Truth That Changes Lives

Here is the transcript for Truth That Changes Lives, episode John 6:32-58, Part 2.

JP Jones: Jesus says that believing in him means total surrender and total identification with him.

Greg: Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Read the Red. Let's listen in as JP gives us part two of John 6:32-58.

JP Jones: Do you want to eat of the bread of life? Do you want to have the full assurance in your heart that you have eternal life? Then believe in Jesus Christ, embrace Jesus Christ, and depend on Jesus Christ every day because he's the bread of life. Just like the manna they had to depend on God for every day, depend on the bread of life today.

Tomorrow, get up and depend on the bread of life. The next day, get up and depend on the bread of life. The bread of life, Jesus Christ, will guarantee your eternity with God because he's the bread of life who's come down out of heaven. If we come to him, he will give us eternal life, and he'll raise us up on the last day.

This teaching now creates a controversy because in any crowd, there are people who are seeking after God sincerely, and there are people who are just there to argue, get into religious discussion, and just be posers. By the way, that's what we have to decide. Are we real believers, or are we just posers? Are we spiritual posers?

In the crowds that Jesus attracted, there were true disciples and then there were spiritual posers. The posers always had conflict with Jesus, got into arguments with Jesus, and got into arguments with one another. It says here in verse 41, "At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.'

They said, 'Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, "I came down from heaven"?' 'Stop grumbling among yourselves,' Jesus answered. 'No one can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It's written in the prophets, "They will all be taught by God."

Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died.

But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world.' Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?'

Jesus said to them, 'I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.'" I told you, it's a difficult teaching, even more difficult to put into practice.

Here's what I think Jesus is saying. Believing in Jesus means total surrender and total identification with Jesus. Jesus is not a cannibal, and he's not teaching cannibalism. But if you were with us a couple of weeks ago when we looked at the parables of Jesus, we saw in Mark chapter four and Matthew chapter 13 that one of the reasons Jesus spoke in parables was to simplify and clarify truth to authentic seekers, but to actually obscure truth from people who had hard hearts and hidden agendas.

When Jesus gave analogies, those whose hearts were humble and pure and were really looking to God, the analogies actually made it more understandable. But to those who were just looking for a religious argument, the analogies bugged them, aggravated them, and made them want to get into theological controversy, which Jesus never engaged in.

Now Jesus is speaking to a group of people. You’ve got to put it all in context. He performs this miracle. He feeds thousands of people, and so the crowd followed him. Within that crowd, there were people who were coming to Jesus for all kinds of reasons. It didn't matter. They were there.

He says, "Don't work for the food that perishes; work for the food that gives eternal life. Believe on him who sent me." Then he says, "I'm the bread of life. I'm the one who can satisfy your deepest longings. I'm the one who can forgive your sins and give you the certainty of a relationship with God. If you'll believe in me, I will raise you up on the last day."

Some of those people who heard that teaching said, "Wait, wait, wait, time out. How can he say he’s the bread of life?" Jesus said, "Yeah, not only that, but you’ve got to eat my flesh and drink my blood." Whoa, whoa, whoa. What in the world are you talking about? Eat your flesh? Then they start arguing not only with Jesus, they start arguing among themselves.

It only exposed their hearts because what Jesus was really talking about was, "Listen, this is not just easy believism. This is not just intellectual assent. I'm not just saying that you acknowledge that I'm an historical person and I'm existing out here preaching." Jesus is not just saying that we go, "Oh, what a wonderful guy Jesus Christ was, a real spiritual guru."

No, Jesus is saying this gift of eternal life, this experience where I'm the bread of life and I nourish you every day, means you have a real relationship with a real person. Jesus is not just an abstract theological concept that we try to wrestle with and figure out academically. Jesus is a real person that we enter into relationship with, and not just surface relationship, but the deepest personal relationship we will ever have in our life.

Jesus says it's like you're eating my flesh and you're drinking my blood. You're fully communing with me. You're fully identifying yourself with me. You're fully in connected relationship with me. When Jesus said that, that caused some to long for that, to understand that, to experience more of that, and it caused others just to argue with him.

Right now, what is it causing with you? Check your heart, check your motivation. Is it creating a deeper longing for what Jesus is offering, for who Jesus is, a deeper desire for that kind of experience with Jesus, or is it causing you to backpedal and put up defenses and want to get into some kind of argument with me?

Jesus says that believing in him means total surrender and total identification with him because he's a real person. Now, the options are we respond to what Jesus says and we eat his flesh and drink his blood. Again, not literally, but figuratively, and we fully surrender to him.

We surrender our whole lives to him and we open up our whole hearts to him and we enter into a fellowship with him that is meaningful today, tomorrow, and for all eternity. Or, in one way or another, we reject him. We can reject him actively, we can reject him passively, or we can reject him passive-aggressively.

