Thank you for taking the time
out to listen to this sermon. This channel is for the teaching
ministry of Grace Truth Baptist Church. We are glad that you
chose to hear this message today, and I pray that it would be a
blessing to you, that the truth of the gospel would be clear.
If you have any questions about the Christian faith, about scripture,
or the gospel of grace, please contact us on our website at
gracetruth.org. That's gracetruth.org. Now today's message. I pray you're
reading it, not just as we go through it, but I pray you're
reading it in and during your week. I pray that you are able
to hear and see that which you are learning as well as that
which the Spirit of God is teaching you as we'll talk very clearly
this morning that is a requirement of our understanding of the Word
of God. I love this chapter. As Jesse
will probably tell you, I probably quote John chapter 6 more than
anything else. The second area that I quote
is probably John 3, and then third is 2 Corinthians chapter
4. I see y'all are mouthing it,
but there you go. I mean, you can turn every passage
of Scripture into one of these three areas. And I love John
chapter 6 because it was this text, it was this text of John's
Gospel whereby in the midst of the megachurch ministry, thousands
of members and millions of dollars and all sorts of pomp and circumstance
and excitement and attention and glory, that I began to see
the intricacies of why we could not see people loving scripture. While we could not see people
who were fulfilled in their faith, but rather were continually looking
for some other piece of life that would give them some joy
or some hope. It was this text in John 6 that
helped me all of a sudden take the burden off of my shoulders
and realize that it's all of Christ. not of salvation, but
of motivation, of discipleship, of discernment, of life, of affection. This is not something that the
church can teach. It is something that God must
grant. So we can beat the pulpit and we can belabor the idea that
you must do this and you must love this. And it's not wrong
to teach that which we must love. But if God does not do a work
in us by the Holy Spirit, there will be no change. there will
be no change. And by the grace and mercy of
the Lord, we know that church discipline is the process through
which we see each other continually held accountable for those things
and that we grow in our understanding and in our practice and in our
affections. But I love this chapter, but
at the same time, I do not like this chapter. I do not like this
chapter Well, let me tell you why I love it. I love it again.
I'll continue to tell about why I love it. I love it. It's like,
you know, oh, you should see what my child has done at school.
You know, we just, we're going to brag about it. But I love
this chapter because in it contains some of the clearest doctrine
on sovereign grace found in the entire Scripture. Here, out of
the mouth of Jesus, we can see sovereign grace. We see election. We see sovereignty. We see the
new birth. We see the need for conversion.
We see the effects of what man can do in his own mind when he
says he believes and what it looks like. But I don't like
it because there's so much here, there's so much narrative in
this passage of Scripture that it can very easily cloud out
the teaching of the passage. It can very easily cover up some
things. We can get so bogged down in
the, whoa, now was this before or after the birth of, I mean
the death of John the Baptist? I mean, how many of you had that
question this morning? When was it? Is this the first, the second,
or was there only one, or were there two feedings of the multitudes?
What says after this, well, John must be wrong because Mark says
something different, or Luke has a little bit of a different
point on this very issue. No, they don't. See what I mean? Those things, while interesting,
are not important. They're not vital, for God supernaturally
teaches through His Word by the Spirit. And then at the same
time, we also see that God's Word, when it is taught, and
the person who is converted, who is regenerated, who is born
again from above, understands and more than understands, receives
and puts trust in the teaching that Scripture gives. Who is
Christ? That's what the Scripture teaches. And so this can easily happen. We can bog down in the details.
The old adage, the devil is in the details. The devil is certainly
not in the details of the Bible, but oh how our flesh can be tempted
by the devil to bog down in the details. For you, beloved, as we have
gone through the last 40 sermons in John, I pray that you've grown
in your faith. I pray that you've been encouraged.
I pray that you've been confronted. But if you have not yet, you
will be. You will be confronted. The very
core of your soul will be confronted as a Christian. And as an unbeliever,
this is where the rubber begins to hit the road. You say you
might believe in the gospel of grace, but now all of a sudden,
as you start to see it very, very particularly articulated,
explicitly by Jesus Himself, you will begin to be confronted
by the reality, do I really believe in this Jesus? Do I really believe
in this gospel? I was asked this week if I were
to share the gospel just out in public, where do I go? And
I go to John 6. I go to John 6 because it confronts
the labor of our life. It confronts the labor of self-righteousness. It confronts the artificial and
worldly cultural false Jesus of the world that we live in. And then it shows that the work
of salvation is the work of the Father, and if the Father does
not grant you faith, you cannot be saved. To which I was asked,
well, how is that good news? And the answer is, if the Father
is not the one who is granting faith, there is no good news.
In what must I believe? You must believe that God is
the author and finisher of our faith. You must believe that
the work of Jesus Christ is sufficient for your salvation. It is not
the facts and figures of Scripture that saves you. It is the Spirit
of God and election that saves you through the message of the
cross of Christ. I can't beg you to come to the
cross. Christ has already been. It's hogwash. That's not evangelism. That's
man-centeredness, humanism. I can't beg you to come accept
the salvation of God. He must give it to you. He must
secure it for you. And He has on the cross of Christ,
to which you would do well to pay attention, to believe on
the cross of Christ, to believe on the work of Christ, to believe
on the Son of God. In all that He's done, in all
that He is, that is the gospel. No other gospel but that. You
see how frustrating that is? Because in our human ability,
and there are a lot of smart minds in this room, and we sit
here and we get this little arc going. And we feel the short. And we're trying to put it back
together and rewire it. I want to process that. The human
mind cannot process the gospel of grace. It just believes divinely
in the work of God. Because God grants repentance.
