Good morning. Let's pray. Father, here in the power of
Christ, we stand. There is no other grace this
universe has ever seen except the grace that you give. What
glorious truth. It should affect our soul, the
depth of our being, our DNA should cry out. Father, we are so unworthy to
be before you today, but Lord, in your great mercy and love
for us, you became like us to take the sin that we could not
rid ourselves from. And your judgment and wrath is
satisfied in the blood and body of Jesus Christ and in the life
that he lived to satisfy the law. Father, help us to embrace that
today. Help us to see that in such a way, Father, that we've
never seen it before. Lord, I pray that You would bring
to life those who are dead today in this congregation. Father, that You would bring
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf. And Lord, if Your Word does not
bring that life, nothing will. And so, Father, I pray that You
would speak through me today. And that we would worship you
in spirit and in truth with such a fullness and overexpression
of joy that it would be inexpressible, as Peter says, Father. We thank
you for being the God who saves. In Jesus' name, Amen. What a blessing it is to be with
God's people. What an awesome season of life
that we have been given, as we call it Thanksgiving. We give
thanks for many things. And I'd ask for you to turn in
your Bibles with me this morning to the sixth chapter of John's
Gospel in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
John chapter six. And we'll be looking at verse
twenty two through, I don't know, we'll see. And when you find that, if you'll
hold that, I pray that you do have something to write with
and on today. I always say this, and I'll say
it to you, is that I believe no one has really studied the
Word of God nor really worshipped through preaching unless they've
taken notes. And if nothing's being said worthy of being written
down, then maybe you shouldn't be listening to who's speaking.
Not that what I have to say is important, but God's Word is.
Thanksgiving. I spoke with many of you today
and just passing and it's been the last few days and everybody
would explain their Thanksgiving holiday. Well, how's it been?
Well, it's been good, but I've overeaten. Everybody's been grabbing their
stomachs today. And we've seen that. We've heard
that. And I have to sit there as it was brought forth in the
announcements about the marathon training. We should all sign
up after church, maybe for marathon training, at least for a couple
of days to get our Thanksgiving meal digested. But I started
thinking about my own Thanksgiving holiday and how Thursday I overate
terribly, not intentionally. I didn't get up that day and
say, I cannot wait to eat as much food as I can hold, plus
some. Neither yesterday as we met at my mother's for a Thanksgiving
meal. In the middle of the afternoon,
you've heard of brunch. We do the reverse brunch. We eat dinner
or lunch at three. So we eat breakfast, lunch, and
then roll, and then by nine o'clock we're hungry again. So as I went
to bed last night, I was extremely full, extremely ill, extremely
overwhelmed with the digestive process of my innards. And I
went to bed and promised myself I would not eat another bite.
But then when you wake up this morning, you're hungry again. And as ironic as it may seem,
we go through life and we eat every day. And friends, I'll
tell you that most of us treat our lives as Christians the same
way. We don't treat our lives as Christians the same way. We
would not dare skip meals, and if we do, we make up for it at
the second hand. But yet, we skip meals sometimes
for weeks, months on end when it comes to the Word of God.
And we ask ourselves as we look into the proverbial mirror and
we say, what is wrong with my life? Why is my joy gone? Because
we're starving. And friends, there are indicators
whether or not you have been born again. If if you know you
are a believer because of something you did, you are so lost. So that's not good to say, it is
awesome to say, I love you more than you will ever know. And
if your assurance of salvation comes because of something you
did, if someone asked you, how do you know that you know that
you know that you are a child of God? And the answer to that
question starts with because I, I will tell you that will
not cut muster with God. He will not be impressed with
your examination of yourself. He will not be impressed with
your answer that you give, because I said something, because I did
something. Well, you know what, friends?
I never came down the aisle of a church and I never prayed a
prayer to receive Jesus as my Savior. But from an early age,
God had been calling me to repentance and to love holiness and to love
His Word and to live for Him. And every day of my life, I struggle
and fight to uphold what God has done, which what He's done
is redeemed me through the person of Jesus Christ by His declaration
of justification, not because I called on Him and demanded
that He save me. That's witchcraft. But yet sometimes we say, oh,
I am OK with God because of what I have done. Therefore, I am
satisfied and I don't need to study my word and I don't need
to worship and I'm OK. Friends, you're not OK if you
do not love Christ and you do not love His word and you do
not love righteousness and you do not fight against sin. You
are not OK. I want you to hear me this morning.
With what in the world are you preaching to? I'm preaching to
you the Word of God. Preaching has two purposes. The primary purpose of preaching
is that God is pleased with hearing Himself. For He loves Himself. He is worthy of self-love. Christ is the only one in whom
God is pleased. And if we are not in Christ,
then God is not pleased with us. And as we sit here today, And
here preaching, the primary reason that I preach is that God may
be glorified, that He may be honored with His own word reaching
His own ears. And the second reason that we
preach is that you may be troubled. Preaching should trouble the
soul of the saint. It should impact our lives, not
tomorrow. I should never, preachers should
never give you something you should take home and work on.
That's not found in the exposition of Scripture. It's not found
in the teaching of the apostles. And yet what we see is that we
hold to the apostles teaching today. Not one letter of the
New Testament was written to unbelievers. It was all written
to the church. Every jot and tittle. But yet
we take it, I took it. My testimony is that I used to
think the gospel was for lost people. And that when I received
the gospel, then I was done with it. And I was moving on to bigger
and better things called ministry and churchmanship and things
of that nature. But oh, was I wrong. And oh, was my soul hungry. And
was I just starving, going from the meal that I had done as a
child and every now and then getting fed and just going on
that forced hand feeding from time to time. And now then I
came to the realization that my whole problem was that I didn't
hunger for righteousness. I didn't thirst for Christ. I
didn't hunger for His Word. And He showed me His Word and
nothing has been the same since. Nothing. I want to stir your
soul this morning, church. I want you to be so troubled
that you forget about lunch and that you go do something else.