What are you talking about? Actively, there are people who just say, "I don't believe that. I don't buy into it at all. I reject that." I was watching a video this past week of a scholar who has devoted his academic scholarship to trying to say that the Bible isn't true, that Christianity isn't true, and he wants to debate and speak to anybody to try to represent that.

Why? Because he's actively rejecting Jesus. But most people do it passively. Most people do it passively, like, "Well, I'll think about that. If that works for you, that's great." Or they do it passively even in church. Not everybody who is in a church is a real follower of Jesus Christ.

On purpose, we want to be a church that engages with this community. We pray for the fact that every week you would invite your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, and seekers and people would be here. But sometimes there are people who aren't even seekers. They're just here because they're religious people.

In any given church, some people just feel like they should go to church. There are other people who feel like there are certain things about Christianity they like and they want to be around Christian people. There are other people who are just posers and they're predators and they're fakes, but they just don't want to come out and be honest about it.

Here's this crowd of people. Jesus is engaged in talking with them, and his teaching, rather than uniting, is actually dividing. It's actually dividing. In fact, Jesus says in verse 53, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate the manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever." He said this while teaching in the synagogues at Capernaum. On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they're life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe."

For Jesus had known from the very beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him." From this time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

Fourth observation: Jesus's teaching separates true disciples from pseudo-followers. You see, some of Jesus's teachings are difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to follow. Jesus speaks in metaphors and analogies and parables to expose the motives of people's hearts.

Jesus always puts the responsibility back on us, doesn't he? He always teaches in such a way that we're left with this challenge. The level of intimacy I have with God is up to me because God in grace reaches out to me, God in truth shares with me, and I either receive that and respond or I reject it.

So Jesus says, "Here's this teaching." Now, what I find about this is very interesting because the way this discussion unfolds is different than I think the way we think it should unfold or the way some of the discussions we have with people unfold. He says he’s the bread of life.

They take issue with that and want to get into an engagement with him. He says, "You think that's hard to understand? Then you’ve got to eat my flesh and drink my blood." Then they really begin to argue. It says that they grumble and argue. Then he says, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part of me."

Then they argue among themselves, and then they say, "This is a difficult teaching. We can't get it." They withdraw, and he doesn't go running after them. What I think is interesting about that is I think the way I would think Jesus would have this conversation would say, "I'm the bread of life that comes out of heaven."

They start arguing with him and arguing among themselves. He goes, "Wait, wait, time out. Bad illustration. What I meant to say is I'm the only way that you can really experience God. Or let me see if I can unpack this even clearer for you, or let me see if I could explain it in such a way that you really get it because I need you to get it."

No, when they start arguing with him, he makes it even more difficult. When they say they're going to leave, he says, "Bye." That doesn't sound like what I think of what Jesus would do. Well, see, here's the point. Jesus knew people's hearts. Jesus knew those who were really seeking him and those who weren't.

Jesus laid out the truth to draw people, yes, but also to expose those whose hearts were hard, who wouldn't respond to him no matter what he said or what he did. That's why when you look at all of the gospels and the interactions of Jesus with people, he didn't answer everybody's question because Jesus knew the motivation behind the question.

The people that are being described in this passage are those whose hearts were hard. The difficulty of the teaching was because they had a hard heart, so they couldn't receive it. Jesus put the ownership of that choice on them. He didn't send them away; they chose to go away. But not all of them.

That's why the teaching of Jesus separates true disciples from pseudo-followers. Jesus said, "My words are life. It's the Spirit who gives life." Paul says over in First Corinthians chapter two that the man without the Spirit does not understand the things of the Spirit of God.

He cannot understand them because they're spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual discerns all things because he has the mind of Christ. In other words, the Holy Spirit speaks to us spiritual truth, and people who are spiritual, people who are open, people who have surrendered their lives to Christ, they understand it and they get it.

But people whose hearts are hard, it just seems foolish to them. So in this crowd, there are true disciples and there are pseudo-followers. In any crowd of people, at a Billy Graham crusade, at a Harvest Crusade, at a church service, in any given crowd, there are true disciples, there are seekers, and there are pseudo-followers.

Every one of us here is in one of those groups. Some of us are true disciples, some of us are really interested seekers, and some of us are just pseudo-followers. Pseudo-followers get bugged at the hard teachings of Jesus. Disciples get it and want to live it out and grow in it.

Seekers are compelled to want to know more. But pseudo-followers just get bugged and want to argue, and then when the truth is exposed, they want to leave. Not every person in a gathering is a true disciple. Some are just pseudo-followers. This past year, I was invited by some friends here to attend a USC football game.

I went to the USC football game. I was surrounded by USC fans. I love football, so I was engaged in the game. They were playing Syracuse, a team I could care less about. So I was cheering for USC football. You’d have thought that I was a true disciple.

