Hi, I'm Pastor James Tippins
with Grace Truth Church. We're glad you're taking the
time out to listen to the teaching of God's Word. If you'd like
more information about what you're about to hear, please connect
with us online at gracetruth.org. There you can learn more about
our church family, our teaching ministry, the gospel of grace,
our school of theology, and our missions. We would love to hear
from you and provide you with answers to any questions you
may have. Lord bless and remember that life is found only in Jesus
Christ, who is our righteousness. this dialogue with these people.
For those of you who are following along with us in our series in
John, by the way, this is week 45 of John's preaching or preaching
through John. We have several years to go in
this, but it is not a problem. In John six, we see that Jesus
has gone and fed the multitude, some 15 to 20,000 people, 5,000
men plus others. And he's done so miraculously.
He's done so to prove his divine essence, his divine being. We
see over and over again, Jesus continues to preach the gospel
of redemption, continues to share that he is the one through whom
life is found. And yet in the flesh of the depravity
of humanity, they cannot see even when they know for certain
he is Messiah. The Jews who held to their understanding
of scripture were rebuked and Jesus said to them, you search
the scriptures because in them you think you find eternal life.
But Jesus said to them then, but if you were to believe Moses,
you would believe me for he wrote of me. Jesus in John's gospel
is revealed to us as God, in all the gospels, but particularly
this gospel. And Jesus and His sovereignty
as God, especially and particularly redemption and salvation in sovereignty,
is the point of John's gospel. So that you may know that Jesus
is the Christ, Messiah, and that by believing in His name, you
have eternal life. It's very simple to see, not only in that
point that John writes in chapter 20, verse 31, but also in what
we've learned already in the prologue or the introduction,
the first 18 verses of chapter one, where we see the outline
of this gospel by the evangelist, John, by the apostle John. And we see very clearly that
everything that he's shown us there has played out in the dialogue
with the individual people and groups of people. And so nothing
has changed. Jesus talks to the Jews. They
cannot see. They think they understand scripture.
They think that they know everything there is to know about doctrine,
about God, but yet they're looking at God face to face and they
will not believe in Christ because therefore they cannot believe
in Christ. I remind you too, beloved, that
we are not topically driving ourselves through the gospel
of John, we are expositionally driving ourselves through the
gospel of John. That means that we take every verse, every structure
of every sentence of every thought, and we teach it exactly how it's
printed on the page in English. And where the English is troublesome,
we go to the Greek and we study it and we study the variants
and we look and spend 25 to 30 hours a week diving into this
so that we might rightly understand it. But in all of that, unless
God the Spirit help you see, you will not comprehend. That is the teaching of Jesus
from the beginning of days until now. And that is the number one
threat in the heart of every human being is that people want
to be the Lord of their lives. And people want to be the Lord
of their afterlife. And people want to be the Lord of their
eternal life. Jesus is the Lord of all. We
cannot make him our Lord. We cannot declare him Lord. We
cannot live as if he is Lord. because He is Lord. And despite
what we may or may not do in this world, God is the Lord of
the living, Jesus Christ, the God of heaven is the Lord of
the dead. Jesus is the Lord of creation. He is the God over
all. He is the Lord of the saints,
and he is the Lord of the sinner. He is the Lord of those who are
redeemed, the elect, and he is the Lord of the reprobate. He
is the Lord of the angels in glory who sing his praises this
very moment, and he is the Lord of the angels who have been cast
out of heaven. He is the Lord of the devil.
He is the Lord of Lucifer himself, and he rules Lucifer with absolute
sovereignty and nothing, nothing, Nothing, nothing, let me say
it again, nothing that happens in this life happens apart from
the sovereign decree of the Lord Jesus. If anything does, then
Jesus Christ is a liar, for He Himself declared Himself the
Lord. He is the Lord or He is not, and He is, beloved, whether
we believe it or not. And that is what we see time
and time again in John's gospel. He is the Lord. I've entitled
this message. I've been trying to title my
messages lately. I don't know why, but the last
six weeks or so, I feel like it keeps me focused. And although
running after rabbits today of all days might seem fitting,
we will not do that if we can help it. But I've entitled this
message Running Full Speed to Nowhere. Running Full Speed to
Nowhere. And the day of social media that
we live in, there's always somebody trying to show us something on
some place about someone doing something silly. Stupid, gross,
scary, foolish, amazing, glorious, majestic, or just plain right
dumb. And there's these memes that
are very, very off color, where people in certain areas of the
world or the country, they dress up into some way that they look
terroristic, whatever that looks like, and they throw a bag at
a group of people. And then they add music to it.
And the song starts out that just says, run. And everybody
just runs. And they think it's funny. And
I'm thinking, try that in the South. And you liable to get
shot. People aren't going to laugh.
Oh, you scared me. I thought you were going to blow
me up. They're not going to laugh at that. And it's not funny at
all. And you know what's funny? A
joke. That's not a joke. But I use
that because they're so viewed on social media that people who
have posted these videos actually make an income, a sustainable
income, based on the ads that run on their YouTube channel.
Because so many people watch it, they get paid by advertisers
to post their ads. Now imagine that. Two points
in illustration, and then I'll move to the sublime. Point number
one is that that is a wasted life. It is running at full speed
for nothing. Well, it's making money, so what?
