John 6:66-68
The Son of God Goes Off to War
Midweek Lent
After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore. So Jesus asked the Twelve, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. The Warrior Rejected by Many Followers In the name of our Savior Jesus, dear friends, Every day, somewhere, couples get divorced. We remember all the happy moments of the wedding day when two people declared their love for each other and put rings on each other’s fingers. They made so many promises: to take care of each other when they were sick, when poor, when things were bad, as well as when things were better. They said they would cherish each other right up until one of them died. So what happened to those happy days and that loving commitment to each other? What does it take to break up a wedded couple? How many disagreements and arguments? How much disgust over things like personal habits, alcohol abuse, fits of anger, drugs, video games taking time away from relationships, pornography, physical or emotional abuse, child abuse, or unfaithfulness? What causes the “Wow” to turn to “Yuck”? It’s always a loss and rejection when someone deserts the marriage. Jesus inspired excitement—the “Wow”—when he began his ministry. But still the “Yuck” entered the hearts of some. His own rejected him. This happened during Jesus’ last year of ministry. For two years, crowds regularly followed him, eagerly watching and listening. Shortly after he had fed a crowd of five thousand men, plus women and children, with five loaves of bread and two fish, the people began to think that they should make Jesus their king. They were even going to take him by force, probably so they could keep him there at the Sea of Galilee and get all that free food and maybe also be free of sickness and disease. Keep in mind that all of these people were part of the chosen nation that God had “married” himself to and carefully protected for more than two thousand years. They knew that God had promised a Savior, and they were looking at Jesus as that Promised One. It’s tragic that their expectations were for a Savior who would give them food and health. Some of their spiritual leaders had abandoned the beautiful promises of the Savior from sin and the giver of eternal life. They had turned those promises into a prediction of a king who would throw out the hated Roman rulers and establish a kingdom on earth with unlimited bread and health. How could that have happened? An enemy had been at work! He had attacked the Bible. Satan used a lie about the promised Savior to convince the spiritual leaders to reject Jesus. Many others chose to do the same.
Jesus resisted their efforts to make him a king and withdrew from them. The next day, the crowd found Jesus and had many questions. The subject turned, naturally, to bread. That’s when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). They had bread on their mind, but the bread Jesus gave them was so different from what they expected! He told them he had come from his Father in heaven. He was the bread from heaven, and all who “ate” the bread from heaven—that is, who took him in by faith, would live forever. He would raise them up on the Last Day. But they seemed to stop listening. If we had been there, we probably could have felt the enthusiasm drain from the crowd, like when my son and I went to the Lions-Cardinals football game last year and it ended in a tie. No one was happy; everyone just turned around and went home. Many of those chosen people didn’t hear what they wanted from Jesus, so why stick around? But it wasn’t just the crowd of thousands who walked away. Jesus had a group of disciples whom he was training to reach out with the gospel to the huge mission field in Galilee and beyond. But the words of Jesus, the bread from heaven, were difficult to understand. How could he claim to give them eternal life? “On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can listen to it?’” (John 6:60). And then we learn, “After this, many of his disciples turned back and were not walking with him anymore.” It’s hard to accept that some of his disciples would desert him. They were people who had walked all those miles with Jesus, had slept on the ground many nights, had eaten with him, had seen his many miracles. Jesus is the most fascinating person who has ever walked on the face of the earth. When he spoke, it was with a kind of authority that no one had ever heard before! This was the Savior of the world who had come to offer his perfect life in exchange for our sin at the battle on Calvary. He was getting ready for that battle and had been preparing the troops to carry on. And some of them left. They did not believe Jesus had the authority or power to grant eternal life. They rejected him. They divorced themselves from him. The “Wow” had turned to “Yuck.” How sad. The enemy of Jesus had gotten to the hearts and minds of the Jewish leaders and others. He had led them to believe the lie that Jesus couldn’t be who he had said and showed he was. The leaders were teaching false doctrine of the worst kind to their people: that they could somehow get to heaven by trying to be good people and following the law. Jesus was simply telling them what he had said at the beginning of his ministry: “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). They rejected his message and planned to kill him. How does the awe for Jesus go out of someone who’s seen and heard him? An enemy did this.
It wasn’t just back then. The enemy still hates Jesus and, as much as he can, still fights hard against him. The enemy has encouraged lost people to grow deeper in their separation from God by establishing numerous false religions such as Islam, Hinduism, atheism, materialism, and many more—all of them offering some sort of path to God or a substitute for God, a path that leads only to hell. He has also made inroads into the Christian church, spreading false doctrine, attacking the Bible, and using critics of Christianity in the media, in universities, and in politics to damage and destroy saving faith. You may know about the growing numbers of “dones”—people who have left the church and say they won’t come back. And the “nones”—people who claim they have no religious affiliation. Even our own church has some members who once enthusiastically promised in front of God and his people that they would remain faithful to Jesus and his Word, even if they had to die to do that. Those confirmation vows have been broken. Something has happened to take away their love for God and the joy of being in his house. Maybe you have someone close who is slipping or has lost his or her faith. We all sometimes struggle with a personal doubt about something God says. Our doubts and questions keep buzzing in our brain. So you can understand Jesus when he turns to the smaller group of disciples with a question. Listen carefully to this question: “You do not want to leave too, do you?”
His gracious words of life draw us ever closer to him. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter was so right on, wasn’t he? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” When God created the world, he simply spoke the words, “Let there be…” and there was light and dirt and stars and galaxies and lions and butterflies—a universe beyond understanding. He just spoke! What power God has in his words! We hold in our hands—on our tablets, in our Bibles, on our phones—God’s own love story toward us—his words of life, forgiveness, and salvation. These words have terrific power. You maybe remember the passage in Romans where Paul tells us, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
Only God knows how many believing Christians there are in the world. This I do know: Every single one of them did absolutely nothing to create saving faith in their hearts. Every one—you and I too—came to faith by one very powerful thing. It doesn’t matter if it is spoken or read. It’s the single most powerful force for good in our world: GOD’S WORD! That’s what brought you and me to trust that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has purchased and won for us the forgiveness of all our sins! He did it all and paid it all for us! He loves us enough to die so we might live with him forever. So can you see why Jesus fought false teachers so hard? He said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). They continue to oppose Jesus and lure you to abandon your Savior. They have a lot of opinions and theories, but they do not have the words of eternal life. There is only one source for that, and Peter had it right: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter and the others were blessed and did not want to lose what Jesus had given them. We are also blessed. You and I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb of God! We are forgiven and we have eternal life. This is the time of year when baseball teams are normally in spring training. The coronavirus took that opportunity away from those players, just as it took our opportunity to gather for worship and Bible study and activities. We are just like those players who need to practice and enjoy the camaraderie of those with whom they were united in order to build the bond that strengthens them against their opponent. We need to practice our faith by hearing the Word and studying it. We need our Christian friends and the strength that comes from our shared faith in Jesus. We don’t get to do these things in all the ways we are typically accustomed to. But we can still do them—and we need to! We can still reach out to the others on our “team”—texting, calling, social media. And we can still worship—we just need to do that online right now. We can still study his Word using a Bible study online or simply reading our Bibles or having devotions with our kids at home. We need all of this because we still face enemies greater than any virus. Our faith is challenged every day by all the stuff that we see and hear in this world…and by our own sinful flesh…and the temptations Satan throws at us. It’s a pretty steady flood. We need to constantly hear the words of our Savior so that when tempted to leave Jesus, we will have the strength to say with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Amen.