The Menu is Not the Meal

6 · Continuing the exposition of John 1, Oswald catalogs explicit and implicit Moses references: the law/grace contrast (v

Now, as we move through John 1, we get to verse 17, and we're told this by John, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And then we have another reference in verse 18. This is implicit to Moses. We're told in verse 18 of John, verse chapter one, verse of John, no one has ever seen God, the only Father who is at the Father's side, He who has made him known. Well, who is the one character in the Bible who came the closest to seeing God? Moses. As we move through chapter one, we get to verse 45. Philip is introduced. Remember that name. That'll come into play when we're in John 6. Philip is introduced, and he goes to others. And he says this. We have found him of whom Moses in the law. And also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So if we're paying attention as we go through the first chapter of John we see Moses is in here a lot. What's going on here?

7 · Oswald moves beyond explicit Moses citations to identify implicit typological patterns: the serpent lifted up (John 3), Jesus at the well echoing Moses meeting his Gentile wife, and the 38-year paralytic symbolizing Israel's wilderness wandering

As we progress, we see more and more examples of this. For instance, in chapter three, Jesus himself says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Moses keeps appearing in these crucial moments. And these are the official mentions, the explicit mentions, but there's all these sort of implicit parallels in John. Woman at the well. How did Moses meet his wife? What did Jesus do? He sort of drove this woman. He sort of separated her from all these men. Right? Not to marry her, exactly, but to make her part of the bride of Christ, I suppose you might say, what did Moses do, and how did he meet his wife? Well. And what was his wife? Well, she was not really a Jew. She was not a Jew, actually. And then you get to chapter five, where Jesus heals a man who's been paralyzed for 38 years. You're like, well, that's a convenient number. How many years did Israel wander around in the wilderness? It's actually 38. We say 40. It's actually 38 years. You've got this man representing the people of Israel who are lame and ineffectual in their faith and can't get to final redemption until Jesus comes. That man, that lame man who can't affect his own salvation is Israel. And it just kind of continues all the way throughout.

8 · Oswald arrives at the sermon's primary text: John 5:44–46, where Jesus declares that Moses testifies about Him and accuses those who claim Moses but reject Christ

And then we get to chapter five, the verse I asked you to start with. I said, this is the beginning of Our Text, Chapter 5. 44. Jesus is talking to the Jews who opposed his healing the man on the Sabbath. And you see this. John 5. 44. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes only from God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope for. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe me? My words. Now, there are plenty of people that could see the connection between Jesus and Moses. Right off the bat, I mentioned Philip. In chapter one, he tells others, come see the one whom Moses spoke about. But as we progress through chapter six, the first miracle we see a miracle that's mentioned in all the Gospels is the feeding of the 5,000. How does the crowd respond when Jesus turns the five loaves and the five fishes into feeding everybody? What do they say? How do they respond? Well, they say this in John 6, 13. This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world. Now, your ability to understand what's going on there is dependent on your understanding of the old Testament. Deuteronomy 18:15. Moses, as he is departing the scene, says to Israel, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, and it is to him you shall listen. Moses predicted the coming of Christ. So when Jesus says in John 5, it is Moses who testifies about me, the very next story is the feeding of the 5,000. And the crowd says, this is the prophet who has come into the world. They are referencing what Moses. There are plenty of people who understood what Jesus was doing at some level.

9 · Oswald explains the mediatorial role Moses occupied at Sinai and how that role anticipated Christ

Moses says in that passage to the people, remember when I went up on Mount Horeb and there was smoke and fire and trembling and thunder and lightning, and you said to me, you go up to the mountain on my behalf. You go hear from God. We'll stay back here lest we die. In Deuteronomy 18, Moses says to the people, you remember when you told me that someone is coming who will be your mediator? And so there are people. Philip understood this to some degree. The people, after receiving the food from Jesus miraculous provision, understood this to some degree. People. Some people could see, at least partially, that Moses was the menu and Jesus was the meal, that Moses was the map and Jesus was the actual territory.