That's running at full speed to nothing if that's the only
goal we have in life. And second, where are they running
to? See, that's what happens. We
in our culture, we believe that we can have Christian language.
We can use the name of Jesus. We can say the word as it said
to me just yesterday by a person in public, hallelujah, hallelujah,
praise Jesus. And I looked at this person,
I said, do you know what hallelujah means? And they didn't. I said, you're just saying a
word, you don't know it? I said, thankfully, it does mean
praise God. Praise Yahweh, God, Yahweh. Praise the Lord. I said, so you
got it right, hallelujah, praise Jesus, you got it right. But
oftentimes we believe that when someone has the vernacular, they
indeed have life. And I'm finding it more and more
realistic to say that most people who have the vernacular are not
born again. And they're not born again because
if you dig through the overarching generalities of their statements
and their confession, what you'll find is not a confession of Christ
alone, but a confession of Christ plus something. Or a confession
of Christ with something. Or a confession of me plus Jesus
and plus something else comes. eternal life. And so most people
are running full speed thinking that they're running out of judgment
and out of danger into the hands of Jesus that they proclaim,
but they do not know. Where are we running? Where is
the world to run? And quite honestly, as we see
in John's apocalypse, as we see the imagery of the justice of
God, there is nowhere to run. But I would challenge us to think
today, as we see these people, like we saw last week, and as
we see Jesus declare himself the bread of life, the bread
of God even, that many of us will know someone in our lives,
this very moment, in our hearts and in our heads, this very day,
that they may profess Christ, but by the very nature of their
confession, they do not know him. And they're running a race
with no finish line. They're running a race with no
hope. They're just running nowhere. How wasted is that? Verse 26 and 27 we'll review
this morning to prime our hearts and minds to this text. Jesus
goes miraculously by walking across the sea and appearing
to the disciples in the midst of the wind, teleports the boat
three miles onto dry land and the people who were looking for
him get in the boats that God divinely brought to the shore
and go over there to Capernaum to find him. And they say, Rabbi,
they patronize him, Rabbi, when did you come here? And Jesus
just rebukes them. He doesn't even answer the question
of when or how, but he rebukes them and says, you have come
after me because you want something from me. I'm paraphrasing this,
because your bellies are full, your flesh is satisfied, your
lifestyle is at ease. You want something from me, you
do not want me. You're laboring, let's use our
text for today and the title, you're running nowhere. I don't know how many of you
have had tea parties with little girls growing up, but I've never
been full eating a tea party. And then we've had some world
type cuisine in our home and we've had English tea parties.
I don't know how those people survive. They don't eat enough. So even when you're not pretending,
pretending with a child and eating a real tea party is just the
same, it's nothing. Here's your cucumber sandwich.
I thought that's what you put in the water to make it pretty,
not eat. I mean, you know, where's the meat? And I love them, actually. But you have to eat 12 just to
get started. The point is, no matter how much you pretend,
you're never gonna have a meal at a little girl's tea party.
No matter how many refills she gives you, in that artificial
container. No matter how many steaks the
young boy takes off his plastic grill, they never feed you. And that is the extent of most
people's experience with Jesus. They are eating plastic food
and artificial meals and they think they are full. And what
they want is that experiential feeling to prove that they're
in Christ. They want some substance that
they can put their hand on. They want, like an atheist, something
they can measure. The irony. Oh, the irony of such
things. But either way, they want something
they can measure and observe. Yet, they're running to nowhere. In verses 26 and 27, these people
were running after Christ. They looked for Him. They found
Him. They followed Him. They went and tried to get Him
once more, and they wanted more and more and more so that their
bodies could be full. Why was the meal they had the
day before not enough? Because, just like we like to
remind our children sometimes when we go out to eat as a family
at a nice place, Yes, it might be a good experience, but it
all goes the same place as the cheap food. And the lever flushes. You get
it? Went over somebody's head out
there. So it's just the same as taking
$50, taking Grant and putting him in the toilet and flushing
it. Yes, the experience was there,
but it doesn't do you any good in the morning, does it? It's not there anymore. That
wonderful piece of steak or lobster or whatever it is you might've
eaten, or some of us that like hamburgers or like a good burger, or whatever
it might be that you like, the pasta or the rabbit food, the
antipasta. It's not worth anything the next
day. That is what the religion of
the Jews is and was if they could not believe in Christ. That is
what it is for us today, beloved, if we are not holding fast by
faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, who is our grace, who is our
righteousness, who is our sanctification, who is our Savior. They were running to have their
bodies full. We fill our lives often as human beings in all
manner of desire. We look for things. We want to
be fulfilled. We try to find it. I mean, think
about the new shoes. I mean, how many of you have
a pair of shoes that are over 20 years old? Raise your hand.
I don't ever do that. Okay, me too. I've got several. Have you
ever resold them? I've resold a few. You can't
even find a cobbler anymore. That's not something you eat.
