Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1460
“For My flesh is meat, indeed, and My blood is drink, indeed.” John 6:55.
WE know that the Savior spoke of spiritual, not carnal things, and He spoke of Himself not as being in any sense meat for our bodies—that could not be—but as being food for our souls. This statement is very plain to us, but those who heard it at the first, found it very difficult to understand. Nor need we wonder, for men of the schools who play with letters, words and phrases, frequently meet with difficulties where none exist. The Jews of our Lord’s day had fallen into the foolish habit of taking words to pieces and dwelling upon the syllables and letters until they seemed to have lost all power of getting at the plain meaning which ordinary language was intended to convey. They blinded their own eyes with the pretense of superior wisdom; made puzzles and riddles out of plain words; raised a lot of dust and sat down in it blinded to the end.
Our God has taught us more and given us to understand more clearly, for His Holy Spirit has given us back the childlike spirit so that we are willing to see the natural sense which words were meant to reveal. Now we see great force and clear expressiveness in that very language which seemed, before, to conceal the Savior’s meaning. It was a veil to the Jews and they saw not—it is an instructive parable to us, which, instead of hiding the Truth of God, shadows it out to us and softens the light for our weak eyes. We see, I fear, even now but dimly, for our spiritual sight is scarcely clear as yet, but we see, blessed be God for that, and we see Jesus and something of His loving meaning. We do more than see—we enjoy and, therefore, know to the life what it is to feed upon His flesh, which is meat, indeed, and to drink His blood, which is drink, indeed.
We cannot attempt to explain the deep mysteries of our text, but rather, as the swallow touches the brook with his wing and is away again, we will glance at these crystal waters of this sacred Truth of God and then up and away! The text teaches us, first, what Christ must be to us. We shall consider, secondly, what is bound up in this. And, thirdly, what reflections naturally arise out of it.
I. WHAT CHRIST MUST BE TO US. The answer from the text is, He must be our meat and drink. He must be everything to us—the one thing necessary, the indispensable, necessary all-sufficient supply. He must be the source of strength, the support of life and we must feel Him to be so. He must, to come back to the figure, be meat and drink to us. Our Lord, in speaking to the Jews, was doubtless thinking of the Paschal Lamb and of the time when Israel came out of Egypt—when they not only had the blood of the lamb sprinkled upon their houses for their security, but the lamb, itself, within them as their sustenance.
They sat down to feed upon it before they enjoyed the fullness of redemption by passing out of Egypt from under the bondage of Pharaoh. They did not understand that symbol and they little knew what our great Lord and Master meant when He employed it to set forth Himself and said, “My flesh is meat, indeed, and My blood is drink, indeed.” Our Lord Jesus Christ must be to us, then, our spiritual meat and drink. What do we mean by that? First, that the doctrine of God Incarnate must be the food of our souls. Brothers and Sisters, we have no doubt as to the true and proper Deity of our Lord Jesus. We have long since passed out of the region of controversy about that, for He has been God to us in the work of salvation and in the new creation which we have experienced through His power.
We have, moreover, no doubt about His humanity, but we do not usually dwell enough upon it. We are bound to adore His Deity, but we must not forget that He is as truly Man as if He were not God, and as much a Brother to us as if He were not the Son of the Highest. Jesus is assuredly Man. Now feed on this. The man Christ Jesus heads up a new race—as the first Adam headed up the race of old and was our federal head to stand or fall for us, and we were to stand or fall in him—so is there now a new Head who brings us up from the ruin of the first Adam’s fall and puts us into a new position before the living God. There is a Man who has redeemed us! There is a Man who has made all the men in Him
well-pleasing to God. There is a Man who represents manhood in perfection in the Glory above. There is a Man in whom all Believers are—even as we read that Levi was in the loins of Abraham when Melchisidec met him!
We are in Christ and we now stand before the eternal Throne in that blessed representative Man. Feed on this doctrine! Jesus is a real Man, though clothed with all power He is God and yet He is the mirror of tenderness! He rules all things and yet is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. You must believe this and you must receive it—and you must rest upon it—otherwise you have no life in you. Some try to turn this fact into a myth, but, indeed, it is no parable or figure of speech, for the Christ who spoke these words was there before them—one whom they had often seen eat and drink! He spoke of Himself with His own lips and was not a phantom or apparition, but a solid existence of flesh and blood. So, then, it is upon the historical Christ, whose existence is a matter of fact, that my soul must feed as I believe Him to be both Human and Divine.