Three Kinds of Disciples

John 6: 60-71

Introduction

John 6 is famous for Jesus’ miracles of feeding the 5,000. After the miracles, many have followed Jesus Christ after they have witnessed his miracles.

our scripture passage is what happened after Jesus had perfomed the miracles.

Jesus was not satisfied with the great numbers of disciples. He wanted to make sure they followed him for right reason. He taught them a hard teaching and ask if they can accept it.

What is this hard teaching - his is the bread of life. While humankind seek for physical bread, he is the true bread that brings life. - eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. Jesus’ descension and ascension. He is God.

the claims that he was greater than Moses, that he had come down from heaven to bring life to all who believe, and that by eating his flesh and drinking his blood a person would live forever. these were so far-reaching that many of htem who heard found them incredible and inconceivable. Those who did not believe could arrive at only one conclusion: if Jesus were not demented, he was at least a paranoid suffering servere delusions of grandeur.

John reveals to us the reaction of those disciples. who/what are you following? they are interested in Jesus for different reason. obviously, two group have wrong reasons to follow Jesus.

Self-seeking Complaining Disciples - the crowd who left

disciple is someone who is at that point following Jesus, either literally by joining the group that pursued him from place to place, or metaphorically in regarding him as the authoritative teacher. Such a ‘disciple’ is not necessarily a ‘Christian’, someone who has savingly trusted Jesus and sworn allegiance to him, given by the Father to the Son, drawn by the Father and born again by the Spirit. Jesus will make it clear in due course that only those who continue in his word are truly his ‘disciples. The ‘disciples’ described here do not remain in his word; they find it to be hard teaching (lit. ‘word’, logos; cf. notes on 1:1) and wonder who can accept it. The adjective rendered ‘hard’ in the NIV (sklēros) does not mean ‘hard to understand’ but ‘harsh’, ‘offensive’. These ‘disciples’ will not long remain disciples, because they find Jesus’ word intolerable.

they were looking for a king who can bring them political liberation from the Roman empire. their responses show their self-interest and self-focused infatuation in Jesus

v61 they were grumbling. this is hard - for what reason? culture, society norm, inherited? it reflects the inappropriate expressions of disbelief or dissatisfaction in God through allusions to the Israelites in the wildreness as they complained and argued with Moses, and therefore God. like the forefatehrs, the Jews were opposing God himself.

this teaching is also beyond their comprehension.

the rebuke by Christ serves to exhort us to avoid bringing against God any categories of unbelief, including elements of arrogance or human wisdom. so often, we think we have words for God, or we would like him to hear how we think he should view a situation so as to get a different result. yet out actions clearly reveal our unbelief in him; we do not believe that he is capable, proficient, powerful or loving. With God, the Christian learns to chastise our own reason, not for the sake of ignorance but out of a holy fear of God, and to commit to trust him more than we trust ourselves.

on the other hand, it was “hard” not so much because they couldn’t understand it but because they found it offensive. they were offended by Jesus’ teaching (v61b). these “disciples” respond in a manner conspicuously similar to the response of the Jews to Jesus and of their forefathers to God.

there are far more greater thing which we could not understand now. v61-62 Jeus says, “Does this offend you?… what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?” In John’s world of discourse the ascension would linclude the entire sequence of events beginning witht the crucifixion. So if the clais he has just made bothered his listeners, much more they will be offended with his ascension because a crucified Messiah was the most preposterous idea of a Jewish person could imagine.

v64 the main reason for the complain or grumble was due to their own expectation of who Jesus is. the crowds who wanted to make Jesus king melt away when he makes it plain that his kingdom is not of this world. they were disappointed.

they were looking for miracles, but they did not understand that Jesus’ miracles meant to teach lesson about himself. the bread on the hillside carries the symbolic meaning He is the bread of life. the feeding of the five thousand is fare more than just the satisfaction of hunger. however, the crowd fits Jesus into their religious categories (This is the prophet) andd decide that they can control, promote and fashion something religiously constructive out of this event. They want Jesus for their own ends, they want to pursue a political agenda (revolution, social upheavel).

