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Salvaged by God Deep Dive: John 6, Why Jesus Is the Big Deal
Open up to John chapter 6. Over seventy verses, but the shape of it is this: the feeding of the multitudes, Jesus walking on water, and then He drops the hard teaching. He is the bread of life, and unless you partake of Him, you don't get eternal life. This is where it gets radical, and it's a hard teaching for people. Many people wanted to leave. As a result of this hard teaching, many of His disciples left and would no longer walk with Him. So Jesus turns to the twelve and asks, "You do not want to leave also, do you?" And you'd almost expect them to bail on Him too, but Simon Peter answers, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have already believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."
That's the whole thing right there. He is the biggest of big deals. And it is so hard for us to get our minds around the fact that it all revolves around Jesus. It's all about Him. And in our flesh nature, we want to make it all about ourselves.
Four Reasons People Couldn't Accept It
Look at verse 60: "This is too hard for us to understand." Break that down and there are really four things going on, four things that stand as a hindrance to that truth.
1. They were more interested in food, politics, and miracles than in spiritual realities. They don't get it, they don't understand, but the reason they're not understanding is because they'd rather chase those things. That's the list of what's getting in the way.
2. They were unwilling to surrender their own self-rule in order to come in faith. That's the real cost, and it's the one people resist most.
3. They were offended that Jesus claimed to be greater than Moses and had the authority to give life. There was a lot of offense going on back in those days when Jesus was walking around. He was like a shock jock. Well, let's not say that again, but that comparison holds in the sense that confidence and honesty rub a lot of people the wrong way. You try to care, but you just can't appease people. Especially in presenting the gospel: you share it, you proclaim the truth, you don't debate. You try to do it in a friendly way, but you can't be friendly enough for certain folks, especially the ones who get a bee in their bonnet about something.
4. They couldn't comprehend the metaphors of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. That's a metaphor for accepting His future work on the cross, and it carries into communion. This cracker represents the broken body of Christ. This juice represents the shed blood of Jesus. Some look at it as sacrament, others as ordinance. Either way, the bottom line is those four things show your interest is different. Your focus is really on yourself, and you're offended that Jesus is claiming to be the only way, or in their case, in the Jewish ancient times, greater than Moses, with the authority to give life. Jesus is your creator, and He comes and dies for you. It's an amazing journey, this thing we call Christianity.
Jesus could say these things even though, honestly, if we'd heard them straight from His mouth ourselves, we probably would have reacted the same way as the crowd. To hear about partaking in His blood, eating His flesh, drinking His blood: these were shocking things. But sometimes shocking things that are said is what catches people's attention. If it isn't hard, you're not learning. It's going to be worth it if you press through. If everything is just coming easily and you're just navigating through, you're not really growing. So when Jesus steps onto the scene as God Himself, He has the authority to say these things. People were meeting with God face to face, and of course they're going to hear things that are hard to hear.
The takeaway is this: it's really never even about us, no matter whether we're doing good or whether we're doing bad. That's the journey, like Peter said in verse 68. "Lord, where are we going to go? There's nowhere else for us to go. You have the words of eternal life." And we have already believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
Global News Christian Views: Burger King and "The New King Is You"
During the World Cup broadcasts, Burger King rolled out a new ad campaign. The CEO put his own personal cell phone number out there, like he's carrying that phone around with him all day, and made it sound like, "I'll give you my personal cell phone." He invited people to call and say how their local Burger King could be made better. Do you see problems? Do you see anything good? Just basic dialogue: I'm the new CEO, and I want to make Burger King great again.
That number got called 100,000 times. People were talking about how signs were broken, how the service was bad. In the commercial, they show a broken sign getting replaced, people taking pictures and sending them in. And the tagline that struck the hardest: "There's a new king, and that king is you."
You're the king. You're number one. You're the customer. You matter. That'll stroke an ego or two, no doubt, and that's exactly what we identify with. That's what sells for sure. We identify with that because it's all about us, and that's kind of our natural tendency. Our natural default is it's all about me. I want to be in charge. I want to have control. I want to make all the decisions. I am in charge of my own destiny.
To a certain degree, we have been given the liberty to make a lot of choices for ourselves. However, there is something inside each one of us that, kind of like Satan, would like to sit on that throne for a little while. Burger King is tapping into human nature, that is for sure. There was a commercial not long ago, a makeup commercial targeted toward women, with the slogan "worship yourself." Those kinds of slogans wouldn't have taken effect fifty years ago. But now? Worship yourself, because you're the king.
