Jesus, the Bread of Life

Lesson Transcript

Good morning, everyone. Greet you in Jesus' name. I invite your attention to the Gospel of John, chapter 6. I'm going to read verses 22 to 71. 22 to 71. And the title of my message is "Jesus, the Bread from Heaven." Gospel of John, chapter 6, verse 22.

"On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there except the one which his disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but his disciples had gone away alone. However, other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they ate bread after the Lord had given thanks. When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they also got into boats and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus.

And when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, 'Rabbi, where did you come when did you enter?' and set them and said, 'Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

Do not labor for food which perishes, but for food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you because God the Father has set his seal on him.' Then they said to him, 'What shall we do that we may work the works of God?' Jesus answered and said to them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent.' Therefore they said to him, 'What sign will you perform then, that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do?

Our fathers ate the manna in the desert, as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.' And Jesus said to them, 'Most surely I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' Then they said to him, 'Lord, give us this bread always.' And Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

But I say to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. And all that the Father gives me will come to me, and the ones who come to me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

And then and this is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son of Son and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day at the last day." The Jews then complained about him because he said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that he says, 'I have come down from heaven?'" Jesus therefore answered and said to them, "Do not murmur among yourselves.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Most assuredly I say to you that he who believes in me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead.

This is the bread which comes down from heaven that one may eat of and not die. I am the living bread which comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly I say to you, the Son of unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink 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 at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread which comes down from heaven. Not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead, he who eats this bread will live forever." These things he said in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. Therefore many of the disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying.

Who can understand it all?" Then Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained about this. He said to them, "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives the life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who would betray him.

And he said, 'Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father.'" From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also want to go away?" But Simon, Peter said, answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Also, we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus answered, "Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?" He spoke with Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray him being one of the twelve. Now, this is the fourth discourse of Christ after the sign of the feeding of the 12,000.

And it's a very interesting discourse talking about the bread of life, talking about the bread from heaven, and the necessity there is to eat and drink of that bread.

And when you look at what people have to say about this thing, particularly if you are from those higher churches like the Catholics or the Orthodox or the Anglicans or whatever, they all say, "Well, this is talking about the Lord's Supper, where we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ." In fact, the Oxford Study Bible, which I know some of you folks trot around with, which is okay. I don't have any problem with you doing that as long as you don't as long as you remember that the notes are not inspired.

That's the problem with study Bibles. You know, that's at least what I have found. You read you have a study Bible and it has these notes at the bottom. And if you look at the notes while you're reading the Bible, you sometimes walk away, "Well, what was Bible and what was study notes? The study notes are not inspired." That's why I think it's actually good to have a Bible that doesn't have any study notes in it. But at least one that you use all the time.

In fact, the Oxford Study Bible says this about this passage, "The Eucharistic significance of this passage is indisputable." I always love it when people say things like that. This is indisputable. Well, I can dispute that one if you want to ask. "Our Lord's declaration that he himself, the living bread that gives life, reveals the mystical supper of the New Testament Church." So what they're saying is, "Well, this is all about the Lord's Supper. It's all about the Eucharist.

It's all about the communion where we drink the body and blood of Christ and are spiritually nurtured." That's a very interesting thing to say. I would like to say that there is not a disconnect between what Jesus is saying here and the Lord's Supper. But the connection is not that this is about the Lord's Supper, but that the Lord's Supper is about this. Do you understand the difference there? This is not about the Lord's Supper, but the Lord's Supper points to what Jesus is talking about here.

Remember that the Lord's Supper is a as Paul describes it, is a remembrance. It's a remembrance. It's a memorial meal. It points us to what Jesus did for us and who he is and what he has accomplished and what our trust and faith in him does for us. Okay? So I sometimes think with some of these things that people say that they focus on what points to something rather than on what is pointed to. And that's what I want to talk about today.

Another thing that I would like us to remember here is that throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus talks about himself in many different ways, oftentimes in very metaphorical ways. Here he says, "I am the bread from heaven. I am the bread of life. Eat my flesh. Drink my blood." Okay? You remember in the earlier discourse with the woman from Samaria, he said to her that I will talking about the well there and the water in the well.

And he talks about, "I can give you water that will make you thirst forevermore." We all know when we look at that passage with the woman in the well, we all know that Jesus was not talking about giving that woman water, natural water. We know that he was talking about using that natural water as a metaphor to help us to understand that there is a deeper inward thirst that needs to be quenched.

