Do not work for bread that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. John 6:27
Jesus had recently fed the five thousand people with the loaves and fish. Here He told them that ‘they were following Him, not because they saw miraculous signs but because they ate the loaves and had their fill’. People were following the Lord Himself to have their own personal needs met and He told them to work for bread that endures to eternal life.
Next the people told Him, ‘our forefathers ate manna in the desert’. Manna sustained Israel in the desert but had a limited life span. Jesus told them it is my Father who gives the true bread from heaven. He declared the first of the seven ‘I am’ statements in John’s Gospel, “I am the bread of life”. Jesus was ever trying to lift peoples’ eyes from the physical realm to the eternal.
Jesus then began a controversial line of speaking which offended some of the Jews. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. I tell you the truth, unless you can eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you”. John 6:51,53. Today it’s easier for us to understand that this is fulfilled in our sharing the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. I’ve heard several speakers saying that in these days we will need to be partaking of the emblems daily, to be firmly connected to the Lord.
“From this time many of His disciples ‘turned back’(when we turn away from the Lord we are going backwards) and no longer followed Him. John 6:66 The insertion of chapters and verses into the word came a long time after it was written and were not divinely inspired. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the reference to this verse where many disciples stopped following Jesus is 6:66, three sixes. Six is the number of man and 666 is the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18. I can only say that we as members of His body need to be taking these emblems;
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me”. NKJV 1 Cor 11:25
God bless and keep you this day and forevermore.