John 6 and the Teachings of Jesus Christ

Good afternoon, everyone. That was wonderful. I always look forward to hearing Art perform special music. That was fantastic. It'll take just a minute here to get things situated.

Hopefully everyone has been doing well despite the snow and the ice we actually had at our house two episodes in the last week where we've come out and found a car. In our front yard would be an exaggeration, but at least over the snow bank, kind of sticking into our front yard. So it has definitely been slick out there. At our house, there's a street that tees into the front yard. And so in both circumstances, I think we've had somebody who's been going a little too fast around the corner, because 25 miles per hour would not have launched a car into that snow bank. But luckily it didn't affect us at all except for messing up the snow in our front yard. Alright, I think we're set here. Alright, and we have video. So as all of us know, we're coming up pretty quickly actually to the time of Passover and time when we try to spend some time preparing, reflecting back on our calling, thinking about what we're doing and how we're living our lives as Christians.

So what I wanted to do today is focus actually on one particular chapter of the Bible in John 6 and reflect on the teachings, the ministry of Jesus Christ, and what it means to us as followers of Him, and really trying to accomplish a few different things at once maybe in doing this. Number one, looking a little bit deeper at this one particular passage and what it has to say, but also hopefully striking a bit of a nerve and driving some interest and curiosity on the part of all of us to dig back into the Gospels, what the Gospels have to say about Jesus Christ, and how we need to follow Him as we reflect in our lives in this spring Holy Day season. If you'll turn with me to start, let's turn to Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12, verses 1 and 2, or if you can read the text on the screen. I don't have all the scriptures up on the screen this time, so, but this one we do have. As a starting point, we'd like to turn here because Jesus Christ is the standard by which we need to live our lives, and He's the one who works everything out in our lives.

And so therefore, in verse 12, and therefore, of course, is referring to the previous chapter. We know that Hebrews 11 is a faith chapter, and it goes through the whole listing of all the heroes of faith and all the things that they've done. And so wrapping that up, the writer of Hebrews says, knowing all those things, seeing all these heroes of faith, we also, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that's set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. And the words I want to focus on there is the author and the finisher of our faith. And as we're going through the rest of this sermon, and I would encourage all of us as we're going through the upcoming weeks leading into Passover and the time when we think so much more about the role that Jesus Christ plays in our lives and giving our lives to Him, encourage everyone to think about those concepts of the author and the finisher.

He's the pace car, if you will. But also, like it says in Revelation, also uses the words the alpha and the omega. Today in advertising, we'd say, he's got us covered from A to Z, from beginning to end, complete. I'd like to read an interesting story that I found on the internet, something from Discovery News as we work our way into this topic. The title of this story from August of 2009 is people naturally walk in circles. If you're lost in the woods and you feel like you're walking in circles, you probably are. Without landmarks to guide us, people really do go around and around, found a new study. The finding emphasizes the importance of being prepared if you're going to set off into the wilderness or even into a maze of city streets. Just walking in a straight line seems like such a simple and natural thing to do. But if you think about it, it's quite complicated what's going on in the brain, said Jan Suman, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Turbingen, Germany. After these experiments, I would never go into a big forest or desert without a compass or a GPS anymore. Suman's project started when a German popular science television show approached his group with a viewer question, why do people walk in circles when they're lost? At first, Suman wasn't sure if that common sensation was actually true.