For any man, as wise as he may be, who could articulate the
gospel and its inner workings perfectly so that any other man
could understand it, he himself would be God. So Jesus has done
it very clearly. John 3 and John 6 and John 12,
those are the places I love to go. I double it in 6, I double
it in 12. If there was a 24, I'd go there. And in John 12, Jesus sees people
believing in him and he says to them, they cannot believe
for God has hardened their hearts against me and blinded their
eyes that they may not see. He will not grant them repentance. This is the Jesus, not of culture. This is the Jesus of scripture. For you, this chapter will test
your faith. I pray that it does, beloved, church, believer, Christian,
born of God, child of God. For if it doesn't, if we can,
as I used the term this morning, flippantly receive this teaching
and go, hoo-hum, woo-hoo, something is desperately wrong in our soul. This text will undermine any
portion of human volition in salvation. This text will destroy
any free will argument that has ever come from the mouth or mind
of men. This text will attest to the fact that the gospel of
grace is the finished and sufficient atoning work of God the Son,
Jesus Christ, for His particular people that the Father gives
to Him, and they will come. Why does it matter? Why can we
just not believe the Sunday School Gospel that we were taught for
so many decades? Because the Sunday School Gospel
cannot save you. It may be a very deep treasure
for you. It may be so intimate to you. It may be so nostalgic for you. But it is a condemnation to you. It is wrath. There is no condition
to the gospel. There is no movement of man in
order to be saved. There is nothing but faith alone
in the perfect, finished work of God through Jesus Christ,
the Son of God. And it is done supernaturally. We study Scripture because it
is our rule. It is our governor. It is the
canon, the measure of our faith. It is our hope because it speaks
of Jesus as we just learned in the last two Sundays. It speaks
of Jesus from the beginning to the end. Every essence, every
argument, every dialogue, every narrative. Why did God put Israel
into captivity for 500 years? To show that He could. and to show that humanity deserved
judgment, and to show the picture, the small, insignificant, tiny,
shadow type of Christ in the Passover and the redemption of
Israel out of slavery, not for eternity, but just for a moment
in time that would point to the pure and absolute sufficient
Passover Lamb who is Jesus the Christ. And that's what this
text, verse 4, that's where it starts, see, in verse 4 of chapter
6. That's what's on the mind of
John when he writes this. And that's what's going to be
on our mind by the time we get there next week. Scripture is our hope of accomplished
salvation. Let me remind you, beloved, that
in chapter 20, verse 31 of this gospel, we see this writing. It says, Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written
in this book. But these that are written, these
are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Holy Anointed
One of God. Let me say that you may believe
that Jesus is Messiah. That's what Christ means. In
English, transliteration of Christos, which is a Greek translation
of Messiah, which is an English translation of the Hebrew word,
which is a big mess. We just, Messiah. That you may
believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing,
you may have life in His name. You ever heard people argue,
all we need is the name of Jesus. We just say the name of Jesus.
I know a man named Jesus. He pronounces a little different,
Jesus. I have a brother that's named Jesus.
In English, it's Joshua. Yeshua, Yahweh saves. It's a
very common name. Probably a bajillion people have
had that name even before Jesus the Messiah was born into the
world. But about the word Jesus, it's
nothing. We can say, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
As a matter of fact, we do. We say, Oh, Jesus, get me out
of this car. Oh, Jesus, get me away from these kids. Don't we?
Using a word means nothing. As a matter of fact, if we think
that it's the name of our Savior and we use it flippantly, it's
using the Lord's name in vain. You don't have to put profanity
with it in order for it to be profane. What is vanity? What is using the word's name
in vain? Worthlessly? Emptily? With no purpose? Are we talking about Jesus? Are
we talking to Jesus? If not, then we shouldn't be
saying Jesus. We shouldn't be saying God. Because in our world,
we know that that is how we relate to, that is how we identify,
what the Scripture teaches about who God is and who the person
of Christ is. But people like to say, well,
it's all about the name, all you need is Jesus. Dig into that
for just a moment. Because on the surface it sounds
right, but what do you mean by that? You know what they say?
Well, what would you say? All we need is Jesus. What do you mean? Just got to
say the name? See, a lot of people believe
that. A lot of cults in town believe that. They say if you
just confess with your mouth, And that Jesus is Lord and believe
your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.
It's just about the name of Jesus. Just say it with your lips. You'll
be saved. That's witchcraft. That's witchcraft. I said that
very statement in 2004 and I almost got sucked off the stage. It
created a vacuum. I mean the Bible changed pages. And I said that somewhere around
Mother's Day or Thanksgiving in 2011. It caused havoc. Why? Because we hold to the idolatry
of our own salvation experience as dear to us. Do we want to
hold to the worship of the Savior or the idolatry of our salvation
experience? Do we want to be able to pen
into the carved tree of our backyard so that we can look at it for
generations to come? On this date, James Tiffins was saved.
