Jesus' Powerful Words

Introduction

Illustration: Good bedside manner doesn’t mean dishonesty.

Jesus is called by some the “Great Physician.” He compared Himself to a doctor even in Mark 2:17

Mark 2:17 CSB

When Jesus heard this, he told them, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So if Jesus is the Great Physician, surely He has great bedside manner? I think a read of the gospels shows just how insightful and caring Jesus was. But you know what else we see? He isn’t afraid to tell people that they are sick and dying. In fact the more in denial they are the harsher words He has for them, hence the way He talks to the Pharisees that are so convinced that they are righteous and don’t need a savior.

In today’s passage we see the fallout of Jesus giving harsh truth to disciples who aren’t really looking for what He’s got to give them. In the last passage we talked about Jesus tells them a hard truth they need to hear. Let’s see how they react to this truth, in John 6:59-71

John 6:59–71 CSB

He said these things while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Therefore, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?” Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to observe the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and the one who would betray him.) He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.” From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus replied to them, “Didn’t I choose you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” He was referring to Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, one of the Twelve, because he was going to betray him.

The Bible makes it pretty clear in a few places that there has been, is, and will be until the end false disciples among the true disciples of Jesus. In fact Jesus tells a whole parable about it, in Matthew chapter 13. In that parable Jesus describes a farmer who goes into his field and sows good wheat, but then an enemy comes in and sows a plant called tares, which look like wheat, but is poisonous. This He explains is to illustrate that there will be fake disciples that will be in His church even until the end.

Remember that earlier in this chapter Jesus fed 5000 people bread, and then they want to make Him king and even follow Him across the sea. Jesus tells the crowd that He knows they aren’t really after Him, but they are after bread. So He tells them some harsh truths about the Kingdom.

Why does Jesus do this? Jesus wants to teach these would be disciples some harsh truths, and He would rather they reject Him than follow a false version of Him and falsely think they have eternal life. He also teaches them this hard teaching in order to show them first hand that they can’t earn their way to Him, that their flesh can’t do anything for them and that salvation is only found in the Spirit. Finally Jesus shows them that His words are the source of eternal life, words that we inherit and need to share with everyone that we can.

Hard Teachings

Illustration: As a parent I dread teaching my kids about difficult things, like death and suffering and evil.

Yet if I want my kids to one day grow into fully functioning well adjusted adults some day I’m going to have to cross that bridge when I get to it. I’m going to have to explain these difficult concepts to my children in the best way I can figure out. If any of you have advice for how to go about doing that, I’m all ears by the way.

The same thing rings true with a lot of bad news that we get in our lives. No one wants to hear a cancer diagnoses. Yet what’s worse than the doctor telling you that you have cancer? Them NOT telling you that you have cancer if you do have cancer. What’s worse than finding out your country is at war? Not being told your country is at war and finding out the hard way. It’s hardly considerate to shield someone from bad news if it’s bad news that they need to hear and to act upon.

Jesus was not afraid to tell people difficult things, even if it meant they might reject Him. Consider verses 60-66

John 6:60–66 CSB

Therefore, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?” Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, asked them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to observe the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and the one who would betray him.) He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.” From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him.

Remember, Jesus being God Himself knows people better than they know themselves. He knew that when He told these people that they need to eat His flesh and drink His blood that they would be offended and leave Him. So why did He do it? Because they were following Him for the wrong reasons. Flash back to last week, where we saw that these people crossed the sea after Jesus not because they wanted to follow Him and obey His teachings, but actually because they wanted more bread.

Jesus wants people not just to follow Him, but to follow Him for the right reasons. And to know truly what it means to follow Him. It’s better that someone walk away from being His disciple than stay as a disciple but not really be following Him. It’s similar to the idea behind interventions. Sometimes if you know someone has a drinking problem or drug addiction than the most loving thing you can do is confront them about it and show them that it’s really a problem. There’s risk in doing so. They might just break off their relationship with you and continue living a destructive lifestyle. But isn’t that better than enabling someone who has a problem?