What was it that offended their sensibilities? Judging by the preceding discourse, there were four features in Jesus’ word at which they took umbrage. (1) They were more interested in food (v. 26), political messianism (vv. 14–15) and manipulative miracles (vv. 30–31) than in the spiritual realities to which the feeding miracle had pointed. (2) They were unprepared to relinquish their own sovereign authority even in matters religious, and therefore were incapable of taking the first steps of genuine faith (vv. 41–46). (3) In particular they were offended at the claims Jesus advanced, claiming to be greater than Moses, uniquely sent by God and authorized to give life (vv. 32ff., 58). (4) The extended metaphor of the ‘bread’ is itself offensive to them, especially when it assaults clear taboos and becomes a matter of ‘eating flesh’ and ‘drinking blood’.

v66 many of them turned back and no longer followed him. However, many have left him after they get to know more about Jesus’ teaching. they were angry because the formulas has changed, thingsd dont show up as prediected.

Do u want to leave too? What is hard for you to accept in following Christ?

jesus said, there are some of you who do not believe. that only “some” reminds us the possibility of change. the one who knows the nature of humanity also knows the nature of his followers.

Jesus Christ may have things to say taht we cannot accept. We may hear ourselves saying, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” We have built our religious structures and justified them with verses from the Bible. We have a history to protect, an agenda to promote, a vision to foster, and any who impede our progress deserve our militancy.

For example: LBGTQ movement

Self-denying Committed Disciples - the twelve who are chosen

this is true. v68 to whom shall we go?

assertions in Peter’s reply on behalf of the twelve. (i) there’s no one else to go to. they who have truly seen and heard Jesus know that there is non beside him. (ii) the early enthusiastic expression of faith and hope has grown to fuller faith and knowledge; they now really believe and have come to know that Jesus is the Holy one of God.

“We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God”. That both verbs are in the perfect tense indicates that the Twelve had not only come to belive in him and recognize the truth of his claims, but also that their faith and confidence was holding stady in this time of decision. Truth calls for commitment.

our spiritual journey cannot remain stagnant at expecting God’s miracle, but to know him in solid understanding. as a committed Christian, Jesus expect us to grow in the understanding of his teaching.

v64 for Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who wgould betray him

no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them. the primary agent of faith is the Father.

Jesus was speaking metaphorically when he said that a person must eat his flesh and drink his blood. It is the Spirit who “gives life”. life comes from hearing and absorbing the words of Jesus. His words are spirit and life. IT is through His word that we know Him. One of the key characters of a committed disciple is to receive and believe His word.

that is what Simon Peter replied. not only just to believe, but also to know (learn, understand, acknowledge experientially). (1) He asks, Lord, to whom [else] shall we go? What alternatives are there, granted that You have the words of eternal life? Peter may not have understood all that much of the preceding discourse, but he here picks up on v. 63: the words Jesus has spoken ‘are spirit and they are life’. (2) We believe and know [the Gk. perfects are properly stative, i.e. expressing the state of the disciples’ faith and knowledge: cf. Porter, pp. 251ff.] that you are the Holy One of God. The additional words found in the AV (‘the Christ, the Son of the living God’) are not original, but are due to assimilation to Matthew 16:16. The verbs ‘to believe’ and ‘to know’ are extremely common in John, and are frequently roughly synonymous (cf. the parallelism in 17:8). There is one absolute distinction: Jesus himself is said to know God (7:29; 8:55; 10:15; 17:25), but never to believe in him. To believe apparently has overtones of dependence appropriate to creatures, redeemed creatures, but not to the one who is both the agent of creation (1:3) and their redeemer. Knowledge in the Fourth Gospel is frequently personal (it is knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ that constitutes eternal life, 17:3), but no less frequently propositional (as here: the disciples know that Jesus is such and such).