I want you to be so stirred by the Word of God that you can't
go to work Monday morning, that you have to take a day off so
that you can spend your time on your face with the Word and
you can wonder what magnificent, awesome, just grace and riches
that are coming through into your heart today that you have
never perceived before. I want you to seek God in such
a way that you have to change all your thinking, that you have
to change everything you've been taught since you were a child,
and you have to start over from new beginnings. Because that's what the Word
of God does. Over-eating. Oh, how I pray we
would over-eat on His Word, church. Oh, how I pray we would overread
on his word. How I pray that amens would resound
from congregations worldwide. Not because it's just cliche
and it's what we do when we get excited, but that we are standing
in agreement, so be it, thus saith the Lord, that we would
stand and say, yes, I too have ate from that table and you are
serving me the same meal that I ate from this morning in my
home. And I agree that God is good. Before coming here to Claxton
to start Grace Truth Church, in my church, the First Baptist
Church, Newark, California, I was halfway through the first chapter
of Colossians. We sang about the first chapter
of Colossians today, if you didn't know that. That Christ is the
Creator, the Magnificent One, the One whom the fullness of
God was pleased to dwell. Did you know who that is? Did
you know who Christ is? And what's amazing is we always
say, do you know Jesus? Do you know Jesus? Do you know
Jesus? You know what? That's not the question God's
going to ask you. The question is, does Jesus know
you? Nowhere in the New Testament do we ask that question. Do you
know Him? Maybe He asked that to Peter
and the disciples. Do you know who I am? Who do you say that
I am? You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. But yet,
even in that profession of faith, Peter was not one who was passionately
sold out to Jesus. He denied Him. Ran, because his
flesh was more powerful than his passion. Friends, I'll tell you that we
ought to be struggling We ought to be looking and understanding
what the Word of God is teaching us. And we ought not be looking
for this pragmatism. But we ought to be looking to
be worshipers in spirit and in truth. You know who God is seeking?
Not leaders. Not teachers. Not preachers. God is not seeking those who
are good at what they do. God is not seeking those who
have their lives together and their finances in order. God
is seeking worshipers. In John chapter 4. Jesus Himself
says God is seeking worshippers. The Father seeks worshippers.
Are you a worshipper? Look at your life. Look at your
love. Look at your passion. What do
you live for? What do you spend your time on?
What do you use your money for? When you have free time, what
do you kick your heels in the air and run out the door to do?
Is it to spend time with God? Or is it to do things for yourself?
See, preaching. is to impact your life right
now, not later. That you may be confronted with
the greater, the cheese grater upon the forehead of your soul
called the gospel. And that it would change you
forever. I pray today that you would see
Christ as the creator of all things, who is sufficient and
satisfying. And I pray that in time, many
of you will see this truth. Consider the idea, friend, that
this might very well be the last sermon that many of you hear.
I thought about that today. While I get to preach at Eastside,
oh, what a burden, what frustration, what fear, what anger. What am
I supposed to say, God? What am I supposed to do? What
if it's the last sermon that someone hears there? What if
they don't make it through the service? What if they die before
they leave? What if they die before the sun
goes down? Am I giving them the gospel or am I giving them something
that is useless to their lives? Consider the idea that this may
be the last sermon you may ever hear. As I contemplated this for myself
over the last few weeks, I prayed. That if this is the last sermon
that one or more of you might ever hear, it could very well
be the last one I ever preach. Think about it. As we live life,
though tomorrow is a given, we already have a plan for tomorrow
morning. We already know in some sense what we're going to do
Tuesday. Are we sure? Are we sure that we're going
to be able to get up tomorrow and thus fulfill the contract
of our calendar? We learn as though we can catch
up later. Well, yeah, I need to get that,
but next week. How about OK, it's toward the
end of the year, so we'll start doing what we need to do in January,
a New Year's revolution. As we think and ponder these
things, my prayer is that you are not doing this with your
spiritual life. We're not doing this with our
church. That we're not living as though we have tomorrow, but
that we're doing all that we can for the glory of God today
as true worshipers who are growing to such an intimacy that we're
really understanding who He is more today than we did yesterday. Some of you might say, well,
I'm certainly giving my time to Christ. I'm a deacon in the
church. Or I'm a teacher in the church, or I'm a leader, or I'm
a musician, or I'm a singer, or I'm a children's worker. Great! That's not what I'm talking about.
We don't get crowns in heaven for being a teacher or a worker
or a Sunday school teacher. We get crowns in heaven that
whatever we're doing, all of it below, we do it for the glory
of God, out of a passion and love and adoration for Christ,
not the stuff that we do. We don't come to serve in the
church because we love children. We come to serve in the church
because we love Christ. And he has called us and commanded
us to serve children or to serve through the music or to serve
at the deacon. I hope our attitude isn't that
we'll get these things later. As we think in part of these
things, we're certainly bombarded with emotions. I pray that many
of you are so caught up in thought If you're having a hard time
paying attention to what I say. Because that's what the Word
of God is supposed to do. Hebrews 4 and verse 12 says that
the Word of God is living and breathing and sharper than any
two edged sword. It cuts to the marrow and the
bone and the flesh and the soul. Is the Word of God cutting your
soul? Or do you do like I did for many
years and have a vitamin box of Scripture? The vitamin-popping
Christian who goes and says, well, I'm feeling a little down.
Let me take my happy Jesus pill. For God so loved me, He gave
Himself for me. I'm ready. Folks, when I think
about God's love for me, I can't kick my heels up. I have to bury
my face. Sinless hands, the crimson stain, the sinless hands of God.