10 · Oswald narrates the progression of John 6: the crowd pursues Jesus across the lake, demanding more bread and invoking the manna Moses gave

But I'm also interested in asking how some people who started to see that changed their minds. So let me kind of tell you the quick timeline Progression through chapter six. Jesus feeds the 5,000. They say, Behold, this is the prophet who has come into the world. They move to make him king. Jesus, realizing it's not time for him to be king and not in that way, departs. His disciples go across the boat, across the sea. Jesus joins them while walking on water. Probably a reference also to Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. If you're ever wondering, why is Jesus walking on water, maybe something there to think about. A lot of Jesus's water miracles have things to do with Moses. Anyway, so they arrive on the other side of the sea, and all these people who had just been fed are like, chasing him. They're like, well, not so fast, bucko. You just did something pretty wonderful. We want to engage some more. They find Jesus on the other side of the lake, and they're like, hey, something's up with you. Would you give us some more bread? And Jesus actually calls them out on this. He actually says, you're here because you want More bread. We'll talk about that more in a moment. But listen to what story they tell when they're trying to get Jesus to become the divine vending machine. They say this. Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written. So they know Moses, Moses, it's all in the air for them. And the way they're thinking, this is all lining up. Just as Moses provided manna in the wilderness, so Jesus has provided food in the wilderness. He gave them bread from heaven to eat. And Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

11 · Oswald exposes the crowd's fundamental error: they see Jesus as a superior Moses who will give more bread, but they fail to see that Jesus gives a different kind of bread — spiritual, eternal, life-giving

At the end of chapter six, toward the end of chapter six, Jesus says this to these same people. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread come down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Here's the problem. These people have some understanding that Jesus is better than Moses. But for them, they think that if Jesus is greater than Moses, that just means he'll make greater amounts of food. They haven't taken that final step to realize that it's not greater amounts of food, greater amounts of freedom from your enemies, you know, greater conquests and so forth. They haven't taken that final step to understand that it's the food itself, the quality of the food itself is greater. It's spiritual food. It's food that will give you eternal life, not just energy to do another few hours of labor. They can see that Jesus is in line with Moses. What they can't yet see is that he's operating at that level that C.S. lewis would call the heavier, the weightier, the more solid. Jesus is operating on the meal side of things. And these people are still thinking in terms of the map, confusing the map for the territory. That's that final step to go.

12 · Peter's confession — 'You have the words of eternal life' — is itself a Moses echo

Now, pretty much everybody leaves Jesus at this point, and Jesus turns to the 12, and he says in verse 67, do you want to go away as well? Simon Peter answered him, lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy One of God. You have the words of eternal life. Friends, that is actually more Moses. Moses ascends to the mountain, comes down with the words that God says are your life. Take them that you may live long in the land. He says in Deuteronomy 32. These people were very aware, obviously, of the Old Testament. They had a great fluency and understood the play on things to some degree.

13 · Oswald signals the structural shift from exposition to application

So that's essentially an exposition of what's happening from John 1 to John 6. You've really got a bunch of interaction that is all based on this concept I'm presenting to you as a map or as a menu, meal confusion. Moses was the menu. Jesus is the meal. And not all people understood that. So now I just want to shift into application. This might be kind of a quick sermon. What time is it? Yeah, we'll see.

14 · Oswald begins application by restating the core principle: eternal joy depends on the ability to distinguish representations from realities

How do we apply this concept? How do we observe the mistake that these folks made and gained traction in our own pursuit of eternal joy? One thing. Your eternal joy depends on your ability to distinguish between representations and realities. Your eternal joy depends on your ability to distinguish between things that represent things and the things that are represented by those things. So I sat down and, like, really came up with a way to just say this over and over and over again to get it into your beautiful thick skulls.

15 · Oswald uses a humorous, extended analogy of confused tourists parking at a Buc-ee's sign instead of entering the store

And let me just say it a thousand different ways, the same thing. The sign is not the destination. The sign is not the destination. In John 2, Dove talked about these wall drug signs and how pathetic the actual place is in South Dakota. I would compare that to the BUC EE's, where think of the BUC EE's to wall drug sign ratio issue here. You've got more wall drug signs per wall drug than you have Bucky signs per Bucky's, but you've got way more glory per sign. Like, the ratio to glory to sign is, like, high on the Buc ee side. And it's, like, utterly disappointing on the wall drug side. But, you know, you really can imagine some kind of very confused foreign tourists driving through the Southern United States and seeing, you know, maybe they're from some, like, you know, backwards Eastern European country, and they see, like, a Buc ee sign, and it's the biggest and most beautiful thing they've ever seen. And they're like, this is important. Look at this huge sign. It's red, it's lit, it's big. Like, it's steel. There's more steel on this sign than there is in our capitol back home. You know, and they pull in and they park under the BUC EE's sign. And they think we have arrived at BUC EE's, right? And they're like, they're like sending photos to their keys. It's like, no, you're not at BUC EE's. You're at the sign for BUC EE's. Keep going. You would not believe the gap between the sign and the beauty. Buc ee's is way better than the sign.