Here’s the thing, it’s very possible to attend church every Sunday and not really know Jesus. It’s possible to confuse church attendance with knowing Him. And that is an extremely dangerous situation. Think about it: who is less likely to respond to the gospel, a drug addict who knows that they’re living life wrong and desperately needs something to change, or a faithful church attendee who has never prayed and never changed but thinks that they’ll be welcomed into the Kingdom because their a good person who goes to church?

All this to say that this is why we can’t avoid the more sensational and difficult truths of Scripture. We can’t avoid the things that make us uncomfortable. Because these are the things that force us to choose between ourselves and Jesus. When it really comes down to it, when the Bible asks me to believe or do something that I don’t agree with do I change or do I ignore or explain away what the Bible is teaching? So let us never avoid the hard teachings of Jesus whether it be in my sermons, in our Bible studies, Sunday School classes, or small groups. Let’s let our guard down and let the Bible change us. I would rather scare someone out of church with the truth than to avoid the challenging parts of Scripture and never confront someone who isn’t really living for Jesus.

The Spirit Not the Flesh

Illustration: Sometimes you need the right tool for the job. For instance when my child grabs a fork for soup, it’s not going to help at all.

The same goes for salvation. We need the right tool for the job. The trouble is that our sickness isn’t a sickness in our bodies, or in other words our “flesh,” it’s a sickness of the Spirit caused by Sin. Maybe we don’t feel it in every moment of our lives, but we know that something is wrong with us. That we try to do good but keep doing wrong. We struggle to do the right thing but find ourselves doing the opposite. Paul summed it up well when He wrote this in Romans 7:14-24

Romans 7:14–24 CSB

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin. For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

When mankind fell and started to do wrong things it broke our spirit and our relationship with Jesus in a way that could not be repaired. Now that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, we can be restored to relationship with the Father. The thing is, we often try to fix this problem with the wrong tools. Consider what Jesus says in verses 63-65

John 6:63–65 CSB

The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who don’t believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and the one who would betray him.) He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.”

The thing about it is, we like trying to work our own salvation “in the flesh.” How many world religions are there out there? How many of them teach salvation by faith alone that is not of our own works? Just one. The true one. The rest are all systems designed for mankind to earn their way into heaven, or into a better life, or to rule some planet in a distant galaxy or something else. Even those of us who follow the true religion of Jesus sometimes fall into the habit of trying to work our way to Jesus. We become convinced that if we’re good enough than that will be what gets us into God’s Kingdom. Or worse we think if our friends are just good enough than they will get into God’s Kingdom, so we don’t need to feel bad if we never tell them to follow Jesus.

None of that works. In Romans 3:23 we read the sobering truth about the state of mankind.

Romans 3:23 CSB

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

Further, even when we do our best to live the way God wants we at best give Him a dirty sort of almost righteousness, which the Bible describes in Isaiah 64:6

Isaiah 64:6 KJV 1900

But we are all as an unclean thing,And all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; And we all do fade as a leaf;And our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

I chose the King James here because “filthy rags” is a much more poetic phrase than “polluted garment.” By the way the literal Hebrew translation of that phrase is “menstrual rags,” but the Bible was too crude for us there so we cleaned it up a bit. Just as an aside, the Bible is a very real book that deals with all the messiness of life and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. End rant.

The point is, no one is good enough for God. The only way to be made right with God and have eternal life is to fall upon His grace, to ask for Him to have mercy, to put our faith and trust in Jesus and what He accomplished for us on the cross. In other words the flesh doesn’t help at all, it’s the Spirit who gives life.

Romans 6:23 CSB

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can’t earn it. Jesus earned it on the cross for us. He paid the penalty for sin so that we will never have to if we trust in Him. So if you haven’t yet put your faith in Him and are trusting in your own goodness to get you through let this be a call to give up. Stop trying to earn God’s favor, it won’t work. It’s like trying to eat tomato soup with a fork, only less effective. Instead lay your burdens down at the foot of the cross. Repent and follow Jesus and demonstrate your repentance through baptism in His name.

