We can't be studying the Word
of God every moment of every day and still be productive. We can meditate on it in our
hearts. We can hear the words of You.
We can hear the truth of You. We can see the face of You through
the lens of Scripture as we consider it every moment. And Lord, one
of the greatest ways that we remember the truths of Scripture
is when we put it to song. So Lord, singing is important.
It's important to us as people, as a culture, as a world. And Father, You've given us song
for such as that. That it may be a song that is
in our heart for even when the passages of the text cannot come
so easily during our day, Lord, the tune and the words of truth
as we sing them, Lord. are very prominent. So Lord,
I pray that as we worship today, as we sing in our hearts, as
we come to the place where Your Word is alive to us, Father,
let it plant a new hymn, a new song in us. One that shows and
reveals Your glory, Your Son, Your love, Your redemption, from
the beginning of time and before until evermore. In Jesus' name,
Amen. Amen. John chapter 6. Last week I was able to muddle
through the beginning part of this text, and this morning I'd
like to continue there. It is always a good thing, and
the Lord is very gracious to remind me of The fact that it's
all about Him and there is nothing in us or especially in me that
constitutes a good teacher, but that it is His Word by the Holy
Spirit that teaches us. It is His Word by the Holy Spirit
that is so easily forgotten, especially when we see the world
around us in our homes, in our community, in our culture, in
our own lives where we really want to take the reign and we
want to hold it so fastly and steer it so quickly because we
believe that if we have the reigns, we would be able to manipulate
our lives and the lives of others around us to a good place that
it might honor the Lord. And that is a joke. It is a farce
because there is no way possible for us to come to the place of
controlling our flesh, much less taking sin out of our lives. That is why it is a glorious
thing that Christ has suffered for our sin, has taken our sin
on Himself to satisfy God's justice and His wrath. And so as we come
to this text this morning, I thought, well, I'll just re-preach it.
I'll re-preach what I preached last week so I can do it right.
It was right enough because the Lord is true. But I will review
a few things that I missed because of our technical difficulties. Chapter 6, read with me as we
follow in the Scripture, reading all the way from 1 through 20.
After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of
Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was
following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on
the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down
with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of
the Jews, was at hand. Lifting his eyes then, and seeing
that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip,
Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat? He
said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
Philip answered him, two hundred denarii worth of bread would
not be enough for each of them to get a little. One of his disciples,
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, There's a boy here
who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for
so many? Jesus says, Have the people sit down. Now there was
much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five
thousand in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and
when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who
were seated. so also the fish as much as they wanted. And when
they had eaten their fill, he told the disciples, gather up
the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost. So they gathered
them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five
barley loaves left by those who had eaten. When the people saw
the sign that he had done, they said, this is indeed the prophet
who is to come into the world. Perceiving then that they were
about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus
withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came,
his disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and started
across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had
not yet come to them. The sea became rough because
a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three
or four miles, they saw Jesus on the sea and coming near the
boat, and they were frightened. But He said to them, It is I,
do not be afraid. Then they were glad to take Him
to the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which
they were going. Verse 22, And on the next day
the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that
there had only been one boat there, and that Jesus had not
entered the boat with His disciples, but that His disciples had gone
away alone. We will accomplish most of that
today. I told you last week that chapter
6 is one of my favorite places in the Gospel of John, because
it is there that some doctrine, some deep theology, and some
glorious truth came to life for me, as well as it is so much
in line with the teaching of what this gospel is written for,
that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and by believing you may have life in His name. This is an
evangelistic writing. Some people would say, well,
you know, when we exposit Scripture, true, we are going to commentate
a little bit, we're going to look deeper, we're going to see
what it's saying. Some people say, well, when you
exposit Scripture, what good does that do for the lost? We've
forgotten, beloved, that God saves only through the hearing
of the teaching and the reading of Scripture. We find it very easy to believe
the myths and fairy tales of sorcery. We find it very easy
to watch Marvel and marvel at the powers of heroes. We find
it very easy as children to wish we were Spider-Man, to not think
it strange that a man could come from outer space and be the strongest
thing in the world except for a little rock called Kryptonite.
We don't sit up wondering, well, how could they come up with such
things? But yet the world in all of its wisdom and all of
its fantasy When they hear that all you need to do is read the
Scripture for one to come to faith, they cannot believe such
simple things. Beloved, that is exactly what
we see here in this text. People believing all sorts of
powerful things, all sorts of legends, all sorts of miracles,
but cannot believe in the simplistic gospel of grace. Because it has
not been granted to them to believe. And the only way it would be
granted to them to believe is if they hear it by the mercy
of God. In this text, this miracle in
verse 11, I will pick up a couple of things from last week. Jesus
took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, and there's
a lot to think about there. There's some Jewish practice
of prayer that I don't believe that Jesus did there. I don't
believe Jesus practiced a rote prayer from the book of prayer,
if you will. I believe He prayed from His
heart and from His mind to the Father. But He gave thanks, and
it says, He distributed them to those who were seated. The
loaves. as much as they wanted, and the
fish as much as they wanted. From the hands of Jesus came
continual and abundant bread. I mentioned last week very rapidly,
it wasn't like Jesus set a magic incantation, or waved His nose,
or did a magic wand, and all of a sudden this big mountain
of bread came flying out of the basket, and everyone was like,
wow! No, as far as anyone could see, it was just a basket. One
boy's lunch. And as Jesus handed bread that
He broke, it continued to be in abundance. A lot of people
would ask the question of me as I taught this one-on-one,
well, why was there so much left over? Why would He keep making
bread? Well, He didn't just keep making bread. They kept taking
it. Like when we make noodles. My
wife made some pasta last night and you have to, when the dinner
bell rings, you better come in there. Because there's some of
us that like to fill the bowl. And it may mean that the serving
bowl is a little empty. We get what we want. And then
at the end, if you're standing over our shoulder and there's
two or three ravioli pieces left, you might have one. Otherwise,
you'll get stabbed if you put your hand in our bowl. People
are always looking to get more than they need. And the people
here just kept asking for more and taking more, thinking, I
better get what I can get now so that I won't have to be hungry
later. But Jesus kept giving and kept giving and kept giving.