And just in a sense, as natural water quenches our natural thirst, there is a deeper inward quenching that needs to happen, and that is provided by God. Peter Walpolt, a 16th-century Anabaptist leader, wrote this, which I think is a really good thought, particularly in helping us to understand what when we look at these kinds of sayings here and so on. Walpolt says, "Because Christ said, 'I am the true vine,' he was not physically a grapevine. He is called a lamb, but he was not physically a lamb.

He called Simon Peter a rock, but Peter did not turn into a stone. He remained human. Paul says of Sarah and Hagar that they were two testaments. Should that make them literal documents? No. They stood for the documents. Christ said, 'I am the door into the fold, and I am the way.' He said that whoever believed in him would have rivers of living waters flowing from within. But he does not mean a literal river.

Christ spoke of a man having a beam in his eye, but he did not mean a literal log or the tongue of a wagon. Christ said, 'The seed is the word of God, and the field is the world. The seven fat cows and the seven lean cows were seven years.' The holy writings speak many times in words like these, 'If I should take everything literally in a temporal way, many foolish things would happen.' And they do.

In the same way, when Christ said the bread was his body and the wine was his blood, it was not physically the case, but it stood for those things." I think that's something we have to keep in mind. All right? And so again, I would just simply say that when we observe the Lord's Supper, when we eat the bread and we drink from the cup, they represent Christ's body and blood. They point us to him, to what John is saying here today. Because what John is talking about here is not the baked bread or the crushed grape.

He is talking about Jesus being the means of spiritual life, eternal life. Okay? And that's what the focus is here today. Now, he starts out this story starts out after he has fed the 5,000 and everything, he leaves the area, goes over to the other side, goes to Capernaum. He's there in the synagogue. They have met him, and they're saying, "Well, why are you over here, basically? What are you doing over here? We were looking for you." And they call him Rabbi, which is teacher.

And it's a term of respect and acknowledgment that he does have some authority that they recognize. But the thing I notice here about Jesus is that and he does this a number of different times throughout the Gospels. They ask him, "When did you come here?" And Jesus never answered that question. I've noticed that a number of different times Jesus does not answer the question they ask. Sometimes he answers the question they should have asked. All right?

He does not answer the question they ask, but he does answer a question. It's a question they should have asked. And he has here somewhat of a rebuke. Chrysostom, in one of his sermons on this passage, talks about the fact that Jesus is not always sweet in his response to people. He's not always gentle with them. But there is sometimes a rebuke given to them, that he can speak words of rebuke. Sometimes words of rebuke are necessary.

And I think we shun away from that because we know so often that our words of rebuke, often the flesh or anger or some other things, can be mixed in with it, and we need to be cautious about this. But Jesus here speaks words of rebuke. And he says to them, "Why are you seeking me? Why are you seeking me? Why are you coming after me?" Okay? And there were lots of people following after Jesus, seeking Jesus. But you know, they may not have been seeking him for the right reason.

In fact, he says that, "You're not seeking me for the right reason. You want something out of me, which is not the thing I'm going to give you. I have something to give you. It's much greater than the thing that you want me to give you, but I do not have for you the thing you want me to give because that's really not what you need." All right?

And he says to them, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you because the Father has set his seal on him." And then they said to him, "What shall we do that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent." Now, notice here that Jesus says to them, "Don't labor for food that perishes." Does that mean that we should not go out there and have jobs and work

and provide a living for us?

No. That's not what he's talking about here. Okay? That's not what he's talking about here. It was interesting when I was reading Chrysostom's John Chrysostom's sermon. He spent on this passage he spent a lot of time talking about this thing that, you know, there are people who argue, "Well, Jesus said, 'Don't labor for food that perishes, so we don't need to have a job.'" Okay? There's a young man who comes into the room, many of you who would know him. And he is on the streets purposely today.

I think he could probably have a home if he wanted it. But I asked him why. He said, "Well, the Son of Man had no way to lay his head." And so he was imitating Jesus by simply being on the streets and not having a home, not being and so on, not having a job and everything like that. I'm not sure that's what Jesus was talking about here. And I know it's not what he was talking about. Okay? But he does say elsewhere in the Gospels, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you." Okay?