Or do we want to be saved this very moment and forever? Beloved, do not let pride swallow
you. But by the grace of God, through the hearing of Scripture,
God will overcome pride, just like He overcomes your will,
just like He overcomes your unbelief, just like He overcame your sin
on the cross. He will save you if He wills. These things are written that
you may believe that Jesus is Messiah, the Son of God, and
by believing you may have life in His name. See, it is not the
comprehension of these things written that constitutes your
belief. You cannot say, well, I believe
that Jesus is Messiah, so I'm saved. So what? The demons believe
and they tremble. Why? Because they know the truth
of Christ, but they will not trust in Him for salvation. Believing
in Christ by faith is to believe in the work that He has done
and that it is effectual for you. Friends, please do not hang
on. Please do not hang on to a false
hope. Life is not long enough for you
to figure out the pieces with pleasure. By the mercy of God,
I pray He would help you see. Help you see. It's not the comprehension
of the Scripture. Assenting to the truth of the
writing of the Gospel of John is non-effectual. There are some
people that hear me say that and they go, oh no, wow, you've
really messed up now. Faith is just a sin. No, it's
not. It includes it. And truly the one who's been
born of God assents to the fact of Scripture, but we're missing
the point. What is it that we assent to?
What is it that we have a very large affirmation of? What is
it that we believe in? That the Bible is true? Or that
the Gospel is effectual? That's saving faith. We believe
what is written. We assent to the proposition
of the proclamation of what Christ has said. He is the way. And He is the truth. And He is
the life. He is the living water. He is
the bread that comes down from heaven. He is Messiah. He and
the Father are one. He is doing the work of God.
He speaks the words of God. He came to do the will of God
and this is the work of God. You should believe on the Son
whom He has sent. That's the work of God. Faith
is the work of God. There must be trust, there must
be faith. in the Greek, in the person,
in the work, in the word, etc. of Jesus Christ as effectual.
The natural man, according to John 1, cannot see this, for
he came to his own and his own did not receive him. But all
who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right
to become the children of God. Why? Not because of who they
were, or who they were born into, or what they believed, or what
they accepted in their brain, or what they decided in their
heart. None of those things. Not by the will of God, not by
the will of man, but by the will of God were they born into Him. John 3 is a direct expression
of what that looks like in teaching, in doctrine. The natural man
cannot see this. They would say, as we are going
to review a little bit of five chapters, they would say, well,
what sign do you bring? As he cleared the temple. What
sign do you bring as he says, I am the bread? What sign do you bring? Nicodemus
would say, well, how can a man be born again? I don't get it. Jesus would say, don't be confused. Don't go, wow. Whoa, I can't
get this. Do not marvel. Whoa, wow. This is foreign to me. It is
foreign to us as unbelievers. But beloved, as people who have
been converted by the Spirit, we receive it. It may be new,
the depths and the riches of the mercy of God as we grow in
the Scripture. It may be new to us and it may
be like, wow, but we are not shaken. in unbelief because of
it. How can a man be born again?
The woman in Sychar, give me this water. Wait a minute, you
have nothing to dip it with. Who gave him something to eat? When Jesus says, I have food
that you know not of. Who gave you something to eat? You see
what the natural man does? You see what the unbelieving
mind does? You see what even the believer's human mind does?
It's like, what? I mean, how many times do we
do that as Christians in our very day? We come to a place,
we go, how am I going to do this? How am I going to honor this
way? How am I going to please God here? How am I going to this? And then so on and so on and
so on. And we figure a way out to manipulate our lives in such
a way that they may, from our points of view or either each
other's point of view, look the part of righteousness. rather
than just trusting that Christ is our righteousness. Hey, there's
no one to help me in the water. Do you want to be healed? There's
nobody to help me in the water. What am I going to do? I just
don't have anybody. It's a hopeless thing. But hearing, The teaching of
Scripture about who Christ is and what He's done, according
to Paul in Romans 10, is the only way through which we can
actually be given spiritual ears to hear what Christ has done
and believe in it, trust in it, trust in Him. Hearing gives hearing
by the will of God through the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural
work. I said yesterday to someone that
we have forgotten that God supernaturally saves through the teaching of
the Scripture, not through the comprehension of Scripture. The
gospel for the natural man is dumb, and he cannot even posit
such stupidity because it offends him. See, man's knowledge of
God and salvation is foreign. It is impossible for man to believe
on Christ as Savior without any effort of his own in his own
mind. It's impossible. He can't imagine, how am I supposed
to believe? There must be something more
to this gospel. I have to do something. And the
scripture says it is impossible. Now we come to chapter 6 where
Jesus is about to feed 5,000 people miraculously. Let me give
you some hermeneutical lessons. Hermeneutics, the study of interpretation,
the science of interpretation. It's not just for the Bible,
it's for poetry, for literature, or any other writing. Stereo
instructions, whatever it might be. What does it mean? Well,
when we come to the place of trying to understand what the
Scripture means, we do not just pick something out of Scripture
and say, oh, see, Jesus fed 5,000, so we should be feeding 5,000.
Or Jesus was healing, so we should be healing. I think we forget.
Or Jesus tipped over tables, we should be tipping over tables.