There was no amount of bread that they could not have. There
was no amount of food that was not given to them. There was
not any who were hungry. And as they finished their meal
and they could not breathe, they looked down and they thought,
wow, we have really wasted a lot of bread. We took more than we
needed. So Jesus instructed His disciples to go collect what
was left, you see. Not, ooh, I made too much. No,
you took too much. Collect what is left. This miracle
really exposes redemption to such a degree. That it blows
my mind that people later, as we see over in verse 25 and beyond,
where they say, what sign do you bring? What sign do you bring? Because they wanted Jesus to
bring manna down from heaven. And we'll talk about that in
a couple of weeks. As Moses brought manna down from heaven, so would
the Messiah bring manna down from heaven. Even in the absurdity
of that, the illogical aspect of the fact that manna would
come down, there was a myth that maybe there was a piece of manna
that was unperished in the Ark of the Covenant, and that the
Messiah would take it out and produce the Ark. They were looking
for the law and a king to rule with it. The bread that Jesus gave gave
forth more bread, and it was transformed. Jesus didn't create
bread out of nothing. He could, but He didn't. He took that which was already
made, which He already created, which someone had already turned
into something edible, and He transformed it into more bread
and more bread and more bread, just like He took the water that
was already there and He transformed it into wine. It's like He takes
us who are dead and depraved and transforms us into the children
of God. In verse 12 and 13, as I've said,
they took up the excess. In verse 14 in review, when the
people saw the sign that He had done, they said, this is indeed
the prophet who is to come into the world. And there's something
that you don't realize there unless you read a lot of Scripture
and study a lot of Scripture, and your notes in the bottom
of your Bible should have a cross-reference to Deuteronomy 18. I don't even
know if mine does. I can't read those notes. They're
too tiny. But it should have, because the
people had in mind what they had been taught for so long that
Messiah would come. In Deuteronomy 18, 15 through
19, the word of the Lord reads, The Lord your God will raise
up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.
It is to him you shall listen, just as you desired the Lord
your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said,
Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this
great fire anymore lest I die. And the Lord said to me, They
are right what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet
like you from among their brothers, and I will put My words in his
mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
And whoever will not listen to My words that he shall speak
in My name, I Myself require it of him." So they knew that there was a
prophecy of a prophet, the one that was to come into the world.
They knew that there was someone coming, and their hope was that
this Messiah would become their king. Not a puppet king, like
Herod, but a true king. Like they would
say, David. Or worse, Saul. We want a king! Okay. They wanted another king. Their hope was to escape Rome.
Their hope was to see the revitalization of Jerusalem and here's this
man, here's this prophet, here's this one who's come from God
and he can provide for them physically. They will never starve. What
can Rome do to us? This man can feed us. If he can do this with
bread, what can he do with soldiers? If he can do this with bread,
what can he do with money? If he can do this with bread, nothing
can stop us. Their focus was that Messiah's
significance was earthly. They were considered about their
national wealth, their national food, their national victory,
their national freedom, as it related to their personal well-being. They could not see the divine
revelation of Jesus through the feeding of their stomachs. They
could not see that God was standing before them. They could not see
as they were dressed in their finest apparel, for it was Passover,
as they laid amongst the background of that green grass with the
Sea of Galilee behind them, green as it is. Oh, the splendor of
5,000 men and their women and children sitting there on a hill
being fed by God, and they looked straight past Him to the gift
that He gave. Into verse 15, and this is where
we'll spend 15 through the end of 21, where we'll spend most
of our time in the next few minutes. Perceiving then that they were
about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus
withdrew again to the mountain by Himself. There's some points
I want to make about this type of sentence. The work of Jesus
caused the mind of men to become very creative. I have an entrepreneurial spirit. You know what that means? I can
see something and I'm like, man, I like that. If I use a particular
product, I can sell it. Levi and I had that conversation
this week. I can't sell things that I don't use myself. And
when I say sell, that doesn't mean that I'm selling for profit
or commission, just that I can talk to someone else about it
and they're like, wow. And I'm like, dude, you really didn't
try this stuff. We make much of it. You know, if you get a
nice Bible, or you get a nice pair of shoes, or you have a
nice experience at a restaurant, what do you do? You go, man,
you just... I know you've never had a steak before unless you've
had a steak here before. Like some of us may rather have
cheeseburgers than steak. But either way, we can sell that
which we... The mind of men is very creative. They find a way to capitalize
on something that they take pleasure in. Especially in our culture. First century Jerusalem was no
different. Here's this man performing these powerful things. They've
already seen him do powerful things. They've seen him heal
the sick. They've seen him make the lame walk and the blind see. They will soon see him, well
in a year, they will soon see him raise a man from the dead. And they got creative. Let's
just make him king by force. Now, some people would say, well,
why would they force Jesus to be king? No, no, no, that's not
the point. That's not saying they're going to put a knife
to him and say, be our king. I mean, then he's the king and
he says, now kill all those guys that may be king. I mean, you
know, by force means that they were going to, by force, overthrow
Rome. They were going to make him king
by force. They were strong. They were many. And they were
assembled together at one place. What better time than now to
make this man our king? But see, what they could not
see is while they were in Jerusalem for the Passover, they weren't
there to claim victory over Rome. They were there to view the victor
over death. And Jesus, was not there to be
their king on earth. He was already their king in
heaven. Just like the Jewish leaders
of John 5 and John 3 and John 2, these Jewish people could
not see the truth of Christ. Remember last week we talked
about Jesus in this second Passover. He is the actual Passover Lamb. And the Jews were in awe of Him.
