Classic Christianity – Book of John Part 32 (06-11-19)
The disciples, whom Jesus spent 3 years with, came to accept the truth Jesus was sharing concerning eternal life, except Judas Iscariot who later betrayed him. These disciples had an encounter with the living God. It was a hard teaching because it was so contrary to what they are so accustomed to hearing, since, like all of us, live in the natural realm and are born spiritually dead. But Peter, a disciple of Jesus, caught the message. Bob George also had an encounter with God and was born again in 1969. This is not an encounter where you physically see Jesus but where you hear spiritual truth. Truth is revealed to you by the Spirit of God. The Spirit has spoken deep into your heart that you are spiritually dead and in need of life and you accepted the only available life, the resurrected life of Christ.
Jesus is speaking on earth to these men concerning what he is going to do in the near future, to die, be buried and then to rise again. That has already happened in our generation over 2000 years ago. But not all men accept the message of eternal life. God has created man not as a robot, but a being with a free will. Man is created with a will to choose death or life. Sadly, Judas Iscariot chose death. Jesus came to appeal to men to listen to truth that he was sent to proclaim, news about heaven and eternal life. Who has the words of eternal life? Will you listen and accept the offer of eternal life? Have you come to the end of your self sufficiency, your self righteousness and your pride to listen and believe? Until you do you will be unable to accept this message.
Bob briefly reviews this hard teaching Jesus had shared to the Jews, who had followed him to get fed, after being part of the miracle of the five loaves and two fish that fed over 5000 people. But they did not come to him for life. Beginning with physical bread, something they came for, he turned the conversation into a spiritual conversation they needed to hear, a conversation about spiritual food. This was the means Jesus commonly used to explain the truth of heaven, a place people have never been and cannot understand, in terms of the natural world that they can see and do understand, the natural realm they live in.
Bob George teaches from the gospel of John. In John 6, Jesus is explaining man’s need for new life using an illustration of bread and wine. This is the same appeal to Nicodemus when he said that unless he is born again he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
John 3:3-18
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’
8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?
11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony.
12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?
13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.
14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
In John 6, Jesus is speaking now with his disciples, those that had followed him. Having talked to a larger crowd about bread and wine, the disciples heard this conversation and this was their response.
John 6:
60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
The disciples whom Jesus spent 3 years with, except Judas Iscariot who later betrayed him, came to accept the truth Jesus was sharing concerning eternal life. These disciples had an encounter with the living God. Bob George also had an encounter with God and was born again in 1969. This is not an encounter where you physically see Jesus but where you hear spiritual truth. Truth is revealed to you by the Spirit of God. The Spirit has spoken deep into your heart that you are spiritually dead and in need of life and you accepted the only available life, the resurrected life of Christ. Jesus is speaking on earth to these men concerning what he is going to do in the near future, to die, be buried and then to rise again. That has already happened in our generation over 2000 years ago.
Bob briefly reviews this hard teaching Jesus had shared to the Jews, who had followed him to get fed, after being part of the miracle of the five loaves and two fish that fed over 5000 people. But they did not come to him for life. Beginning with physical bread, something they came for, he turned the conversation into a spiritual conversation they needed to hear, a conversation about spiritual food. This was the means Jesus commonly used to explain the truth of heaven, a place people have never been and cannot understand, in terms of the natural world that they can see and do understand, the natural realm they live in.
John 6:53-59
53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.
58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
In this passage, Jesus is using an illustration of bread and wine to explain such spiritual truth of new birth. There are two births, a physical birth and a spiritual birth. There is physical bread and there is spiritual bread. There is physical wine and there is spiritual wine. This is a hard teaching because whenever we hear an illustration our minds always drifts to the physical realm, the place where we live. We want to feel and hear and touch.
Jesus is saying, “There is a spiritual realm to this life that you know nothing about.”
Bob George addressed an error commonly taught in a prominent religion today. On this one passage, a whole religious denomination in serious error had formed and is in existence today.
