7/1/07 Two Amazing Days Pt. 3

For the past two weeks

we have spent our time together

looking at the events that took place on the first of two amazing days in the life of Christ.

Parts of these events are recorded for us in all four of the Gospel accounts,

but it is our study of the sixth chapter of John’s account

that brought us into this study.

The two events we’ve looked at so far

are the ones we know the best.

They are the ones that come to most people’s minds

when they are asked about the miracles performed by the Lord.

The first was Jesus’ feeding of the 5000 men and their families

with just five loaves and two fish.

And the second was His late night walk on the Sea of Galilee,

accompanied briefly on the water by Peter.

Portions of these two events

are included in all four Gospels.

But what took place the following day back in Capernaum,

and what we will look at this morning,

is only recorded for us by John.

And without it

the picture of those two days is woefully incomplete.

There were no supernatural acts performed by our Lord on that second day,

but the interaction that took place between Jesus and the crowd

and then between Jesus and His disciples

give us insights into both ourselves and our Lord that are worth far more than any miracle.

It is a long passage, fifty verses altogether,

beginning with 6:22 and running through the end of the chapter to verse 6:71.

There is far too much material here for us to work our way through it verse by verse,

but I would strongly encourage you to read the passage on your own,

and for our purposes this morning

I’ll try to lead us through it in a way that builds an accurate framework for this section

and at the same time allows us to see how these truths impact our own lives.

So, to start with,

let’s put ourselves back into the historical setting

and see what took place and why.

If you were with us last week

you will remember Jesus and His disciples’ late night adventure on the Sea of Galilee,

and their early morning return to Capernaum.

The following day was the Sabbath,

and Jesus’ return to Capernaum

and His presence at the synagogue

brought with it a flood of questions from the crowd that showed up.

Many of those there

had been with Jesus the day before

and they had a whole lot of things they wanted to know.

When did Jesus arrive in Capernaum?

How did he escape his pursuers the night before?

Why did he leave them?

How did he get back to the city?

Those questions began what, at the time,

His disciples most certainly viewed as the most disturbing

and disappointing interaction between the Master and the mob

since His public ministry began.

Jesus began His response by ignoring their questions

and went instead directly to the heart of the matter.

JOH 6:26 ..."Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”

His meaning was obvious -

you don’t seek me because of who I am,

you seek me because you want another free meal.

This brutal public revelation of their true motives

clearly irritated the crowd.

But then he went on to make a statement that seemed to renew their hope of common ground.

JOH 6:27 "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal."

This was better!

Jesus was talking about food again.

Food they understood.

That stuff about “enduring to eternal life” was all a blur,

but the part about the Son of Man giving them this wonderful food

was clearly worth examining more closely.

Then someone from the group put into words

the question they really wanted Jesus to answer.

JOH 6:28 "What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?"

The intent of the question was obvious to everyone:

“Can you teach us to make food from nothing too?”

But apparently it was obvious to everyone except Jesus

because His response suddenly caused the discussion

to head a direction no one else wanted it to go.

He said, JOH 6:29 "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

Now, before we go any farther with this,

I need to let you know what’s happening here,

and then I also need to say a little bit more about this statement Jesus makes in verse 29.

This whole conversation between Jesus and these people

is a classic example

of man trying to manipulate God.

These people have an agenda -

they have something they want from God.

They certainly haven’t consciously identified Him as God,

but they know He’s the one who has the power to give them what they want.

They want more free food.

And as we move through this conversation

we will see them doing

what we all do at times -

we will see them frantically looking for something

that will get God to do what they want done.

They come at Him with “logic”,

then they come at Him with Scripture.

They try anything and everything

to get God to deliver the goods.

But their agenda, their bottom line never changes -

they will accept and follow Jesus if He will do what they want,

and they will turn away from Him if He does not.

Now before we end this morning, we will see some contrast between the crowd and the disciples,

but what I want us to be aware of here

is what happens in our relationship with God

whenever we bring a non-negotiable agenda to Him.

And please don’t misunderstand me here.

I am certainly not suggesting that we shouldn’t bring our needs and our wants to Him.

He likes that,

He wants that,

He encourages it.

He’s the one who urges us

to share our lives with Him totally, openly.

But that’s not what’s happening here.

What’s happening here

is not men reaching out to God with a need,

it’s men trying to control and manipulate God into doing what they want done.

They don’t want Him,

they want what they think they can get from Him,

and their response to Him is directly linked to how they think He performs.

And we’ll see how that plays out as this passage progresses.

And then, let me offer just a comment about that remarkable sentence

that we just heard from the mouth of our Lord.

"This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

In this one clear statement

Jesus gives us the very heart of all we need to understand the most

about what we’re here for and what He wants from us.