When lost, he suspected, people might veer to the left or right, but he didn't really expect them to actually walk in true circles. So, to find out, he instructed nine people to walk as straight as possible in one direction for several hours. Six walkers forged through the flat forested region of Germany, three trekked through the Sahara Desert in southern Tunisia. A sandstorm stopped further testing in the desert. All of the walkers wore GPS receivers so the researchers could analyze their routes. The results, published in the journal Current Biology, showed that no matter how hard people tried to walk in a straight line, they often ended up going in circles without ever realizing they were crossing their own paths. But there was a twist. Circular walking befell only before forest walkers who had had to walk in overcast conditions and the one desert walker who walked at night after the moon had set. Those who could see the sun or the moon managed to travel fairly straight. Previous studies have shown that bees, pigeons, and a variety of other animals move in tight circles when orienting cues like the sun are missing. The new study suggests that when we're conscious of what we're doing, whether we're conscious of what we're doing or not, people are tuned into those types of environmental signals, too. People find it hard to say what they did exactly, so it's pretty clear from our data that they do use the sun somehow. So in a follow-up experiment, the researchers challenged 15 people to walk straight while blindfolded. When they couldn't see it all, the walkers ended up going in surprisingly small circles with a diameter less than 66 feet. In repeated attempts, the blindfolded walkers circled in one direction sometimes and in the opposite direction other times. The blindfold experiment dispelled one theory, that people might walk in circles because one leg tends to be longer or shorter than the other or stronger than the other. So instead, Soman expects that little mistakes in the brain add up until the sense of what's straight turns into something round. The results aren't necessarily surprising, said Randy Galistel, a cognitive neuroscience at Rutgers University. Most dead hikers, after all, are found within a mile, if not within just 100 meters of where they got lost. Still, he said, if you do get lost, it's important to know your body might end up doing the opposite of what your brain intends. So he goes on to say in the end, make sure you have a compass or a GPS with you. Kind of reminds me of a quote from Yogi Berra. Yogi Berra is always good with interesting quotes. He's known for saying, if you don't know where you're going, you might wind up somewhere else. So as we approach the Passover, it's good for us to think of where we're going and think about Jesus Christ as our orientation point so that we're not, spiritually speaking, going in circles in the lives that we're leading. And I know often as we get lost in our lives, as we get removed a little bit from God, as we're not studying and praying and orienting ourselves to Him all the time as we know we should, it's easy in our lives to feel like we're going in circles, isn't it? I think we probably hear that from a lot of people out there that we deal with from day to day. I feel like I'm in a rut. I feel like there's nothing new. I feel like I keep repeating the same things over and over again, even though I don't want to. What we need, as this article points out, is an orientation point. And God has given us that orientation point in Jesus Christ, our Alpha and our Omega. So the ultimate point today, if we remember nothing else, is to look to Jesus Christ.

And as we're moving towards the Passover season, again, what I hope to do is encourage a curiosity and light a little bit of a fire and an interest in going back to the Gospels, reading about Jesus Christ, thinking about His life, understanding what He did and why He did it, how He dealt with other people and what it is that He's called us to. So let's go forward then and talk a little bit about John 6. John is an interesting book in the Bible. It was the last of the four Gospels that was written. And you might have heard in past sermons and Bible studies, the Gospels are all different in terms of how they cover the life of Jesus Christ. And that's why they're interesting to read. They were written by different people at different times and aimed at different audiences.

So, for example, if we look in the book of Matthew, you'll see the book of Matthew is filled with references that say things like, as was written or as was said in the prophets, because the book of Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. That's why it starts with a genealogy, because a Jewish audience wants to know the family lineage that someone comes from. And so in that book, it's talking all about how Jesus Christ fulfilled different prophecies of the Messiah that were in the Old Testament. John was the last Gospel that was written, and it's what's called a synoptic Gospel. So it's meant to be a synopsis or a summary of the things that Jesus Christ did.

And consistent with something that's written later on, it focuses then on certain key days, actions, aspects that happen. And one of the accounts that I read said that the Gospel of John covers only 27 single days of the life of Jesus Christ, because what it's doing is it's picking out certain events and certain things that he did, and then drilling into those events to see what the meaning is and to bring it out. It's also a Gospel that was written to a broader audience than just the Jews, so as we step into it, we'll see a bit of that right in the beginning.

So let's start here looking at the setting in verses 1 through 4 and just think and reflect a little bit on where this is set. John 6, if you'll please turn there. I don't have any of the other Scriptures up on the screen this time. I apologize for that. I ran out of time. But in John 6, chapter 1, after these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And then a great multitude followed him because they saw his signs, which he performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. Now Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. So I'd like to pause there and just talk a little bit about what that's bringing across. First of all, John is writing to an audience that doesn't necessarily know the Jewish geography or culture. How do we know that? In chapter 1, or in verse 1, it talks about the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. So two different words that are used.