Why? Because He wanted to. Christ
lived. Christ created the womb from
which He was born and became like humanity in every way except
that He was sinless. The fullness of God in humanity. And He lived a perfect life.
We talk about the cross all day long. But friends, the cross
is worthless if Christ hadn't lived a perfect life. Christ's life as a human being
commands the love of God. Our life as a human being commands
the wrath of God. Understand the difference. My
life commands God's judgment. Christ's life commands God's
affection. There's a difference. Christ
is worthy. Worthy, worthy. Holy, holy. Glory, glory. Do you hear this?
We've seen this. But do we grasp it? Friends,
grasp it. Struggle with it. Be bewildered
with it. I'm lightheaded. Be bewildered. Be amazed. Be astonished. Are you astonished with Christ
today? Are you overwhelmed with His
mercy that you deserve every ounce of God's wrath for all
of eternity? But in His mercy, He has forgiven
that by taking your sin upon Himself and thus not only satisfying
the law as a human being and living out the life that commands
God's love and demands God's love toward Him, but then also
He dies a death that demands God's justice. be satisfied against
us. And in Romans 3, Paul teaches
very clearly that God put forth Christ, as it says in Isaiah,
that God was delighted to put Christ to death. It pleased God. And God put forth Christ as propitiation. That word is written several
times in the New Testament. It means the satisfaction of
judgment. God's judgment is satisfied. We are all in church, we say,
for each week, thinking as though we have another seven days to
begin listening to the word, another year or two, and then
we'll become more interested in spiritual things, you know,
after the first year. That's after the first of the
year, you know, that's the time I'm going to get serious about
my faith. Church don't play that game. Because I'm here to tell
you now, if you don't have a passion for the Word of God and for living
for Christ, against the grain of the world and the culture,
against the retirement that you have planned, against the call
of the world and the goodness of what we see in our society,
friends, the chances of you being born again is slim to none. And
that's not my opinion. That's the Word of God. For John
himself in his first epistle, chapter 2, verse 15, says, do
not love the world. It's a command. Do not love the
world. Do not love the things of this world, the lust of the
eyes, the things we like to see, the things that we like to own,
the pride of possessions, the pride of life, the positions
that we hold. Do not love these things because he said he qualifies.
If you love these things, the love of God is not in you. He
didn't say you're an idolater, he said you're lost. And in John chapter six today,
I'm going to show you just that. It's sort of like a fish. Well,
I'm going to get right with God. I'm going to start becoming a lover
of holiness sometime soon. That's like the fish after being
born, jumping up on the shore and saying, I'll get back in
the water in a couple of weeks. I want to be a sunbather for
a little while. He's going to be baked. He's
going to die because he has no oxygen. He can't live out of
his environment. Friends, the true church cannot
live out of its environment. She only lives through the bread
of life, which is the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ. The
living word. John 1, 14. The word became flesh
and tabernacled among us, he lived among us and we have seen
God's glory. So a few thoughts. This may very well be the last
sermon that some of you hear. My question is, what difference
is that going to make in your life? When God opens your ears and
your eyes and your hearts to Him, will you see Him for who
He is and will you love Him? Will you worship Him? Will you
live for Him? Friends, when God opens your
eyes, when God opens your ears, when God opens your heart, when
He gives you a new heart, that's called rebirth. In John chapter
3, we see Jesus talking to Nicodemus in that way. He said, you cannot
see the kingdom. You cannot physically see it
unless you're born again. And unless you're born again,
you cannot come to faith. It teaches that in Scripture.
You will express faith in Jesus Christ if you love Him. And that
faith will not be a profession from the mouth. That's not what's
important. What's important is that a change of life and a change
of heart is evident. When we go back to John in this
first epistle, it also teaches us that if we say, if we profess
with our mouth that we walk in light, but our affections of
our heart are for the world, we're a liar. Those are exactly
the Apostle John's words in the Greek. You are a liar, James.
If you say you love Christ, but yet you hold on to the world,
you lie and the truth is not in you. And when's the last time you
heard that? When's the last time you read that? Chances are, if you're reading
any of the New Testament, you will get that. The Word of God, friends, is
God's grace to us for eternal life and for Christian living.
Don't labor for another bread. I want you to understand that
all that we do is an act of labor. Just some little presuppositions,
some things I want you to do before I get into this text.
Everything we do in life is a labor. Whether we sleep, we're working
to that end, we work to the day, we get ready for the bed, we
labor into sleep, we rest. Whether we're getting up, we're
going and doing something, whether we're tuning the guitar, we're working
towards something. What are we working toward? Having
a tuned guitar that when we play it, it might be appreciated for
its sound and not as disunity. So that we might lead worship.
It's a good thing. Nothing wrong with this. I'm just wanting to
understand. Everything we do is a labor. What are we working
toward in life, Church? As a Christian, what are you
working toward? When I talk to the Church, I'm not talking about
what the Church is doing corporately, because I don't see that as evidence
in the Scripture. I'm talking about what you're doing as a
part of the body individually. God has not called the Church
corporately to do evangelism. He's called each one of you to
be evangelistic. And you know, the dangerous spot
to be in right now is when you scoff at what just came out of
my mouth. If you roll your eyes and you go, man, can't wait till
12. It's a dangerous place to be,
boy. It's a dangerous place to be. The word of God is grace. All
that we do is labor as believers. We should be living for his glory. We should labor for his glory.
We should labor for the gospel. It is the truth of our lives. Everything that we do, we ought
to be able to prove that it is for the glory of God, out of
affection, out of spontaneous, supernatural affection for Christ.