16 · Oswald expands the problem beyond the Jews to the Gentiles, citing Acts 14 where Paul and Barnabas correct pagan idolatry by pointing from creation to Creator

The blueprint is not the building. The map is not the territory. The menu is not the meal. The model is not the machine. The brochure is not the vacation. Get what I'm saying now? We do, okay, distinguish it between these things. When the, when the menus are 2D, when they're two dimensional, we can kind of sort out like, okay, this isn't the meal. This is a piece of paper. But of course, the complication of being a sinner in this fallen world is that our menu is very much three dimensional. And it really does offer some small installments of the pleasures that are to come. Some small installments of the glories that are to come. And so it was really hard for the Jews because they looked at Moses as a high water mark in some respects, in terms of. of the most excellent men to have ever come out of the tribe. To understand that he was a billboard and not a destination, that's a lot harder. That's a lot harder. That's actually the real trick of holiness. And it's really kind of hard to do. It's really kind of hard to get that sense that there is a better reality behind this reality than. And that this reality is meant to point me to the eternal good that Jesus has for me in Christ. People really struggle with this way of thinking. And it's not just the Jews. In Acts, we see kind of the gentile version of this problem, which might be closer to our problem. In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas are preaching and a man is healed. And the people get it in their heads that Paul and Barnabas are gods. And they go to offer sacrifices to them. And Paul freaks out. He's like, stop. In verse 14 of Acts 14, he says this. But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments, rushed out into the crowd, crying out, men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of nature with you, and we bring you good news. Now I want you to pay attention to how he talks them out of their idolatry. Because what we're trying to do is talk ourselves out of our idolatry here. Okay, so what does he. What. How does he do this? That you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in it. He did not leave himself without witness. We just saw that word witness talking about Moses. Same idea here. But this isn't a person. This is stuff he has not left you without a witness for. He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with fruit, food and gladness. So how does Paul talk them out of idolatry? He helps them make a creator creation distinction. He said this stuff, which is great. He's filled your bellies with good food, he's brought seasons and it's a beautiful world. He's like, this is just the menu. This is just the billboard pointing you to the one, to the destination. He's like, in the past, God allowed you to walk in ignorance in this way, but no longer. Jesus Christ has come and, and he has revealed fully the destination that we're all arriving to. And you need to stop this foolishness.

17 · Acts 17 is added as a second Pauline example: the created order is designed to lead people to seek God, but they must follow the breadcrumbs without confusing them for the destination

In Acts 17:24, God encounters another group of pagans who have their idolatry issues. And he says this in verse 24. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in the temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything he made from one man. Every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find Him. Yet he is actually not far off from us. What's he doing there? He's saying, follow the breadcrumbs, my friend. Feel your way toward God. This world has been created with all these glories, and you're living in a place that you didn't choose where you're going to live. You're. You were born into a family. You didn't choose where you're going to born. There's a master of ceremonies that work over your whole life. Orchestrating everything through providential sovereignty is like, pay attention to creation and make sure you distinguish between creation and creator and you'll find the truth.

18 · Oswald catalogs contemporary idols — romantic love, money, children, health, comfort, safety — and identifies them as signs, not destinations

So the Jews were doing this whole thing and are doing this whole thing with Judaism. They're trying desperately to turn the menu into a meal. And the rest of the nations are doing this in their own way through hedonism. They're trying desperately to turn those things which signify into things that are more significant than that. They're trying to make the map the territory. Where are you doing this? Here's some places where this sort of thing comes into view. Romantic love, friends. That's a sign, not a destination. Money, children, freedom, health, friendships, comfort, safety. These are menu items pointing you to the great eternal chef. These are things that are meant to turn you toward the one who made them.