That's a man that fixes shoes. But you know how you get that
new pair of shoes and as long as they're clean, as long as
they don't curl up, you're like, man, I love these shoes. And
then what happens? They become yard shoes. That new smell when you
buy a car, it's chemicals, by the way, but it's euphoric. Oh,
that's great. Love getting a new car. Six months
and four glasses of milk in the carpet later. What is it? We need to trade this in. Now let's go have it detailed.
We go spend 40 bucks, have somebody clean it up, make it look new.
They spray that artificial chemical smell in there. This just doesn't
do it. It's just not the same, is it?
That's like everything. And you know what's sad? It's
unbelievers who think they have Jesus. They treat Jesus the same
way. Love the new Jesus smell. Love the new Jesus feel. Love
the new Jesus experience. I love the emotion. I love the
experience. Where's the smoke? Where's the
mirrors? Let's dim the lights and get it all wired up. Let's
tell a story about a boy who dies and his father kills him
to save a bunch of folks and then relate it to Jesus. How
about we just point to Christ and let God the Holy Spirit break
us and remake us. We live in a day when Christians
need to stand up and call foul and call blasphemous the garbage
in the name of ministry that takes place over and over again.
It's time when Christians stand up and say, no, that is not my
savior. You're teaching not Christ. and stop giving time and ear
and heart and soul into all the things. More professing Christians
watch YouTube for their spiritual substance than they watch the
pages of their own Bible that sits so eloquently in the back
of their seat in the car until the Lord's day. We fill our lives with all manner
of desire. seeking to find hope in our life, seeking to find
hope in our Christian way. We're seeking to find assurance
with our own efforts. Even when we can see the power
of Christ in front of us, we're unable to believe most of the
time as people. And I'm not talking about you,
beloved, but human beings are unable to believe except they
be born of God. We find nothing and we make it
into something and then we place it over Christ to make Him better.
What is it that we need? As I said two Sundays ago, as
much as I love reading, there is nothing but this that we need.
We don't need the commentaries that go and point to this. We
need to read our Bibles. We need to eat the bread of life.
We need, we need Jesus Christ, not the food He provides. We
need Him. And that's what he's talking
about. There's a review. Those people ran after him for all
sorts of reasons, except to be born again. Sometimes we're running at full
speed to nowhere. And sometimes people run to Christ and then
run to nowhere because they're running to him wrongly. Verse
27, do not work. but work for the food that endures
eternal life. The Son of Man will give to you, for on Him
the Father has set His seal. See, the Son of Man here gives
you the bread. And people argue, well, you gotta
ask for it. Well, they do and He doesn't. They ask and He will not give
it to them. You think begging God will cause
your salvation? No, believing God. will reveal
that you are saved. Let me say that again. Begging
God will not cause your salvation. Believing God will prove it. We're not striving to enter into
Christ. We're not looking for a place
where Christ has made an opportunity for us to come to Him. The Bible
teaches, even in that small little statement, that Christ gives
Himself to us. that Christ finds us, that Christ
takes us, that Christ snatches us, that Christ saves us. Friends of mine who work in the
Coast Guard, they don't fly around and see people stranded at sea
with their boat atop and go, oh, they're not waving, we'll
just keep flying. Maybe they're having a good time. I've heard
about this new thing, upside down boating. It's all the fat.
No, they save them. The drowning people don't have
to come up and wave the flag in order to be saved. The dead
on the gurneys of an EMT don't wait for the shock. and ask to
be brought to life. We do not ask to be brought to
life. We do not seek Christ in such a way that He may grant
us the wish of life. He finds us through the hearing
of His Word by the measure of His own will, and He comes at
the most unopportune time. When man is at his lowest, or
when man is, in his own eyes, at his highest, but desperately
at both times, in every situation, always, not in need of food,
though he may be starving, he's in need of saving, because he
is standing in the judgment of God. The Son of Man will give you
bread, Jesus says. He will give you bread. And do
you know what happens when you give a hungry man bread? Let
me tell you something, he will eat of it. You give a poor man money, he
will receive it. You give a thirsty man water,
he will consume it. You walk to a man and say, I
will take that cancer from you, oh man, and you shall live, he
will definitely let you. Friends, Christ gives bread to
his people. Christ gave himself for his people. Christ sacrificed himself for
his people. Our greatest need, it's not that Jesus is our only
means to life. Our greatest need is that Jesus
is our life. Jesus is our life. We need to
see that Jesus is our life. Our greatest need is that Jesus
Christ is our greatest need. Our greatest need is to believe
that we must not seek other things apart from Jesus Christ. The morning of the resurrection,
as we've been reading at home this week, through all the gospels,
I have to confess that when we read through Matthew's gospel,
I wept uncontrollably hearing that scripture. Most of all,
because of what Jesus said to the Jews, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
woe to you. For you have this knowledge,
you have the Word, you have these things, but you shut the people
out of the kingdom of heaven. Woe to you, you brood of vipers! Woe to you, you dirty bowls! The outside is clean, but the
inside is filthy. Woe to you! Woe to you as those
who were in the days of Noah when God shut the ark and brought
the flood. Woe! It should be better that
you had never been born than to reject me. The morning of the resurrection,
the women were seeking Jesus, not to see if he was alive, but
to prepare his body for decomposition. Think about that for a second. They were going to prepare the
body of the Creator of the world to rot. But they found what they were
not looking for. They did not find a body to prepare,
but they found a living Savior. And if you notice, I made an
error in that statement. He found them. And had he not revealed himself
to them, they would have gone back and said, the gardener said
he was gone. You seek Christ this morning
that you may have something that he has, that he may do something
for you in an attempt to earn favor, maybe prove your intimacy
or promote your own goodwill. You seek after Christ. Well,
Jesus is alive this day. He was alive yesterday and he'll
be alive a million more days from this day. He is alive. And
He has found you, beloved. He has saved you, beloved. He
has redeemed you, beloved. He has never moved, nor will
He ever forsake you, no matter how much or how little you work.