Every organized religious system I’ve ever gotten near

has, to some degree, ended up handing me a list things

that define the works of God

The lists differ in the details from group to group,

but the underlying message is always the same.

These are the things that a person can and in fact must do

in order to accomplish “God’s work” here on this earth.

The list can include anything from regular church attendance

all the way up to entrance into “full time” ministry,

whatever that is.

In the early days of my Christian life

I was involved with a highly motivated evangelistic organization

and was told by one of the leaders

that, if he was with a person for more than five minutes

he considered it a “divine appointment to present the gospel”,

which was code for trying to bring them to the point of praying to receive Christ as their Savior.

That was one of the “works of God” on that particular group’s list.

Certainly I understand why such lists exist.

I understand our natural longing to figure out

what we can DO in order to live a truly productive life.

But the truth is

we can never get there that way.

From the very beginning what our God has wanted from us

is not our efforts for Him

but rather our presence with Him and our trust in Him.

And when Jesus said, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.",

in a single sentence He was revealing to us

the very heart of what He’s offering us and what He wants from us.

What He’s offering us is not a list of things we can do in order to earn a place in His family

or a place in His heart.

What He’s offering us is His commitment to live within us

and then to literally live His life out through us.

And what He wants from us

is our choosing to believe that He is doing just exactly what He promised.

The problem, of course,

is that so often what He does through us

looks nothing like what we would have expected,

and very little like what we see on whatever list has been handed to us,

and with every growing Christian

there will be times when we must choose to either trust the list

or, well or to "... believe in Him whom He has sent."

But let’s get back to our debate between the Master and the mob.

They, of course, didn’t get it at all,

and from their point of view Jesus was totally missing the point.

Then a second spokesman took up the challenge of trying to get Jesus to do what they thought He should do.

JOH 6:30-31 So they said to Him, "What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform?

And then, with skillful verbal maneuvering,

he turned the conversation back to the real issue of he day.

JOH 6:31 "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread out of heaven to eat.'"

The man’s words must have prompted a rumbling murmur of approval throughout the crowd.

The reference to Moses

and manna

and the quotation from the Prophet Nehemiah about bread out of heaven

brought the discussion right back on target.

At first Jesus’ response seemed to be staying with the crucial issue.

JOH 6:32-33 "Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world."

Whether it was Moses

or whether it was God working through Moses

really didn’t matter in the least to those listening.

The important thing wasn’t who gave it but rather what he gave.

If Jesus wanted to play theological word games

they would gladly concede their error

just so long as this fellow was willing and able

to come up with a lot more of that life-giving bread from heaven.

Jesus’ apparent offer to once again produce the goods

brought an emphatic, enthusiastic response.

JOH 6:34 ..."Lord, evermore give us this bread."

Let the party begin!

Who has a lunch for the Master to multiply?

What size groups would you like us to divide into today?

Can you do anything else besides fish and bread?

Can you hold off long enough for me to run home and get my family?

Would you prefer to be addressed as “king,” or will “Lord” be acceptable?

Then came the blow from which the crowd never recovered.

JOH 6:35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

The whole dialogue was so strange.

It was like listening to actors

attempting to perform a scene in which the director had mistakenly given them scripts from two totally different plays.

The questions and the answers didn’t match.

With every additional word the Master uttered,

Jesus’ disciples saw another chunk of their support base crumbling.

Yesterday Jesus provided these people with an apparently endless supply of free food.

Today they returned with a polite request for a second serving

only to find Jesus telling them he himself is the only bread they really need.

Most of them never heard anything else Jesus said that morning.

They didn’t hear because they didn’t want to hear.

They brought their agenda to their God

and skillfully sought to maneuver him into fulfilling that agenda.

When he refused to comply with their wishes, they had no more use for him.

And it wasn’t just the crowd who struggled with Jesus’ words.

At that point His own disciples must have found their own desires

far more in line with the mob than with the Master.

The mob wanted to crown Him king;

His disciples wanted to crown Him king.

The mob wanted Him to lead their little nation;

the disciples wanted Him to lead their little nation.

The mob wanted the things only he could give;

His disciples wanted the things only He could give.

True, they were things that would make life better for them,

easier for them,

but what was wrong with that?

He was the one who offered free food in the first place.

Why offer it one day and then refuse to do so the next?

Jesus obviously cared deeply for His people.

He loved them.

He had the power to give them

everything they thought they needed for a fulfilling life -

health, food, safety, protection.

Then why wouldn’t He do it?

It was all so confusing to them,

staring at the world of the Spirit through the eyes of the flesh,

wondering why nothing seemed to make sense.

There is a common but mistaken belief

that the mind of the flesh sees only the world of the flesh.

