[Transcript represents full sermon's text]

       Continuing today in Jesus’ conversation with the Jews in the synagogue in Capernaum. John chapter 6, beginning in verse 41: “So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day” (ESV).

       The immediate action on the part of the Jews is to try to discredit Jesus' claim of coming down from Heaven, his claim of being the Son of God in fact by trying to say they are aware of who his earthly parents are. Since they believe they know that his human father was Joseph, they think that he couldn’t possibly have come down from Heaven. In John chapter 8, it will carry along all the way to the point of an insult to his face in order to try to back up their claim. That aspect will be contemplated when reach that spot in the text. No honest, sincere attempt to understand who Jesus was, was being displayed by the Jews. We know that because Jesus responds to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves.” “Do not grumble among yourselves.” Sounds like they are trying to come up with a defense against him, or at least are arguing among themselves about it. Perhaps there are some who believe, and some who do not. Jesus brings up the famous phrase as pertains to this matter, when he says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” This is the famous phrase used by proponents of Calvinism to support their position that people are elected to salvation by God. Yet, the understanding that God decides, and the people have no decision, doesn’t seem to line up with his saying “Do not grumble among yourselves.” If Jesus was thinking in a Calvinistic way, wouldn’t he have simply said, “You are grumbling among yourselves because no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him”? The mere fact that he tells them not to do that suggests that have a free choice, and can choose otherwise.

       Verse 45: “It is written in the Prophets, And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life” (ESV).

       This was discussed last week, how individuals went to the Father first, and then, in essence, the Father points them to the Son. That’s the way it worked in the Old Testament, and technically speaking, we are still in the Old Testament in this passage in John chapter 6. That’s why Jesus speaks of the Father first. One is with the Father first, and then comes to the Son. Only those actually with the Father are those who actually go to the Son. Many, many of these Jews think that they know the Father. This, as afore to discussed, ties into the hope in their belief in their connection to Moses, their connection to their seeming obedience to the Jewish Law. The only Person, though, who has physically seen the Father is God the Son. He was with the Father before he came to the earth. You remember. John told us, in John chapter 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (ESV). That speech almost sounds as if it were Jesus talking. Who knows? Maybe John took Jesus’ words to create that first part of John chapter 1. Perhaps those are Words developed from words Jesus spoke. Anyway, notice in the last sentence in verse 47 of John 6 that it is the one who “believes” that gains eternal life. It’s not the one who automatically is drawn to the Father without any kind of choice in the matter, as if God has pre-selected the person. If that were the flow of the matter, it would mean there’s no free-will. On the contrary, it’s the one who willingly chooses to “believe” that ends up obtaining that eternal life.

       Jesus continues, now in verse 48: “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 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” (ESV).

       This is the famous passage where the understanding comes, and this for the Eastern Orthodox believers, that the Communion, when administered, truly becomes Jesus’ real blood and real flesh. These believers really think that when they take that Communion, that’s what they are eating. We touched upon this a little bit last week, and the Anabaptists and Evangelicals certainly believe that that is not actually the case. That the Communion doesn’t actually become Jesus’ real body. A few things can be noted as regards this fact. For one, if it did actually become Jesus’ real body, then why did the those Old Testament believers die? After all, that bread from Moses was a foreshadow of what was to come. Certainly it would have beget them some physical benefit. This, of course, leads to the more important point that Jesus says whoever eats of his flesh won’t truly die, that the person will live forever. We understand this part certainly not to be literal in that a person, once taking the Communion, will live forever and not die. Rather, we understand this in the representative sense, in that the saying represents that even though a person will in fact die physically one day, that the person will still live forever afterwards in Heaven and then in the New World. Since we easily comprehend that Jesus wasn’t speaking literally on the matter, why is there confusion regarding his flesh. Certainly he wasn’t speaking literally about that part either, but that was representative as well. No reason exists whatsoever to credit the elements within the Communion, the bread and the cup, as actually being Jesus’ real body. It’s the heart—remember—the heart that counts, and not the physical-ness of the elements.

