And we continue this morning with our advertised
theme, From Simon to Peter.
And our subject this morning has been billed
as Forward with Christ, without the crowds.
Forward with Christ, without the crowds.
You will find our morning's message based particularly
on verses 66 to 69 in that sixth
chapter of John's Gospel from which our reading
was earlier taken.
And it might be advantageous if we read
again at this point the verses to which
we have referred.
From that time many of his disciples went
back and walked no more with him.
Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye
also go away?
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom
shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life, and
we have believed and are sure that thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living
God.
Or as another translation puts it, the Holy
One of God.
And probably that is the better, comes from
the better manuscripts.
Now the last few days and indeed the
last few weeks preceding this episode have been
packed with excitement for the followers of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
And especially I suppose for a man like
Simon whom we are particularly focusing attention upon.
Gradually the implications of our Lord's signs or
miracles are dawning upon people.
At any rate they are certainly dawning upon
a little nucleus among the twelve, if not
upon the twelve as a whole.
And they are beginning to formulate new convictions.
Not just ideas, not just notions, but convictions.
They are beginning to see that he is
requiring of them an ever new and increasing
dedication of themselves.
Its significance, of course, was not appreciated by
all of them to the same extent.
I suppose you will notice from Mark chapter
6 and verse 52 that the incident that
we were considering in part or which was
a background to our message last Lord's Day
morning.
The incident of the feeding of the five
thousand people beside women and children.
This had not been appreciated at first by
hardly any of them.
Their hearts were hardened, Mark tells us in
chapter 6 and verse 52.
And they didn't appreciate the significance of it.
But in retrospect, that episode particularly seems to
have been a watershed.
And something seems to have clicked.
A crowd multiplied and wherever he goes the
crowd seemed to be right at his heel
following, waiting, listening, expecting something new all along
the time, all along the way.
And so it's been happening.
But now something quite different appears before us.
Something quite different, something which was a blow
and a challenge to the twelve disciples especially.
We see that the multitudes are turning heel
and breaking rank and going back.
Back wherever they came from and leaving but
the handful of the twelve, just a little
handful to listen to his teaching and to
accompany him wherever he is planning to go.
Now I want to look at this episode
this morning focusing attention upon three main facets
in the record.
We're going to look first of all at
the retreating multitudes then at the resolute Lord
and finally at the remnant few that are
left.
First of all, the retreating multitudes.
John describes the scene before us with a
kind of solemn brevity if you note his
words.
In verse 66, after this many of his
disciples drew back and no longer went about
with him.
That's the RSV translation and it's very accurate.
They drew back and they no longer went
about with him.
In other words they severed connection.
May I remind you therefore before we come
to look at this how very eager the
multitudes have been to follow Jesus up to
this point.
Some of you will remember when we began
this series we saw how in Jerusalem, in
Judea, in the south of the country on
the occasion of the first Passover attended by
our Lord as scripture records a whole vast
multitude professed to believe in him.
Of course we're told he did not believe
in them but they believed in him apparently.
A whole multitude of them.
It seems to have been a very popular
movement.
Then at the beginning of John chapter 4
we are told that the multitude of our
Lord's disciples and the number of people that
were baptized as followers and disciples of Jesus
had become an embarrassment to him.
Now we didn't dwell upon this but you
read back and you will see how true
it is.
They'd become a positive embarrassment to him.
An embarrassment of course for this reason.
If the converts are going to grow to
such a multitude then the authorities are likewise
going to unleash a backlash.
And Jesus can't allow that to happen at
this stage because he has not taught the
people what he's come to taught.
And before his prophetic ministry of teaching is
concluded he cannot entertain his priestly ministry upon
the cross of Calvary.
So you see he leaves Judea in the
south John chapter 1 verses 1 to 3
chapter 4 verses 1 to 3 he leaves
Judea because they're causing a little bit of
a problem.
The multitudes.
