Eat, Drink, Believe

Missions UpdateI want to begin this morning with a missions update from our partners in India. We support two couples, Tia and Atula and Murry and Louivani.They have a two-fold mission. First, they train up students in a seminary and provide them training for the pastorate and the mission field. Recently they have moved their seminary from Bagalore which is the tech capital of the world to a more strategic spot in the north called Nagaland.It’s a little different up here. The reason they moved their seminary is because there is access to the neighboring countries, Mynmar, Bangladesh, and Butan.Their seminary is in the city but they can, in a relatively short period of time, reach into the tribes and minister to them. This a mix of spiritism anamism, Budhism, Muslim, and Hindu. It’s an incredible opportunity.They recently purchased a plot of land for a seminary and we have been saving to give toward this project so we were able to give $40,000 toward this facility and we are so excited to be partners with them.You or I would have a hard time getting into some of these countries, but many of the students and graduates are either from these countries or are going there as missionaries. We are so thankful to be in partnership with them.Please pray for them as they work so hard for the Lord.IntroductionHave you ever been confronted by someone and you know the message is true but you refuse to admit it? In fact, you MUST NOT confess it because the implications are too overwhelming.Let me give you an example in my own life. We built an extra room onto the side of our house a few years ago. My wife and I had agreed on the design. So I’m framing up the walls and I’m really exciting that I’m making good progress. I’m efficient, I’m being incredibly productive. I’m flying. Lisa had been gone running some errands and I couldn’t wait to show her how much progress I had made. So she comes in and I can tell by the look on her face something’s wrong. I hate that look. And sure enough she says, “Well, that’s not going work. We need another window right here.” And I could feel my emotional zeal for life getting sucked out of my soul like a tornado. So I objected, “What do you mean you don’t like it? What’s not to like? Why do we need another window?” And then she gave me some reasons. Well, it would be more symmetrical. It would let in more light. It would give the room a more open feel.""Now if you were to stop me right there and ask, “Objectively speaking, do you agree with her points?” I would have said yes to all three, an emphatic yes. I actually love windows. Here’s what I said: “I mean, symmetry? It’s is all a matter of perspective. Symmetrical to what? Sometimes asymmetrical looks better. Let in more light? There’s giant trees shading the whole yard. That’s not going to let it more light? What do you mean open feel? Define open. The ceilings are vaulted and 15 feet high. How much more open can you get?”The insanity! I agreed with her and yet I communicated disagreement. Why? Because I didn’t like the implication of her being right. If she’s right than I’ve got to tear down and and rebuild and I don’t want to. Now in the end, I confessed. She smiled. And the room looks awesome.Now it’s one thing to have to tear out a few studs and rebuild a partial portion of a single wall; it’s one thing to swallow a bit of pride and lose an hour or so of my life. Not so big a deal. But it’s another thing entirely to realize that your entire life, everything you have worked so hard for, has been built upon the wrong foundation. To realize that every stud you’ve laid, every nail you’ve pounded, every ounce of energy you’ve invested, every dollar you spent, everything - 100% of it needs to be torn out. Why? Because the entire foundation of you life is incorrect. It needs to be jackhammered out, hauled to the dump and you need to reform and repour the whole thing. Everything you have been living for has been a complete waste. That, my friends, even if you are 100% convinced, is not easy to admit.You see, this is why many cannot come to Jesus Christ. Not because they don’t have enough evidence, not because they suspect the evidence is untrue. The real issue - and it operates mostly on the level of the subconscious - is that they don’t like the implications of the evidence.In our passages last week Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” If you accept that, if you believe that Jesus is in fact the ONLY source of TRUE LIFE, then that necessarily DEMANDS that things you’ve been chasing are NOT life. The career, the girl, the family, the money, the glory, the degree, the job. These things are NOT life. If you admit that Jesus Christ is the source of LIFE, then you have to admit you’ve been wasting your life barking up the wrong tree. And that means we need to break out the jackhammer and break up the foundation upon which we’ve built our entire life.Today, all of us will be offended at some aspect of the message. This is maybe the most offensive chapter in all the Bible. So, if you aren’t offended, I probably haven’t done my job. But here’s the encouragement, if you can receive it, there’s life waiting for you. True life. Abundant life. Everlasting life.ReviewLast week we saw Jesus confronting the shallow interest of the crowds. He was confronting this shallow, genie-in-a-bottle interest in Jesus’ miracle working ability. They wanted Jesus to fill their belly, to add another couple zeros on the end of their bank account. They didn’t want him. They only wanted what they could get from him.Jesus confronted this, “You guys are all focused on the plane of your crude human needs. You need to stop looking for bread that perishes and instead work for the bread that never perishes.” And the natural question is well, what is the bread that never perishes and how do I get it? What is the bread? Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” John 6:40, “…everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” LIFE! Zoa.Jesus is claiming to be that life. And the way you get it is to believe. Believe who Jesus claims to be. Everything we read last week was the claim. What we are going to see this week and next week is the response. And here is what we are going to discover. This claim that Jesus is the bread of life come down from heaven is UNIVERSALLY OFFENSIVE. No human being who truly hears and understands what Jesus is saying accepts it without offense.Today we are going to look at five ways that Jesus’ offer to be the bread of life offends us and how we can move from offense to worship. So Jesus has just finished saying, “I am the bread of life”. Here’s the response from the religious leaders.Jesus is offering them eternal LIFE in himself; but in order to get the life you have to believe the claim. Jesus has them on the horns of a dilemma. Because on the one hand they cannot outright dismiss him. Why? He’s been healing people like crazy. He just multiplied bread and fish so as to feed 10,000 people. He’s healed the blind, lame, and deaf. So they cannot dismiss him, but on the other hand, his claims are outright unbelievable, “I have come down from heaven?” Come on!? Now, they have to come up with some sort of explanation for what they see and hear but this is not it.Even though it doesn’t say it outright, I could guess at their explanation. Here’s a miracle worker; miracle workers in the Bible are prophets. They’ve got a category for that. That’s what made sense to them. Here’s a man, a regular homo-sapien, who has prophet-like access to God. That’s what my intuition tells me.But Jesus says, “Nope. Here’s what’s really going on. I have come down from heaven.” Just like we would say, “I’ve come down from McCall,” Jesus said, “I actually used to live in heaven. Now I live here on earth.” Jesus says, “I came down from heaven.” It’s a major focus of chapter 6. Look how many time the phrase is used in chapter 6.How could a man come down from heaven? That’s totally and completely counter-intuitive.Jesus says, “You’re right. I’m actually not a man. God has given me power to raise the dead and judge the world. You see, I am a GOD-MAN.” Well I wasn’t expecting that! How could a God-man look just like me? They definitely had an expectation about Messiah and it wasn’t this. If Jesus is who he claims, God come down from heaven, I certainly wouldn’t expect him to come this way. So normally. So undramatically. To Nazareth? Does anything good come out of Nazareth? My intuition tells me coming from heaven doesn’t work like that.But let me ask you, does that make it not true? Just because something isn’t intuitive, doesn’t make it untrue. The theory of relativity is not intuitive - at all. Does that make it not true? Something that upsets our intuition and upsets our expectations is not evidence of it not being true. It’s just evidence that our intuition and expectations are incorrect.There are thousands of things that are counterintuitive but are still true. To refuse them on the basis that they upset intuition is to the epitome of pride because it makes conformity to intuition the definition of truth. I wouldn’t have expected Messiah to turn water into wine. That’s a strange miracle to begin the public ministry of Jesus Christ. So be it. My expectations are wrong. Shall I be offended or learn from it? Humility is letting truth inform your intuition. In fact, it is often the act of upsetting expectations and intuitions that lead us to the truth.Before you became a Christian you might have had a way to explain Christian behavior, “I know why religious people try to be moral. They are trying to work their way to heaven.” But then you realize, nobody who is a true follower of Christ is trying to work their way to heaven. That counter-intuitive discovery will lead you to the truth. Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life.” That claim offends our intuition. That’s our first point.In other words, when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” our natural inclination is to say, “Thank you but no thank you. I don’t want that.” When Jesus hears them grumbling about having come down from heaven he says,Now you think the first two were offensive. This, to many, is downright repugnant. What we are reading about here is what theologians call the doctrine of election. Election speaks to the divine force responsible BEHIND our CHOICE to submit to God. Or to state it more simply, “Who chooses God? Do you choose God or does God choose you?”This is a thorny question. You come at this question wrong and you’re liable to get poked and bleed. But if we’ve learned anything thus far in the sermon, it’s don’t trust your intuition and don’t assume it’s going to be like you expected. Do we really expect God to match our human intuitions? Don’t judge by the external appearance alone.If you watch any survival shows, you know that a barrel cactus can save your life in the desert because beneath the spiny exterior is a storehouse of