They could not figure Him out. In John 5, Jesus says that the
Jews put their hope in Moses. They saw Scripture, but they
could not see Jesus. The Passover was their prime
festival. It was the thing that they did
as Jews. But yet, they could not see the
One to whom it pointed. National pride was at its peak
during this season. And the people of Israel were
taught that Exodus was a picture of a future glory, that the Messiah
would bring them in the freedom from their captors and make them
a nation, a government of men again, just like He did in Egypt. But Egypt, the Exodus of Egypt
was a temporal shadow of the reality of what eternal life
is through Messiah, the true Passover Lamb. And by His blood,
the wrath of God, we are passed over. And we do not experience
death because God's wrath is poured out on the Lamb of God
that takes away the sins of the world. Jesus tells the Jews in
John 5 that the Word of God was not in them. So that these people
now sitting here on the hillside in John 6, if the Word of God
was not in their teachers, the Word of God was not in the pupils. You should hear that very clearly,
church. If I speak to one person a week, I speak to five who tell
me, well, I'm in this congregation here, but, you know, I just can't
leave. Well, what do you want? Well, nothing. The preacher doesn't
even preach out of the Bible. He just tells stories. Well, what
are you doing? Well, you know, I just got to...
Listen, if you are not being taught, you will not know. The Jews erroneously taught the
people, and the people did not have the Word of God in them
either, evidenced by the fact they followed Jesus for His miracles,
they wanted to make Him king, they stayed there all night hoping
to get something else from Him. They came to Christ on their
own terms, with their own conditions. They saw Christ through their
human interpretations of the practice of Moses. They comprehended
by the flesh, not the Spirit, for they were not born of the
Spirit. They searched the Scriptures for salvation, but the Scriptures
spoke of Jesus, and they could not see. John 5 leaves us seeing
the condition of Israel and her spiritual leaders, dead, blind,
and feasting on morals, not grace. And then John 6 now reveals to
us the product of those sheep who have no shepherds, feasting
on manna instead of glory. the manner of nationalism, the
manner of real bread, rather than the glory and the infinite
majesty of Christ. But the work of Jesus not only
causes man to be creative here, but it does cause them also to
be very focused. And they had in their mind what
they wanted from Jesus, and there was nothing that would stop them
except the divine power of God. that Jesus could just disperse
the crowd and walk through them. He is God, after all, but He
is also man. And we see Jesus dispersing the
crowd and we see in the synoptics, Matthew and Mark, where Jesus
tells the disciples to go down and get in the boats and go to
Capernaum. I'm leaving. And He goes off to pray. This
focus is that they wanted Jesus as their King and they would
do anything to put Him there. They had the numbers, they had
the power, they were in the right place, and they could do something.
If Jesus could provide for their bodies and their families, how
much more could come from His hands if He were made their King? See, Jesus is the one who took
initiative here in chapter 6. He fed them. He saw the concern
for their fleshly needs. But he later rebukes them for
their fleshly desires and says, do not labor for the bread that
is perishing for the food that is perishing, but labor for the
bread that endures to eternal life. I am the bread that comes
down from heaven. John focuses on the continuity
of the gospel's theology, not chronology. So He's showing us
this picture here so that we might see the doctrine, we might
see the teaching of who Christ is. He is the God of the universe,
in the flesh, as a man, equally, at the same time. Jesus inquires
on what to do, not for the sake of needing to know, but for the
image of revealing that nothing could be done without His power. There is nothing that man could
do. Man's feeble attempts, as we see in verses 7-9, there is
nothing that man could do to satisfy the need. There are 5,000
men plus women and children. Who has enough money? Nobody. And Philip says eight months
of one household salary would not be enough for any, all of
them to get a little piece, a crumb. It would take a million dollars
to feed these people. And we only have twenty. Not
enough to buy bread for ourselves. And this was the same foolish
attempts that constantly we see in John's Gospel from His mother
at the wedding, the Jews at the temple, the disciples looking
for real food, Nicodemus looking for a natural birth, the woman
at Sychar looking for a bucket for water, Philip now looking
at the world's market and the economy, Andrew saying, hey,
there's nothing we can do. All we've got is this sack of
food. But we see in verse 10, if we're looking back, Christ
needed no assistance. He didn't say, well, God, let's do this.