I get that one a lot. Straight out of context, that's
it. It's just out of context. Well, I said to someone, I actually
texted someone yesterday, be known for your kindness, and
it actually tweeted. The guy's name started with a T, and I
just put, and it tweeted out. So, interestingly, it caused
some good conversation. To which someone replied this
morning, I'd rather be known for justice. To which I replied,
if you are just, you will be kind. Because if you're not kind,
you're not just, because it is unjust to be unkind. Because
who are we to be unkind when we should receive justice? You
see? In the hermeneutic, we don't
go to the Bible and say we're going to feed 5,000, because
Jesus fed 5,000. and then ran them off. Jesus went into a thousand
and healed one and then vanished. Jesus went into the teaching
of the temple and he said, you're not who I'm talking about. It's
not for you. See you later. And he hid from them. So we talk about salvation, what
we've been talking about for about a year in some of the circles,
some of the brothers in the church in the circles we've been having
conversations over meals and other times. We've been talking
about the gospel and indeed the doctrines of grace as really
one issue. If we could take the tulip of Calvin, excuse me, it's
not Calvin's tulip. If we could take the tulip of
Calvinism, it's not Calvin's. He knew nothing about it. And
we take the L there, which is limited atonement, we just deal
with the atonement of God. Atonement, sufficient and effectual
atonement, is the gospel. God has atoned for sins of His
people. He has paid for the sins of His
people. He has justified His people. He has propitiated His people. His wrath is no longer, no longer
on us. How? Because Christ took it.
That's the gospel. That's the gospel. Do you believe
in that gospel? Are you trusting in that message?
Are you trusting in that Jesus more? We don't just go to the
Bible and just pick and choose what we want to see and believe.
We hear it and God, through the Holy Spirit, helps us to believe
all the counsel of God. even if it is the first time
we may understand these things. Jesus then clearly showed through
His work that He was divine. And without the divine work of
salvation, of conversion, of regeneration, no man will have
eternal life. Jesus turned the water to wine.
Whoop-dee-doo, nobody cared. His disciples, it says He did
these things that they may believe. Believe what? That He was God.
But they still couldn't see, could they? They were still in
a fog. They were still on that day coming
back from Sychar. Wow, he's talking to that Samaritan
woman. Who gave him food? He even says, my food is to do
the will of the one who sent him. What's he talking about?
Peter, you are the son of the Most High God. You have the words
of eternal life. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona,
for a man has not revealed these things to you but my Father.
who's in heaven has revealed these things to you. And then
Peter comes back just a little bit later and goes, hey, you
don't have to die, we got another way. This Messiah thing, we know
what to do. And Jesus says, get behind me,
Satan. Help me in my unbelief, we'll
see. And to the places, the sign of Jonah, he cleared the temple.
What sign do you bring? I'll tear down this temple and
in three days I'll raise it up again. And they went, it took
48 years to get to this place. He's so stupid. Yet everything
the temple was pointed to Christ. The mercy seat is Jesus and He
was in there tipping over tables and ruining people's lives, destroying
their economy, putting them into bankruptcy. Well, that's not the Jesus I
know. Well, then you don't know the Jesus of the Bible. You see,
this is the hard thing about Scripture. It actually reveals
God to us. And when it reveals God to us,
the caricature that we have created of God, the false idol of whatever
God it is that we've created, maybe it's the God of our forefathers.
Maybe it's the God of our grandmothers. Maybe it's the God of our pastor,
the God of our book, or the God of some TV show that we watched.
Or maybe it's just the God of our own imagination. It's wrecked. That's what Jesus is going to
do here. He's going to wreck it one more time. He's going
to wreck the God, the image of God in all these people. And
He's going to wreck the image of God in the lives of the Jews
over and over again. And beloved, I pray that He would
wreck yours and teach you the truth. That you may sit in a
place of awe and wonder and thanksgiving for the grace and the glorious
grace of God our Father who saved us as His children in Christ
Jesus. All of these things. All of these
things that Jesus does over and over again, all of these signs,
man still hates the truth that he is powerless to save himself. And until someone is converted
by the Spirit, which is the work of God, they will not receive
the Gospel. as truth. They will not have
faith in the work of Christ. Trust in the work of God's gospel
and its sufficiency, its perfection, its person, its message. The
gospel is necessary and it is not a call for you to believe. It is not an offer for you. It is a command for you to believe. It is not a story of possibility. It is a story of certainty. The
gospel is a story that Christ suffered and satisfied the wrath
of God for his people. It is not an option. It's a guarantee. Isn't that good news? What must
I do to be saved? Change the way you think and
believe. That's what Peter tells them.
And they're going, I just asked you how do I believe? You've
got to change your mind about not believing or what you are
believing in. And ever since these days, men
have been creating all sorts of ways to put conditions on
faith. Saving faith is a particular
work of God for a particular people that belong to Him, that
belong to Him. This is a message of hope, of
power, and of peace. These things are written. That's
where I am right now. I got a little lost. John 20,
31. When you see Jesus through a
converted mind, you will believe that He is who He says He is. And you will trust in what He
says He has done for you. You will love Him. Now these
things. Chapter 1. Chapter 6, verse 1.
Now these things. 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 in 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 up 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.