But let me tell you, when it comes to USC football, I am a pseudo-follower. Because somewhere under this skin is blue and gold. I am a Bruin fan. Would I go to a USC football game? You bet. Would I cheer at a USC football game? You bet. Do I admire certain USC football players? Oh yeah.

But I'm not a true disciple. There are people who come to church who admire Jesus, who love the worship, who enjoy the pastor, who like the teaching, who have certain Christian values, but they're not real disciples because they've never come to Jesus to eat his flesh and drink his blood.

That's what Jesus says. It's absolute surrender. It's total commitment. When we contemplate that, we either are all in or we in some way backpedal. One last thing that Jesus says as some of these disciples are leaving, verse 67, "You do not want to leave too?" Jesus says.

Simon Peter answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." Then Jesus replied, "Have I not chosen you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil." He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who though one of the twelve was later to betray him.

Jesus gives this hard teaching. Some of them say, "It's too hard," and they leave. He looks at the twelve and he goes, "Are you guys going to go too?" Peter says, "Where else can we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. You're the only deal. I'm all in." Here's the point.

We need in our spiritual journeys as true disciples—I'm speaking to true disciples now—we need times where we reevaluate and re-up on our commitment to Jesus Christ. We need it. Peter needed that. Peter needed to say, "I've got nowhere else to go. I'm only following you, Jesus."

He said that with conviction because he had the intellectual knowledge, because he had the personal experience of being with Jesus, and because his faith was put to the test and he goes, "I've got nowhere else to go. It's only you, Jesus." We need that as followers of Jesus Christ.

We need times to reevaluate our—do I really believe this? Am I really—do I really believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? Do I really believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins? Do I really believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Do I really believe that heaven is real?

Do I really believe that the word of God is true? Do I really believe that the only way is to be a follower of Jesus Christ? Do I really believe that? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I'm all in. I've got nowhere else to go. So here's the bottom line before we leave here, and I've kept you a little bit overtime, so just let me lay this out.

There are only two choices to be made. If you're not yet a true disciple, if you're here as a seeker or a pseudo-follower, eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood. Come to Jesus Christ for your salvation. Believe in Christ alone because he offers eternal life.

He's the bread of life who will satisfy your soul today, tomorrow, and all eternity. Give your life to Christ. If you're here today and you are a true disciple, re-up. Say, "I'm all in. That was the best decision I ever made in my life and I'm not going back on it.

In fact, I'm living it out today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life. I'm following after Jesus Christ. I've got nowhere else to go. I've got nowhere else to go."

Greg: What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5.

Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, Facing Goliath.

Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're in a series called Read the Red. We're looking at the teachings of Jesus, and we're looking in this segment on John chapter six where Jesus teaches to the truth that he's the bread of life. It's one of these passages where Jesus lays out his gospel so clearly.

It's when we believe in Jesus Christ that we receive the gift of eternal life. This is the most powerful message that has ever been revealed. It's the message of the gospel, the message of hope, the message of salvation, the message of forgiveness. Jesus says that he's the bread of life that has come down from heaven.

In other words, he's the only one who can satisfy the deepest needs of our heart, the deepest needs of our soul. When we believe in him, he not only gives us that deep soul satisfaction, he gives us the assurance of forgiveness, the assurance of eternal life, and he promises that he's going to raise us up on the last day.

Believing in Jesus Christ is the most important decision of life, more important than anything else. Whatever decisions you've ever made in your life, the most important one is believing in Jesus Christ and committing yourself to Jesus Christ. Now Jesus unpacks in this passage what it means to really believe in him.

It's not just intellectual assent. In other words, it's not just an acknowledgment that Jesus lived, that Jesus died, and, "Oh, I guess the Bible says he rose from the dead, so I guess he did that too." No, it's not intellectualization. It's a personal commitment.

In fact, Jesus says you’ve got to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Now, let me just assure you, Jesus was not speaking about being some kind of cannibal. He's talking about the most intimate partaking of life. In other words, believing in Christ is full identification with Christ, full surrender to Christ, full commitment to Christ.

Whatever your spiritual response to Jesus has been, what Jesus is calling upon you to do is to fully engage with him. Believe in him in mind, in heart, in will; fully embrace him and surrender your entire life to him. That's what Christ is calling us to as his followers, as his disciples.

Believing in Jesus as the bread of life means to totally surrender our life to him. Would you be willing to do that? Why don't you share that with God right now in prayer? "Lord Jesus, I surrender my entire life to you. I believe in you. I want to follow you.

I accept your forgiveness. I receive your salvation. I'm following you, Jesus, as the bread of life. In Jesus' name, Amen."

Greg: We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or call us at 949-916-0250.

On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.