He said, why don't you just tell them just to sit down. That's how it is in redemption
too. The devil has propagated a lie that is very established
in our culture. That God will meet you where
you are. You come to Him, He'll come to
you wherever you are. You know the scripture teaches about where
men are in relation to where God is? Far from glory. Where God is life and the life
of the light is the life of men. We're dead. He's glorious. We're evil. He's alive. We're dead. He's sovereign. And we're running away. Scripture teaches that God snatches
us out of our abandonment. Not wakes to see when we look
up. We don't have to raise our hand to be noticed. We don't
have to come to anything. We don't come to Christ. It's
a misapplied use of language when we say, come to Christ.
We say it a lot. But it's a misapplied use of
language in our culture. We don't come to Christ. Christ
comes to us. And He comes to us, as we'll
see, in the depth of darkness and death. Christ needed no assistance.
Sit down! No one's helping me. Because
there's none that can. He could have inquired of the
crowd, anybody else got a sack of lunch? Let's see what we can
come up with. He could have had them sit down and told them that
he couldn't feed them or take up an offering. Let's see how
much money we can come up with or so much food we can come up
with. None of that stuff. This miracle is for the purpose
of Him rebuking them the very next day. That's why He fed them. So that the theology of who He
was would be clearly taught. And the theology of who we are
and who men are will be clearly taught. The work of Jesus causes focus. But the work of Jesus also, as
we'll see as we continue in this text, is the work of Jesus causes
fear. It causes fear in the hearts of
men. not necessarily fear in the hearts
of these 5,000. They were absolutely excited about what they just
witnessed. They were thinking. I mean, they've been following
Jesus around for weeks, for days. They saw Him there and they ran.
According to the synoptics, they ran to the north side of the
hill so they could hear Him. The Scripture says in the synoptics,
He taught them then at that place as He fed them. But it causes fear. Who was afraid
of Jesus? The Jews. The Jews were afraid
of Jesus. Some say, well, He's just teaching
Scripture. At least they're using the Bible. Name one cult that
doesn't use the Christian Bible in some degree. Name one world religion that
doesn't use the Christian Bible. Name one. I don't know any. I mean, even Islam, even a Muslim
is commanded by the Quran and the Hadith to read the New Testament
yearly. And their scripture is the Old
Testament. And then they have these two
revelations of Muhammad. Jehovah's Witnesses. Romanism. Any other religion, there's always
some way of incorporating the truth of Christ. But it's not
the truth of Christ. It's the manipulation of the
use of Christ. There are many Judas Iscariots
in the world professing to be Christians. And sadly, some of them, most
of them, don't even know it. The Jews were afraid. of Jesus. Why? Because everything that
they taught, this is what I was getting to, everything that the
Jews taught, Jesus will tell us that they shut people out
of the Kingdom of God by their teaching. That means that what
they taught was so wrong and so out of context and so misapplied
that there was no way that anything they ever taught would bring
salvation to any soul they ever taught it to. And I wanted to bet you that
on pulpits across this world, this very day, let's just do what I was good
at doing, making up statistics. 90% of them are probably that
same way. We don't know how many percentage.
I think that's being conservative. Go to work tomorrow and ask some
of your friends, hey, are you a believer? And they're like,
in what? The NFL? The government? No, in Jesus
Christ. They might wet themselves. You never know, run out crying.
But most of them will say, oh, absolutely. Then ask the question,
in your own words, what is the gospel? It'll blow your mind. And then it'll break your heart.
You know why they don't know it? Because they've never been
taught it. Because at least unregenerate
people can be taught the truth. And that God in His mercy, if
they be His people, He will bring them to faith. What is the Gospel? The Jews
were scared of Jesus because He took their own scrolls and
He read them. Remember what He read in Nazareth? The year of the Lord is among
us. The year of God's favor. He will set the captives free.
He will give sight to the blind, joy to the downhearted. You'll
be free for the God of mercy is your God. This Scripture is
fulfilled in your hearing this day." And all the eyes of the
synagogue were on Him. And they were marveling. And
they were filled with joy. Then Jesus said what the Pharisees
and the Sadducees and the scribes would never teach. But it is
not for you, O Israel. for you. For as God shut the
heavens on His people and gave reign to the pagans of old, and
as God shut the wounds of Israel and gave children of mass importance
to pagans, so shall God shut His mercy upon you. This is not
for you. And you know what the Scripture
says? They wanted to kill Him. And they tried to push Him off
the cliff. So the Jews were scared of Him.
because he was teaching the Scripture in ways that had never been taught. And Jesus was right. We get in
this argument these days about interpretation. Friends, if I
say the brown cat sits on the white chair, it just says something
about a cat and its color and the chair and its color and the
location of where that cat is sitting. There is nothing to
interpret. But men are creative. And men are fearful. And men
are focused to do that and to follow after that which is most
clearly beneficial for them. You see, this is what this text
is showing us. It's what's beneficial for them.
Jesus as a king. Jesus as a chef. King chef. Sounds like a new show. King chefs in tunics. I can see
it. It would be a billion-dollar show. Jesus' work and Jesus' words
caused fear with the Jews. And because of that, and there
was this tension, because the common people, the sheep, if
I can put it that way, not necessarily salvifically, but the sheep,
those who were being shepherded and being herded and being taught, they were following Jesus. I'm
going to bet you that some Sabbaths, there was a mass exodus from
the synagogues. Where are y'all going? Jesus is here. I mean,
they went. And Jesus went. And when Jesus
left, they left. Where are y'all going? Jesus is here. So Rome was scared. Rome was
thinking, they outnumber us 12 to 1. Maybe 100 to 1. I don't know. I've never looked
at it. But they outnumber us. And our center of our military
is not here. We just keep the peace through
these puppet kings and these puppet procouncils. We're in
Rome. They're in Israel. We need to
worry about this man Jesus. But the one thing Rome had going
for them is they were a law-abiding nation. So-so. The Caesar was scared. Herod, Antipasus, the Galilean
king. These people here, they're king. Why do they have a king? Because
Caesar put him there. You're a good guy. You're a good
Hellenistic Jew. You understand the ways of Rome.