Tiberias was a Roman name that was given to the Sea of Galilee. It was also known by Hebrew names like Kinaroth, which means harp, because the sea is shaped kind of like a harp. And so what John is doing is explaining here to an audience, look, there's a sea. You guys might know it as the Sea of Tiberias. They called it the Sea of Galilee. That's where these things happen. Also chronologically, in verse 4, he mentions the Passover, and then he puts parenthetically a feast of the Jews. So again, he's explaining to the people who are reading this who might not even know what Passover is, for example, because they didn't grow up in a society that understood the Old Testament and the days of observance that were in the Old Testament. A little more about this, just to level set in terms of geography and things. I think most of us are familiar with a map of the Middle East, and right here then we see the Nation of Israel. This is a modern map of the Middle East, the Mediterranean Sea, I think we're all familiar with, and of course the things going on right now all across the Middle East. But that's where Israel sits within the Middle East. This is more of a modern map than of Israel. And what I want to point out here is this right in this area here, below the Golan Heights, is the Sea of Galilee. And so in the old days they would talk about Israel stretching from Dan in the north to Beersheva in the south. And you'll see a lot of comments about that in the Old Testament, but for now the focus really is on the fact that right up in this area around the Sea of Galilee is where those things happened. We hear a lot in the news about the Golan Heights and about Syria. This map helps you understand just how close to Syria and Lebanon Israel is up in the north. And this area up on the Golan Heights that's sort of shaded is an area where the Syrians back in the 1940s, 1950s, used to lob shells down on the Israelis who were doing farming right around the Sea of Galilee. That's why it's considered such a strategic area and why it's been fought over so much. This is a map you might be more familiar with if you've looked in the back of your Bible from time to time when you're bored during the sermon. I mean, when you're interested in geography, again, here is the Sea of Galilee right in this area, and then Jerusalem would be down in this area more in the middle of the nation of Israel. So just a level set in terms of geography where these things happen. During the early part of his ministry, I don't see it exactly on here, but the towns right in this area would be where Nazareth is. And so it's in this area that Jesus grew up. He's not far from home. It would probably take, I think it takes probably from the shore of the Sea of Galilee to drive out to Nazareth today on a modern road, take about maybe an hour, give or take. It's not very far, so it'd probably be a day, maybe a two day at the most journey by foot in those days, or if he had a donkey to ride on.

So this is right in his neighborhood. This is in his area. This is a close-up, then, of the Sea of Galilee. And we'll see a little bit more in this account in terms of what was happening, but the places to focus on here would be Tiberius and Capernaum, okay, because these are towns that are going to come up within what we're talking about here. So that's a little bit just about the geography. To get a bit of a feel of what it looks like around there, this is a view taken from the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and there's a couple more. You can see how it's a pretty wide-open plain. Mountain would really be an exaggeration, unless you're using, I guess, northern Ohio views of what a mountain is. They're really hills, okay, so there aren't thousands of feet of elevation that are here, but you can see when it starts talking about multitudes coming to him, you know, sitting on an elevated place, we can easily see how in this green area up on the right-hand side, you have an elevated place, an easy place where thousands of people could actually gather and listen to someone speak. One last thing I'd like to talk about before we move on to the next section, and that is where this episode is placed within the ministry and the teaching time of Jesus Christ.

I don't know how much we focused on sort of the phases of his ministry and his preaching when he was on earth, but it actually fits within a few fairly defined categories. We know generally three and a half years Jesus Christ was here teaching on the earth. The first two and a half years or so was a very public time. It's time that he spent primarily with Jewish populations in large crowds doing a lot of miracles and really saturating the area with his message. And again, we showed that area around the Sea of Galilee. A lot of that time was spent up in the northern part of what today is the nation of Israel, and he was really going out to the people of his time, his people that he'd grown up with, and in that broader area preaching his message. The next six months then becomes a more private time where he avoids miracles, he's more with the disciples, he avoids Jewish areas.

It talks about him, for example, going into areas of what's called the Decapolis, which were other Roman towns in that area, more outside of the Jewish part of the Sea of Galilee.

And then the last part of his ministry, which we often think about and read about when he's in and around Jerusalem. That starts around his last feast of tabernacles, and then it goes through as he gets more and more into the escalating conflicts with the Pharisees, and then his final entry into Jerusalem when he's crucified. So the passage that we're going to read through today in John 6 fits between the first two parts of his ministry, and it's really an inflection point in his ministry. And we'll see that as we start reading through the account, because this is the turning point when he stops doing the public ministry that he's been doing for the past two and a half years, and he begins to turn to speak to other non-Jewish audiences and then really focus on the core of his disciples. And I think as we read through the chapters, we'll see that turn, or through this one chapter, we'll start to see that turn taking place. So let's go to the next section then and read through now in verses 5 through 21 and see a little bit more of what's happening as we get into this account. Verse 5, so Jesus lifted up his eyes and seeing a great multitude coming toward him, he said to Philip, where should we buy bread that these may eat?