And one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to
him, There is a boy who here 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 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 what is
left, all the fragments, that nothing may be lost. So they
gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from 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 has come into the world. I'll stop there. I'm not going
to get but three verses today. Here is Jesus. And just like most people, they
come to Jesus on their own terms. Jesus had done many signs and
wonders. He had taught in many places, in many cities, in many
spots. And everywhere that Jesus went,
people followed Him. You see, we have, because we
don't understand that time. I mean, if we're walking around
town and there's a crowd of people following us, what do we do?
We call 911. There's a mob behind me. But people do it all the time.
They do it now. If I were to set myself on fire
and do some crazy feat of magic or illusion or to come up with
this great oratory that would move the nations and you videoed
it and you put it on Facebook, people would follow that. People
that have no interest in who I am or what I'm trying to accomplish,
but they just want to see me burn. We'll see this guy set
on fire. Cool. Likes. Then the memes would
start. You'd see people coming up. They'd
make videos of me burning and then people roasting marshmallows.
I mean, you name it. People have always done it. From
the beginning of time, people have followed, the crowds have
followed something that was interesting, different, bizarre, horrid, horrible,
morbid, macabre. I mean, why does traffic slow
down when there's an accident in the median? Rubbernecking. You know, oops, oops, sorry.
And every good accident causes about six more. And everybody's
got whiplash. And then we're five hours late
for work. Because everybody wants to see something. That's exactly
what was happening in the days of Jesus. Do not think, because
the Scripture tells us this, do not think that people were
following after Jesus because they loved Him. Do not think
that people were following Jesus in large numbers because they
were so in awe with the message of the gospel. Do not think that
people were following Jesus because they were being drawn by the
Father or by the Spirit. They were not. And in the same
way that people followed Jesus in the first century for no other
reason than just curiosity or selfish interest, so do people
follow Jesus in our culture. Nothing but curiosity, pride,
and self-interest. The difference is that we've
built buildings and put steeples and called pastors so that they
might seem as though they're a church. Man comes to Jesus on his own
terms most of the time. If we remember what we saw in
chapter one of John's gospel where Jesus calls the disciples,
they come to him on their terms, don't they? Are they coming to
Jesus? We've got to see what this man's
all about. But he commanded them to come, they came. Nathanael,
I saw you under the fig tree. Woo, what a wonderful God you
are. You think that's something? Daniel was just amazed this man
had the power to know Him and got it accurate. A Hebrew of
Hebrews in which there was no God. Now, how do you know me? He says. Then they say, where
are you going? Where are you staying? See, this,
in all things, tell us what is going on in the hearts of these
people who followed after Jesus. Where are you going? What sign
do you bring? What are you going to do, Jesus?
We've run out of wine." That's his own mother. The interest in Jesus was for
selfish ambition. If you're not born again, you
will follow Jesus in that same way. That's what the Scripture's
been teaching us all along. The outline of the prologue made
that very clear that people will follow after. All sorts of things
will cause us to follow after Jesus, but yet we will not see
the true Jesus unless through the hearing of the teaching of
Scripture, God births us anew. Why are you speaking this way?
Nicodemus would say, we know that you are, remember? He came to Christ in his own
terms. The end of John 2, it says now when he was in Jerusalem
at the Passover feast, he did many, many people believe in
his name because of the signs that he was doing, but Jesus
on his part did not entrust himself to them. because He knew all
people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself
knew what was in man." See, the terms that we come to Jesus under
are insufficient. They're insufficient. Those who
come on their own terms have condemnation of God remaining
on them. They cannot escape it unless they believe in Christ
alone. Jesus would say, that which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit
is spirit. Don't marvel believing. You must be born again. After
this discourse in John 5, Jesus still has people following Him.
Not because they have faith. It's because they want something
from Him. The rich young ruler wanted something
from Jesus. What did he want? Life. Life. You must be perfect. Jesus says you must be perfect.
You must be perfect. He already said no one is good
but God. Why do you call me good? You must be perfect. And the
man responded, I am. I am. I'm perfect. Did you know a perfect man cannot
enter the kingdom of heaven? A righteous man cannot be saved. A man that says he can see and
know all things can never be redeemed. Christ came to save
sinners. Christ came to find the lost.
Christ came to give sight to the blind. Christ came to give
life to the dead. John 6, after this, as we've
already read, says, 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, why were they following Him?
Because they saw the signs that He was doing on the sick. And
Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His
disciples. Now, that's all I'm going to be able to do in the
time we have left. Jesus went away from the crowd. Jesus went
away from the crowd. He's amongst the crowd in John
chapter 5. He's amongst the crowd in Jerusalem,
in Nazareth, in Judea, the Judean area, and now He's over in Galilee.
And there's the crowds. They're following Him everywhere
He goes. And they lose sight of Him and what you'll see is
that they'll stand around, they'll find His disciples and they'll
just hang out where His disciples. And they'll just wait. This often
looks like the idolatry of Christendom today with pastors and teachers
and apologists and people that have a little bit of fame. And
these people will just stand there with their mouth agape
going, oh, here's brother so-and-so, and there's pastor so-and-so,
there's doctor so-and-so. We don't do that. But they did. Jesus went to the place on the
Sea of Galilee called Tiberias, an isolated area. so that He
could get away. Jesus got away often. Jesus went
away every time He would do a miracle or every time the crowd would
gather. He would speak to them and teach them and then He would
vanish and what? Go off and pray. He got away. Jesus' ministry
was not about gaining a following, listen to this, but it was about
redeeming His people. I'll say that again. Jesus' ministry was not about
gaining a following. It was about redeeming His people. And above all things, the 300,000
foot foundation on which all of that sat upon is the fact
that He did everything that He did for the sake of the glory
of God the Father. All of it. Boy, how backwards
our culture is. How mistaken we have become.
