Sermon Tone Analysis

! \\ John 6:60-71

The kingdom of God is built on people who are in for the long haul.

/ /

/We terribly overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in five.

-- Ted Engstrom, Leadership, Vol. 3, no.

2./

 

Most of us can remember folks who once were active in their local churches and zealous in their relationship with God who no longer profess or practice their faith.

They come and they go and many times we don’t understand the “why’s”.

I have read statistics that tell us that an average church loses ten percent of it’s adherents on a yearly basis.

They may not be people who have been around for a long time who make this exodus and they may not be people who have accepted Christ as Savior but they are around long enough to be known and then they disappear.

Obviously, from the scripture lesson this morning we can see that Jesus’ ministry was greeted with great enthusiasm in it’s early days and yet he had those who could not or would not understand his teaching and in turn, they too left.

Have you reached the point of no return in your spiritual walk?

It’s not a prideful declaration or a profession of great spiritual wisdom or extraordinary insight.

It is not a point of great personal victory necessarily, merely the recognition that there are no other viable alternatives that remain for you.

We used to sing the chorus around the bonfires on the beach, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”

Why do people turn away from God?

/ /

/People seldom lose their religion by a blowout--it is usually a slow leak./

Ø      The don’t get what they expect.

These people had a typical understanding of prophecy.

Even though the predictions re: the Messiah are clear to us (hindsight) - they were in error in terms of what this person might look like.

Consequently, their dogmatism caused them to reject their Messiah and blinded them to truth unfolding before them.

Application - we need to be very careful as we look to the future and beware of any particular teaching that interprets the future with certainty.

Often our certainty about things that are uncertain can cause us to miss what we are so desperately looking for.

John 3:14 After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.”

15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

[1]

 

They had a political agenda for the Messiah.

They had already decided that this is what he would come to do.

It is a difficult thing when the church adopts any kind of political agenda.

I think today that there are still those who wish to politicize the mission of the church.

Politics hold no promise for eternal values.

Jesus still has a different agenda.

John 3:41 At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

42 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’?” [2]

 

They expected someone that they did not know.

They were sure that they would not know his parents or be familiar with his parents.

There was a common belief in their day that when the Messiah returned, he would once again feed them the manna that they were fed in the desert.

This prompted Jesus reference to the manna, telling them in effect that he was the bread of heaven.

There are so many people today who expect things that they never get or experience when they come to Christ.

Think of the false expectations that people hold.

Some of these because they are promised them.

Ø      Bad things will no longer take place in my life

 

Ø      God will give me anything that I ask him for

 

Ø      The scripture guarantees my healing

 

Ø      God wants to make me prosperous

 

Ø      I will get along with everyone who calls themselves Christian

 

Ø      What I feel God telling me personally is a justifiable source of guidance in itself alone.

On and on the list goes.

We soon find out that these are false assumptions or expectations.

v     They reach an impasse.

John 3:60 /On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching.

Who can accept it?”

61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you?  62 What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!

63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing.

The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.”

For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him.

65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”/

/66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

*[3]*/

 

There have been things in my own Christian experience that I have struggled to understand.

I am unclear in certain scripture passages.

The one thing that I understand is that it is quite normal to lack understanding at times.

v     Depleted resources.

There are times when people turn back because they have exhausted their ability to serve or to follow.

They have done everything that they know to do and still look for more to do.

John 3:28 /Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

*[4]*/

/ /

A truth that I remind myself of is that God chose to love me just because He chose to love me.

There is no service that I can offer God that he cannot arrange without me.

I remember years ago hearing sermons where someone would say something like,  “If you don’t witness to your neighbor and he goes to hell, God will require his blood at your hand.”

We witness to our neighbors whether we realize it or not.

These are people who get to see how you live.

If my neighbors are turned away from Christ because of my poor witness then that is one thing but I do know something about God.

He loves our neighbors just like he loves us and he loves them too much to make them an object lesson of my disobedience.

If I can’t get myself in gear then he will find someone who will go.

He will find some other way because He is not willing that anyone should perish but that all should come to repentance.

Most people learn sooner or later that the place where we stop is the place that God begins in our lives.

/Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible.

There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible.

Faith begins where man's power ends/.

-- George Muller.

Leadership, Vol. 12, no.

4.

 

I think that when people finally understand that they cannot do anything in and of themselves that will secure for them a place in heaven, then they are poised to experience vital Christian living.

It took me years to understand that there was no hope in me and if I was ever to get to heaven it would be because of Christ’s goodness.

Then suddenly the Great Commandment began to make sense to me.

I began to sense real love for God – not the “heady” kind but something that began to stir in my heart because I was starting to comprehend the great love that God has for us.

It also ushered into my life a new depth of compassion for those who struggle with various things in their faith.

I realized that there hope was not to find the strength to set everything right and order or discipline themselves properly so that God would be pleased but the hope was that they could totally cast themselves upon Christ and His mercy and grace.

Our behavior follows what we are on the inside if it is true and lasting.

We cannot for long maintain a façade.

But we can grow in this grace and mercy, moment by moment.

v     Issues of the will.

Often people part company with the church and with Christ over these sorts of things.

You must know that Christ would be the Lord of your life or nothing.

The following words are from an old engraving on a cathedral in Labeck, Germany:

 

   Thus speaketh Christ our Lord to us:

   You call Me master and obey Me not.

You call Me light and see Me not.

You call Me the Way and walk Me not.

You call Me life and live Me not.

You call Me wise and follow Me not.

You call Me fair and love Me not.