But this he said to test him, for Jesus himself knew what he would do. And Philip answered him, 200 denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may have even a little.

And one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are those among so many people? So Jesus said, make the people sit down. And there was much grass in the place. And we saw in the pictures before even how today there's a lot of grass and open land around there. So the men sat down and number about 5,000. And Jesus took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples and the disciples to those sitting down and likewise of the fish as much as they wanted. So when they were filled, he said to his disciples, gather up the fragments that remain so nothing is lost. And therefore they gathered them up, filled the 12 baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves that were left over by those who had eaten. And then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said truly, this is the prophet who has come into the world. Therefore, when Jesus in verse 15 perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain by himself alone. And when evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. Again, if we recall, we saw, we'll go back up here to this map. They went up to Capernaum. And it was dark and Jesus had not come to them. And then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing. So when they had rode about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat. And they were afraid. But he said to them, It's I, do not be afraid. And they willingly received him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going. So in this section, we see two very distinct miracles.

Let's take this apart a little bit, looking through these verses and just understanding a little bit more of what was happening here. In verse 5, we can see that Jesus had concern for the people that were following him. Now, you'll see different interpretations of what's going on here. But essentially, it's a group of people who are following him. And as we see in the early verses, they were very interested. He was healing, diseased people, people who were crippled, people who were sick, people who were demon-possessed. And so there were groups of people who were following him for different reasons and different motives. And at this point in time, it got to be a lot of people. Back at that time, grocery stores didn't exist. The economy around a lake like this was largely either farming or fishing. And so people very much on a subsistence level might have, at most, a couple of days of provisions with them. So they wouldn't have been prepared. Perhaps they got excited about the message. They wanted to continue following Jesus Christ to see the miracles he was doing. And they just extended beyond their supply lines, so to speak, and had run out of food. It's interesting as well to see that it's a child that gets focused on as having the food. And we see similar passages in other places, like the blessing of the little children, as people were bringing children to Jesus Christ, asking to have them blessed.

And it reveals something else about what he was as a person. So in Jewish life, in that day, in the culture that he was moving in, the men really are what counted. The women and the children might be around, and at most might be listening in to what was going on, but it was really the men who counted.

But in this situation, it wasn't the big burly man, it wasn't the religiously knowledgeable man, it was a child, a little boy who had the food. And it's that that Jesus turned to, going to that child and taking that food to multiply for everyone. In verse 14, after all of these miracles happened, we see that the people believed.

And so they saw these powerful things happen and they believed. And what's very interesting, we spoke about this going back a month or so ago as well, is that jump that happens from verse 14 to verse 15. And it seems like a real jump to say, well, they believed and now suddenly they just wanted to drag him away and make him a king, which he didn't want to.

And what we have to remember, of course, is at this time that the Romans ruled all of Judea. This was a nation that was in captivity. And the Romans did a lot of great things. They built fantastic roads, they kept things safe, they built a whole system of commerce that went all through the empire. But they were also very ruthless people. The way they controlled this empire was through terror. And there are many things like this idea of decimation, right? If we say something is totally destroyed, we'll say it's decimated.

Where deci means ten, one of the things the Romans would do to control populations would be if there was an uprising, they'd take all the people out, they'd stand them up, they'd choose every tenth person, they'd kill that person, they'd execute them. That was a quick way to make sure that people weren't going to rise up. Because if you started causing trouble, you knew that you would get one tenth of your town killed. So the Romans were very brutal people in the way that they dealt with a lot of the local populations.

The Jews, and we see this in other parts of the scriptures as well, you might remember, for example, when Gamaliel hears about Paul, there's a whole dialogue about what should we do about the Apostle Paul. And Gamaliel basically says, let it run its course, right? Because if Paul is of God, he'll succeed. If he's not, he'll go the way of all of these other usurpers who've come along and tried to overthrow the government.

And that's what was happening here. People would glom on to different individuals who would rise up and say, I'm going to save you from the Romans, come follow me. And then that person, in the end, would get in trouble, get caught, get executed, and the movement would die out. So what's happening here is when they see what Jesus Christ is doing, they acknowledge His power, but they're looking to Him to be a physical king.