Now we have seen what happened when he
arrived in the north in Galilee.
Do you remember that first Sabbath in Capernaum?
It had been busy throughout the day but
at the end of the day whilst Jesus
was in Simon Peter's house in Capernaum do
you remember how when the stroke of the
Sabbath is over the multitudes come.
Our hymn is based on this episode I
believe that even there the sun was set
the sick old Lord around thee lay.
The multitudes came.
They were carried, they were conveyed one way
or another and there they were and he
touched them or uttered the word of healing
and they were healed.
The multitudes.
We saw another incident.
Do you remember how walking by the seaside
the multitudes were such as to squeeze the
Savior first of all onto the shore Luke
chapter 5 and then from the shore into
Simon Peter's boat.
And this was all because of the press
of the multitudes.
They were squeezing him and he had to
go onto the boat for a vantage point
from which to proclaim the message of the
kingdom that he had come to declare.
Then again after that just imagine five thousand
men besides women and children five thousand men
besides women and children are at his heels
all waiting to hear what he's got to
say all watching to see what he's going
to do.
He had a popular following at this point.
Then not only did they go to that
place where they were miraculously fed you notice
that the day after they discover that Jesus
has suddenly vanished.
They don't know where he's gone to and
there's quite a commotion.
And suddenly they find that he's gone to
the other side of the lake and they
get on a little boat and they go
in a direct line to catch up with
him.
In other words they will not let him
go.
It was a popular movement in Galilee as
in the south.
The incident now before us however points to
a most significant change.
Men who but yesterday ate out of his
hand the miraculous food men who but yesterday
to quote John were prepared spontaneously to say
I quote chapter 6 and verse 14 this
is that prophet that should come into the
world namely the Messiah and who according to
the verse following verse 15 were planning secretly
to take him by force and make him
king they're now turning heel and they're scattering
each to his own place to abandon the
one whom they believed to have been worthy
to be king and lord and all vanishing
in mid air.
Now John very helpfully tells us why.
He explains the sudden change.
He reports that many of those who were
tentatively appear to be his disciples were offended
at his teaching.
Ah whilst he was largely working miracles it
wasn't all that bad they could see it
all even if they did not always benefit.
And just to see the miracles performed there
was something of excitement about it.
There was a thrill about it.
It was something out of the ordinary.
But when their own kith and kin benefited
well now that was so much the better
and when they themselves were fed out of
his hand well that's better still.
But now they go.
Despite the significant testimony of his signs pointing
so conclusively to the fact here was a
greater than the prophets and greater than the
Pharisees greater than men here was none other
than the Son of God incarnate.
They said John 6 and verse 60 this
is a hard saying who can take this?
We can't take this and because they could
not take it they left it and they
left him.
Now the question that comes to us is
this what was that hard saying?
What was it that made them turn back?
This morning I can only spell it out
in brevity in shorthand.
Is that the right way?
In just a few lines here and there.
John speaks of a hard saying but probably
the hard saying as the commentators will tell
you refers not just to one statement but
to the whole teaching that precedes verse 66
and this chapter is a fairly long chapter.
The reason probably why the commentators say this
is that John chapter 6 is like a
woven bit of tapestry it's all one.
And you can't unravel one thread and say
this is one saying separated from the rest
of the chapter.
The chapter is one, it's one whole.
Therefore it is more than probable that when
they say this is a hard saying they're
referring to the largely, if not entirely what
we have recorded as having preceded this particular
point.
Now what has been said?
Can I refer to three of the main
thrusts of this remarkable passage?
I suppose the first difficulty and the first
thing that hurt was this.
Jesus turned to them and uncovered their crude
materialism their crude materialism and false motives.
Recognizing the actual cause of their frenzied following
of him across the lake he felt constrained
to tear away the mask of pretense and
show them exactly their own hearts.
And you see men in ancient times did
not like that any more than men like
it today.