It will not have any bearing on your eternity, because Christ
has done all the work required. He will give you the spread.
That's where I am. Christ gives eternal life. It is a guarantee for you, beloved.
See, the gospel is good news because it doesn't matter what
we think. The gospel is good news because
it's not conditional upon our doings, respondings, etc. The good news of Christ is that
He has redeemed. That means He has paid for, He
has purchased, He has satisfied the wrath of God for His people.
And through the hearing of this truth by the Spirit, God saves. He gifts repentance, which is
the mind that no longer looks to itself and to its flesh, but
then all of a sudden looks to Christ alone and can see and
behold that the bread that I thought I needed is not the bread at
all and now I don't even want it. Christ alone is all I need. Do you have faith in this gospel?
Or do you have faith in a prescribed conditional gospel that expressly
tries to get you involved in a synergistic way to come to
a place where God meets you and waits and then you meet God and
meet? Where is that? It's not here. There's not one passage in the
scripture that shows us It's this example. There's not one
narrative, even in the Old Testament, where God does this with man
in any way. But God is always the author
of salvation. He's always the author of redemption.
He's always the finisher of all faith. And He is the one who
founds it, starts it, gifts it, and causes us to believe it. If man is the causality of His
justification, then man is greater than God who finished the work. People say, well, it's semantics.
It's about your theological interpretation of soteriology. No, it's not.
It's about what the Bible teaches in its principal language and
in its translated English, even in the horrible New Living Translation
and open Bible, even in the garbage of so many other paraphrases
of Scripture, we find the truth that God is sovereign in the
saving of His people. Even when they try to add words,
you cannot get out of the context unless you rewrite the story. The work of Jesus Christ is the
work of God for your salvation. Jesus has had the seal of God
put upon him. That means that he is approved.
Jesus alone is the one, is the only, through whom life is given
and no one else. See, none of you, none of you
have the power of salvation. I don't have the power of salvation.
There's no process of salvation. There's no place that you go
to receive salvation. There is not a program that will
establish in you salvation. There is no type of personal
relationship that'll give you salvation. It's just Jesus. It's just Jesus. And I know I say some things
sometimes that seem a little polarizing with our culture,
but our culture has rearranged the meaning of grace. Our culture
and many professing Christians have rearranged and reestablished
the definition of the gospel. They have come to a man-centered
focus that the scripture does not teach. And to believe in
any other gospel than that that the scripture teaches is no gospel. And the only thing that causes
us to be so stubborn is our own self-will and depravity. The
only thing that causes us to relinquish that and to trust
in Jesus is the sovereign work of God by the Spirit. Who are we trusting, in the Spirit
of God to save us or us? This is a far different gospel
than the one we see in Scripture. because the gospel that we see
in culture, and I counsel people this every single day, the gospel
that we see in our culture is the gospel that says, repeat
this prayer. That's almost like the word of
faith movement, or the new apostolic revolution, or any of these other people
that think they can just, you know, Like what we saw 25 years ago with
some of these guys getting on TV saying, just speak it into
being and, you know, look at my big fat wallet. Why are you
doing that? He said, if I call my wallet
big and fat and full, it'll be big and fat and full one day.
Really? Full of what? Better be specific. You might find last night's meal
in it. You got it again. OK. How about the ABCs gospel? Young
man, 15 years old, confronted me with this, not two weeks ago.
I was taught that the gospel, in order to be saved, I must
follow the ABCs. And the next thing out of his
mouth is, that's not in the Bible I have. And I keep being told
to trust in that, but it's not in my Bible. What am I to do? I said, believe what the Bible
teaches you. The ABCs is ask and believe and confess. Or admit
that you're a sinner. Believe that Christ rose from
the dead and confessed Him as Lord and you shall be saved.
That's not true. Many who say to me, Lord, Lord,
will not enter into my kingdom. I will say to them, depart from
me, you workers of iniquity. Didn't we do a lot of good stuff?
We preached and taught and prayed and served and gave and loved.