All that we do, whether we go to work or whether we go play
ball, it ought to be for the glory of God. We shouldn't do what we do because
our pastor says to do it or because our denomination says to do it,
or worse off because mama says to do it, although that's not
a bad thing to do is obey mama. Look at John 6. There'll be several
responses to what is in this text today, and I pray that everyone here will have
the response that the Word of God demands, not asked for. God doesn't ask for anything.
He demands all things. He commands it. The question
is, are you obeying God or disobeying God? Anger. There's a response to
what's going to be preached. Some of us may become angry.
Some of us may become amazed. Some of us may have an attitude,
good, bad, indifferent, apathetic. Some of us may be alarmed. Some
of us may be ashamed. Some of us may be in adoration. In John chapter six, in the very
beginning of that text, Jesus Feeds 5,000 people. I don't want
to read all of this. I want you to get the picture. He feeds
5,000 people. Now think. Listen. Look at it. You've got to read the text this
way. Every time you read the Bible, you've got to put yourself
in the 1st century Palestine. That's where we are. The Middle
East. These are a people who have been walking around, listening
to Jesus for weeks. Following Him. I would suggest
to you, just being conservative, a quarter of a million people. Walking around. Listen to Jesus teach. And he
looks out over the people who are there to see what he has
to say, and they're listening to Jesus, they're following him
around. And he looks out at them and he says, we need to give
them something to eat. This is a bad place because I
don't want to get through all this. I want to get into verse 22. And so One of the disciples says, will
it take a day's wage? And that wouldn't even feed them
all. What are we going to do here? And of course, one of them brings
the sack lunch from a young boy. Will this do? There's a sermon
in that. There's a sermon in all this. And Jesus takes and supernaturally,
because He is the Creator God, reaches into this basket and
keeps pulling and feeds 5,000 men, because only men were counted.
Heads of households. So there was a wife. Very well,
could have been a wife. We can suppose there was a wife
and at least three or four children for each man. How many people
was that? Let's just be conservative and
say 20,000 people Jesus fed with a little bit of fish and a little
bit of bread. And at the end, they gathered up what was left,
and each disciple carried a basket that he could barely carry away
of leftovers. He provided for their needs.
There's incredible allusion to Old Testament prophecy in that.
I wish I had time. If I had a couple of months to
go through the Gospel of John here, chapter 6 would be a great
chapter for us to study. You will worship Christ when
you see that. And so what happens is that Jesus, around verse 16,
He disappears as He always does. He goes off by Himself to pray.
The God of the universe and man and flesh, He prays to the Father.
And yet we often find it no time to pray to God. And so here we
are, Jesus and the disciples go on in a boat about a six-mile
journey across the tip end of the sea there, the Galilean Sea,
and a storm starts to brew. Jesus walks out on the water,
gets in the boat, and teleports them to dry land three miles.
That's what it says in chapter 6, verse 16 through 21. And immediately
they were on land. They were three miles in, three
miles to go in the water, and He steps in the boat and immediately
they were on dry land. He teleports. Some really cool
stuff in Scripture. Star Trek didn't think of this. In verse 22, follow with me. On the next day, this is after
he fed them miraculously, the crowd that remained on the other
side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there.
Listen, and Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples,
but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from
Tiberias came to the place where they had eaten the bread and
the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus
was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the
boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus to see what's happening.
Jesus is not there. They saw the disciples leave.
Jesus wasn't with them. So they thought, well, he must
be over there somehow. Let's go find him. When they
found him, verse 25, this is key. Many of us in the room are
in this crowd right here. Don't think it's not you. Pay
attention. When they found him on the other
side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come
here? And Jesus answered them, truly,
truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, listen, not because
you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Now stop. Jesus is saying, you seek after
me, not because of my divinity, not because of my power, not
because of me. You want what I have for you. Let me tell you the greatest
trick the enemy has always done in the sight of preaching. And
he did it in the garden with Eve. And Eve said, God said,
I cannot eat of the fruit of that tree, lest I surely die. And the devil says, no. Did he
really say you would die? See, God has something. This
is Satan speaking to Eve. God has something that He wants
to keep from you. Something that He'll give you
if you just eat of this. You will be like God. You will
know good and evil. And he was only telling a half-truth. And sometimes we come to Christ
because of what Christ can give us. And friends, those people
will stand before Christ and He will say, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of
iniquity, you laborers of sin. And Jesus answered them in verse
26. I've already read it. You are seeking me not because
you saw the sign, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
Listen, he commands them. Do not labor. Do not labor for
the food that perishes. I can preach a series on that.
What is the food that perishes? Well, Jesus will answer that
for us. But, for the food, and the implied verb there is labor. Do not labor for the food that
perishes, but labor for the food that endures to eternal life. That means that it's everlasting.
Labor for the food that never perishes. It's what Jesus is
saying. Stop working for your meals. Now that doesn't mean,
alright kids, teenagers, I can hear you now. You're going to
go home and say, see the pastor said we don't have to work. No, the
Bible honors work. If a man doesn't work, he doesn't
eat. But that's talking about the temporal. This is talking
about eternity. Do not labor for the bread, for
the food that perishes, but labor for the food that endures, that
lasts, that never fails unto eternal life. Do you see? Look. Which, what? Which the Son of
Man will give you. What is He giving? Which? That
referring to the bread of life. The bread that endures eternal
life. I, the Son of Man, Jesus, will
give to you. I will give it to you. Here it
is. I'm putting it on the table.
And it's set. Sit down. And they're seated.
Here it is. Eat it. They didn't want that
bread. They wanted what Jesus had fed them. You see that? Oh, church, I pray
you see it. If I have to commentate that,
I'm scared. Which the Son of Man will give to you for. See that
big word? That's a big word in the Greek.
