Please read the note from Pastor Woodhouse regarding his sermon below:

Our Old Testament and Gospel readings for this week are obviously connected, as the people following Jesus ask Him for a sign that He has been sent by God, explicitly mentioning the manna with which God fed His people in the wilderness during the Exodus.

But the contrast between these events might call us to reflect on the different blessings God illustrates in Holy Scripture. There is no doubt that God richly and daily provides for our temporal lives in this world, but Jesus points out that this crowd has followed Him only for those blessings, without recognizing the far greater work Jesus is doing before their eyes. The miracles Jesus performs point to His identity as truly God in human flesh, but the point of His coming to live among us is not just to feed or heal those who come to Him at that moment, but rather to sacrifice Himself for the sins of all of humanity, to restore our relationship with God and to give us the confidence of everlasting life in a new creation.

At times, it can be tempting to concentrate so much on the miraculous signs Jesus performs that we start to lose focus on the real reason He came to earth. So this week, let us remember to seek the Word, not (just) the signs!