Why don't you lead this group of people over here on our behalf?
We'll even call you king. He wasn't a king. He couldn't
do anything. What happened during the teaching of Jesus? What happened
during the miracles of Jesus? What did he do that was so catastrophic? He beheaded John the Baptist
at the request of his wife. John and Herod goes, has John
the Baptist been raised from the dead? The work and the words
of Jesus caused fear in the Jews. Fear with Rome. Fear with King
Herod. Fear with Caesar. In John 18,
Caesar will say, Are you a king? And Jesus will answer, My kingdom
is not of this world. I love this. If my kingdom were
of this world, my slaves would have been fighting that I might
not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from
the world. It's not from the world. See,
Jesus' kingship was not to fight by the spear, but to die by the
spear. There's a difference. So Jesus
withdrew from them, He dispersed the crowd, and He told His disciples
to leave there in boats because there was some fear on their
behalf that they might be taken as ransom to Jesus. Think about
it. There's 12 of those guys. Where'd
Jesus go? Well, let's just hold these guys captive until He comes
back. So they go down to the boats and they get in. And they
leave when it becomes dark. What does Jesus do? He goes to
pray. Why? Really? Think about it for
a second. He just performed a miracle showing
His divine power. He knows the hearts of all men.
He knows that the will of God is that He do this miracle that
ultimately would lead to what? The cross. He's stirring animosity
amongst Israel, amongst Rome, amongst the people of Israel,
the leaders and the people. And he knows that in the end,
what these people want is not what they need. So he goes to
pray. He prays because what had just
happened and what the people wanted to happen were grave and
serious desires. They were grave and serious events.
They were burdensome and they were pushing toward the ultimate
end, which is His death on the cross of Rome. Verse 16, When
evening came, His disciples went down to the sea and got into
a boat and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now
dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. See, though the work
of Jesus was mighty, when Jesus was not there, people's faith
was gone. And they're symbolically because
of John's prologue. In him was life. The life was
the light of men. The light shines in the darkness.
The darkness did not overcome it. John 3, what does he say? Those who
come to the light. The light has come into the world.
There is this incredible symbolism in John's writing. Now keep in
mind this is the last New Testament epistle written other than the
Apocalypse. John is 90 years old. He's in prison on the Isle
of Patmos and he's got all the New Testament writings except
this and his Apocalypse and his Epistles. He's got all
the New Testament except his writing. So he knows a lot. He's had a
lot of time to think. He's had a lot of time for the
Lord to work in him wisdom and to give him understanding and
focus. That's why this Gospel is so
different. That's why it pushes the divinity and the divine nature
of Jesus as God. And he uses this idea of darkness.
It was dark, literally dark. It had become night. And the
cooling down of the weather causes the sea to become rather tempest,
waves, and wind. See, people were looking for
Jesus. His disciples were looking for Him. The authorities were
looking for Him. Everybody is looking for Jesus,
all for different reasons. But the one thing that was common
amongst all the groups that were looking for Jesus, they did not
have peace until they found Him. The authorities would not have
peace until they could put chains on this man to quench and quelch
and put to death this possible usurper. And the people of the
day would not have peace until they could get Him into the throne
of David. And the disciples would not have
peace until they knew that everything that they'd given up to follow
Him, that He was safe and He was with them. No matter His
power, no matter His work, no one had faith if Jesus was not
present. That's why every time Jesus left,
the disciples get in trouble. That's after His death and during
His burial. They all go back to fishing.
They go back to work after three and a half years. They go back to work. It's over,
now what? Let's go back to work. Let's
go back to work. Can't wait till we get there.
For all these different reasons, the crowd wanted more from Him.
The disciples believed He was their life in the flesh, but
had no spiritual bearing. The authorities were fearful
of His teaching against their own. Darkness seemed to be the
state of men without Jesus, because it is. And that's the theological
issue that John continues to press. Without Christ, we are
in utter darkness. But with Christ, what does the
writer of Hebrews say? We are saved to the uttermost.
To the uttermost. Without Christ, these men were
scared, alone, and they did not know where they were going. They
were blind. Even though Jesus had proven
His power, when He was not close, they feared. And sometimes even
when he was close, if he was not aware, they feared. Remember
when he was sleeping in the boat? Verse 18, the sea became rough
because a strong wind was blowing. Now we could take this text and
preach an entire hour sermon on it if we make it topical. But I'll make a topical statement
based on this reality. This is given to us that we might
know that there was fear in the disciples' hearts because they
feared for their lives. Why? They'd been rowing for three
and a half hours. It was a six plus hour boat ride. They were halfway there in the
middle of the night with probably a lantern that had been blown
out. and all of a sudden all they
have is the moon, if the clouds haven't overcome it. They're
in utter darkness without Jesus and now the sea is strong. But
it doesn't say a storm, it just says a strong wind. This act
of creation, this natural episode of wind was enough to topple
the faith of the disciples. I remember when Matthew came
through here and just blew for 12 hours and scared me to death
as water began to run down the walls of my house. Scared me
to death. All I can envision is if I went
to sleep, I would wake up like Dorothy and my house would be
flying in the air. One little natural act of wind
can take the greatest of faiths to its knees. They just saw Jesus transform
a sack lunch into an abundance, into a lifetime of earnings worth
of bread, and carry more home. Now I want to say that all the
bread that they carried was washed away in the storm, or in the
wind, but it wasn't a storm. They had the bread. They ate
on it for days and days and days. They probably fed it to hungry
people in other places as they traveled. The Bible doesn't tell
us because it's not important. Because Jesus didn't feed them
as an example of feeding people. He fed them to show them their
true hunger. And He fed them to show them
He was God. But here, they had lost all hope. They were in this darkness and
they were in this wind. And the disciples were looking
for Jesus. Verse 19, Jesus reveals Himself then on His own terms,
not the disciples' terms. See, because if we're all going
on a trip somewhere, the best thing for us to do is stay together.