Give no thought for tomorrow. Okay? Trust God. He will provide. You know, in our we can be very anxious about the things of this world. You know, I'm approaching I'm getting older. I'm not sure if I'm ready to quite say I'm old. Some days I feel old. I'm getting older. And I think more about my approaching end than I think I've ever had before. Is that how it is for some of the rest of you, or as old as I am or maybe older? Do you think about that?

And you know, there's going to come a point in time in probably which I will not be able to work anymore. There may come that time. And how am I going to take care of myself? Okay? How am I going to supply my needs? How are my needs going to be supplied? We can become anxious about that, or we can believe that if we do now what God wants us to do, if we live according to what his word says, he will in the end take care of us. Okay?

Jesus did tell us not to lay up treasures on earth, but to lay up treasures in heaven. What's that mean? Does it mean nothing? Does it mean we can lay up a pile here on earth and it's okay? I'll let you answer that for yourselves. How are you going to figure that out? But we need not we should not make the words of God of none effect by our rationalizations. But Jesus tells us here that we are to labor. We are to work. We are to put forth effort. Okay? We are to put forth effort.

I always wonder what I've never had a conversation with somebody who believes that, you know, there's nothing you can do to be saved. It's just believe or just as it's grace alone about what Jesus says here. Okay? According to their logic, there's no work that you can do. Jesus should have said to them when they asked, "What is the work of God that we must do?" He should have said to them, "Oh, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do." But he didn't say that. What did he say?

"The work of God that you must do is to believe in the one whom the Father has sent." That's the work that has to be done. This points to the fact that salvation is a cooperative endeavor. God does his part, the most part, the major part, the most important and foundational part, the part upon which, if it had not been done, all our striving would be useless. Okay? But he does expect us to do our part. He expects us to respond to what he has done. He expects us to put our trust in what he has done.

He expects us to live out what he has done. It's a cooperative endeavor. There is something that we must do. We must believe in the one whom the Father has sent. And I want you to notice, as we go through this passage here, that Jesus is emphasizing the fact that believing in him is the way to eternal life. Putting our trust and confidence in him is the way to eternal life. In fact, I want you to notice here he says to them and that okay, their response to that is, "Well, okay, our Father's ate manna in the desert.

What are you going to do?" Now, one of the things you have to keep in mind is that manna came every day for 40 years. Every day for 40 years. That is not an insignificant sort of thing to have happened. Now, they had to eat that manna every day. All right? They had to eat it every day. And it's what sustained them physically. All right? And so Jesus fed them one little meal, 5,000 of them. Okay? And I think what they're saying is, "Hey, Moses fed us for 40 years of manna in the desert. What are you going to do?

Can you top that one Jesus? Are we going to see something more significant from you?" Well, the answer, of course, is yes, you are going to see something more significant than manna in the desert for 40 years sustaining people's physical life. All right? They are going to see something more significant than that. And Jesus says, "Moses gave you bread, but it was not spiritual food. It was physical food. And it did sustain your physical lives.

But you remember how in the wilderness the children of Israel rebelled against God, and God brought judgment on them. And none of the generation who left Egypt none of the generation who left Egypt entered into the promised land except for Caleb and Joshua because of their rebellion. That was a spiritual problem. Okay? That was a spiritual problem. But my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of heaven for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Then they said to him, "Lord, give us this bread always." Now, that is a very powerful statement, even though I don't think they knew what they were saying. In fact, I would like to suggest to you that this is a prayer you should pray every day. "Lord, give us this bread always." What if that was the thing that you most desired every day? This bread from heaven. Give us this bread always.

Lord, give us this bread always. And then Jesus says to them, "I am the bread of life." I want you to notice here, in this passage, he says in verse 48, "I am the bread of life also." In verse 51, "I am the living bread which comes down from heaven." Okay? He these are three I am statements, who he is. "I am the bread from heaven." Okay? What's he mean by that? What's this metaphor stand for? Well, why do we eat? Why do we naturally eat? What does it do for us? What's the purpose of it? Okay?

Last night, our family got together for a cookout, and we had these pub burgers and brats and everything. They were all very good. Okay? They were all very good. And I will confess, I only had one, so I was a good boy pretty much. All right? I could have eaten two. And it would have been satisfying it would have made me, you know, it would have been greedy, but I could have done it.