       Yet, really, all of this is besides the point since the actual point Jesus is trying to make is that anyone who comes to him truly gains eternal life. That’s the more important part. These Jews in the conversation with him were only concerned as pertains to the material, as pertains to obtaining physical, real bread that would cause them to live forever in their current state. That’s a very worldly outlook. Sounds almost like they were New Agers. Wanting to live forever in their current bodies. Not sure why anyone would want to do that, with the inborn sin-nature and all. Who would want to live forever with their sin-nature? That’s why God, you remember this, that’s why God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and put the angel there with the flaming sword all the way up to the Flood of Noah. That angel stood there day after day, guarding that garden. That’s due to the fact that God didn’t want Adam and Eve to bite into the fruit from the other tree, the Tree of Life, which would cause them to live forever in their fallen state. That would have been a really bad day, a really bad day. A bite into that fruit, and that action would have been irreversible. It’s hard to say what God would have done at that moment. And they could have bitten into it. That’s why they were driven out of the Garden and the angel placed there. It’s not that God, with foreknowledge, knew they wouldn’t. He had to get them out-of-there lest they did. Already they had proven they weren’t trustworthy, and it would have only been a matter of time.

       Let’s not miss that last sentence, where Jesus says, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world.” [F]or the life of the world.” Just another reason is presented as to why it’s blatantly obvious that Jesus died for the whole world, for anyone who freely chooses to believe, and not simply for a group called the elect. No sense could be made of it if, in reality, God elects certain individuals and then dies for the whole world. That would equated to wasted flesh and blood. The argument is often made in the reverse, that it’s actually wasted unless one subscribes to the idea that Jesus died only for the elect. But that’s not what the verse we just read says. If Jesus died only for an elect group of people, it should read something like “the bread that I will give for the life of those who believe.” Or, “[T]he bread that I will give for the life of those who the Father draws.” Obviously, it doesn’t read either one of those ways.

       This whole discourse reaches its conclusion. Verse 52: “The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum” (ESV).

       A particular detail stands out in the question from those standing by, and that’s the word “man.” They say, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” An attempt is being made to belittle Jesus in stating he is simply a man. No belief is present that he is really God, even though he’s just made that very clear. Let’s also note that Jesus used the plural words in his response, the plural words “feeds” and “drinks.” He said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood.” It’s a continual action, something that happens over and over again. It’s not a one-time deal. This is a foreshadowing of the Communion table, and that it will be a continual practice by the church. Some might think this means that salvation is more of a living thing, and that a person can actually lose that salvation if it’s not maintained. There certainly is debate for that. These folks would be primarily known as the Arminians (the opposite of the Calvinists). The speaker’s personal opinion, though, is that’s not possible. It appears best to believe that once saved, it’s an irreversible process. In point of fact Jesus says, “I will raise him up on the last day.” This very phrase shows us, covertly, that what he has been saying about eating his flesh and drinking his blood is not literal, since right before this he said that the person who did so would live forever. Now, Jesus is admitting that they will actually die. We know that because he says, “I will raise him up.” Sounds as if there’s going to be a death which occurs first. Yes indeed. All this ties into what Jesus was saying to the Samaritan women in John 4, when he talked about “living water.” She desired a drink of that water so she wouldn’t have to come to the well anymore. Of course, there was no such thing as a ‘physical, real’ living water. It was a metaphor.

       Verse 60: “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (ESV).

       It’s become a difficult moment of understanding that even Jesus’ own disciples are thinking about abandoning ship. We shouldn’t think this group of disciples only represents the ‘Twelve,’ but it likely represents all those who were there at the synagogue who believed in him. Unfortunately, no number of how many people that was is recorded for us. Interestingly, there was nothing to be offended by as, again, Jesus wasn’t even saying what a lot of them thought he was. He wasn’t talking about physically eating himself—about being a cannibal. We could ponder what would happen, for the text seems to imply it, if Jesus just aborted the whole project altogether, and instantly ascended to the Father. He’s asking them if that would be enough for them to believe, if the saw him going up in the sky. Of course, he’s not going to do this, and of course, this is another foreshadow of what is to come—that he is going to rise from the dead and that a few of them are going to see this specular site. But notice that he says “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all.” Again, this demonstrates that a person cannot believe without coming to the Son. One only believing in God, without the Son, doesn’t really know him. That is believing in the flesh. The Spirit draws a person to the Son so that he or she can gain that life. Remember, the Son and Spirit are One and the same, as Jesus will tell his disciples later here in John.