Jesus is saying the exact opposite. When you follow Him, you're following something far beyond your neighborhood, your family, your job, the state you live in, or even the country that you serve. A lot of military people have started tuning into broadcasts like this, and there's something worth noting there, because in the military, it's never about you. It's always about the platoon.
Where Do You Go for Truth?
There's a movie in the works called The Secret Meaning of Life, and a chunk of it is built on 1 Timothy 6:6: "Godliness with contentment is great gain." Flipped around a bit: "Contentment with godliness is great gain." Either way, the equation raises the real question. Where do you go for truth? Where do you get that godliness? How do you get that godliness? And if you're focused on yourself so much, are you actually getting a fake, counterfeit godliness instead?
Jesus asks a penetrating question here. If you turn away from Him, or try to add something else to your life alongside Him, what are you actually turning to? There's really only two things you can be. One, you can try to honor God while you're actually serving yourself. You're the new king, the king is you, and it's already in us, fighting for our attention. Or two, you can be a full on sold out disciple for Jesus Christ. And in that world, you don't get to call the shots. It's a pretty fun place to be sometimes. That's a reason they call it surrender.
A lot of people run around saying God has given them the authority to do this or that. No, no, no. All authority belongs to Him. If you are a blood bought believer, you have just been put completely under His authority. Don't get that confused, because when you do, you're going to end up with disappointment. That's the reality. When you don't, you get to walk Pilgrim's Progress, the narrow road.
Three Roads People Take Instead
Atheism. It doesn't even make sense. It's bankrupt. It's an ignorant worldview. Anyone who claims to be an atheist is pretty ignorant, but most of them do it in an arrogant, "I'm smarter than you" way. It's not a sign of intelligence, regardless of how smug the delivery is. God is based in evidence, research all over: there has to be a designer. Folks like Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, and Wernher von Braun. Atheism has no answers to satisfy. And the Bible says only a fool says in his heart there is no God.
Philosophy. Not that philosophy in itself is bad. There's good philosophy and there's bad philosophy, so don't get sucked into the bad. But you can't rely on it. There are professors a dime a dozen who claim they have the answers, and one of their answers is actually that there are no answers. Oh, happy day. What a waste of mind energy. That's basically the deconstruction movement too: you just have to ask questions, ask questions, ask questions, but you never end up arriving at any answers. That's the problem. German pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said life is a curse of endless cravings and endless unhappiness, and from an atheistic worldview, of course it is. Bertrand Russell said philosophy proved to be a washout for him. It's all stacked against it.
Materialism. The rule of 21: whether it's a new watch, a new car, or anything materialistic, it's only good for 21 days, including the awesome memories of the trip and the stamps in your passport that last a lifetime. You're very strong and very happy the first 21 days, and then it fades. Materialism can provide a pleasant temporary pleasure, but it deceives people into little pockets of satisfaction that don't last. And that's why Jesus said, "I'm the bread of life. Those who partake of Me will never die. He is the one who gives eternal life."
Final Thoughts
The parable of the seeds that are scattered and sown perfectly illustrates all of this. Some eagerly receive that seed, which is the word of God, but for whatever reason over time, they give up on it, whether it's the problems they have to face because they've been told God's going to heal you, God doesn't want you to be sick or sad or not have enough money, He wants to give you everything you ever wanted. And then you don't have everything you ever wanted, so you wilt away, you dry away. Some of it just lands on the ground and the birds come and steal it away. That's false teaching, false doctrine that corrupts it, and it's no good anymore.
That's the battle: wanting to be king, and yet these are the things that really stand in the way of receiving the truth of Jesus Christ. It's visible in ourselves, and visible in others. That is the battle waged day in, day out.
Fresh Road Media's headquarters are changing locations this summer, and through that transition, the hope is to avoid any interruption in content. New digs are coming in a couple of weeks, a new studio, the whole shift. Guest interviews are on pause for a stretch (Steve Deace is on the docket for August), but the devotions keep going, along with the occasional dive into politics, and the ongoing conviction against false teaching: the word of faith heresy, the charismatic heresies, standing on the fact that it's sola scriptura. The Bible is not just the authority, it's sufficient.
When it comes to what's facing the church right now, pastors known and unknown are all singing some version of the same song: the rise of false teachers and the apostate church. That's the real challenge, the same one pastors faced during World War II, often to their own detriment. Where would we be without the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the men of God who actually stood up and said that needs to be confronted? God will not leave His people without witness all the way to the end. He's going to preserve a remnant, and the prayer is to be strengthened to be part of that remnant, regardless of what happens. Because when you say Jesus is your everything, and you'll love Him throughout any circumstance, His circumstances may very well change on you, in ways you don't care for at the time. But the joy of the Lord is legit. And that's why Jesus is the big deal.