19 · Oswald identifies the first danger: spiritual apathy when earthly blessings accumulate

And the problem that we have is the same problem we see the Jews having in relation to moses in John 6. And it kind of gets really bad in John 9. And that is, we look at this thing, you know, whether it's marriage or money, and we think, I've arrived. Or I will have arrived once I get this. Nope, nope, that's a breadcrumb. That's not a destination. Now, as people are sorting these issues out, you typically, there's a few ways that this sort of manifests itself. And one is, is that there are some people who accomplish their list at some point in their life, and they become apathetic toward the Lord. I would say, like, I feel like I have accomplished most of the things that I felt like were important. I wanted to have a wonderful wife. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to raise my kids. I wanted to have a meaningful job. You know, I wanted to be reasonably healthy and so on and so forth. And, you know, I would say that, like, for the most part, I've arrived at these things, and maybe some of you here have arrived at some of these things or, you know, people who have. Well, you've got to be very careful at that moment not to think you've reached the end of the rainbow. You've simply accumulated a whole host of evidences that there is a God over all this who must be worshiped, and that there is an eternity beyond this that is far more potent than all of the pleasures you've accumulated in your life.

20 · Oswald continues warning against apathy: some people are content to study the map rather than take the journey

You know, people talk about maps, and they think that the only potential problem with a map is if the map's wrong. It's like, well, you know, there's another problem with maps. Some people confuse them as territory. Some people confuse knowledge of a place with experience in that place. Some people are content to just look at maps instead. It's honestly quite safer, of course, to just look at maps than to go on the trip. And in the same way, friends, there's a spiritual apathy that can creep in where our representations of glories become our only glories. And an Apathy and a complacency creep in. You've got to watch out for that. If your life is great right now, praise the Lord. But there is one thing that that's supposed to lead you to the creator of those things.

21 · Oswald identifies the second danger: deconstruction when God removes an idol

So sometimes I see folks that have actually been really blessed and they. They don't use those blessings as the billboards that they really are. And the other one I see is like various versions of deconstruction, when God takes away something that they had wrongly worshiped. I've preached this passage before on a sermon about deconstruction. And you see that in the text. These people had a very narrow view of what it meant for God to be good to them. And when Jesus says, no, I'm not giving you that anymore, they leave, they depart. Because their bandwidth, their window for understanding what it means for God to be good is this. God has to do this. And then God takes away your wife, or he causes you to be infertile, or he makes it really hard to make ends meet. And you look at those things and you say, well, how can God be good? It's like if God withholds those things from you, he is not withholding them to starve you, he's withholding them to feed you the food that never perishes. And that will lead to your eternal joy.

22 · Oswald constructs a dystopian hypothetical: a future where people use neural implants to taste menu items, becoming addicted to the simulation and starving because they never actually eat

That's the really hard thing about being a sinner in a beautiful world. It's still pretty beautiful. It's cursed, but it's still pretty beautiful. I want you to think about this image that I came up, which I don't think is that far into the future. Some kind of cyberpunk hellscape. I was thinking about the other day where we all have the neurolink. You know, we've all got the chip. And now when you go into a restaurant, you can double click with your finger on the menu item and you can smell the meal you would potentially be eating if you ordered that meal. And your brain is triggered also to have some simulation of the taste. This would be relatively simple to do, neurologically speaking, with where we are technologically right now. So it would be possible for you, say, in 10 years to get the chip, go into a futuristic Elon restaurant and be handed a menu. And probably you wouldn't be using your hands. You probably just look at it and it would notice that you're looking at that item. And then you maybe hear a countdown. Three, two, one. And then you would smell the meal and you would taste the meal and it would last for a little bit. And you'd know exactly the meal that you're about to have. And you could potentially see a kind of people who would become addicted to that, Right? And they would literally just sit in restaurants all day, moving from item to item. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's kind of like chewing the box of chocolates and then spitting them out, like, all the way down the line. You can imagine that, like, being a thing. You can imagine that people would struggle with that because they're getting so much close to a simulation of the real thing. But here's. Of course, the problem is that if you spent all of your meal time doing that, you would die of starvation. There are no actual calories happening.