Jesus said to them in verse 26 Truly,
truly I say to you you seek me
not because you saw the signs Now notice,
not just saw miracles but saw the signs
that he was the Son of God.
You're not seeking me because you saw the
signs pointing to one who was more than
men who was the incarnate Word of God.
That's not why you seek me but you
seek me because you ate your fill of
the loaves.
Now here is a very, very daring statement
but it's so true of our Lord.
You imagine it.
He's looking into the face of 5,000
men beside women and children and he's looking
them straight in the face as you can
look a crowd like that in the face
if you can anyway and he's telling them
quite straightly he says look, you are seeking
me and you're making all this fuss to
follow me and to find me out not
because you want me but because you want
what I can give you.
It's not the truth that I preach it's
not the person that I am but it's
the fact that I can turn stones into
bread or I can multiply your few loaves
and fishes and satisfy your material needs.
You're after me for what you can get
out of me not for what I am.
Your motives are false your materialism is crass
and I know it, he says.
He put it earlier on by saying this
don't go on laboring, he says using your
energy for the meat that perishes but rather
use your strength and your intellectual energy and
your moral powers use all that you are
to labor for the meat that does not
perish.
You're using your strength in the wrong way
and they didn't like that.
A hard saying.
It's so much easier, isn't it to have
a Jesus who always pours platitudes upon people
but he can never be the saviour of
lost sinners without telling them the truth about
themselves.
My friends, this is true in the spiritual
as it is in the medical realm.
The doctor has to know what's wrong and
put his finger on it and diagnose and
sometimes tell an unwilling patient look, you've got
to get it done.
So does Jesus.
And he does it.
And does it still.
Another facet of the hard saying, I suppose
was his emphasis upon the sovereignty of God
here and particularly the other side of that
same truth that men are impotent to come
to Jesus Christ unless God helps them.
You know, we like these ancient people unfortunately
in our fallen condition like to feel that
we can opt for Christ or against Christ
just as we please.
You know, I can vote him in or
I can vote him out.
I can bring about the success of the
kingdom or I can frustrate it.
Now, the lesson of the New Testament is
this.
You can crucify him but God will not
allow the crucifixion of his son to spell
disaster for the cause.
He will raise him from the dead.
A vote against Jesus is a vote against
yourself not against him.
So that when God is drawing men into
him and women it is a most significant
moment or a significant season when he is
inviting us even by our thoughts and our
follies and the memory of our sins or
by his infinite grace and promises he's inviting
us.
Now at that point everything is open.
Another element here I suppose and this is
quite clear because this was the last in
the series immediately before our text they were
upset by our Lord's reference to himself as
the living bread which came down from heaven.
Now perhaps this doesn't strike us as it
struck them.
You see they had all the Old Testament
so familiar in their minds and they remembered
the manna.
Now the manna was of an extraordinary nature.
The ancient people had been able to live
and to survive only because of the manna
which came down from heaven.
And they were so full of this and
the manna of course was God himself come
down to provide what was needed in the
wilderness.
Well now Jesus said I am the bread
which has come down from heaven.
I am the bread of God.
I am what the manna but faintly symbolized
and I've come down to bring life to
you in the wilderness and without eating me
he explained that eating meant believing, receiving, believing
without partaking of me as I've come down
you have no life in you.
You just haven't begun to live because I
am the bread of life.
This is a hard saying they said.
You see it made him not just an
addition to their present beliefs but it made
him essential to life.
Essential to life.
He is saying you can't begin to live
and you can't continue to live when once
you've begun apart from me I am the
bread who brings life and sustains life.
There is no other.
That's the point.
This is a hard saying they murmured and
began to withdraw.
Now this has been greatly misunderstood and the
best commentators will show you and prove to
you what I have no time to do
this morning.
They did not mean, look it's a hard
saying we don't understand it.
That's not the point at all.
What worried them was not what they could
not understand but what they could understand.