To make a plan, where we're going to meet, where we're going to
go, how we're going to get there. We're going to be together. Not just say, alright,
we'll see you there. And everybody and every man for
himself, we just all go and show up. These men wanted Jesus with
them. But Jesus was not going to do
it the way they wanted. Jesus will not reveal Himself
to you the way you want Him to reveal Himself to you. Jesus
will not save us on our own terms. Jesus saves us on His terms.
God operates on His terms. Now the good thing about God's
never-changingness, His immutability, is that what God has revealed
to us of how He operates and when He operates never changes. So the Scripture says that God
will save His people through the hearing of the words of Christ
by the Spirit as the Spirit wishes. There it is. And so our only
responsibility is to teach Scripture. Our only responsibility is to
preach the gospel. Our only responsibility is not
to become theologians from an academic point of view. Brother
Jesse and I had this conversation a little bit yesterday. Wouldn't
it be amazing? Now, I love reading. I love academics. I love to hear all the chronicles
of antiquity and the history and all the dead theologians
that have come. But what should we say then about
our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world when all they
have is a scant, loose, hopeless, incomplete copy of Scripture,
and that's all they've got, and they know more about Christ than
we ever thought about? We only need the Word of God,
beloved. And I throw more books in the
trash, and toss more books to goodwill, and have more books
to trip over in my house than the law should allow. And I can
honestly stand here and say, as I stand before you, none of
them are worth anything in comparison to this. Why? Because if I want to know
Christ, this is Christ. This is Christ. Jesus reveals
Himself on His own terms. And He's chosen to reveal Himself
through the teaching of His Word. When they had rowed about three
or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming
near the boat, and they were frightened. The synoptics tell us they thought
he was a ghost. Why doesn't John say that? It doesn't matter.
John's focusing on God's power, not the fear of the disciples. Jesus appears in the sea. This
is the fifth miracle he does in John's Gospel. Walking on
the water. He had power over the water.
He had power over the bread. He had power over the sea. Now
He has power over gravity. Now He has power over surface
tensions. All sorts of physics things that
we could learn about. Jesus has power because He created
it all. He transforms the water to wine.
He transforms the bread to more bread. He transforms the sea
to a rock, I guess. To a walkable surface. And that's
a joke. Don't go back and say, well,
the preacher said Jesus turned the ocean into a rock. No, I didn't. He
walked upon it. It's a miracle. He appears in
the sea. He walks on the sea. He has the
power over the sea. And if we look in other places,
we see where Peter walks out, right? Remember that? Peter walks out to him and sinks. But he walks for a little while,
he takes his eyes off Christ, and then he sinks. That's not
important. to John's Gospel, so that issue is not recorded
in John's Gospel. But Jesus even has the power for a human being
to walk, a mere human being, not God-man, who was also fully
a human being. Why doesn't He record it? Because
the synoptics guide it. Why does He need to repeat it? The other three Gospels were
widely disseminated by the time John wrote this. He didn't need
to recapitulate all the things that were already written. This
three or four miles, we say, what's about the details? All
the details. These things about this the next day, and then this
happened, and then three miles, and then it was green grass. Because if we did not see this,
that we were three or four miles rowing on a six to seven, eight
mile journey, you know what we would think? Oh, they were close
to the shore and Jesus was just walking on the shore. Because that's what people say.
You talk to a Bart Ehrman or some of these guys, some of these
high-brow professors who know Greek like the back of their
hands. The Lord helped their soul in their unbelief. Well,
see, Jesus was walking on the shore and they thought He was
on the water because it was so windy they couldn't tell. And
everybody goes, oh, oh, that explains it. It's like when David
Copperfield's assistant tells how he did it. You might not know, but I'm an
illusionist. I've always been since I was 5 years old. And
I got to sit front stage at a David Copperfield show 11 years ago. And I took notes on a napkin.
And I was very impressed and I was very excited. He saw me
writing and his stage face went just like that. I'm like, oh,
I'm about to get killed or something. You know, don't tell my secrets.
You know the secret of Jesus' power? He's God. But unbelievers want to have
the answer. How do you do that? I made a sponge ball appear in
my hand one time to a woman. She thought I had the power to
create matter. And I said, honey, if I could create matter, it
would be a gold coin, a Krugerrand, a gold brick, a platinum something. We could be clowns now. Beside the point. Three or four
miles is to prove that Jesus is not walking on the shore.
He's walking on the sea. He's God. He's walking in the sea.