23 · Oswald reveals that the dystopian illustration is not his invention but biblical — Isaiah 55:2 condemns spending resources on what does not satisfy

For some of us, that would be a good thing. Maybe this could be. Anyway, actually, the Bible. I invented that from the Bible. I didn't imagine that because I read a lot of Neal Stephenson. I invented that from the Bible. What do I mean by that? Well, Isaiah 55, 2. Why do you spend your money on that which does not? Bread and labor for that which does not satisfy? This is exactly what idolatry is, my friends. It's turning the menu into the meal.

24 · Jeremiah 2:13 is added as a second prophetic indictment: Israel forsook the fountain of living water for broken cisterns

In Jeremiah 2, God says, Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord. For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountains of living waters and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water. The Bible actually talks this way. This is actually the human condition now, not into the future. We try to subsist on the menu, forgetting that there's an actual meal behind it.

25 · Oswald issues a direct charge: if your life is together but you feel an anxious gnawing, you are spiritually starving — turn to the Maker of all things

And so for many of you, when your life is all put together and you feel this sort of anxious gnawing now what? That's because you haven't taken in the spiritual calories necessary to actually survive. You're simply trying to turn the menu into a meal. So to you, I would say, turn to the one who made you and everything on the menu. Turn to the One who made you and everything on the menu. Love him, follow him, worship him. Paul says it this way in Colossians. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear. This is where Lewis is getting this imagery of a translucent person who becomes solid. When Christ, your life, John Says in I think it's first John, we do not know what we will yet be, but when he appears, we will be as he is.

26 · Colossians 3:5-10 is expounded: putting to death what is earthly is precisely the work of distinguishing menu from meal

Colossians 3 continues in verse 5. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires and covetousness, which is idolatry. What's going on here? Meal, making out of the menu, taking pleasures which are meant to point you to the One who made them, and making them the point of your life. On account of these, Paul says, the wrath of God is coming in these two. You once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them away. All anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put on the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

27 · Oswald identifies a diagnostic for corporate idolatry: zero-sum thinking

One mark of a church full of idolaters is they think in zero sum ways because they're competing for actual resources, not the eternal resources that are represented by those actual resources. They think in zeros. They're competing for glory, they're competing for time, they're competing for all these things they don't understand. Like right behind those things is the real thing, and there's no end of it. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore.

28 · Oswald transitions toward conclusion and communion by issuing a diagnostic question: Where are you making billboards your destinations? The call is self-examination — to identify personal idolatries and reorient toward eternal realities

So what does this all do with, like, what do we do with all this? Well, you can just look at the way that the Jews have tried to turn the menu into the meal and pull the plank out of your own eye and think, well, where am I doing that? Where am I making the billboards, the destinations? And how can I begin to look in hope to the way things will be forever, the real way, forever. When Christ returns her communion, we have a great communion text.

29 · Oswald concludes by returning to John 6:53-58, where Jesus shocks the crowd by demanding they eat His flesh and drink His blood

In John 6, the Jews grumbled against Jesus as he was making these points. And Jesus turned the volume, the offensive volume, up to 11. He says. So Jesus said, truly, truly, 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 feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true blood and my blood. My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on 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 whoever feeds on me also, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Now you can see why they got out of there. Their inability to see representations and symbols had them thinking very literally in this moment and thinking, this is cannibal talk. You know, they ran away because Jesus was playing games instead of producing food. They ran away because Jesus is like, let's use our brains and think about the way that I'm talking here and how it's symbolic and so forth. But if you're in Christ, you understand that fundamentally what he's saying is. There came a moment when you said, I am starving. Lord Jesus, My whole life has been about trying to turn the menu into a meal. I've done the girl thing. I've done the money thing. I've done the career thing. I've done the athletic thing. I've done it. Why am I so hungry? Then, through a work of God, you realize, oh, there's a different kind of food for a different part of me. That is the realest part of me. And Jesus saved you and filled your heart with a substance you did not have up until then, and you felt satiated for the very first time. What the Lord's table is here to do is to remind you of these fundamental realities week after week after week, so that you never forget where the real meal is. The real meal is found in Christ. So if you're a follower of Jesus today, would you come up during our time of partaking and partake of this demonstration of the Lord's faithfulness and know that he is indeed the realest meal there is? Sam, It.