How manipulative Bible teachers have been to teach different
things. And I know the argument. I said
this two weeks ago. Well, that's your interpretation.
No, I'm reading plain English. You don't read into the Bible.
You just read the Bible and it shows you these things. You see,
people did not come after Jesus for any other reason than that
he was doing magical things. People hated Jesus because he
preached grace and made himself the object of
the efficacy of that grace. A large crowd Jesus was rejected
in Judea, he'll now be rejected in Galilee, in total. I mean,
just everywhere he goes, rejection, rejection, rejection. Sychar,
acceptance. You see the picture of that.
People often say, well, ethnic Jews, the word Jew comes from
the region Judah, the tribe of Judah, which was the only physical
tribe living in the first century. The others had lost their place. They were gone. So the word Jew
is a shortening of those people who are from Judah. And here
we see that many people today say, well, Jews believe in God. No, they don't. They do not believe
in the God of Isaac. They do not believe in the God
of Abraham. They do not believe in the God of Jacob. They do
not believe in the God of the Bible. Jesus said that last week
in John 5 where He says, You search the Scriptures because
you think that in them you have eternal life, but it is they
that speak of Me. And I will not indict you before
the Father. Moses will indict you before
the Father as guilty of unbelief and idolatry and idol worship
and satanic work. Darkness, Nicodemus, remember?
This is the judgment. Do not lose sight of this. It's
the point of John's Gospel. To show you God's people are
utterly and hopelessly lost in the flesh. But as Paul would
say, it is not what? It is not those who are of Abraham
who are Israel, but those who are in Christ. Christ. Jews are condemned because they
do not believe in Christ. In the same way, in our American
culture, if we add conditions to Christ and His salvation of
us, we are just as condemned. If the condition is your free
will, you are lost. If the condition is this works,
Faithfulness, you are lost. If the condition is any other
thing, any knowledge, any action, you cannot be saved by trusting
in those things. Now, beloved, the church can
be deceived, as we see in Paul's writing to the region of Galatia.
They received the gospel, but they received the true gospel
first. And through the gospel, God converted
them. And then the Judaizers came in
and said, oh, we believe the gospel too, but... We add this,
we do this, we do that, we do this. I mean, all these things.
And Paul has a very strong, angry letter to say to those people.
He even says to them that to add to the gospel is to be cut
off from Christ. So I pray that that which you
hold fast to is the gospel of grace and not the gospel of works,
not the gospel of additions, not the gospel of conditions,
and not the gospel of culture. Do not believe in the God that
is partly from the Bible and partly from the mind of man,
because that God cannot save you. Jesus alone can save you. Jesus went away to get away from
these crowds, and then all of a sudden now, this large crowd,
they've followed Him everywhere. I'm reminded of the discourse
in Luke chapter 4. As a matter of fact, I might
read that. Luke chapter 4, 17 through 30, if you want to go
there. And the scroll of the prophet
Isaiah was given to him. This is in
Nazareth, his place where he grew up. He unrolled the scroll
and found the place where it is written, the Spirit of the
Lord is upon me. Now listen to these words, listen. Imagine
being a Jew in this day, sitting in the tabernacle, I mean sitting
in the synagogue in Nazareth, and all you can think about is
how long you've been under the oppression of Rome. And all you
can think about Messiah being is someone to come and liberate
your flesh and your family. And then here comes this man
who had already been proclaimed by John the Baptist as the Lamb
of God. Many people had already started
talking, hey, we heard God say, this is my son. We saw the Spirit
of God descend upon him. Oh my goodness, he's teaching
things. He's doing signs and wonders. Now he's coming to our
town. Let's go to the synagogue and listen. And he opens the
scroll of the prophet Isaiah and he says, the Spirit of the
Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good
news to the poor. Now if you were poor, it's not
necessarily poor in pocket. It has nothing to do with that.
Poor in life. poor people without much freedom,
without much liberty, without much worship, without much hope.
You're poor, you have nothing. Yes, maybe some poor in pocket,
but He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. If you
were poor in the hearing of that Word, you were part of Israel,
you went, oh, I remember, I remember learning this just years ago
or as a child. Oh, this is such a blessing.
to be reminded of the mercies of God. He has sent me to proclaim
liberty to the captives." Now, they were all captives. "...and
recovering sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are
oppressed." Oh, how they were oppressed. "...to proclaim the
year of the Lord's favor." Now, you want to talk about abuse
of Scripture? I've heard people teach that
text. and then say God's going to give you all healing, money,
happiness. Well, let's use the text in the
context in which Jesus used it. We don't even have to go to the
Old Testament. Let's just use it in the context. Let's just
say that it did mean happiness, wealth, and healing, and freedom
from Rome. And he rolled up the scroll and
he gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And he said these
things and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon
him. Did you hear what he just said? Oh, wow. Did you hear it?
