get out of bed,
right?
Because food is life.
Food is life.
You know, the New Testament
was written in Greek and in Greek.
There are two words for life.
You know, in English we only have one.
But the two words in Greek are bio,
where we get the word biology,
which is physical life.
But the other word is Zoe,
which is, a quality of life
or kind of a social life,
a time when you, when things are going in
such a way,
like you would say
when I was in southern Florida and it's 75
degrees, perfectly sunny, and I'm sitting,
looking out in the ocean and I say,
this is living, right?
That's not just bio, that's Zoe.
When Jesus says, I am the bread of life,
he's saying, I am the bread of Zoe.
I am the thing that will make your soul
come alive.
I am the thing
that will make life worth living.
When he uses this metaphor,
he is telling something,
telling us something we already know
deep down, which is that
we need something more than just
our physical needs met
to really have life,
to have abundant life.
They actually discovered this
in the country of Romania in the 1980s
in a heartbreaking way.
In Romania in the
1980s, there were these huge orphanages,
and they had too many children
and not enough workers.
And what they found
was that they could provide all the babies
with their physical needs.
They could provide them
with enough food and milk,
and they could change their diapers.
But they did not have enough workers
to give them physical affection.
What they found was
even if the babies had their
all their physical needs met,
but didn't have love,
they would die.
What we know deep down
is that bio is not enough.
Not for abundant life.
We need Zoe.
We need something to give us that.
And that brings me to my second point
where we get it.
So where do you go
to get food for your soul and have you
something that will make your soul
come alive in such a way that you can say,
I have abundant life?
Oh, by the way, whenever the Bible talks
about eternal life,
it's not talking about longevity,
all right?
Like when Jesus says in verse ten,
for this is the will of my father,
that everyone who looks on the son
and believes in him
should have eternal life.
That's Zoe.
Know when I say it's not longevity.
When I was a kid, I went to church
and they talked about everlasting life.
I just thought that was life
that goes on like physical life
that goes on forever, right?
And that's not necessarily physical life
that goes on forever is not necessarily
a good thing.
Those of us who are getting older
kind of know that.
But all you have to do is read a Stephen
King novel or watch,
you know, The Walking Dead.
Now, you don't want to be a zombie
that can't die.
That's not
what the Bible is talking about.
The Bible talks about eternal life
when it when it says eternal
life is eternal life for a Christian
doesn't start when you die.
Eternal life starts
the moment Jesus becomes your Savior,
because your soul comes alive in the way
it was intended to be alive.
So where does somebody find food
for their soul?
The answer is
everywhere and nowhere.
Kind of. Let me explain that.
There's a poem by Samuel Coleridge
called The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,
and it's a poem about sailors who end up
like on a raft, you know, and they're out
in the middle of the ocean.
And the most famous line of that poem
is this water, water everywhere.
And not a drop to drink
water, water everywhere.
Not a drop to drink.
What he's saying
is that these sailors longed for water.
They were thirsting to death,
and there was water
as far as their eye could see.
But it was salt water, and salt
water would not quench their thirst.
Salt water would make them more
thirsty, would eventually kill them.
That's like our world.
Everyone
you know, everyone sitting around you,
everyone in your neighborhood
wakes up in the morning hungry,
not just for physical food,
but for something to make
their souls come alive.
And so everybody tries to find something.
And I started paying attention to commercials, particularly beer commercials.
Yeah.
I don't want to go into it.
But one of the things I noticed
with beer commercials
and I just selling beer, there's
they're trying to sell Zoe.
They're saying, oh, and they that's
why the settings are so amazing.
It's why they're having such a great time.
They're saying, if you will drink this,
then you'll experience
what you long for deep down.
And of course, we all know that beer is
not the thing that will you
you know, that's why Ephesians chapter
five says, do not get drunk with wine,
which leads to debauchery,
but be filled with the spirit.
What that saying is, you're your soul
wasn't designed to run on alcohol.
Alcohol will be like salt water.
The more you have, the more you will want.
But it will make you.
But it's not just alcohol, it's.
It's all good.
I was watching a documentary
on, John de Rock and Rockefeller.
At one point,
John de Rockefeller was worth
$300 billion,
and he was asked
the question, what is enough?
And he
famously answered, just a little bit more.
$300 billion.
And what what's he say?
It's not enough.
He was saying it's salt water.
It's so we can take anything.
And we look at the
the best things in our lives,
and we try to force them
to feed our souls.
And it doesn't work.
The movie
Jerry Maguire, where Tom cruise looks
at Renee Zellweger and says,
you complete me, right?
And everybody just goes,
oh, that's so romantic.
That's like a formula for disaster.
Every time we, you know, we we're channel
surfing, we see that scene.
I look at my wife and I say, they're
not going to make it those two right.
The reason and listen
I love being married.
I love my wife.
But there are a couple
problems with that. One is
I it's
too heavy of of weight for me to tell her.
You need to fill the part, the hole in me
that goes as deep as my soul.
That's your responsibility.
No one can bear that.
The other thing I want you to know
is that,
you know, in church,
we talk a lot about marriages.
I'm going to talk a little bit
more in a minute,
but we do a disservice
to single people
when we elevate marriage to the place.
Jesus didn't say a good
marriage is the bread of life.
Jesus said he was the bread of life.
Whether you're single or married, it's him
that will feed your soul.
I talked to an NFL player
who won three Super Bowls, he said.
When we won the first Super Bowl, he said
before the confetti hit the ground,
I realized it hadn't worked.
It hadn't filled me up.
And that began his trek toward Jesus.
This is the most dangerous place to be.
Let me just tell you this.
This is important,
the most dangerous place for people to be.