They were in the middle of the ocean and their fear is not the
real important thing here. He's focusing on the one who
took away their fear. You see that? That's what John's
gospel is showing us this morning, is that the focus is not on our
fear. but on the one who takes away
our fear. The synoptics would say the same thing, but they
put more of an emphasis on the fear of the disciples. And then
the illustration of Peter walking on the water, and as long as
he focused on Christ, he did not sink, but when he had fear,
he sunk. Why? Because Jesus made him sink. When he feared. To teach him
something. But verse 20, what a beautiful
verse. Stitch it on the heart. Stitch
it in your mind this morning. But He said to them, they were
fearful. They saw Jesus walking near the
boat and they were frightened. But He said to them, it is I,
do not be afraid. It is I. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. See, Jesus
is our refuge. Jesus is our hope. Jesus is the
one who takes away our fear, for he is the victor. Jesus brings
faith for his people. He gifts faith for his people. He is the object of faith for
his people. Hear this, beloved. He didn't stand out there and
say, OK, guys, stand on this side of the boat. Put the cell
over here, put the oars down like this. You ever been whitewater
rafting? It's playing God. I've been once and that was the
first and last time I'll ever go. Terrible. I do exactly what I say or you'll
die. Let me off. Too bad. Too late. I mean, that could have been
what some people look for in God. Well, God, what's your big
plan? Give me your plan, detailed out, and then I'll be okay, okay?
Just let me know what's going to happen tomorrow. Let me know
what's going to happen in my marriage. Let me know what's going to happen
in my health. Let me know what's going to happen in my future.
Just let me know you've got a plan for it so I can see this plan
and I can go, not the way I do it, but God's got it. How about
Christ is the plan? And even if the plan means we
perish, and we fail, and we die, and everything that could horrify
us in its reality comes to pass, Christ is the plan. Christ is
the hope. Christ brings faith to His people. We don't have
to worry. If God's called us here, then God's called us here.
If God's called us there, then God's called us there. And there
is nothing that's going to stop us except fear when Christ is
the giver of our faith. Christ is the giver of our faith.
He gives faith for His people so that they walk in confidence
with faith. They walk in confidence. There
was no more fear in the eyes of these people when they heard
the words. In the hearts of these people,
when they heard the words, it is I. Fear not. But O our flesh, It begs of God
a greater promise. It begs of God in the universe
a greater resolve. It comes to the table of organizing
an engineering miracle that we can measure and observe and trust
in something greater. But God responds with only one
answer. My grace is sufficient. And the
grace of God is Jesus Christ the righteous. Jesus is the only one who could
have calmed them, and they were no longer afraid. And in the
like manner, any storm in this world is in the hands of Christ.
I read an article yesterday that just made me sick. And I won't
say who it's from or where it went, but it's a local group
of men in this state who wrote an article about how the devil
is winning in Georgia. But God is stronger, so let's
do something to beat the devil. And I sat down. I'm going to
respond to this. And I thought, why waste my breath? Don't throw
your pearls before swine. These are not unlearned men who
have not heard the Gospel. These are men who will not believe
the Gospel. And yet they are purveying a false teaching en
masse to the world of the lost. We have a large task. God is
victorious. Christ is King. And His Gospel
and His Word will not fail even if every one of us close it today
and never open it again. God's Word will not fail. He
will not lose any for whom Christ died. He will not lose and He
will not be disglorified. I made that word up. Verse 21, And they were glad
to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat, the boot,
I have some allergies today. And they were glad to take him
into the boat, and immediately the boat was on the land to which
they were going. I want you to see this. You think
Star Trek created teleporting? No, Jesus did. Two reasons why they needed to
be halfway through. One is because Jesus was walking
on the water, and secondly because He transported the boat and everybody
in it three miles. Like that. I'm willing to bet that before
you met me and my obsession with John, you probably had not ever
noticed that before. Some people don't. I never saw
that before. I remember seeing it for the
first time after reading John for a decade. Because you just
read through it. Next. You get to what you think
is the meat and potatoes, which is the red letters. The black
ones are important too. Jesus is the God and King of
time. Jesus is the God and King of
space. Jesus is the God and King of matter. He moves the boat and the twelve
immediately. And I'm going to beg for your
forgiveness on this, because I believe that there's an illusion
here of Psalm 107. No commentator agrees with me.
Turn to Psalm 107. We'll look at nine verses. And
then we're done. In Psalm 107, starting in verse
23, we hear, Some went down to the sea in ships doing business
on the great waters. They saw the deeds of the Lord,
His wondrous works in the deep. For He commanded and raised the
stormy wind which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted
up to heaven. They went down to the depths.
Their courage melted away in their evil plight. That's the
waves making a boat do like this. They reeled and staggered like
drunken men and were at their wits' end. Then they cried to
the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their
distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea
were hushed." And verse 30 is what I'm talking about. Then
they were glad that the waters were quiet, and He brought them
to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for His
steadfast love, for His wondrous works of the children of man.
Let them extol Him in the congregation of the people and praise Him
in the assembly of the elders." I believe Jesus did that very
thing so that the Jews would have just yet no one more reason
why they should believe. But on verse 22 we see the reality
of it all, don't we? that unregenerate man continues
to look for Jesus on his own terms, for his own purpose. But
that will soon change with this group of people. Verse 22, on
the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea
saw that there had only been one boat there. See, they watched
all night long. They watched all night long.