It was not that they were saying to
Jesus, look you're talking things that are so
difficult to understand we don't know what you're
getting at.
What they were saying is this, you're talking
so very clearly in a language that we
can understand but we don't possibly see how
we can follow you this way.
You're making yourself absolutely and exclusively the only
Savior.
This is a hard saying.
It's not the intellectual difficulty of understanding what
he's saying, it's the moral difficulty of obeying
what he teaches.
The longer I live, the more I am
convinced that ultimately this is the cardinal reason
why many people do not accept Jesus Christ
and walk in his way.
It is not the intellectual difficulty of imbibing
his teaching but it is the moral difficulty
of following in the way and of obeying
his precepts.
The retreating multitude.
Can you see it with your mind's eye?
Can you see it?
Leaving just a little band of twelve around
the lone Savior all on an anticlimax.
You can almost see the funeral of the
Christian church announced in the daily press, buried
today, 12 noon.
Now let's look at the second here very
briefly, the resolute Lord.
How does he react?
How does Jesus Christ react when he sees
them all going?
The gospel writer records how as the grim
realities of the hour were gradually dawning upon
him, Jesus stands resolute and turns calm.
Will you also go away?
You?
Also?
Now my friends I have no time to
go into all the details and significance of
that, but let's just say two or three
things about it.
Mark the uncompromising demands of Jesus Christ.
Faced with the spectacle of a retreating crowd,
faced with the end of his popularity, he
does not attempt to strike a compromise even
with the twelve.
He does not even entertain the possibility of
a compromise even to keep the last dozen
of those eight or nine thousand people that
have been clamoring around in the last few
days.
On the contrary, he shows the handful still
before him the only alternative to the acceptance
of his person and of his precepts.
Hard though the saying may be, he cannot
compromise.
Will you also go away?
Underlying this uncompromising attitude, of course, there lies
the Savior's absolute certainty of his own authority
and of his own deity.
Jesus only does this because he is certain
of who he is and certain that in
declaring these things that have offended people he
is declaring the word which the Father has
given him.
And therefore, if that is so, he cannot
compromise.
You can only compromise on things trivial or
on things concerning which you are uncertain of
their truthfulness.
And our Lord was not declaring trivialities.
He was declaring the great eternal verities of
salvation.
And he was declaring these great eternal verities
with a conviction that he had come from
God with God's word and doing God's will.
Therefore he says, I have come down from
heaven not to do my will but the
will of him that sent me.
Verse 38, If all this is too hard,
it is too hard for you to be
redeemed.
Will you also go away?
Having said that, however, it is evident that
Jesus did not expect them to go away.
I must say this.
It's necessary to an understanding of the passage.
Though he put the question to them, he
did not expect them to say, Yes, we
will go for the reason.
How can I know this?
Well, because in Greek you address a question
like this in one of two ways.
If you expect the answer to be negative,
you address it in a certain way.
If you expect the answer to be positive,
you put it in a different way.
And Jesus so couched the question that he
expected a negative answer.
We're not going away.
In other words, he knew that they were
different.
He knew that though the saying might well
have been hard, they had come to understand
his person in some measure.
They had come to an appreciation of his
word in some measure as well as his
words.
But they did not want to go away.
They could not.
Even so, it certainly taught them how he
was incapable of compromising his message to keep
the crowds.
And when you come to think of it,
this was surely a vital message for a
would-be apostle.
Those of us involved in Christian work in
a full-time sense in the ministry, or
missionary work, you know, we always have to
come back here.
It is so tragically possible to modify the
word of the Lord or to mute some
of his massive, mighty declarations in order to
keep the peace or keep the people.
Jesus wouldn't have it.
And Simon learned that lesson as early as
this.
If the people do not come to the
truth which is from God and which is
alone saving, then the people cannot come.
It is truth unchanged, unchanging.
And the Son himself says, I cannot negotiate
the terms of the gospel.
This is not negotiable.