My natural flesh would have said, "Oh, yes, that's great." You know, we eat the purpose of eating food is to sustain our physical bodies. Now, I think oftentimes God makes some things some things that are necessary he makes pleasurable so that they get accomplished. All right? We need to eat. So eating, you know, food tastes good, and so we eat it. And then we sometimes eat more than we do need to. Okay? But there's something that satisfies our taste buds, something that satisfies our hunger.

There are eating natural foods that satisfies a hunger. But in satisfying that hunger, what happens? We get the nourishment that we need. Because the purpose of eating food is to provide nourishment to our bodies. That's the purpose. That was God's reason for us to eat. It's for eat food. It's to provide nourishment for our bodies. And here, bread is, I think, used in a broader sense to mean is to mean food. Jesus says, "I am the bread of life.

I am the source of nourishment." He's not talking here about physical nourishment. He's talking about spiritual nourishment. And if we eat, we will live. We all know a couple of years ago, we all had a friend who decided to stop eating. And we know what happened to him. He died. He died. If you don't eat, you're going to die. Older people, when they get older and become dishonorous, they don't eat. And they lose weight, and they wither up, and eventually they stop eating and they die.

They stop taking in nourishment. And so when Jesus says here, "I am the bread of life," he is saying, "I am the source of spiritual life." And then he goes on to define that as eternal life or everlasting life. Notice he says in verse 35, "He who believes in me shall never" oh, excuse me. A little farther. It's a little farther down. Sorry. It's let's see. No, it's I have it marked here. Okay. Yes. And Jesus said, "He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

But I say to you," I'm looking for everlasting life here. Okay. It's verse 40. "Everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up the last day." Later on, he talks about this everlasting life. Several times he uses the term everlasting life. Okay? Jesus came not to necessarily give us everlasting life as we have it. I mean, life as we have it now, but to give us something that's eternal. Okay? Something that is eternal. I have a quote here from N.T. Wright.

I like him, but I don't take everything he says as gospel. But this one I thought was pretty good. "Eternal life is the quality of life sharing in the inner life of Jesus. That is an offer at once to anyone that is on offer to anyone who believes." Eternal life is forgive me, my glasses are getting a little foggy here. Eternal life tells you what sort of life it is, as well as the fact that it goes on after death. It is the life of the age to come, the new life which God has always planned to give to his world.

But the form that this eternal life will take is the end is not that is of the disembodied it is not of a disembodied spirit. The eternal life that begins in the present, when someone believes and continues in the future beyond, will eventually take the form of resurrection. Okay? So basically, what he's saying here is eternal life is not only about duration. It's about the kind of life we have. It begins when someone believes in God. He has eternal life.

He begins to participate in that life that comes from Christ. And it ultimately has its fulfillment, and it continues on. And even when our physical body dies, we have eternal life. But it continues it has its ultimate reality in the resurrection. And notice here that Jesus says in verse 40, "And this is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day." That's the second time he talks about this last day.

"I will raise him up at the last day." Now, I want you to notice then what he says in verse 53 and verse 54. "Moses, surely I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink 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 at the last day." Now, I would like to suggest to you that Jesus here is using different words to describe the same thing. All right? Believing in Jesus, putting our trust in him is eating and drinking him.

That's the metaphor. The metaphor of eating and drinking has to do with putting our trust in what Jesus has done for us. And notice he says here elsewhere that in verse 51, "I am the living bread which comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." Now, what's he mean by that? Well, what did Jesus do for us? He died on the cross. He shed his blood. He gave his flesh up.

And through that, he paid our ransom, and he gives us life. He offers us through that life eternal. And it says here he gave it for the whole world. Okay? He gave it for the whole world. But it only becomes operative in our lives when we put our trust and faith in what Jesus has done for us. Not all the blood of bulls and beasts could take care of our sins.

That whole system of the Old Testament sacrifices were simply something to point us to a fulfillment in Christ, that he would come into the world, he would take on flesh, he would walk among us, he would teach us his way and God's way. And he would come to the cross offering himself up for our redemption. That through his shed blood, the price was paid for our sins, and we could be released from the power of sin and death and the devil. And that is what we have to put our trust in. Okay?

The work of God is to put our trust in what Jesus has done for us on the cross. That's what it means to eat and to drink. Jesus. And he promises us that, "He who believes in him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." Do you see the parallel there? Eating and drinking Jesus is believing and trusting in him. That's what Yolanda did this week. She put her trust in Jesus.