For on Him, on Christ, on the Son of Man, God the Father has
set His seal. You know what that means? Have you ever read that and just
skipped right over it? Do you read the Scripture? Church,
do you know what that means? That means God has approved and
sealed and made certain and affirmed the Son. He loves the Son. He cherishes the Son. He adores
the Son. He gives the Spirit without measure.
He gives love without measure. In Christ, He is pleased. The
fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Him. And so that which
God affirms and seals now is the giver of the bread that gives
life to those who believe. So stop working for everything
else and start working for the bread of life. That's not a work
salvation. It's just a call on the carpet.
for those who were following Jesus, and they weren't really
in love with Him. Judas worked for Jesus, but he
hated Him. How many deacons and pastors
and leaders and teachers and business people, how many people
in the church today actually fall into that category? You say, well, I love Jesus.
OK, then prove it by the way you live your life, according
to the commands of Scripture, through the power of His grace,
which is given through the Word of God. Eat the Word of God.
Eat Christ. Just look. They said to Him,
Jesus says eat, and they ask Him, so what sign do you do? What power do you display? What
miracle can you perform that we may believe in you? What are
you talking about? I just fed your behinds with
a sack lunch. I just walked across the sea. I made blind people who were
born blind see. I made limbs grow back on bodies. Well, he hadn't done it yet.
But people who were paralyzed for 38 years take up their bed
and walk. And the same thing the Pharisees say. Who told you
you could take up your bed on the Sabbath? I can walk, dude. What's your problem? Who told
you you violated the law? Who told you you could take up
your bed? You know that. What song do you give that we
may see you and believe? What work do you perform? And
look at the argument. They go back to Moses in the
Old Testament, the Exodus account. You know that? In Genesis and
Exodus. Our fathers ate the manna in
the wilderness, as it is written. He gave them bread from heaven.
And listen to what Jesus says in verse 32. He says to them,
truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread
from heaven, but my Father who gives you true bread from heaven.
Are you seeing it? For the bread of God, listen
to that, God giving bread, the bread, the true bread of God,
is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
Now, that's not universalism. We're Baptists. We do not believe
that everybody's going to be saved. But what we do believe
is that in the Semitic writing of John, as well as what Jesus
is talking about in John chapter 3, is when we see the word world
in contrast to the Jews, it means that God's not a respecter of
persons. It doesn't mean the whole world is going to be saved.
Because if we did that, then why would we ever teach the Bible?
Just do what we want to do. We don't believe the whole world
is going to be saved. We believe those who believe in Christ are saved. And they said to Him, Sir, look
what I asked for. Give us this bread always. What
does Jesus say? I am the bread of life. I'm here. I'm before you, my table is set
and I'm here. Whoever comes to me shall not
hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Americans, we don't understand
that. We don't understand what it's
like to go weeks without food and water. Hunting for it. But I tell you, about two o'clock,
if we just stayed here and sat, we'd know a little bit of what
it was like to be hungry. And we'd be irritated. You get irritated
when you're hungry? I'm mean when I'm hungry. I don't
mean to be. How must it be? for those who
had not had food, who wanted to eat because they were physically
in need of food and Jesus refuses to give them any more because
they labored for what was temporal. He loved them and He gave them
what was loving rather than what was good in their eyes. I love you and I'm not giving
you any more bread and I'm not giving you any more fish. I'd
rather you starve to death and eat of me than live a healthy
life and go to destruction. me. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not
hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I say
to you..." He rebuked him. "...I say to you that you have
seen me, and yet you do not, you will not believe." Oh, look
at verse 37. Oh, this is going to rock your
world. All that the Father gives me
will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will
never cast out. I began to weep when we sang
that in song this morning. Never plucked me out of His hand.
I didn't put myself there, and nobody can pluck me out. The
Father put me in the hand of Christ. And I want the bread of life.
Do you? I want the bread of life. Jesus. All who the Father gives to me,
come to me. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. For
I have come down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will
of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who
sent me. That everyone who looks on the
Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will
raise Him up on the last day. There's so much I'm going to
talk about. And I skipped some. Back up.
Look at verse 28. I skipped it. I'm like, wait
a minute. Verse 28, then they said to him,
for the fatter is set as seal. Verse 28, then they said to him,
what must we do to be doing the works of God? See, the whole
idea of this dialogue is labor. They're working for something.
What are they working for? What are they working toward?
What are they trying to accomplish? What must we do to be doing the
works of God? Jesus answered him, verse 29,
This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has
sent. You know, that's a command. Believe in Him whom He has sent. You see, Jesus It goes on to say, and if you'll
skip down, verse 43, do not grumble. The Jews began to grumble. Verse
44, it said, no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent
Him draws him, and I will raise him up. Look at verse 47, truly, I said,
whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.
Look at verse 49, your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness
and they died. Do you see the relationship?
When we labor for anything but Christ, it's a dead work. Faith without works is dead. And anything that is done outside
of faith is sin. Jesus says in verse 50, this
is the bread that came down from heaven, so that one may eat of
it and not die. He's already said, I'm the bread
of life. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If
anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread
that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The
Jews then disputed, saying, how can this man give us flesh to
eat? And Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat
of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have
no life in you. And what happened to unbelievers
that day is they were confused and frustrated and they didn't
want to hear anymore. And they left. In verse 60, when they heard
these things, there's so much here. It actually took me about
a year to preach through chapter 6. Many of the disciples heard it. This
is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? Many of
them left. And the disciples said, who can listen to this?
This is hard teaching. You know why? Because it's truth. Christ didn't come to bring peace.