       And John notes for us, he notes that there are some who will continue in the group, to continue physically following Jesus, who really don’t know him (who really don’t know God). They are only following in a worldly sense, a non-spiritual sense. They want the hand-outs. They want to be part of the kingdom. We know the chief one of this group, Judas Iscariot. But there were more. It wasn’t just him. That’s what John tells us. John even informs us that Jesus understood that Judas wasn’t really believing at this point. Perhaps not early, or perhaps, but at least at this point he understands that. Perhaps enough observation and communication have made that clear, at least, to him. Let’s not forget that last sentence there, that seemingly smoking-gun for the case of Calvinism, where he says, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” Again, what he’s saying is that no one can come to the Son without being pointed there by the Father. It’s not that one can truly know the Father without the Son, as many Jews try to do even to this day, or that one can know the Son without the Father, at least, at this moment in time, in this context. All authority hadn’t been granted to Jesus yet. One knew the Father, and the Father pointed them to Jesus. If one tries to understand this verse in today’s context, out of that Old Testament dispensation, it is easy to see why it might be interpreted that God pre-selects or pre-elects certain individuals to come to the Son, but that’s reading the verse out of context to the time.

       Verse 66: “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him” (ESV).

       That’s what always seems to cause the disruption for people, the disruption that causes them to walk away from the truth, from being a Christian. This has been noticed over the years with several individuals. It appears that someone may initially come to Jesus, coming to seemingly saving faith in him, only to then fall away, say, approximately a year later. A lot of times, if not always, the root appears to be tied into something that they wanted, like a life circumstance to change, or something they hoped God would give them, if they followed Jesus. That seems to be the disparity. The problem is, is that they had chosen to follow God for the wrong reasons. The had chosen to follow in order to ‘get’ something, for God to help them with something. The conversion experience wasn’t genuine; they had an ulterior motive behind the whole thing. And it seems like usually it can take up to a year for this to manifest itself, at least in the American experience. When a person decides to keep following Jesus even when they don’t get something they want, or circumstances don’t go in the way they hoped, that’s when you know a person has truly been saved, has truly converted, has truly believed. A lot of times individuals have a misunderstanding of the character of God, wherein they think God is controlling all things, both good and bad, and that God could have done otherwise in a certain situation when he actually could not have. Any timeline based theology that basically says that God is the one behind all evil becomes problematic (one that says God has total control over evil which means that anything that happens is ultimately because he wanted it to happen for his glory or something like that).

       The example of Judas is present by John as being one who really wasn’t on the right side, who really wasn’t genuine. You see, it’s not that Judas just toward the end, when the events leading to the cross were going down, just suddenly had a change of heart and betrayed Jesus. That’s not truly the way it went. John is pointing out that there was a problem with Judas all along. Not like Benedict Arnold was it, to throw out a somewhat random example. Arnold was a patriot, felt slighted, and then he wasn’t. Judas, Judas never was—at least, for a long time he wasn’t. That became manifest to Jesus over time. God had told Jesus to call Judas, that much is clear. We don’t know what his heart was like at that moment, back at his calling. Yet, as Jesus observed Judas’ behavior, his heart, it became clear to him that he wasn’t with him and the other disciples for the right reasons. It seems likely he would have been hoping that Judas would change his heart, but at some one point it would become hardened likely to the point of no return. That’s when Satan would enter him. Judas was probably going along for the ride hoping that some day, at some future time, he would reign with Christ the King. Remember, the disciples believed Jesus was going to setup an earthly kingdom and reign on the throne. That’s what they thought was going to happen. Interestingly, they were right, at least in part. They were simply wrong with respect to the timeline. Also interesting is the fact that Judas would of, and could of, reigned with Christ in his kingdom, had he had the right heart. The Eleven are going to do that in the future, but now Judas isn’t going to be part of that.

       John chapter 7, verse 1: “After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him.”