They're looking for Him to be a physical ruler to come to lead their cause and to take over the Romans and give them their political autonomy again as a people. But that was not what He was about. Let's look at verse 21 then, because it's also drawing a contrast between what the people as a whole wanted and how they reacted to Him and how the disciples reacted to Him as well. When we see down in verse 21—I'm sorry, let's stay up above a little earlier—in verse 16, the disciples got in the boat and they went over the sea to Capernaum, and it was dark, and then the wind was blowing.

So Jesus Christ saw that they were in trouble out there on the sea, the wind would come up, and this lake is situated in such a way that there's a big valley that goes from north to south. And the wind on this lake can whip up pretty quickly, I think it's typically from the north, and it'll whip up these very large waves. And if they were moving northward towards Capernaum, you could see then with this big wind coming up how it would, number one, just be dangerous and then difficult to row against it going in that direction.

And when He comes into the boat, they willingly receive Him, and then immediately, in a short period of time, the boat ended up where it was where they were going to Capernaum. And so they took it as much more routine when He came.

At first they were afraid, but as soon as they knew it was Him, there was a relationship there. They clearly knew that He was there to help them, and He was going to take them in the direction that He was going to take them.

It's a very different thing. He didn't come into the boat, and they said, well, Jesus Christ, now that You came and saved us, we're going over here, take us over there, or do this for us or do that for us. It was a different way that they were reacting to Him being a part of what they were doing. And the other thing that I'd like to focus on is in a parallel chapter. So this account is written about in all of the Gospels. Let's turn for a moment to Matthew 14, because this is another part of the contrast I'd like to draw out here.

Matthew 14. This is a pretty well-known passage in verses 22 through 33, because unlike the passage in John, Matthew talks about the fact that Peter went out and walked on the water.

I think we all remember that, that Jesus Christ is coming to the boat. Peter in verse 28 here of Matthew 14 says, Lord, if it's You, command me to come out to You on the water. And He came out, He walked for a bit, and then He saw the waves around Him, and He sank. But what I'd like to focus on here is verse 33. Verse 33, Those who were in the boat came, and they worshipped Him, saying, Truly, you are the Son of God. So let's compare that reaction for a minute to what we saw in verse 14 of John 6, where they said, Truly, this is the prophet who has come into the world.

Okay, a very different view of who He was. So the Jews who were following Him, the multitude that was after Him, viewed Him as some sort of a great teacher and prophet. But it was different than what the disciples, the twelve that He was working with, really knew about Him, that He was not just some prophet, He was the Son of God, God in the flesh. And they acknowledged that. It makes me think of other passages as well where we see that.

One of them is Nicodemus. If you remember the account of Nicodemus, he was pretty highly placed in the hierarchy, the Jewish hierarchy, of that day. He came to Jesus Christ and said, I know that you're a teacher of the law. And then he had this entire discourse with Jesus Christ where he tells Nicodemus about the fact that he has to be born again, he has to be born anew and be a different person.

Okay, but again, Nicodemus came with the same thing. He didn't say, I know that you're the Son of God. He said, I know you're a teacher. I know you're a prophet. So there was a difference in terms of how the people viewed Him and their willingness and their ability to recognize His divinity. That's going to come out more now as we go into the next section of the passage. Let's make sure I know where we are.

So let's start reading in verse 22 through verse 40. So 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 Tiberius 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 they came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here? And Jesus answered them and said, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.

Don't labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that 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?

And Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him who He sent. And they said to Him, What sign are you going to perform then, that we can see it and believe you? What work will you do? Our fathers ate man in the desert, and as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. And Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Moses did not give 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. And 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 said to you, that you have seen me, and yet you don't believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes 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 He has given me I shall lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him, they have everlasting life, and I will raise Him up at the last day.

So there are four interactions here that happen between Jesus Christ and the multitude. As we go back through this passage, let's just take those apart for a moment and understand what's happening as the multitude is going back and forth with Jesus Christ.

Because it seems kind of just disjointed, and it's almost as though you've got people talking at different levels. And often, as happens in the Gospels, we see Jesus Christ not necessarily directly answering a question, but rather speaking to what He perceives and understands to be in the minds of the people who are asking Him, whether it's that they don't understand, or that they're trying to set a trap for Him, or whatever else might be taking place. So the first thing they say is, how did you get here? When did you get here? So obviously they were watching. You could see down on the lake. They knew the boat that He came in, and they were curious, you know, how in the world did you get over here?