As a matter of fact, out of his own mouth, he says, I did not
come to bring peace, but a sword. He says, I will pit father against
daughter, and mother against son. I will divide nations. I
did not come to bring peace on earth, but my kingdom will come. And it is a kingdom of peace.
A kingdom of priests. Not those who labored for all
the world, and who labored for all the religion, who labored
for all the church ministry, but those who labored for me.
Not in my name, but out of affection for me. People seek Jesus for what He's
done, church. The table is set. Are you seeking
Christ for what He can do for you? Is your motivation to come
to spiritual things out of a fear of hell? Hell ought to scare
us. God's judgment ought to scare
us. But God's grace ought to break us. God's judgment turns
the hardest of man into a repentant heart, but God's grace allows
that repentance to flee if it's not true. God raised Pharaoh
up before the world began that he might judge him and find him
worthy of being a vessel of destruction. And God put judgment on Pharaoh,
and Pharaoh then relented and said, I'll repent and here you
can leave. But as soon as God took the plagues away, Pharaoh
changed his heart. Because the heart of man is inherently
wicked. It is sinful. It is deceitful
among all things, the Scripture says. It cannot be trusted. Don't
ever listen to a man of God who tells you to trust your heart.
He's a liar with a double tongue. Don't ever listen to anyone who
teaches you, thus saith the Lord, to go with your instincts. The
instincts of humanity is to destroy, to be greedy, to be selfish.
But we who are born again now have a heart that is tuned to
holiness. Jesus rebuked these people for
seeking Him in that manner. For seeking the bread that dies. The bread that perishes. Jesus
revealed their hearts. And He says, you see Me, but
yet you do not believe. He's saying, you sit at My table
and the feast is before you, but you look at it and you turn
your nose up like the rich young ruler that we see in the Gospel
of Mark and Matthew. We see Him. And he sought after
Jesus. He loved the Word of God, the
Law. And he knelt down before Him.
He called Him Good Master. Exercised faith in knowing that
Christ was divine. And yet, he loved the Word more
than Christ. When he balanced out the riches
of his life and the prestige and the honor of his name against
this man who stood there homeless with twelve others, there's no
way I'm giving up all this for you. Jesus reveals our hearts. This
text reveals your heart today, church. I'm telling you, if you're
a Christian this morning, you are troubled but rejoiced. You're troubled because you've
been confronted. Are you confronted by your sin
every day? You better be. Repentance is not a point in
history, but a present reality. Belief is not a point in history.
As a matter of fact, it's a terrible thing, but the English translations
of Greek is hard. It's very difficult to get...
I mean, some of it's plain as day, but on simple little things
like this, the term believe and believed is always a future tense
in the Greek when it talks about salvation. And always, continually,
forever believing. And believing always comes with
the actions overflowing from affections that are stored deep
down inside the flesh. From the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaks, and in the abundance of the love and the
passion of the world, where the treasure is, there your heart
is also. And where your treasure is, is where you put your time,
it's where you put your mind, it's where you put your treasure.
It's where you put your life. Your life centers around it.
Are you centered around Christ? And if you're not, the only hope
you have is God's grace. That Christ is the bread of life.
Repent and believe the Gospel. Nowhere ever in the Scripture
does Jesus come and beg anybody to come to faith. He commands
all men to repent and believe. He demands it. He commands it
because He can. He is God. He says, you will repent or you
will perish. See, that's not the picture of
the Jesus that we've been perpetrating and proposing and selling and
purveying all throughout American church. But the Jesus of the
Bible who came to be the Lamb of God to take away the sins
of all who believe, We'll be the same Jesus who we see in
Revelation, who comes with a sword of fury, who smashes the enemies
of God under His feet, and He will pour out the fullness of
the cup of wrath on us if we are not His children. And we
as the church will stand and worship God in pure serenity
as this takes place. And there will be not a tear
in our eyes, but there will be song and worship in our hearts. Is that the Jesus that you know?
Because if it's not, that's not the Jesus of the Bible. How good is it to feed someone
bread, and then the next day feed them bread again? We ought
to feed the hungry. We're commanded to have pity
on those who need it. But when it comes to having pity
on people who need it, Why don't we feed them something perishable
and never feed them the truth of the gospel? And here's the
truth of the gospel. Here's one of the biggest lies you've ever
heard. God loves you and has a plan for your life. You know
what the plan is for most of humanity? That God's going to
put them in hell for all of eternity. How does that sound? That's the
truth. Jesus says, blood is the way
that leads to destruction, leads to damnation. Now is the gate
that leads to righteousness. Few will find it. Are you part
of the few or are you part of the many walking through? Comfortable. Are you comfortable this morning?
I pray you're not comfortable, Church. Coming to church is not
a game. It's not a civic duty. We're standing in the ear of
the voice of God and hearing His Word as powerful as it was
the day it was spoken from the vocal cords of God, the man,
Jesus, the Christ. Is it affecting you? We labor for the food that perishes
when we think that the programs of the church will bring people
to Christ's church. You have to understand, I've
been on pastoral staff of two mega churches. We've baptized one
year 300 people. And I can run a program and I
can develop things that will draw thousands. And if it doesn't
work, add a monetary cash prize to a youth program, watch them
come. It's useless. And not only is
it useless, and bringing people to Christ, it's an affront to
God. The food that perishes in the
body of Christ is thinking these programs will bring people to Christ.
It'll bring them to us. Are we discipling them into Christians?