That is certainly not true.

The mind of the flesh may see the world of the Spirit with vivid clarity,

but it sees it as a means,

a resource through which the goals of the flesh can be achieved.

The flesh can pray.

The flesh can call upon God.

The flesh can cry out to its Creator.

But it does so with the hope that it can enlist the power of the spirit world for its own fleshly goals.

Those standing before Jesus that day longed for the supernatural,

but they longed for it only as a means through which they could more effectively achieve their selfish, self-centered little fleshly ends.

There they all were,

several thousand hungry, greedy, selfish people

seeking what only Jesus could give.

And that, of course, was the heart of our problem.

They thought they needed what He could give.

What they really needed was Him.

They thought God could provide the things

that would fill their spirits and make their lives worth living.

They could not see the truth.

The only thing that could ever truly fill their spirits

and make their lives worth living was God himself.

Jesus was not playing verbal games with His audience that day.

He answered their questions with razor-sharp precision.

They came telling him they hungered,

asking him for help.

He responded not with far less than they asked

for but with far more.

He said in effect, “I know you hunger, and I know, too, that what you truly hunger for is Me.”

He said it so perfectly, so beautifully that day.

JOH 6:48-51 "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh."

He spoke the truth, but they could not hear it.

As soon as He started talking about eating His flesh

the whole thing disintegrated

and Jesus’ final words to the mob brought the meeting to an abrupt end.

JOH 6:54-58 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. 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 eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate, and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever."

To those who heard Jesus speak those words that day

it must have sounded as if Jesus had totally lost touch with reality.

His faithful few stood with Him,

watching as several thousand disgruntled former followers of Jesus

finally dispersed in frustration, irritation, and bewilderment.

And it was a huge blow to His remaining few.

Less than twenty-four hours earlier

they had a small militant army behind them

ready to crown Jesus king of Israel.

Now they had Jesus and the twelve

and maybe half a dozen others still in the group.

Jesus knew they were frustrated and confused.

He turned to them and said,

JOH 6:61-63 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you should behold the Son of Man ascending where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

It must have been awful for the disciples at that point.

Jesus might have felt as though his words were life,

but to His men it was the death of the King Jesus Movement.

He made a few more comments to them,

then for a few seconds they all just stood there, huddled together in silence.

Then Jesus spoke again, not a statement this time, but a question,

a question possessing the power to bring peace and renewal and,

in the most amazing way, renewed hope to the hearts of His faithful few.

JOH 6:67 ... "You do not want to go away also, do you?"

It was a question that forced them

to see the great divide between themselves and the mob.

Jesus’ words that morning had brought pain and frustration to everyone who heard them.

But there was a difference.

They brought pain and frustration to the mob because they knew they could not follow Jesus.

They brought pain and frustration to His disciples

because they knew they could not leave Him.

And in the most remarkable way

I believe that question gave them hope.

Of course they had their agenda, just as we all do.

Of course they wanted Him crowned king

so that they could reign with Him.

Of course they wanted His fame and fortune and success,

knowing that their fame and fortune and success were inseparably linked to His.

But if they could not have the fame,

if they could not have the fortune,

if they could not have the success,

if they lost it all in an instant,

they still wanted Him!

They wanted Him

more than they wanted anything He might bring them.

If the movement collapsed,

and the crowds never returned,

and they all died in obscurity on the back side of the desert,

it would still be worth it all,

because what they wanted most they still possessed.

He still loved them,

and wanted them with Him,

and it was enough.

Of course Peter was the one who put it into words.

JOH 6:68-69 "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."

At that point they certainly did not understand Him,

and they certainly did not understand most of what He said or did.

But one thing they did understand - He was Truth.

There was no place else to go.

If there was no Jesus, then there was nothing.

When Jesus asked them if they too would leave,

His question forced them to recognize

that they already had what they wanted most - They had Him.

And He was enough.

It was tough stuff for them.

And it’s tough stuff for us

when our Lord puts us in the same situation.

And He will, you know.

With every one of us

there will be times when everything within us tells us

that He’s done it all wrong.

What He’s said we don’t understand,

what He asks of us we feel is utterly unfair,

and what He does in our lives scares us to death,

or makes us angry,

or falls so short of what we feel we so desperately need.

And then, in the face of His great failure in our life,

He will ask us the same question.

“Do you want to go away, too?”

And our world is filled with countless former followers of Jesus Christ

who, when He failed to deliver what they wanted,

walked away.

But the ones who are truly His,

the ones who have tasted of His love,

those of us who know that what we hunger for most of all

is not what He can give us,

but what we really want is Him,

no matter what does or does not come with Him,

those of us who know the truth will say with Peter,

"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.”