And most people are in this place
they think is what I call the
if only place.
They think, if only I had a good marriage.
If only my kids were doing well,
if only I was healthy,
if only I had enough money, then
I would have real life.
And you never get what you think
will make you happy.
And so you never know.
I always think that in a couple of months
they're going to be commencement
speakers, speaking to graduates
all over this nation,
and they're all going to be saying,
listen, you guys go out
and find what gives you life.
And Jesus says, what everyone
is looking for
is not a what you're looking for. Who.
And it's Jesus.
Jesus says, I am the only one that can
bring life to your soul
that can give you Zoe.
You wake up every morning
and you realize you are hungry
for physical food.
You wake up every morning
knowing your soul longs to come alive.
And Jesus says, I'm the one.
So the first is what you need.
The second is where you get it.
The third is how you keep it,
how you keep it.
So when Jesus says, I am the bread of
life, I am the one who can give you. Zoe.
If you come to me, he is inviting you
into relationship and relationship.
Every relationship has like a beginning.
But if you're going to maintain
a relationship
and it's going to really be strong,
then you have to feed that relationship.
You have to maintain that relationship.
Now, I know I use marriage is one of
those things that we can use to substitute
and to try to make force into making it
the thing that is our bread of life.
And it's not meant for that.
But there is something about marriage
that gives us a taste,
which is why a movie like Jerry Maguire
makes sense to a lot of people.
That and even in
Ephesians five, where the Bible gives us
instructions on how to be a husband,
how to be a wife, what it says is that
marriage is supposed to be a reflection
of that relationship between us and Jesus,
where he is the bridegroom,
we are the bride, and that's
what really makes our soul come alive.
And what I find with a lot of people
when they where if you're married,
you realize that your wedding
was just the beginning.
Like if you thought that your wedding
was what you needed
for a really good marriage and you just
thought you stopped right there and didn't
invest in the relationship any more,
then you are probably no longer married.
Hey, I have this coffee cup up here
because I filled it with hot coffee
before the service.
And now of course, it's cooled off.
That's the way every relationship is,
no matter how hot it is, when it starts,
over time it will cool off unless you add
energy back into the system.
So my wife and I, whenever we counsel
people who are about to get married,
we always try to tell them, don't focus
so much on the wedding.
Focus on what happens after the wedding.
If you want to have a good marriage
and you have to figure out
how to add energy back into the system,
and we give him three things to do,
we'll say you need to debrief
daily date weekly, depart quarterly.
When we say debrief daily,
what we're saying is
you need to spend a little bit of time.
Drift happens quickly in relationships.
So every day just connect
for even ten minutes.
Now when my wife and I,
when our kids were small,
but they were toddlers, I would tell them,
listen, you guys go in the other room.
I don't care what you do.
Mom and I need to talk that parenting.
But it kept our marriage together.
Then we said, then date weekly.
That's a time where you have to spend time
just face to face,
and connect in that way
and then finally depart quarterly.
That's a time when you could
really refresh the relationship.
Listen, your relationship with
Jesus is the same.
It has a beginning.
The moment you go all in with Jesus
and you say, Jesus, you are my Savior.
You are my Lord, and you get baptized.
That's like the beginning.
That's like the wedding.
But if you're going to really experience
life,
then you have to invest
in that relationship.
And I would say the same three things.
Learn to debrief daily with Jesus, even
if it's just ten minutes in the morning.
One of the things that I figured out
is that it takes me nine minutes
to drive to church and back.
When I come to work,
that's 18 minutes round trip every day.
I have a chance.
I have a decision to make.
I can listen to sports radio,
I can listen to podcasts,
or I can debrief with Jesus
and spend 18 minutes with him every day.
Right?
I choose Jesus debrief daily, date weekly.
That's like the worship service.
I don't know if you realize this when you
just pay attention to the worship songs.
What you're doing when you come in
is that when you sing a worship
song, a lot of times you're telling Jesus,
this is what I see in you.
This is why you're you're beautiful to me.
This is why I love being with you.
And then you hear Jesus speaking
back to you, like even this morning,
Jesus saying, I am your bread,
I love you, I care for you,
your precious to me every week
and then depart quarterly.
If you pay attention to our church
calendar, you'll see that we're always
doing things like the Men's Summit
or Women's Refreshers student section.
We're going to redo shirt redoing
mission trips,
and all those things are designed to spend
to refresh your relationship
with Jesus
in such a way that you can have life.
So you were created
for abundant life.
Jesus is the only one who can give it.
Jesus says, I am the bread of Zoe.
You want life to be abundant.
You have to come to me.
But in order to really do that,
you have to maintain that relationship.
So I wanted to give you something
practical
this morning,
your relationship with Jesus.
One week from now, we'll either be
stronger or weaker.
It'll be determined
by how much time you will spend
with him between now and then.
You want 2026 to be a light,
a year of abundant life.
It starts and ends with Jesus.
The first I am statement.
Jesus, I am the bread of life.
He comes to me will never hunger.
He who believes in me will never thirst.
Did you pray with me?
Oh Lord Jesus, I'm so grateful.
I'm grateful that when you came,
you came
because you wanted to give us life.
And you say so plainly here,
I know that, by in just a few hours,
my brain will be telling my body
that I need food to continue to live.
Every day.
My soul tells me
that I need something for life.
And it's you that I long for.
I pray for every one of us here.
I pray that, those
who have never started a relationship with
you will start one even today.
But for those of us who have
a relationship with you, then I pray that,
this week will be a week where we will
invest in the relationship in such a way
that we will feed on you,
and you will be our true Bretton.
Thank you.
We pray this in your name. Amen.