She knew she could not do it on her own. She knew she did not have the resources that only Jesus could save her and give her that eternal life. And now she, like all the rest of us, looks forward to that day that Jesus promises here, when I will raise him up at the last day. One of the things that's interesting is that Jesus does not talk about going to heaven. I'm not saying that he didn't believe that we were going to heaven or that we aren't going to go to heaven.

But he and most of the writers of the New Testament talk very little about heaven as a destination. But they do talk about the resurrection. That is the ultimate thing they're looking for. And the resurrection is the idea that God will when God comes and judges the world, he will finally put everything to right. We will finally be everything that he intended for us to be. And we will reign with him. That's what we're looking forward to, when he will raise us up on the last day.

Now, Jesus's disciples, many of his disciples, many of these people who had come across the sea there to find him and seek him out, when they heard him say this, I think they were puzzled. They were puzzled. Now, I think they were puzzled because they weren't listening very carefully. He says that if you believe in me, okay, if you believe in me, I will give you eternal life, and I will raise you up on the last day.

He says, "If you eat my flesh and drink my blood, I will give you eternal life and raise you up on the last day." I think if they'd been listening carefully, they could have made the connection between those two things that he's saying. But you know, sometimes when we listen to somebody, they say something that strikes us as so odd, so peculiar, so off-putting, that that's what we hear, and we don't listen to find out what they mean. And I think that's what's happening here.

And you know, the thing that's interesting is that I think Jesus did this on purpose. I think he did it on purpose. Because he knew that there were many people that were following him out of wrong motives, whether they wanted to have their bellies full or whatever, maybe some expectation about what the kingdom would be like and that he would be a ruler. We know that there were all kinds of false expectations on their parts about what Jesus is doing.

And I think very purposely, Jesus says these things to put them off. Now, if there is a hunger, and if there is a thirst, and if there is a desire for something, I think a person can see through can make the connection. And Jesus says here that, "I will not lose anyone whom the Father has planned for me. No one can come unless the Father calleth him." Okay? I'm not going to get into that too much this morning. But I do want to note that many turned away. Many turned away.

And Jesus turns to the twelve and says to them, "Do you also want to go away?" And Peter, that impetuous soul, answers him and says, "Lord, where shall we go? Where shall we go?" Now, that might say, "Well, I guess I have no other option." You know? Sometimes we find ourselves in that situation. "Oh, I don't have any better option here." You know? It's, you know, either it's a choice between twiddly dry and twiddly dumb. And I guess I'll flip a coin and figure one way or the other.

That's not quite what I think Peter is talking about here. Because Peter is saying, where else would we hear the words of eternal life? Peter did want that everlasting life that Jesus was talking about. Okay? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Who else has the words of eternal life? Only you do, Jesus, Peter says. We have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

I'll just remind you, Christ is not a last name. It's not Jesus's last name. It's his title. He's the anointed one, the long-expected one that Israel was looking for, that was promised. Now, just remind us again that in the Old Covenant, there were three types or three kinds of people who were Messiahs, who were anointed ones. Kings were anointed. Priests were anointed. And prophets were anointed. Kings were anointed to rule over the people and to give God's law.

A priest was anointed to intercede between God and men. Prophets were anointed to speak the word of God. And Jesus, in his person, in his being, incorporates all those offices. He is the king who has come to rule over us. He is the priest who has come to intercede on our behalf and to make a way to God for us. He is the prophet who has come to teach us God's will and to show us the way. He is our prophet, priest, and king. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And that's all incorporated here in what Jesus is saying, that you must believe in me. You must believe that I have the means to give you eternal life. You must put your trust in me. You must eat my flesh and drink my blood. Okay? That's the response we all need to have. We need to come to that place where we say, only you, Christ, have the words of eternal life.

Only you can we be spiritually nurtured, rescued, and given that eternal life which starts now, continues on, and ultimately has its fulfillment in the resurrection. Okay? And the Lord's Supper points to that. It reminds us about that. And so this passage is not about the Lord's Supper. It's not about the communion which we celebrate. It's about who Jesus is and what he has done for us and what our response to that is to be. Right? The Lord's Supper points to this. Okay?

But if we do not believe, if we have not put our trust in that, no eating of natural bread or of natural wine, drinking of the cup, the natural cup, will do us any good. In fact, it will be, as Paul tells us, a curse. Same response.