Oh, why, why, why? What's the iniquity? You do not
believe in the one whom God has sent for this is the work of
God that you believe in the Son. The fruit that God requires is
faith alone. And beloved, it is the fruit
of God's everlasting grace. There is no measure of grace
given to a man whereby he does not come to full faith and acceptance
in Christ. There is no grace given to any
human being, man, woman, or child through which he would not fully
be justified by Jesus. There is no way possible for
a man to see Jesus face to face in the fullness of his glory
and know with all shadow of his soul that he is the Christ and
have trust in him and yet be utterly lost by rejecting him. It is not possible. When you
give a man who is starving on his last breath a piece of bread,
he will eat of it. Fill out this card. You will
receive Christ. Choose, accept, receive. Condition
A, condition B, condition C, condition E is eternity. Where is that? What are you talking
about? All the methods that I once used
with the masses, 25,000 people standing out there and you tell
them these things. And not only do they give you
their decision, but they give you their money. No, be alive in Christ alone
for He alone is the Son of God. He alone is the Son of man. And
when we tell people that it's by faith alone, listen to me,
it is absurd to the unregenerate mind. It is absurd. It's still
illogical to the regenerate mind. You know why? Because it is a
divine work that is outside the realm of the natural. It's a miracle. I love reading
scientific explanations of the flood and scientific explanations
of the resurrection. It's almost like comedy, but
so much so that it's tragedy. Shakespeare all over again. Verse 28, and they said to him,
then, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus says,
don't work for this, work for this. And he says, this is the
work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. These
people were running full speed into Christ, but yet they could
not see him. And they ran into the wall of human depravity.
That's what they did. Full speed at Christ, but instead
of Christ, they ran into human depravity. Because depravity,
sinfulness, the human condition, the natural man stops us from
Christ. Stops us from getting there.
There's nothing we can do to get over that. So even with all
the knowledge and all the focus and all the man-mustard faith
that can come up with, how serious is your faith? I mean, I'm gonna
ask you this question. Don't answer it out loud, because it'd be
chaos. But how serious is your faith? Really? Some of us say,
oh, very serious. How many times have you failed
God today? Your faith is not very serious. How many times
in just this service have you felt a little flustered, frustrated,
aggravated, or insensitive about something that's been said? How
many of you have been a little uptight because it might be a
little hot, might be a little cold? Not being able to focus with
all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, because
there's other things going on in life. You have failed God. You have
not loved Him. You have sinned against Him, and behold, His
judgment, if it were poured out on that sin alone, would be eternity
in hell. Our faith isn't very serious. Now let's just get to the way
we live, the way we talk, the way we think, the way we eat,
the way we spend our time, the way we spend our money, the way
we spend our thoughts. Who's the greatest man among
you? Who's the example that we look at when we see the Bible?
Who's the example? Who are we supposed to follow
after? Jesus. Jesus is too hard, right? Perfection. Oh, Paul. Paul was the biggest murderer
that ever lived. Peter was a loser to the day
his head was taken. I think that might've been by
the Catholic Church. Maybe he was crucified upside down. They
have his head, supposedly. Is it Noah? Absolutely not. Is
it Moses? Who is it? It's Jacob. His name means liar. What's my name? James, Jacob,
Jacobus, all the same. Supplanter, deceiver, great. Who is it? It's Christ, it's
only Christ, it's only Christ. So where is our hope? Is our
faith serious? It better be. It seriously better be focused
on being only in Christ. It better only be in Christ.
We better stop laboring for anything but Christ. We better stop laboring
for our logical understanding of justification. We better stop
laboring for all the nuances of walking in a manner that we
feel is worthy and trusting in that. We better stop laboring.
We better start laboring to believe only in Jesus. And here's the
kicker. It's not our work. It's the work of God the Father
that we believe on the Son. It is the work of God. It is
His requirement of us. It is His command of us. He has
two commands to all humanity. One of them all humanity will
be accountable for, and that is to be holy for I am holy.
Every man, woman, and child will be held by the standard of the
law in the day of judgment. And if so much as we rolled our
eyes to our parents at the age of six, because they called on
us and got on to us when we did nothing wrong, and we rolled
our eyes in dismay, we are worthy of the eternal judgment of a
holy and righteous God, for we have violated his perfection.
And we will stand in that judgment. Every lost person will stand
in that judgment. But every safe person will be
forgiven of it. Why? Because Jesus stood in that
judgment. It's that simple. Either Jesus
paid for your sins or he didn't. What are you gonna believe in?
And what are you going to trust? Where is your hope? What must
we do? Nothing but believe. Just this
week, I had a conversation with someone who said that they heard
someone say to their face, there's much more to being saved than
just believing in Jesus. Yeah. That was my thoughts. And then as I thought about it,
I thought, how horrible. Well, there's more. You got to
repent. Repentance is a natural byproduct of regeneration, which
is the antithesis of faith anyway. We no longer trust in ourselves,
but trust in Christ. See? Why does this happen? Because
our human efforts, as I said last week, give us power over
our lives. When we get through building
something or painting something or doing something as men, I
know for me, it's like, ah, look at there. I remember when I hung
my back door in that horrible, off-plumb house of mine, 126-year-old
house. And I did it and did it and did
it and never went, and then I went and I slung it that last time
and it shut and went click. I went, oh man, and I stepped
back two steps, stepped into the hole in the floor where the
air vent was, and broke my neck. And the only thing I could hear
is pride comes before the fall. When I skimped my shin up four
inches. We take pride in what we accomplish.