And we can't even disciple them into Christians. We disciple
them as Christians. And when they reject the truth and they leave, don't
try to get them back because they hate Christ. You see the
point? Let them go. Pray for them. Go to their house
and disciple them there. You can have as many classes
as you want. But unless you're teaching the Word of God to someone
personally, you're not being obedient. We labor for the food that perishes
when we think that God needs us. What am I going to do for God
today? How about you believe in worship? That's the work of God, that
you believe in the one who made us sin. Believing means forever
and every day repenting and trusting in Christ alone. Belief. We're loaded for the food that
perishes in the body of Christ when we think that we can do
something that God is unable or unwilling to do. All who come
to me, I will never cast out. No one can come to me unless
the Father draws him. And all that the Father gives,
come and believe. Has the Father given you to the
Son today? Are you a born-again believer? Can you express faith
in Jesus Christ, not just with your mouth and an emotional idea,
taking down the lights, playing some songs, doing some things,
and you feel like it's God, and then Monday it's sort of like,
yeah, that was cool. Friends, when you come to faith
in Christ, your life will change today. Usually, from the world's
perspective, for the worse. Because you've got so many idols
sitting in front of you at home, you have to get rid of them.
Not because you have to, but because you want to. So when
you get married, you've got to give the little black book a
toss, men. You know, I enjoy going out on
dates with that girl, but maybe I'll store her number, just in
case. My wife won't care. Ask her. Oh, she'll care. And you and
that piece of paper will be covered up on the sidewalk. Or the black
bear, whatever it's on. You see the point? We have a
relationship with Christ. Our relationship with the world
and with each other is different. Immediately. Immediately. And it's never perfect. It's
always a battle. It's always a struggle. And the
closer we are with God, the poorer we will be, and the sicker we
might be, and the more hated we will be. I'll tell you, I
have been banned from churches for preaching this very message.
Not the same sermon, but this very truth, the gospel. And I've
had deacon boards ban me from the property that if they see
me, they'll call the police. You came here and you stirred my
people up. Now they're all wanting to grow in their faith and read
the Bible and pray! Heaven forbid! It's not me, it's
God's Word. We labor for the food that perishes
when we think that we're in tune with being a believer. When we live as the world lives.
We think that we're okay with God because of something that
we've done. We labor for the food that perishes. When we think
that we're empowered in our role and our ministry, and thus it
makes us somebody. God doesn't need us. He will
use those who love Him and who are obedient to Him. And when
we decide to be disobedient, we will pay the consequences.
If we're His children, we will be disciplined unto repentance,
that we are restored. If we're not His children, we'll
be cast away. We labor for the numbers rather than worshipers.
I'd rather have a full house, sometimes people say. You know
what? I'd rather have five worshipers
than 500 people. Because I tell you, who doesn't
understand preaching? And that's the world. The world doesn't
understand the Word of God. Those who are not in love with
Christ, changed by His grace, bought again, bought and born
again by the blood of Christ, redeemed He who had no sin became
sin that we might become the righteousness of God. You just
don't get in a name tag, you get in a new nature. You understand
that? The world doesn't understand preaching. That's why we have
to change it and make it appealing. What's appealing about eating
the flesh of Jesus? What's appealing about hating your mother and
father? What's appealing about sacrificing your children on
an altar? What's appealing? about living in holiness. You
know, I used to say, and still do, holy is a four-letter word
in the church, but yet is the intrinsic worth of God Himself.
We labor for the food that perishes. When we labor for what makes
us feel good. When we labor for preaching that give us some tools
to live by rather than worship with. The purpose of preaching is to
affect the soul today, not plant some resources tomorrow. It's
food. Preaching is to confront every
aspect of our nature. Every aspect of our nature that
is not dead to sin. And friends, it should help us
be discriminating against the flesh. We labor for the food
that perishes when we labor to assimilate people who hate Jesus. Well, how does that work? Well,
just answer these questions in your own heart. Why do so many people
fall away from the church? Because you can't fall away for
what you are a part of if you're really a part of it. What does
the Scripture say in two different places? They were not of us,
therefore they left. So it could be that somebody
doesn't love Jesus. It could be in some churches, and I would say
in most churches, that sometimes people leave because they are
in love with Jesus and can't find Him. Can't find Him in the preaching,
can't find Him in the congregation. You'll find a lot of good moral
people where Jesus came to save His children from their morality. As to the question, why do so
many people not grow in their faith? That's ridiculous. You know, we've got some doctors
in the house, but if your child didn't gain any weight for three
years, You take it. Actually, in a couple
of months, it just started looking emaciated. You take that shot
at the doctor and they say, well, you haven't. What is he eating?
Oh, he's supposed to eat. I didn't know it was my first
baby. I just thought he had enough.
The first nursing. I thought the hospital gave him
what he needed to go. Just get a job, boy. Feed yourself. Not want to change that diaper
brand, though. It's not too appealing. You see how silly? It's silly. But
that's the way we treat our faith. That's the way we treat people
in the church. Just come on in and we'll just plug them in somewhere
and then they'll grow. No, they won't. If they don't
love Christ, they won't grow. If they do love Christ, they'll
bang on your door to be disciples. Why are so many members in the
church? Why are they apathetic towards
spiritual things? Why is it when you come to a
business meeting in the church, nobody has a Bible? Business meetings in my church,
if people come in there and talk about anything but the gospel
for the first hour and a half, they're gone. They've lost their
position in leadership. That is the business of the church.