And He immediately hones in on that, doesn't He? And He says, look, all you're interested in is to get fat again, or for me to do some more miracles. What do you really want? And so He's immediately starting to go at them and say, okay, do you believe?

What is it that you really want from your relationship with Me? Do you really understand why I'm here? And He refuses at that point to work more miracles for them. He's not going to be their king. He's not going to give them more food today, but He wants them to understand what it is that He's really about in terms of what He's doing on the earth. The next thing then that they say is in verse 28.

And they say, what shall we do to work the works of God? Because earlier He says, He answers them, this is the work of God that you believe in Him who He sent. And so when we read that, we focus on the word believe, right? The fact that we understand we have to have faith in Jesus Christ.

They come at it and they say they see the word works. They say, okay, what is it I need to do in order to do your works? And they're focused on what do I put my hand to? What is it I do? But there's not a formula or a recipe to follow in this case. I mean, Jesus simply said the work of God is that you believe in Him who He sent. So He's asking them that they have to have faith. He's telling them they have to have faith that He is the Son of God. This is very similar to another passage that we read about in the Gospels in Mark 10. Let's turn to Mark 10. We'll read verses 17 through 22. Mark 10 verses 17 through 22. This is the story of the rich young ruler that comes to Jesus Christ. Mark 10 verses 17 through 22. Jesus was going out on the road here in verse 17, and one came running and knelt before Him and asked Him, Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? So two things. Number one, again, He addresses Him as Good Teacher, right? And then He says, what should I do to inherit eternal life? So He's still focused on a formula. What are the things that I need to do in order that I can get the reward? The quid pro quo, right? I do this, you do that. And so Jesus in the end comes back to Him and says, why are you calling me good? There's only one that's good, and that's God. One of the commentaries I read, it talked about the fact that this ruler, when he comes to Him and calls Him good, is really sort of fawning at Him and trying to flatter Him. And Jesus Christ hits right at the heart of it and says, look, you're addressing Me and trying to be sort of, you know, sucking up to Me, but you're not recognizing the fact that it's not just that I'm good, I'm God in the flesh. And you're not recognizing that, you're refusing to recognize that, so you're trying to say the niceties, but you're not recognizing the reality of what I am. And He's essentially saying, don't call me by an attribute of God unless you really believe that I am God. God is good, there's only one that's good, and that's God. So if you're going to call me that, believe it. And if you're not going to believe it, don't call me that. That's essentially what He's saying to them. And in this case, then, He goes through and He tells this young man, because of the situation that He's in, if you are going to show your faith in Me, and you want to follow Me, then give up the things that you have and come follow Me. Show that you value Me above everything else that's going on in your life. That's a similar point that's being made when we go back to John 6. Multitude, looking for miracles, looking for healing, looking for food, and Jesus Christ directing them and saying, it's about more than that. It's about salvation that I'm bringing. It's about faith in Me as the Son of God.

Then in verse 30, the people come to Him again in verse 30, and now they say, okay, you're asking Me to believe in you. If you want Me to believe in you, give Me a sign. And it's kind of ironic after the miracles that happened and after the day before they wanted to make Him king, now suddenly they're saying, if you want us to believe in you, give Me a sign.

One of the things that was brought out in another commentary I read as well was the fact that this idea of a sign is something different than a miracle. A sign would be something to show that He was divine, whereas a miracle, a lot of the people had discounted. Again, there are other passages in the Gospels where, for example, the Pharisees say that He's doing signs and wonders by the devil. And so they were saying that the miracles He did were not of God. The miracles were of the devil, and some of these people probably heard those words as well from the scribes and the Pharisees. So now they're saying, aside from all these miracles you do, give us a sign and then maybe we can believe in you. And He comes back to them again and He says He's not going to do that. And He says, they say, our fathers ate manna. And He comes back and says, look, Moses didn't give your fathers the bread from heaven. That came from God the Father.

And the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

So in verse 33, He's saying He was sent by God. And so you can see how layer by layer He's starting to really completely and bluntly reveal Himself as what He is. And then the people in verse 34, in the last parts, then say, this everlasting bread, okay, give me this bread. I want this bread.