We can boast in it, even if we boast humbly. You know what humble
boasting is? I'm not talking about what the
new fad of humble boasting is, where we say it, we're just inside
of ourselves. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that I
hung that door. Thank you for the skills. Thank
you that I didn't curse it and catch it on fire. Thank you that
I'm not like the guy down the road who punched the wall trying
to hang his. You see? Sound familiar? And the guy down the road would
even pray. He just said, oh, God, propitiate for me. Satisfy your judgment. You satisfy
your just. That's what it means to have
mercy on me, propitiate from me. That's the actual word. It
should be translated that in English. I wrote it out in my
Bible like that. Not this one, but the one I study
from. We love power. We can do it.
That's what we're told as children. You can do it. You can do anything
you want to do. You can be anything you want to be. No, you can't. No,
you can't. You cannot do anything you want
to do or be anything. You can't even do that in a human sense.
There's only one Michael Jordan and a lot of posers. I mean, that's all genetics.
A man that can jump like that and look like he's flying, I
mean, that's just crazy. The silhouettes that came after Jordan
are nothing, you know? It's like, that guy's falling
off a bridge, what's he doing? There's only a few people who
are gifted in a few areas. Not everybody is gifted. Not
everybody can sing. You can want to sing all you want to do, but
if you can't sing, you can't sing. But grandma and mama and
auntie and all them people, for all those years, oh child, you've
got such a beautiful voice. You need to go on America's Got
Talent. And it sounds like somebody took a couple of cats and turned
them into those knickerballs that used to bounce together,
you know. Grandma's crying. The judges
are going, who told you you could sing? Granny? Granny's deaf,
honey. You know those things? Buy her
batteries. You can't do everything you want
to do. And if that's true in our humanity,
how much truer is it in our spirituality? How can we become alive when
we're dead? It's a work of God. You see the point. I'm not arguing
semantics. I'm teaching the gospel. The gospel is not that Christ
provides a way of salvation. The gospel is that Jesus is certain
salvation. Jesus doesn't need our help.
He doesn't need our permission. He doesn't need our great minds
and our great wills to fulfill his purpose in salvation like
I heard at a Prayer breakfast three years ago where the man
got up and says, God wants us to do these things. And he gave
a list of things that God's called us to do. And then he says, and
if we don't do them, God's will is gonna fail in this town. I laughed out loud about like
Kayla did earlier. God is not going to fail because
he can take a bird from California and cause it to fly to Georgia.
And he can take a man sitting in his home right now watching
those stupid run videos on YouTube without a spiritual bone in his
body and convert him through hearing of the Word of God and
make him an evangelist to come in here and preach the gospel
to us. And he can take a wicked millionaire
and turn him into a saint that supports missions. And he can
take an atheist and destroy him for his own glory. Just like
he did Pharaoh. Just like he did Judas. Just
like King Cyrus. Just like the high priest Caiaphas. Don't hear what I'm not saying.
God didn't make them sin. They sin because that's who we
are, sinners. God decrees it. And if it were not for the sovereign
grace of God to change our disposition and create us new, we all would
run amok either into lucidiousness and debauchery or into high cotton
religion, both equally damnable. He doesn't need our permission.
It is finished, he said. What is finished? that God is
satisfied in the work of Jesus Christ. He's satisfied. Therefore, God no longer has
a requirement to be met by man because Jesus has satisfied all
the conditions of righteousness, all the conditions of justice,
all the conditions of redemption, all the conditions, all of them. That's what our faith is in,
the work of Jesus. It's too easy, isn't it? That's
just, there's gotta be more. Yeah, there's gotta be more in
our humanity. But in God's economy, what could we bring to the table?
What can we bring? Sin. What must we do? They said, what
is it that we must do to do the work of God? What does God want
us to do? Here's what Jesus says, God is saving his people. That's
what he's doing. That's what Christ has done.
This work that I'm saying, which is not really work as we'll see
in a moment, is that you believe in the work of God through Jesus,
the son, that you believe that this requirement of God is finished
through Christ, through me, the son of man, the bread of God,
the bread that comes down from heaven. While works of our flesh will
be seen, even those, especially those that are out of faith,
sometimes better than others, none of them have any bearing
on our justification, our life that is given to us, the bread
that is given to us by Jesus through his work of atonement. 30, what do they ask? I know I took a long time to
get here, I'm sorry. That's the introduction. What sign do you do? What sign
do you do? What sign? What are you going
to show us next, Jesus? We hear what you're saying. We
got it. Now what? One more trick and then we'll
believe. One more masterpiece, one more
great act of power, then we'll believe. What else are you going
to do? You're going to pull a rabbit out of your hat? You're going
to levitate? You're going to find the card?
Pick one, I'm not looking. I mean, that's what people have
relegated Christ to. Some magician. And here these
Jews say, well, what sign are you gonna do? Our fathers ate
the man of the wilderness as it is written. What does he say
there? He gave them bread to eat from
heaven. See, they knew Jesus was Messiah. They knew the only
one that was to come. They knew the teaching of John
the Baptist. They knew that Jesus was the one come from God. He
proclaimed it himself. They followed after him. They
knew, they knew. But he taught them that faith
alone in him would save them, but they could not be sure. They
were not converted. They just knew the facts. So
they say, what sign? We all want a sign, don't we?
We want a sign or a symbol or a seal of something that can
show us everything's gonna be okay. We want some solidity.