Christ! Yep, you still got to pay the
bills, you still have to do the things, you still have to get
the lights on, you still have to manage and administrate. But friends,
deacons meetings, you know what diakonos means, doulos in the
Greek? It means slave! Sold out on slave! Are y'all deacons? Are you slaves? To Christ and then to the pastor
and then to the church body? What should we be doing? See,
when we labor for all these things in closing, what we do is we
labor for a perishing food. A perishing life, a perishing
church, a perishing ministry, a perishing family, a perishing
career, a perishing retirement, a perishing hope, a perishing
dream, a perishing pride, a self-proclaimed God status that will usher us
into the judgment of a holy God who will joyfully and rightly
execute His judgment against us. And we will have no say,
but Romans says we will be shut up and that all mouths will be
shut before Him as He rightly puts forth a deserving hand of
destruction. So what are we laboring for? Friends, we ought to labor
for righteousness. We ought to see sin in our lives
and run from it as far as we can. We ought to trip over the
grace of God running into the folds of His love, who is Christ. We ought to pursue the Word of
God. If you are not in the Word of God several times a day, you
are not worshiping God this morning. You are worshipping some aroma
of a meal that you smelled cooked in that kitchen months ago. Maybe
the hot dogs from Halloween. That's what you're smelling.
That's what you're worshipping. You're not worshipping a new and fresh
moment with the Savior of your soul. The Word of God is imperative
to worship. The Word of God is the source
of life. The Word of God is the source
of grace. And grace saves and grace sustains. When I'm hungry in the flesh
and angry in the soul, then the Word of God keeps me from sin. And we labor for the bread of
life, and we labor for righteousness, and we labor for the Word of
God for those purposes, and we labor for the pursuit of the
glory of God. God, friends, is satisfied with
Himself. The question is, are you satisfied
with Him? If all you had tomorrow was Christ and your Bible, is
that enough? Well, all of us would have to
say, not really. Then what are we doing? Do we
recognize that? And then we go, whoa, whoa, it's
me. God, if it weren't for Your grace, I'd see idols when I didn't
see them yesterday. I see them today. And if it weren't
for Your grace, if it weren't for Your salvation of my soul
apart from me, I would never, ever have hope. But because of
Your love, I have hope. Now, I can worship You. You are
an amazing God. You saved me even in the middle
of idolatry and wickedness as I see sin now that have been
there for years and I didn't even know it existed. You saved
me from that. Thank You, God. Is this the last sermon that
you'll ever hear? Are you living in the last era
of your day? Are you breathing the last series
of breath? of your existence, you will never
know. Repent and then believe the gospel. When we labor for
the food that perishes, church, we die starving without bellies
full of yesterday's meal. When we labor for the food that
perishes, we reject the true gospel and thus bring judgment
to ourselves and to the people around us. When we labor for
the food that perishes, we hold to man's ways. We put our hope
in our pastors, in our leaders, in our government. We stare down the face of culture
and wonder how we are going to do anything to bring life to
them. And then we do everything but what Christ has commanded
us to do to reach them. See, the Great Commission was
never, never, never, never filled. and a mass scraping of a people
to attend anything. The Great Commission is fulfilled
in individual obedience. And it doesn't say, go get people
to receive Jesus. It says, teach them to obey Him.
Jesus says that. Do you realize that? As evangelicals,
Southern Baptists since the 1600s, being a Baptist, the Great Commission
is to teach people to obey the Scripture. That's it. Primarily and first, repent and
believe the gospel every day of your life. When we are born again, we, His
children, we hunger for Him. We strive for Him. We fight.
for His glory. We rest in His grace. We desire
Him. We devour our time. We devour
the Word of God. We live and we long to die for
His glory as we live for His glory. See, this meal, who is
Jesus the Christ, the feast on which God put His seal, His approval,
His pleasure, His joy is before every one of us this morning.
Some of us cannot see it, though we sit at the table of His Word.
Some of us are blinded to it. We see this great meal and we
want another bread. We want to hurry up so we can
go to lunch. We want to hurry up so we can get our hunting
in this afternoon. That's more important than Christ. We've got a class to do. We've
got this to do. We've got that to do. And yet, I give you 45
minutes a week, God, but that's it. We sit at a table and all we
see is a place where we want bread, we want something to touch
with our hands, when the fullness of Christ, the treasure of God,
is right before our eyes. Some of you today will be born
again as you've heard this sermon. You've come to faith. You see
for the first time. the reality of who Christ is
and what He has accomplished on your behalf. Christ did not
die on the cross to make salvation possible. He died to make it
certain. I preach that in Mother's Day
of this year here. Some of you will be born again.
Some of you will be hardened. And you cannot wait to leave. Some of you who are born again
will rejoice. as you're reminded of the supreme,
satisfying, all-holy treasure who is Jesus. Jesus is not taking
us to a place. He is the place. He is the kingdom
of heaven. He is eternal life. He is the
joy. He is the bread. He is the truth. He is the living water. He is
the sufficient King. He is the all-powerful God. He's
not taking us to any place or anything. He's bringing us to
Himself. And if you aren't in love with
the bread of life, you are not in love with eternal life. You
are not in love with heaven. And you are not in love with
the blessings of grace. The only work that we are to
be doing is believing through faith. The ultimate end,
that if we are believing, we will see Jesus for the treasure
that He is, and we will be satisfied in Christ. Let's pray. Father, there's nothing any of
us can say at this point. Nothing that's going to change
the heart of any person in here. You have already said it fully
and completely. Christ is the bread of life and
all who come and drink and eat forever will have joy and life
in Him. And so, Lord, Save your people. Bring them out of darkness into
light. Bring worship fresh in the hearts of your children.
Convict of sin. That's our prayer this morning. So Lord, as we close our time
today, may those who are called by Your Holy Spirit, may they
begin to live a life fully hungry. for righteousness. We pray this
in Jesus name. Amen. An invitation today is
going to be a lot different. I do things differently because
I'm weird. But we'll stand and sing this song as a praise offering
to God from our hearts, not just our lips. And my prayer for you
is if you need to talk to me, if you want to talk about what's
been said, you have questions, concerns, after service, I'll
stand right over here. And I'll be there for anybody
who wants to talk for as long as you want to talk. So let us
stand and worship. I'll give the service over to
you, man. God bless you.