John 6.59-71.
So Jesus gave this big ol’ lesson on
Tough teaching for a classroom of people who only wanted Jesus to overthrow the Romans for them, then give ’em free bread. Tough teaching for Christians nowadays, who only wanna live worry-free lives, then go to heaven and live in mansions. God did all the work of saving us, so they figure he can do all the work of everything else in Christendom. These folks don’t wanna actually do anything for God; they want
But there is a big difference in our responses: The Galileans left.
Whereas Christians nowadays will say yes and amen, and pretend we’re all for the idea… then go out and demonstrate by our lifestyles we don’t believe a word of it… but be back in church every Sunday morning acting as if we do. Lemme keep being blunt: Both these behaviors are
Anyway back to the text, where the Galileans are on the fence about Jesus… so Jesus gives the fence a shake.
John 6.59-66 KWL - 59 Jesus said this while teaching in the Kfar Nahum synagogue.
- 60 So, many of his students who heard him said, “This word is hard. Who can listen to it?”
- 61 Innately knowing his students kvetched about this, Jesus told them, “This upsets you?
- 62 So what about when you see the Son of Man rise to where he previously was?
- 63 It’s spirit which makes you alive; flesh gets you nowhere.
- The sayings I tell you are spirit—are life— 64 but some of you don’t believe me.”
- For Jesus knew from the beginning some didn’t believe—and one was his betrayer.
- 65 Jesus said, “This is why I told you nobody can come to me
- unless they were given me by the Father.”
- 66 As a result of this lesson, many of his students went home and no longer followed him.
See, Jesus
Sheep who don’t follow.
Every time I say this—every time—I get criticized for being too hardcore. I get called a legalist, a person who’s promoting
Who am I? Somebody who’s trying to tell people the truth. It’s false grace if I’m lying to them to make them, or myself, feel good. Or to make the gospel sound easier, simpler, or something other than what it is.
Mark 1.14-15 KWL - 14 After John’s arrest, Jesus went into the Galilee preaching God’s gospel, 15 saying this:
- “The time has been fulfilled. God’s kingdom has come near. Repent! Believe in the gospel!”
God’s kingdom has come near, so repent and believe. Anybody who tells you otherwise (i.e. “for God so loved the world…”
Jesus died to make his kingdom available to absolutely everyone. But we still gotta respond to the gospel by repenting and believing. We still gotta follow Jesus. Turns out he expects his followers to actually follow.
And when people won’t follow, it’s basic logic: They’re not followers. They’re not his sheep.
Would they like to become his sheep? Awesome!—they can. God will graciously include them in his kingdom. But if they’re not at all interested in following Jesus… well, you can’t be a follower who doesn’t follow. That option doesn’t exist, much as Christians would like to pretend it does. Jesus doesn’t provide it.
Claiming there’s an option where Christians don’t have to follow Jesus, don’t have to quit sinning and obey Jesus’s teachings, don’t have
They’re the reason there are such things as churches who don’t pursue a relationship with the living God—who just preserve
Jesus’s response to that idea is basically, “If you can’t handle that, you’re never gonna handle it once you find out I’m God.” His reference to “see the Son of Man rise to where he previously was” is of course about how he originally came down from the tenth heaven
With his last statement, the students chose “nuts,” and left.
Twelve left.
Apparently this left behind
John 6.67-69 KWL - 67 So Jesus told the Twelve, “Don’t you also want to go?”
- 68 Simon Peter answered Jesus, “Master, to whom will we go?
- You have lessons of life in the next age, 69 and we believed, and came to know you’re God’s saint.”
One of the many reasons Simon Peter was Jesus’s best student: He was quick to say stuff like this. He, and the rest of the Twelve, were fully aware Jesus was authentically God’s man, and fully aware he was the only one who could explain God to them.
Jesus was fully aware his lesson in synagogue was gonna polarize people. Either they already realized, like the Twelve had, they needed to be with Jesus, would follow him anywhere, and would stick by him no matter how weird he got. Or they’d realize they wanted no such thing, and Jesus’s “You gotta drink my blood” lesson was just the excuse they needed to declare him crazy and walk away.
Still true. Plenty of us Christians are just as willing to follow Jesus wherever he leads. Plenty of other Christians will follow him so long that he never really challenges us.
But he will. The Holy Spirit definitely will. That’s why they hide from the Holy Spirit in churches which never teach about him,
The Twelve already made up their minds about Jesus long ago. They saw who he was. They knew there was no going back.
Well… eleven of them, anyway.
John 6.70-71 KWL - 70 Jesus answered them, “Didn’t I select the 12 of you?—and of you, one’s a devil.”
- 71 He spoke of Judas bar Simon the Iscariot, for this one of the Twelve was later to turn him in.
“Iscariot” isn’t a last name; it’s like Nazarene or Magdalene, indicating what city Judas bar Simon came from. That’d be Keriot, a Judean city—which means he wasn’t from the Galilee. Some have claimed Judas was the only non-Galilean in the Twelve; since we don’t know where everyone in the Twelve came from, we can’t rightly say this. Anyway since there are a lot of Judases out there (including another student in the Twelve,
Judas began following Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, and Jesus grew to trust him enough to put him in the Twelve. But by this point, Judas had become one of those Christians who—like many hypocrites today—stopped believing, but never stepped away.
Why? Likely money. Plenty of other Christians have likewise
Putting God on mute has a tendency to ruin your relationship with him. And your Christianity. It can shrivel and die quickly.
Judas was in charge of the purse. And he grew far too comfortable holding it—and dipping into it from time to time
Jesus knows there are such people in his church. People who would leave over Jesus, but won’t leave because all their friends are at church, or their membership gives ’em standing in the community, or their job depends on their attendance, or their family would disown them. Whatever reason keeps ’em in.
Why’d he permit Judas to stick around, instead of blatantly outing him and booting him?
How about us? Any chance we might come around? There’s still hope, y’know.