We wanna know the outcome is secure. We wanna see something
more. And then when we see that, we're
not quite sure, so we wanna see something else. How many times
in the Old Testament did the saints of old continue to ask
God for sign after sign after sign? I'd have given him a sign. And
Jesus is the sign. His existence, His presence,
His teaching, all that He did to fulfill as we saw in Isaiah
52 this morning in our pre-service reading. Everything Christ is
fulfilled in all of these things. We want God to show us something
more. And in our unbelief, we want Christ to fulfill us in
our marriages and with our children and our jobs. We want something
else. And if He does, we rejoice. And if He doesn't, we mourn.
It's, oh, what have I done, God? Why are you not working in me
this way? We as people want more. We want to see more. These people
wanted to see more. They wanted to feel more. They
want something else other than what Jesus was saying with his
mouth. They wanted something of substance
that they could carry home and say, look what I got. Look what
God gave me. Look what God did for me. An
old bloody man on the cross that was ashamed, barely recognizable
as a human being, Isaiah said. They wanted more than scripture.
What in the world? They were listening to the words of Jesus,
that scripture. They wanted more than that. They wanted God revealed
in a bigger way. They wanted God's work, not through
Jesus' mouth, something that they could tell their friends
about. They wanted to see God's power, not just hear of it. They
wanted all of God's promises. They wanted God's salvation,
but they wanted it on their terms and in their way and in their
will. These people saw and knew that Jesus was God, but seeing
is not believing. Believing is seeing. If we cannot, if we will not
believe the words of Christ, then we will never believe the
signs that he gives. Evidences will never regenerate
a lost man. Only simple faith through the
hearing of the word is how one is born of God. And I correct
that in that one is born of God, thereby he believes. Matthew, Jesus answered them
in chapter 12, verse 39, an evil and adulterous generation seeks
for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign
of the prophet Jonah. You know what's happened? They called Jesus rabbi, remember?
And then all of a sudden, in just a little bit, now already,
and in just a little bit, They don't hear what they want to
hear from Jesus. They don't get what they want
to get from Jesus. So they no longer desire to respect
him and honor him as teacher. Just that fast. That's why so many people, when
they hear exposition, they run for the door. They want something
else. They want to feel or experience
something else. Beloved, we must pray. that as
preaching is done, as we share the scripture, that God converts
his people. They wanted to prove Jesus a
fraud. So they ran then into the traditions of the old ways,
to their fathers. They ate the man in the wilderness.
That's a direct quote from Psalm 78, 24, by the way. Our fathers ate the man in the
wilderness. So what was that a picture of? Moses gave us this
bread every day after the exodus when they were in the wilderness,
which by the way, they were in the wilderness as what? Punishment. So what? So all the generations
of unbelievers would die. That's what the scripture says.
God put them in the wilderness for four decades so that he could
kill off every unbeliever. That's harsh. He saved them to
point to Jesus. And then he proved what redemption
really was, was an act of God. Manna was a shadow. Moses gave
us bread. He was like a Messiah. Are you better than Moses? If
you're better than Moses, then do at least what Moses did, give
us some manna. Call it out of heaven. But see,
if I were Jesus right then, and those maybe 2,000 men that were
left, I don't know how many were left, I'd have dropped the loaf
of bread so big, it'd have crushed them right in front of me. Just,
and the whole world would have been, Jesus just smashed them
people with some bread, y'all. Could you imagine that? The baker's
gospel. But Jesus said, Moses wrote of
me. The teachers of these people
taught them wrongly, so what was their hope? That's why we
don't hold fast to some good teaching. We don't
hold fast to a little bit of good teaching, a little bit of
bad teaching. We know how to pick out the difference. You want to pick
out a roach of your plate and then eat the rest? I've got a
whole theology on that. Some of you have heard it. Unbelief
causes people to look at the workers of God. Our fathers,
our Moses, our prophet, remember them? Evil hearts will endorse
evil people who do evil over truth and the truth doesn't cave
into their fleshly works. That's what happens. I'm not
saying that Moses did evil works. He was a hand and a mouth of
God. He was just a vehicle. He was
just an instrument in the hands of God. But Moses wasn't righteous. Christ is righteous. Moses wasn't
Messiah. He was just a shadow. Manna wasn't
true bread. It was just to point to Christ.
Jesus is not the God who pours food onto the ground for pigs
to eat. He is the God who makes himself the bread for their eternal
life. And then he serves them. That's the picture. The gospel's
not just a bunch of good food spread out there for the hogs.
As a matter of fact, Jesus says, do not throw the pearls of the
gospel to the hogs. All spiritual blessings are ours
in Christ. They are all found experientially and spiritually
through Scripture, through the finished work of Jesus. Eat of
Christ, eat of His Word, and be satisfied. The people reject
the spiritual meal because it will not satisfy their flesh.
In verses 32 and 33. what these people have done and
they're running. They've run going nowhere. They've ran into
Jesus, but the wall of human depravity is what they hit. And
here they're going to run into the true meaning of it all. Because
Jesus is going to tell them and they still won't believe. Watch
this. Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I said, he was not Moses
who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you true
bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who
comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They ran into
the meaning of it all. God's placement of Israel into
slavery, God's dealing with Israel with the Passover, God's exodus
for Israel, and all the provision therein was to point to the redemption
of his people that came only through Jesus Christ. It is only
through the gospel. of Christ. It is only to Christ
that all of these things exist in history. It was not done by Moses, it
was done by the Father. That's what Jesus tells them.