If flesh does not give life, what does? One of the clearest characteristics of the Spirit in the Old Testament is the giving of life (e.g. Gn. 1:2; Ezk. 37:1ff.; cf. Barrett, HSGT, pp. 18–23). In this Gospel we have already been introduced to the Spirit’s role in the new birth (Jn. 3); there the contrast between flesh and spirit is no less sharp. So here: The Spirit gives life. Strictly speaking, the Spirit does not come upon the disciples until after Jesus’ ascension (7:37–39); but already Jesus himself is the bearer of the Spirit (1:32f.), the one to whom God gives the Spirit without limit and who therefore speaks the words of God (3:34). That is why Jesus can now say, The words I have spoken to you are spirit (i.e. they are the product of the life-giving Spirit) and they are life (i.e. Jesus’ words, rightly understood and absorbed, generate life—cf. 5:24). If the words of Jesus in this discourse are rightly grasped, then instead of rejecting Jesus people will see him as the bread from heaven, the one who gives his flesh for the life of the world, the one who alone provides eternal life, and they will receive him and believe in him, taste eternal life even now, and enjoy the promise that he will raise them up on the last day. It is hard not to see in the last clause an allusion to Jeremiah 15:16, where the prophet addresses God: ‘When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight’ (cf. also Ezk. 2:8–3:3; Rev. 10:9ff.). In short, Jeremiah’s assessment of God’s words is the same as Jesus’ assessment of his own words. One cannot feed on Christ without feeding on Christ’s words, for truly believing Jesus cannot be separated from truly believing Jesus’ words (5:46–47). Human beings live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Dt. 8:3). The identical claim is now made for the words of Jesus, precisely because he is the Word incarnate (1:1–18; cf. 5:19–30).

do u want to leave too? Jesus’ question with the negative voice of “me” conveys an assumption that the disciples are not going to do so.

Cat and Dog theology -

Self-fulfilling/Concealed/rebellious Disciples - Judas who betray

not sure if he find the teaching acceptable, but there is something else that he wants to achieve out of it. he find in the teaching a catalyst for his own personal rebellion and betrayal.

unlike the first group of disciple, he is smarter in making it an opportunity for himself. these disciples chose to follow Jesus out of some personal purpose. In some country, people chose to become Christian for the purpose of sending their children to pupolar Christina schools. burial ground, wedding at church. social network.

We can still leave God even if we have make a confession. physcially and outwardly, we are a disciple, but inwardly we are not. when Jesus is taken by force to serve as a pawn in our religiously sanctioned political program, we are no different than the first group of disciples/crowd.

we must forever keep in mind that Judas Iscariot’s traitorous act is born when Jesus reveals the deeper thinigs about himself. this man was a coworker with Jesus for three years. he was chosen by Jesus among the Twelve. He worked miracles in Galilee and preached for Jesus. He evangelized villages and brought converts into hte fold. Even his fellow apostles did not detect anything unusual in him (13:29) He ws not chosen by Jesus simply so htat he would play the role of betrayer. Something must have happened in his life, some overwhleming despair engulfed him, some cynicism settled in his heart that he decided to stand against the man in whom he believed. in the end, it was a decision he regretted profoundly. Perhaps he liked the way things were in the past in Galilee, and when they arrived in Jerusalem and Jesus disclosed his identity as the Messiah and Son with abandon, he simply couldn’t bear it. The Jesus Movemebt, he concluded, might do better without Jesus.

It could happen to us as well. in fact, we have seen a lot in church. We might have followed Jesus for long time. We might even preached gospel passionately. but after some time when things changed in the church, which is no longer familiar to us as in the past, we grumble, we rebel to show up our unhappiness.

when Christian leadership worked to support the civil rights of blacks in America in the 1960s, some of the Christians grumbled. Does God speak for political activism? When Christian spoke up for justice in South Africa and Palestine in the 1980s, many Christians complained. It can be as small as introducing a contemporary worship service at church and as large as promoting women in ministry. But when God tries to lead us into things outside our comfort zone, we bathe our objections in religious language and rebel.

leaders who have their own agenda or their own desire to fulfil through certain ministry. and when it is not achieved, they left.

conclusion

as we look at these three groups of disciples. We can see religious rebellion happening.

Jesus and his teachigns are not easily accepted by the world in its sinful pride and self-righteousness. the gosple of Jesus Christ is a foreign language to the human heart.

the key question in our passage this morning is in 6:60 “This mesage is offensive! who is able to accept it?” Each of us produce our own et of religious assumptins and defend them in the name of God. We have taken God by force. We become inquisitors and crusaders, pursuing what we think is a divine work. But Jesus and his mission are more complex and prfound than any Christian tradition. With Peter, we must always be willing to relinquish our position, to hold our assumptions loosely, and to say in faith, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Does this offend you? Do u want to leave me too?