Did you hear it? And he began to say to them,
today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Son, did you hear that? It's
what I've been telling you about since you were a little boy.
The Lord's favor is here. He is Messiah. Hallelujah. They're so excited. Now watch
this. And all spoke well of him and
marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.
And they said, is this not Joseph's son? Doubtless, Jesus said to them,
doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, physician, heal
yourself. What we have heard you do at
Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well. And he said, truly,
I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth,
I tell you, remember there were many widows in Israel in the
days of Elijah and the heavens were shut up three years and
six months and a great famine came all over the land and Elijah
was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land
of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. See what Jesus is saying? Do
you see what Jesus is saying? They're going, oh wow, here's
our Messiah. And Jesus is reminding them of how God shut His own
people out of favor and went to another land's widows. In verse 26, and Elijah was sent
to none of them. Oh, I've already read that. Verse
27, and there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the
prophet Elisha. And none of them was cleansed,
but only Naaman the Syrian. When they heard these things,
when they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled
with wrath. The old Jeremiah knew what that felt
like. In moments in history of my preaching,
I've known what that's felt like. But nothing like this. They were filled with wrath. Why? Because they had conditioned
their Messiah for their own benefit, for their own pleasure, for their
own flesh, for their own ideals, and for their own politics. Why
is that? Could they not see? They could
see. But they could not believe. And they rose up and they drove
Him out of the town and brought Him to the brow of the cliff
on which their town was built so they could throw Him down
the cliff. We're all having church. Jesus
starts to preach. We're tearing up. We're telling
our kids, what glorious mercy. And then Jesus says, and it's
not for you. And then we all push him off the mountain. So
it's like some deacons meetings I've been a part of through the
years. We just push you off the mountain. But passing through their midst,
he went away. He went away. to the Sea of Galilee, to the
Sea of Tiberias. And just like that, people want
Him dead. Preaches grace and mercy. Then he says, as the Lord
wills it. You don't deserve it. And people
hate him for it. And they want him dead just like
that. In the same manner we saw the Jews wanted him dead in Nazareth
because he was doing what? The work of God. Now we see the
Pharisees want him dead because he's doing the work of God in
John 5. And we're going to see that people walk away from him
because he's doing the work of God in John chapter 6. As long as ministry, here we
go. For those of you who ever listened
to this and don't see a video of it, quote ministry. As long as quote ministry involves
taking care of the flesh of man, healing it, empowering it, making
it glorious and soon feeding it. No one complains. But when the gospel of grace
is proclaimed that Jesus Christ alone is our Savior, we have
a problem. What do you give us? What are
you bringing to us? What are you doing for us? What
have you done for me lately? Do you know when we minister
to each other, it is the ministry of Jesus to each other. When
we refuse the ministry of each other, we refuse the ministry
of Jesus to each other, because that's what the body of Christ
is. When we forget the ministry that
we've done for each other, we are forgetting the ministry that
Jesus has done for us. when we think we need something
more than the straight gospel of grace, when we think we need
more types of teaching than just the exposition of Scripture,
when we think we need to try to placate to the natural man
in the world around us, we have forgotten. We've forgotten the
ministry of Jesus. Friends, we only need Christ.
And they've followed Him around in the name of Jesus, because
they wanted to see them work. For those of you who watch certain
segments of things on the internet, there's this constant thread
of things on almost every medium called, I don't know, something
satisfying, like pressure washing. You ever watch someone pressure
wash? It's like, wow, look, they're cleaning that. Man, that looks
so good. You're just standing there amazed. or sculpting, or cleaning something,
or something that's just really satisfying. You see something
being accomplished. In the same way that many people
like to watch something being built today, they wanted to watch
Jesus do something a little satisfying in their day. Even if they did
not need healing, they just wanted to watch it. People in their ignorance and
selfishness continued to look for Jesus. They looked for Him,
and they would look for the crowds, they would look for His disciples,
and then they found Him. Crowds were common in the days
of Jesus. He could never get away. These people had most likely
lost sight of Him. They were trying to find out
where He went, as we'll see later in this chapter. And when they
would find where He might be, somebody would say, OK, I see
Him. He just went this way. Or, have you seen Jesus of Nazareth? Yeah, he walked by here an hour
ago. Oh, come on, he's going this way. And they just keep
going through the town until they get to where he's paused
and stopped. In like manner today, the testimony
of so many people concerning Christ is that He is, quote,
there for them. He's there to give them a filling
to take away their hunger. He's there to heal them of their
cancer. He's there to take away their
suffering. There's nothing wrong with that,
especially only those who are in Christ. God, through Christ,
can appease these things or take away these things, but they're
not promised to us and they're temporal at best. We have been
taught by the Scripture that in the midst of famine, Christ
is enough. In the midst of death, Christ
is life. In the midst of hopelessness,
Christ is our everlasting joy. Christ doesn't cause us to give
things that are joyful. He is the cause of our joy. He
is our healing. He is our life. It bothers me when the testimony
of people in need is constantly, look what God has given to me.
And it's not Jesus. Be grateful for the gifts, for
all good things are from above when they come in abundance and
when they come in famine. Blessed be the name of the Lord. But what is the greatest treasure?
What is the greatest riches? What is the greatest healing?