Maybe you’re here and you have repented and followed Jesus and put your faith in Him, but you’ve slipped into an attitude that acts as if you need to be good enough to be in a relationship with Jesus. Maybe you’re afraid to pray because you’ve done wrong. Maybe you have anxiety every day wondering if you’re doing enough. Rest in the knowledge that everyone He calls He saves, and the reminder that our works are not the way we earn our salvation, but our offering of thanksgiving for the salvation that we were freely given.

Words of Life

Illustration: The power of words. Words hurt, words heal.

In a lot of ways our words have the potential to have power over life and death. But there’s limits to what we can accomplish with words. Just the same as there are limits to what we can do in general. Though we as human beings are capable of a lot we are small and finite. But what about God? What is His word able to do? If we take a look at the account of creation we see that God created the entire universe with just words.

Genesis 1:1–3 CSB

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Then God continued on creating the rest of the universe by just saying “let there be” and there was. Or in other words He created the entire universe with His word. Hmm, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

John 1:1–4 CSB

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

God created everything which was created through Jesus His son, the Word that became flesh. How is that for a powerful word? Puts the power of even our words to shame. It’s no wonder that Peter responded to Jesus the way that He did in verses 67-69

John 6:67–69 CSB

So Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

As powerful as our words can be, Jesus puts our words to shame. Do we sometimes have power over life and death? Jesus has power over eternal life. Consider that Jesus spoke powerful words in this passage. The twelve heard the same message that the rest of the disciples heard. To those who walked away Jesus’ words will stand forever as a testament against them. To Jesus’ loyal disciples they are words that give eternal life.

You see Jesus is the only way to live forever. His sacrifice is what makes it possible, but His words are what give us the opportunity to respond to that sacrifice. We need both. Romans 10:14

Romans 10:14 CSB

How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher?

This is why Jesus didn’t just silently come and die and rise again. He preached. We need His words of Eternal life in order to believe in Him and inherit the eternal life on offer.

The crazy thing is that now Jesus has entrusted us with the words of Eternal Life. Jesus is still the one whose words are really doing the saving, but after He ascended and sent the Holy Spirit He has now given us the ministry of going out to the world and telling them all about what He has done for them. We now have the words of Eternal Life to share with others. This is an amazing privilege and a terrifying responsibility at the same time. So then we should go out with boldness knowing that we have the words of Eternal Life, but also and most importantly with passionate prayer, counting on the power of God to save people which is beyond our ability.

Conclusion

If I had to sum up the contents of this short passage of Scripture succinctly I would put it this way, “Jesus’ powerful words.” At the end of the day that’s what this is really all about. Jesus does not shy away from speaking the truth powerfully, even when He knows that those who aren’t sincerely following Him will be scared away, and we should do likewise, not being afraid to share the bold truth of the gospel even when we know we’re risking rejection. We see that through Jesus’ words the Spirit is the one who saves us and gives eternal life, and that all our actions are worth nothing in comparison to what Jesus did on our behalf. Finally we see that Jesus’ very words have the power over life and death, and He has entrusted us with the gospel words of Eternal Life to share with others, so that we might give them an opportunity to repent and follow after Him.

At the end of the day we need to be certain that we don’t take the words of Jesus lightly. He is the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, mighty God made flesh, the alpha and the omega. When He speaks we should listen intently, knowing that we rely completely on Him and knowing that He might challenge us to change in difficult and uncomfortable ways. Yet when He does call us to change His Spirit also gives us the power to live faithfully in a spirit of thankfulness to all that He’s done for us.

So as we sing together one last song I want you to reflect on the challenge of God’s words and ask His Holy Spirit to make clear to you the ways that you might need to change and the people you might need to challenge with the truth.

Let us pray.