       By understanding that the events preceding this occurred around the Passover feast, it would appear that now, being at the Feast of Booths, this would have been around six months later. Thus, we can presume some time has passed between chapters 6 and 7. That explains how and why the Jews had built up rage against him, so that he couldn’t even go into Judea. This is one of those moments, again, where if he had, he would have been killed, and the Gospel accounts would have been shorter. But more witnessing had to be done, more truth shared. There was still hope the Jews would overall accept the truth, that they would accept Christ as the Messiah. That’s likely what God was hoping. Anyway, Jesus is in Galilee with his family, remember, his brothers and sisters (probably), or half-brothers and half-sisters. And they are trying to encourage him to get back out into the field, to go spend time with those who did believe in him. For they said, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing.” Notice that they didn’t consider themselves his disciples; they made that distinction. It’s as if also they wanted to see some signs themselves. They wanted more evidence that he really was the Christ. We know Mary, the mother of them all, was a good, God-fearing mother. Yet, her children didn’t believe, at least, initially. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the most blessed woman ever to live didn’t even have her children believing? Mary faced struggles, big struggles, just like any other human being. Not only did it likely break her heart, but it certainly would of had to of broken Jesus’ as well.

       Let’s note Jesus’ reply to them. “Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee” (ESV).

       Jesus said, “My time has not yet come.” “My time has not yet come.” Does this mean that God had things laid out on a specific, day by day timetable, as if he was pre-ordaining everything? Well, let’s consider that. It’s more likely that God was waiting and waiting, waiting to see if it would be different this time, if they would actually respond to his own Son. Remember, the Apostle Peter will talk about this later, when he says, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, ESV). God had a time-table; there’s no doubt about that. It’s just that he was holding out, holding out hoping for something different. Sure, he knew the likelihood of it all. He knew and understood it was probable that the Jews would kill his only Son. Jesus even alludes to this in his parables, remember? But God also is the God of hope (see Romans 15:13). God respects the fact that individuals have free-will, and that they can make free choices. Perhaps they will choose differently. Perhaps the Millennial Kingdom can come about without the crucifixion? Is that possible? We are getting into things here that we really do not understand. Just remember the truth that anyone can change; anyone at any moment can make the choice to choose differently. There isn’t a predetermined fate for everyone. You have free-will, and you can choose. That’s what God thinks, and that’s what he hopes for.

       Then Jesus notes, “The world cannot hate you.” “The world cannot hate you.” Why can’t the world hate his half-brothers and half-sisters? It’s because they go along with the crowd. They believe in living by the sin-nature, and what the sin-nature wants to accomplish. They don’t believe in following God’s truth—in what God says is right—right in the heart that is. Sure, they probably are moral people, perhaps. Maybe they were following God’s Law to perfection, or maybe they weren’t. How were their hearts? If one simply goes along with the world, following whatever the world says, a person is going to be going down all kinds of wrong pathways. In Jesus’ brothers’ and sisters’ culture, the normal was to follow the Jewish Law. In our twenty-first century American culture, the norm is to follow what you desire, whether that aligns with the New Testament Scriptures or not. Jesus said, “but [the world] hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.” “I testify about it that its works are evil.” Ah, there it is. That’s the problem; doing whatever one wants to do in the flesh. Not loving God and truly loving others. This becomes so blatantly obvious (just to point out one particular group of individuals), it becomes so blatantly obvious with New Age spiritual teachers. You can read their books, and they partly tell the truth. Some good ideas are put forth, but they don’t tell the whole truth, the complete truth. They are trying to follow God without a sacrifice for sins. They want some spiritual truths but also want their sin (and that sin usually starts with sexual immorality; it usually appears to start there). But we remember what Jesus said referencing this way of living, this half-truth way. He said, “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Luke 16:13, ESV). We are all servants (whether we know it or not), we are all servants serving something.

       Thus, for the time-being, Jesus chooses to stay behind and not go to the feast, for he says, “my time has not yet fully come.” This was talked about a bit last week. His time had partly come, it was even becoming, but it hadn’t fully come. The transition was taking place from the Old Testament ways to the New Testament ways, from the point where people would go directly to God, to the point where God would in turn point them to the Son.

- Daniel Litton