And then He comes at them very directly at this point, in probably the most direct way He has up to this point in His ministry and says, I am the bread of life. It's me. You said you've seen me, but still you don't believe me. What more do you want? I'm here in front of you. You see me. I've done the things that I've done. I've fulfilled the prophecies and you won't believe. And then in the end of this passage, in verse 40, He lays out the full plan where He says, 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. So you can imagine for people, and especially in this case, people who grew up in some part right around Him, probably in His own town, as we'll see, it's just blowing their mind. How's the kid from down the street stand up there in front of us today and say, He's the bread of life and He's going to give us all everlasting life? They just can't deal with this. And this is what takes us into the last section of this passage in verse 41 through 71. Verse 41, the Jews then complained about Him because He said, I am the bread which came down from heaven. They said, Is this not Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How is it that He says, I've come down from heaven? Jesus answered and said to them, Don't murmur among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws Him, and I'll raise Him up at the last day. It's written in the prophets, They will 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, He who believes in Me has everlasting life. I'm the bread of life. Your fathers ain't manna in the wilderness, and they're dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, that you can eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came 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 will give for the life of this world. And the Jews quarreled among themselves, saying then, How can he give his flesh to eat? And He said, Assuredly I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have 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, and 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 that came down from heaven, not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever. And he said these things in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

And then his disciples, when they heard this, said, It's a hard saying. Who can understand it? And when he knew that they were complaining about this, he said, What does this offend you? What if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? It's a spirit that gives life. The flesh prophets 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. And from that time, and this is the turning point that I was speaking of earlier, from that time many of his disciples went back and they walked with him no more. Then Jesus said to the twelve, Are you also going to go away? But Peter answered him and said, Lord, where are we going to go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to believe and to know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered them, Did I not choose you, the twelve? And even so, one of you is a devil. And he spoke, of course, of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. For it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve. So in this section, what he's focused on, again, is the fact that there is a contrast here. There was the bread, the physical bread that gave life for a while. But he, when he talks about the fact that we need to eat his blood and his blood, his body is food and that his blood is drink, indeed, what he's saying is, food is meant to sustain and to give life, right? In a certain way, we know that it does, because we eat, whether it's meat or eating plants, we eat something that's been living. And we use that sustenance for our physical life. And what he's saying about his life and his sacrifice that he gives for our sins, that's true food in terms of that gives us the spiritual nourishment and the everlasting life that we need. So to choose that, and the true bread that he is, rather than the physical bread, is the point that he's making there. He's laying out also a bit of a contrast using extremes, right? And he does that in other parts of the Bible as well, where he talks about the fact that we are dead in Christ, we're living a new life, talks about baptism as being burial, right? And the end of the old man and the beginning of the new man. And so he's laying out in the same way, using these extremes to show that you can't sort of follow God. He led his people, all of these people that were following him, at this point to a decision point after two and a half years of following. And he said, here is what I'm really about. And following me has a single dimension, it means following where I'm going. So I need you to understand, he says, this is what I'm about.

I'm bringing eternal life. I'm not focusing on the things that are going to improve in your life today, not focusing on the Romans, I'm not focusing on your next meal. I'm not even going to be focusing on healing as I was doing healing in these earlier two and a half years. My focus, and what I really want, is to give eternal life to those who will follow me. And so the people who are being called are expected then to follow in that way that he's leading. Not in the way that they want to go, but in the way that he wants to go. So he's leading and showing a very clear way that things are going to go. And as we read then, in this later verse, many of the disciples stopped following him. And this leads them to the turning point in the next part of his ministry, where he's focused on some of the other areas around there that are not part of the Jewish population, and on the final training of his disciples. So as we wind down, and there's so much more in this passage that we can go into that goes beyond what we can cover just in one sermon, but I'd encourage you to spend some time with it and think about it and read it on your own, and look into it further in the upcoming weeks. I'd like to point out a few areas or points of reflection as we go into the last few minutes here to think about with regard to this passage. And these are the points here.

So first of all, the nature of his focus. Okay, the nature of his focus. Verse 27 of John 6 is indicative in that way, where he says, don't labor for the food that perishes. Okay, that phrase really sums up what he's saying here in terms of his focus. They were working hard. They were following him. They got in their boats. They're rowing all over this lake to find him. But it wasn't for what he was giving, for the most part. They were looking for him for miracles. They were looking for him for healing. They were looking, perhaps again, for overthrow of the Roman government.