What is the greatest life? It is Christ. It is Christ. The gospel then for the church
is our effectual cause of joy. We do not try to escape from
the suffering. On the contrary, Suffering will
come and go, but in the end it will be very great. We all will
pass from life to death in the flesh, but we all, as the children
of God, have passed from death to life in the Spirit. We do not love Jesus as the church
because of what He does for us in this temporal place. We love
Him because of what He is for us. in the spiritual place. He satisfied God's wrath. Jesus then avoided the crowds
as much as possible. He went up on the mountain, as
we see here in these three verses, and it says He sat down with
His disciples. Now, why would He do that? Because
He was about to teach them something. Mark even makes this point. Jesus
went up there to teach His disciples. He went there to teach His disciples.
Now, He's God, so He knew the crowd was coming. But in His
plan, in His ministry, He was trying to get away from the crowds
so He could teach His disciples. Get away from the healing. Get
away from the answers. Get away from the selfishness. I think there's something for
us to learn there. We need to be in like manner,
teaching each other in the assembly, being intimate with Jesus through
Scripture. God teaches His people. Christ teaches His people. God
ordained the intention of Christ to go teach the disciples, but
God the Father also ordained the purpose of its interruption. He ordained the purpose of its
interruption because Jesus was doing the work of God. Had Jesus
just taught the disciples, He would be doing the work of God.
But because God ordained that the crowd would interrupt Him,
He would teach the disciples there, that way. And He would
also teach us. What was He doing? Well, Jesus
was doing the work of God. He revealed Himself as from the
Father. He was teaching the Word of God.
He was doing the work of God. What was that? That His people
would believe on Him. That He would be the living water.
That He would be the bread of life. That He would be the light,
the life. The joy, the new wine. You see,
the new wine is the joy of God. The joy of God in Jesus Christ.
He would be the ultimate temple. He would be the mercy seat. He
would be the Sabbath. That's the work of God. Jesus
spoke of the reality of God. The Word and His works, as we've
learned already, bore witness about Him. So what's the problem?
People saw His works and they followed Him, right? Yes. But
they came to Him in order to awe at the work and to receive
something from Him, even if it was just satisfaction of seeing
Him work. They rejected His message. They
rejected His mission. They wanted Him to be their King
and to separate them from Rome and to empower them to worship
in the shadows when the shadows were now over. That's why God
destroyed the temple in AD 70. Why do we keep the scaffold up
when the work is done? That's stupid. See, ultimately, as we close
out these passages, these three things, we need to recognize
that though people followed after Christ, we need to see them for
what they are. I want you to listen very carefully.
They are hopeless and powerless. They're hopeless and powerless. They cannot believe in their
own mind. They cannot believe of their own will. They cannot
see Jesus out of their own volition. They cannot come from what someone
else has taught them and say, this is sufficient for my hope.
They cannot believe in the free instrument of our understanding
of the truth. What does that mean? They cannot
believe that God Himself is the divine cause of our faith. I must know more. No, we must
know Christ. Theology and its study is the
study of God, but if it is sterile, if it is academic, oh wonderful,
I love it. I love my brain to work. I also
read about quantum physics and recently been reading about other
things that are ridiculously wasteful. But I don't understand
things. When I don't understand things
and I read them, I feel smarter. And then I'm dumber because of
it. But the human mind cannot grasp
that God freely grants repentance and faith. And that in itself
is the message that we must teach. We are utterly hopeless, no matter
how much our mind grasps about Jesus. And the world that we live in
has been established as the answer to many things, but in the end,
He is the God of glory. And He answers to no man, and
He answers to no man's testimony. John the Baptist's testimony
was true of Christ, but he said it in John 5 that he does not
need the testimony of men. Why is it so? that so many people
in the world take the testimony of men concerning Christ rather
than the testimony of Christ concerning Himself. You know
why? Because we hate what Jesus has
to say until we're born again. People do not seek. People do
not obey. And ultimately, people do not
want Jesus as their Savior. They want Him for their own purpose. But God has told us, and I'll
close with this, in Him was life, and the life
was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. Praise the Lord. Let's pray. Thank you, Father. Thank you so much, Father. for
the glorious truth of the gospel of grace, the effectual reality,
the effectual work, the effectual finished redemption of your people.
Father, we love You. We praise You for Your grace.
We are overwhelmed with awe. Help us to be settled in our
spirit this day as we open up this chapter. Help us to be settled in our
spirit this day about our assurance, knowing that we can trust in
You for salvation. Completely, all of you, all of
your work, all of your promises, all of the provision that you've
made that has accomplished salvation, the debt has been paid through
the body of Christ. The command of holiness has been
fulfilled. The law has been fulfilled in
the life of Christ. And the judgment has been satisfied
in the death of Christ. And the promise of eternal life
has been proven through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And we
await that day, Father. Until that day, Lord, help us
to rest, rest, rest in the sufficiency of your work for us and on our
behalf. Let us put aside all instruments of our flesh and
mind, and let us stand knowing that by faith alone do we satisfy
You. Even in the walking that You
prepared beforehand for us to live in, even when we are kind,
even when we are loving, even when we are humble, let us never
look at the mirror of our soul and say, wow, look at me, what
a great Christian am I. But Father, help us to say, O
God, Thank You for Your mercy on me that You propitiated me
through the person of Christ. And we pray these things in His
name. Amen.