life-giving water. The doctrine of election is like a spiny barrel cactus. Many will pass over it’s life giving water never knowing it’s even there. Some have heard that there is water inside, but get injured drinking it and then run away. But there are others who carefully listen to the instructions, pierce through that spiny exterior and the water is the sweetest, most satisfying, most nutritious, life-giving drink you could imagine and it quenches the thirsty soul.Here’s how the doctrine presents itself in the passage. The Pharisees grumble at the claim that Jesus is from heaven. They don’t like it. And Jesus say, “Well that’s not surprising. That’s to be expected.” Why? Because no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. In other words, he’s saying, “Unless the Father draws you, you will never find me attractive. Without God working on your heart, you won’t ever want me.” Paul says the same thing in Romans 3:10:What does this doctrine teach? It teaches that the problem with the human condition is broken desire. We want the wrong things. We love the wrong things. There is a fundamental inability. Now what is that inability in specifics? Let me illustrate. Imagine for a moment that I sit you down at a table and give you two choices. On your left you have toasted creme brule and on your right you have ground up worms and slugs. Which would you choose?Okay, maybe that was a fluke. Let’s run the experiment again. Creme brule or the ground up worms and slugs? One thousand times out of a thousand; 10,000 times out of 10,000 you will never choose the worm compote. Why? Is the problem that you cannot eat the worm and slugs? It’s not that I can’t eat it; it’s that I can’t want it. That’s my problem. The inability is in the domain of desire.When Paul says, “The natural mind is hostile to God,” or, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him,” he’s not saying they can’t come to God, he’s saying they can’t want to. Our unaffected desires never move toward God. What the Bible teaches is that for us to move toward God, he’s got to move toward us. And the form of that movement is the love of God being pressed upon our hearts. The love of the Father is prior. It’s aggressive. It pounces. I want to talk about two things here: order and cause.There’s an order and a cause. Both are important. The order is God FIRST, then us. God’s love was first. And then that initiating love CAUSED us to love him. It is because he FIRST loved us that we then love him. That’s what Jesus is saying here, “No one can come to me, unless the Father draws him.”This is offensive. Why? Because it strips us of any reason we can be congratulated. We can’t take credit for our good choice. If you make a good investment, you can take credit for it. But if the stock company accidentally liquidates your investments and transfers it to another portfolio and it skyrockets, you can’t congratulate yourself.God drew you. Is that what you expected? No. Is that intuitive? No. But is true? Absolutely.Now you may say, “No, I choose Christ. He didn’t choose me.” Well, fine. But be consistent. If you are the one who chooses him, how do you know that someday you will not unchoose him? You can’t have it both ways. How do you know that you won’t foul the whole thing up again? Adam was created perfect and fouled the whole thing up. How do you know you won’t foul the whole thing up again? You see, here’s the beauty of it. Here’s why this doctrine is sweet, life-giving water. Because if God is the one who draws you, he is also the one who will keep you. And he is the one who will raise you up on the last day. And that’s exactly what he says next.Now my intellect is being confronted. Here’s why Jesus is not okay with their grumbling. Their grumbling was dangerous. Our grumbling is dangerous. Maybe you are grumbling about the nature of election. Why is that bad? Because it presupposed that our brain is the ultimate court in which God gets sorted out. If we just discuss this long enough, through our intellect and talking the matter over, with enough thought, we can make sense of this. If I can’t make sense of it, if the supreme court of my brain can’t sort this thing out, then it cannot be true.Here is the severe warning. As long as we are content to remain confident in our own ability, our own intellect, our own intuitive sense of how things ought to be, we will never seek divine insight and intellect outside ourselves. As long as we are content to assess our experience and the meaning of our experience using our own methods, we cannot come to the Christ.This is an issue of authority. When there is a contradiction, who wins? It does not make sense to my intuition. I don’t desire it. And I can’t understand it. Yet, Jesus says it’s true. Which one wins? This is what is at stake.Jesus says, “They will all be taught by God.” This is a paraphrase of Isaiah 54:13, addressed to the restored city of Jerusalem that the prophet foresees: ‘All your sons will be taught by the LORD, and great will be your children’s peace.’ It’s a picture of restored Jerusalem drinking in knowledge from the source of knowledge. Jesus, you tell me what is true. You know that feeling when you are talking to an expert in their field. And they start explaining something and your brain goes into record mode. I trust every word that comes out of his or her mouth. That’s the picture. Total authority. Absolute knowledge. You believe it because you trust it because it’s true.The bread of life insults our intuition, offends our desire, disregards our intelligence, and now offends our vitality.What is meant here? There is a certain amount of pride that we carry within us that relates to our sense of vitality. I’m young and pretty. I’m young and athletic. I hike. I bike. I’m an academic. I’m an artist. I raft. These are all evidences of vitality. Jesus says, “That’s cute. But you’re going to die.”This is a nod to how we began our message last week. We are all dying. We are all playing a game of who can keep the water cupped in our hands the longest. What we didn’t talk about was why? Why are we dying? Answer: because we are starving. If you stop eating food you don’t die instantly. It takes a little bit of time. But you do die eventually. It’s a slow process of starving the body of what it needs. And because we are not eating the spiritual bread of life, we are dying.Well, Jesus says, if you want to live forever, if you want to have eternal zoa, then you need to eat the bread of life. Now here’s is where the offense, turns to disgust which turns to revulsion.Now here’s our final point. This offer of life offends our intuition, our desire, our intellect, our vitality. And finally:What in the world does Jesus mean that we need to eat his flesh and drink his blood? First off, obviously this is a metaphor. But he’s pressing here, isn’t he? Let’s go back to what he said earlier in the text. Jesus said, “If you want to receive the bread of heaven, you can’t work to receive it. The one work that earns the bread of heaven is to confess that you can’t do anything to earn the bread of heaven.” That’s what he’s saying. You have to receive it. You have to believe in it. That’s how you receive it. You receive it by believing it.But then when we get here in verses 53–59, we see Jesus continually using present-tense verbs having to do with feeding. It’s clear that to be a Christian means to be continually in a process of feeding on Christ. And the terms are very graphic. The idea, is that being a Christian is not something you can dabble in. You have to take it inside of you.Think about food. If you want food to sustain you, you can’t be independent of it. There is real power for it to sustain you. But exists out here. And you will die unless you take in inside of you and it gets dissolved down and actually becomes part of you. That energy now courses through your veins. Being a Christian means that Jesus Christ becomes part of you in that way. That’s where the metaphor is pointing. And post crucifixion Christians understand the imagery far better than they did then. Jesus’ body was broken for us. His blood was spilled for us. And so taking that into us, means accepting the substitutionary sacrifice. The imagery of the Old Testament sacrificial lamb now makes all the sense in the world. Remember, Passover was at hand here.Remember the first Passover. The angel of death was going to go throughout all the land of Egypt and destroy every firstborn male. But if you killed a lamb and put its blood which symbolized its life over the doorpost, that angel of death would passover. And what were you to do with the lamb itself. You were to eat it. And its life given for you would now enter into you and sustain your life. That’s the picture.CommunionCould we do church today and not do communion? My goodness, no. We come to the table this morning, ready to symbolically eat the flesh and drink the blood. It confronts and offends at almost every level. It offends my intuition, my expectations, ability, intellect, vitality, and my independence. Why would we ever do it? Answer: Because it is the path to everlasting zoa. Life exists in the person of Jesus Christ. It’s in him.You cannot be independent of Jesus and live. What Jesus is really focusing on here is SOURCE. Where is the source of life to be found? Jesus says, “I live BECAUSE of the Father. You will only live BECAUSE of me. I am the SOURCE of life. And you have to take me in.”Now I want to illustrate this principle. You probably learned in elementry school that all life on planet earth exists because of the sun. It is the source of life. Well animals eat the plants or other animals and the plants get their energy from the sun. Not only all life, but all power. Cars move around because of fossil fuels. What are fossil fuels? They are decomposed buried dead organism - things that used to be alive. We get electricity from hydroelectric plants. Where does the rain water that powers the giant turbines at the bottom of dams come from? Evaporation from the ocean which is from the sun. Solar panels from the sun. Windpower from heating and cooling that comes from the sun. If it moves, is heated, reproduces, eats, grows…it’s all from the sun.Jesus Christ is claiming to take it one step further. “And the sun exists because of me. I am the bread of LIFE. I am the SOURCE of everything. You cannot be INDEPENDENT of me and live. If you live, you will live BECAUSE OF me. Just as the SUN is the source of all power and life on earth so the SON is the SOURCE of the SOURCE. I am the SOURCE of ETERNAL LIFE, both bios and zoa.”Can you see what it means to make him your Bread? Something is your meat and drink. Something is what you are making a beeline for because you think that’s living. Is it him? Is it a personal relationship with him? If it isn’t it will spoil. It will not endure, and neither will you. Come and eat the Bread and labor for the Bread and take the Bread that endures to eternal life.