They said, we're not going anywhere. We're going to wait for Jesus. Let me make a point here. 2001, I said this in a congregation
and they got in big trouble for it. If Jesus revealed himself to
us in a crazy, unbiblical way, now this is all hypothetical
nonsense, and said to us on Wednesday night, next Lord's Day I will
be with you after service. Stay for two hours. Some of us
would find reason to leave. I mean, we would. That's what
we are. It's a life plan. But if Jesus
was just going to come, He's not going to touch the ground,
because that would be His second coming. He's just going to hover above the dirt
just a little bit. There's an inside joke there. Second or
third coming. The parosia. As long as He doesn't
touch the ground, it doesn't count, right? I'm sorry. And I said to 950 people, I said, most of you would care
more about your stomachs and getting to lunch than you would
about sitting down and hearing Jesus teach. And the ones I was
talking about got mad. They got mad. And after service,
you know, the receiving line takes a while at a church like
that. But we definitely stand at the back door so they'll all
leave. How dare you say so? You don't
know me." I said, I was just making it as a general statement.
I wasn't accusing anyone. But if the shoe fits, you know,
I mean, I was early 20s. I didn't know any better. How old was
I? I don't know, 27, 28? I don't
know how old I was. I was too young to be where I
was. And as I've gotten a little bit
older, a little bit wiser, not wise, but wiser than I was, you
know, I think about that statement. I think that was probably an
abusive thing to do to that church in the midst of turmoil. But
it doesn't take away from its truthfulness. It just takes away
from its point in shepherding of people kindly. Because in reality, I did have
some people in my mind, and they weren't even the ones that came
up and talked to me about it. But I will also say this. In
our culture, the reason people are not learning is because their
shepherds are not teaching. And many professing Christians
don't care. And I don't know what to do with
that. Because see, here's the ultimate
end of it. If Jesus were to reveal to us
that He'd be here next week, I'll guarantee you that we, Grace
Truth, would be here. And we'd probably have to put out the
rest of the chairs that we took up last week. For some reason this season everybody's
traveling, spring break and all kinds of stuff. You know, we
don't need as many and I don't like preaching to 12 empty rows and
then everybody in the back. We're Baptists, back row Baptists,
that's fine. Not y'all. I heard that. But when we don't want to sit
under the teaching of the Word of God, we really don't want
to meet with Jesus. And we would rather come to see
Jesus in the flesh and not come to see Jesus in His Word. We
really don't want to see Jesus anyway, do we? And I want to ask you that. Because
this is what I'm finding when I talk to a lot of people and
I ask them about the gospel and they don't know, and I ask them about
what they're learning and they don't know, and I ask them, and
not necessarily, I'm not talking about just being in the chairs,
but I mean being in the Word. Are we in the Word, church? We
want to see Jesus do a miracle. We want to see Jesus perform
something great in our lives. We want to see Jesus do all this
great stuff for us, but we don't want to be with Him. And the
only way to be with Christ is to be in the Scripture. And I
don't know about you, what drives me to be here is the call of
God and the Spirit of God as I study the Word for you. Not
for me. For you. I teach for your sake. I learn for your sake. I'm driven
to be in it more for my sake. And so I want to be together.
It's my favorite day of the week. Always has been. But it's the
hardest day of the week. I implore you to be in the Word
of God more during the week than you ever are on Sunday mornings.
And it is hard to do because life opens up like a floodgate
of nonsense Monday morning, if not at 12 o'clock on Sunday.
And it just opens up. And it's not a drip. That's annoying.
It's just like... And then it shuts off. We're
so waterlogged. We're so underwater. that we feel like the last thing
we have time for is sitting down with Christ. Hear this, church. If Christ
can feed 20,000 people with a piece of bread and some fish, or a
piece of fish and some bread, if Christ can teleport a boat
three miles, if Christ can walk across the sea, He can elevate
and expand your productivity during the week and your time
management. From the hand of Christ comes
great time if it's spent with Him. Don't
look for Jesus to settle your problems if He's not your treasure. Because one will come, one will
come. I said last night at midnight,
I put it out so I wouldn't forget it. Jesus did not fix my life. He did not fix my life. And if
you don't know anything about social media, that's a very,
very fast-growing hashtag. Jesus did not fix my life. From
the world's point of view, He made it worse. Jesus is my life. He is my life. And He's your
life. He's your life. Because He saved
you. In Himself, your life is hidden
in Him. When He died, in our flesh we
died. When He raised alive, we by the
Spirit have been raised alive and we are hidden in Him. This
world and this life is not it. Christ is it. And so, beloved,
if I can give you anything from this text, don't be like these
people of John 6 that are standing on the edge of their seats waiting
to see Jesus do something instead of just being in awe for Jesus being the Word. Because He saves
us graciously through His flesh. He gave Himself that we might
live. Let's pray. We thank You, Father,
for just an amazing truth. We praise You, Lord, for Your
everlasting mercy and love. And Lord, I pray that as we move out of this building, that
our fellowship would not cease, that our intimacy and prayer
above all things would continue. And we worship You, and we love
You, and we praise You. Father, thank You so much for
the attentiveness of our children, Lord, I know it's difficult sometimes
in this room. Father, we pray that not only
as our children learn to listen, that most importantly, they be
given ears to hear. Oh God, save our children, save
our households, save our neighbors, save our community, that we might
be the light of Your Word shining forth and not a dull, bent nothing,
just doing religion. I praise You, Father, because
You're worthy, in Jesus' name.