It was not done for them, it was done to show them. Just like
the previous meal that they ate, no matter how miraculous, it
was unfit for life. They were hungry again. It perished. So did the things of old. So
did the ways of old. So did the shadows and the types
of Judaism. They all perished. They all became
dust. Moses cried out to the Lord and
God gave bread. every day so that they did not
starve and die. But they grumbled. Did you bring
us out here that we might starve? Better it be a slave in Egypt
than a dead man in the desert free. That's why they stayed
in the wilderness. But Jesus says the Father gives
you true bread from heaven. He comes down, the Son of Man
is the Son of God who comes down. He is the, what does he say there?
The bread of God who comes down from heaven. Jesus is the bread
of God who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
See it and believe it. Jesus is the true Passover lamb.
Jesus is the true manna. Jesus is the true Redeemer, not
Moses. Jesus is the true temple. Jesus
is the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus is the true mercy seat.
Jesus is the ladder, not Jacob's, not Jacob. Jesus is the snake,
as we see in John 3 out of Deuteronomy. And Jesus is the bread that fills
and keeps on filling so that you never hunger or thirst again. The world Jesus will save is
comprised of all peoples. And this hit the Jews in the
face because they were rejecting as they did in the town before
them and the town before that. The Jews continued to reject
the very thing to whom all of their scriptures pointed, Jesus
the Messiah. And this world, when He says,
I will give life to the world, it damaged the hearers. It hurt
them deeply because Messiah was for Israel only. It was not for
the pagans and the Gentiles. This bread was supposed to be
for the children of God. Now Jesus said he was going to
give it to the world. He would feed all peoples, not just Jews.
Jesus, the bread of God is the only bread that gives life. And
now he says he was going to give it to just, I mean, to all peoples. And so in reality, what these
Jews were doing is they were seeing that in their unbelief,
they could not see it, but they would see it soon enough, that
they were running full speed into death. And we all, beloved,
are running full speed toward death in this flesh. But if we
are in Christ, we are fully alive while we run. But I find it very
interesting, and I'll close with this in verse 34 today. He says
these words, they say these words to Jesus. He says this to them
and they say, sir, give us this bread always. Give us this bread. You've come
because you want more food. I'm telling you, I'm the bread.
The bread there was not true bread. I'm the true bread. And
they say, give us this bread. Let's take it home with us. They're
still thinking in a fleshly way. They desire to always have this
bread. They asked for the bread of life. They wanted something
rather than someone, see. They could not see that Jesus
was speaking of Himself even though He said He is the bread
and made it abundantly clear they refuse Him. Give us! You
said He would give it? The Son of Man? Then give us! They knew he had it. They could
hear that in his teaching, but he was, did not have bread to
give. He was the bread. He was Messiah,
but they wanted imperishable, get this, they wanted imperishable
physical food. They wanted eternal temporal
food. That's insane. I want a dead living thing. Does
it make sense? I'm the bread of life. What they
wanted proved that they were in unbelief. Jesus says, I am
the bread of life. We must not feed on the world,
beloved. We should only feed on Christ.
We must not feed on traditions. We must not feed off of our spiritual
heroes. We must not feed off of our spiritual
experiences. We must not feed on anything
but Christ. And Jesus starts our life. He gives us life as bread and
He sustains our life. He commences our life and He
continues our life. He is the author and the perfecter
of our faith. Jesus will go on to say, whoever
comes will never hunger or ever thirst. Many reject Jesus. Jesus took
up his own life as a ransom for many. Jesus laid it down and then raised
it up again. Did you hear that? Jesus laid
down his life and then raised it up again. How much more can he take up
our lives in himself? by His glorious power, hear this
beloved and live, believe in the work of God. Let's pray. Oh Father, this truth of your
gospel is so powerful and so blessed. We rejoice in it. And Lord, it
is troubling. It's hard because even in hearing
the text that you give us in scripture, we want to play with
it and massage it in such a way that it starts to become palatable
to our flesh. But Lord, the gospel is not palatable
to that which is against you. We see in Romans that all flesh
is hostile toward you. Even our flesh is hostile toward
you. Our mind is hostile toward you,
though you renew it and though you overcome it by your spirit,
Father. Though we are regenerated in
rebirth, we still fight in our flesh against the spirit. Thankfully,
the victory is ours in Christ alone. Help us to rest and continue
in the faith. While it not be off for us to
contemplate the depths of such things, Lord, may we feed our
souls on the bread of life through the word of God. First and foremost
and forever, it is faith alone in Jesus. But as you have called
us to yourself, Lord, through Christ and through your word
and by your spirit, Lord, you will forever keep us there. So
when we feel our faith waning, when we feel that our faith is
not as serious as we thought it was, as we are honest with
our own assessment, Lord, run us to the word. Run us to the
teaching of our Savior. Run us somewhere to someone who
is Jesus Christ, the King, the Lord, the God of heaven. In his
name we pray to you, oh Lord, our Father. Amen.