And they were willing to follow him around and row around the lake and walk around the countryside for that. But what he's saying here is his focus is something different. Follow me, but follow me for what I want to give you. Everlasting life, salvation, forgiveness from your sins.

Secondly, his divinity and the sacrifice that he made. Verse 69 of John 6 points out, as the disciples say, we have come to believe and to know that you are a Christ, the Son of the living God.

As we're focusing before Passover and as we're looking at these passages and others, we need to focus and consider in our own lives, do we have that full faith, that belief and understanding, that he is the Son of the living God? And in verse 51, where he points out himself, that he gave his life for the world. In this case, he's talking about a future event that will happen. But in verse 51, he says, he's the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh. He was predicting his crucifixion, which I will give for the life of the world. So sacrifice and his divinity, something else we need to reflect on and think about, also that's brought out in this passage.

Next, his calling. We see two times in this passage in verse 44 and in verse 65 that he says, no one can come to me unless the Father who has sent me will draw him. There's a calling that has to take place. We can be grateful for that calling, for the fact that we understand what it is that God is working out in his way of life. The other thing that I find interesting here, too, is there are actually three categories of people who are following. Because it talks about the multitude that was following him, about 5,000 people who ate. But then it implies later on, and I won't go and look for the verse right now, but it applies later on in that last section of the passage, that he came to his disciples and said, are you going to follow me? And many of his disciples, left. And then finally he was down to the 12. So there were different categories of people in terms of how attached they were to him. What I take away from that was there was a large group of people who kind of followed all of the hubbub that was going on and all the talk that was there about this guy who was healing and performing miracles. There was a tighter group of people who he considered his disciples, who were listening and being taught by him. But then among those, there was the core of the 12, because we see here in the response that Peter has, he had really called and was working with in a very different way. So God is working with different people in different ways as he draws them towards him. And we have to recognize the fact that his calling is special and it's precious and not something to be taken lightly.

His granting of a new life, another thing that's brought out in this section. He talks in very stark terms about the fact that what it is going to take to follow him. He's after something different than what they were after. Galatians 2.20 is a passage that talks about this. If you want to turn there for a moment. Galatians 2.20, this is a passage we often talk about in the context of our spiritual life at this time of year. The granting of the new life that he gives us. Galatians 2.20 says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. So do we recognize our lives as a new beginning? I think that's the challenge that we have because our physical surroundings don't change. Our physical situation, in most cases, only changes a little bit as we come to accept Jesus Christ. But there's something much bigger that's going on inside of us. And so we have to continue to struggle with everything going on in our physical world around us, but changing our priorities, changing the walk and making it a walk that's a newness of life and another thing that's important to reflect on at this time of year. Have we really been walking in that new way of life? Are we simply trying to fit in a small compartment of sort of God's stuff as we keep walking along in our old way of life?

Another thing for us to reflect on. And then finally, his reward. So in 1 Corinthians 15, he talks about the reward. And again, as we saw throughout John 6, he started to talk about the fact that he was there to bring everlasting life. Not food, not healing for the people at that time, but he was there to bring everlasting life a greater gift than anyone else could bring.

1 Corinthians 15 verses 20 through 22, he talks about that gift. This is Paul talking in 1 Corinthians 15. And verse 20 through 22, he says, Now Christ is risen from the dead, and he has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as an Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

So the other aspect as we think about the things not only written here in John 6, but all about the life of Jesus Christ, is to remember the reward that he brings, what he's promised to those who follow him and believe in him. So in conclusion, now is a time of year that it's good, in addition to everything else that we might be doing and preparing and turning our minds towards the Passover, to think about Jesus Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith. He talked early on about the fact how as human beings, we've got a natural physical proclivity to walk in circles.

And I would say spiritually as well, we have a proclivity as human beings without an orientation point to walk in circles, to keep repeating the same problems, the same sins, the same outcomes in our lives, the same ways that we maybe mistreat other people, the same pits that we fall into.

But with Jesus Christ out there as our orientation point, with the forgiveness that he's given us from our sins, with the new life that he gives us, he's there to help us straighten our paths and to walk that straight path towards him. And so as we move towards the Passover, towards the Spring Holy Days, and think about our journey that we're making, let's look at that orientation point. Let's think of Jesus Christ as the author and the finisher of our faith and all of the things that he brings us and consider how we're doing in our walk and following him.