John 6:55
55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
Jesus is using an illustration to explain spiritual truth yet people have turned it into a religion of ingesting a wafer offered by a priest for the absolution of sins, a practice of a mass performed every Sunday across the world, what is known as trans-substantiation, where bread is raised up by a priest to literally become the body and blood of Christ. That is heretical teaching contrary to truth Jesus is revealing to us in the spiritual realm.
Bob commented on this. If that is true, then that wafer will not stay there long as much as we have a digestive tract. Bob remarked, “How people can believe this I do not know”. That is why have to keep coming back to keep getting Jesus over and over. That is not the way to receive Jesus. You receive Jesus not by taking a wafer or drinking something physically.
Bob George explains the necessity of being born again as revealed through the scriptures.
Jesus said he came down from heaven and asked what if you saw me go back to where I came from? Until this happened even the disciples were unable to grasp the spiritual truth Jesus was sharing.
Jesus further explained that life does not come from the physical, but from God above, a gift of life given by God that man must believe unto eternal life. Just as Jesus shared with Nicodemus, he repeats the same message to his disciples.
John 6:63
The spirit gives life. The flesh counts for nothing.
We spend so much emphasis on our bodies or our physical abilities, things of this world that do not last. A young lady will spend hours in a mirror prettying herself up. A young man will spend much time and money in a gym to get physically fit. But look at the aging process. An athlete is no longer able to perform as he once did and has to think about retiring. As a woman ages, what they strive so hard to keep, a beautiful body, and yet the body still wears down with age. Many young ladies spend so much energy looking good and succumb to anorexia and bolemia. This life is temporary. But how much emphasis do we spend thinking about things that will last forever, the things of the Spirit. Do you prepare for eternity? Even our successes and failures as adult in the working world are all temporary. What we do spiritually is what counts. What you do down here will only affect you for a few short years in comparison to eternity.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
This message Jesus shares is a message of reality, not of doom and gloom. You can eat this food and you have to keep eating this food to stay alive. But one day you will still die, and where will you be then? Jesus is essentially appealing to men of new life by saying, “I can feed you and clothe you and perform miracles for you down here, but when you die and you have not believed the message from heaven I was sent to proclaim and for which I came to bring, then what have I really accomplished for you?
So this was a hard teaching for people to accept and understand, being born spiritually dead and being so accustomed to this life on earth.
John 6:64
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.
We know from other scriptures that Judas Iscariot was one of the disciples that betrayed Jesus. He refused to accept and understand the gift of eternal life because of pride. Yet it is God’s will that none should perish. He loves all men and loved Judas just as much as the other disciples. Man was created with a free will, by God’s choice in creation. Therefore man can choose death or life.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
It is God’s will that none should perish. This is true. Are all going to come to repentance? No. Even though God’s will is that you should come to repentance, you also have a will. God did not make you a robot. How does God allow these things to happen? God gave you a will. That is why wars take place. People make up their own god, such as Allah, instead of believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They believe if you kill the Christian, including those whom they call an infidel, that you will get seven virgins in another place when you die. They choose not to believe in Jesus, who gave life to people and not death to people like they do.
1 Peter 5:5
God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
The reason people reject the message through Jesus alone is because of pride. The proud of heart thinks, “I want to be liberal. I want to be a broad thinker. I just want to believe everything is going to be okay. I just want to come into church and be okay, where I want to believe in anything. I want to be tolerant of people, not calling sin what God calls sin.” God will not touch your heart when it is prideful.
John 6:65
65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
How does God enable you to come to him? Only when you have had your heart softened will you listen to truth. When you have come to the end of your self sufficiency, when you have come to the end of your self pride, and when you have come to the end of Your self righteousness, leaving pride behind, only then will you come to Christ for new life.
There are only two kinds of righteousness, God’s righteousness and self-righteousness. Self righteousness is an abomination to God.
Romans 3:10
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one
Romans 3:20
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Isaiah 64:6
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away
There is no one righteous. You can only have your self righteousness or God’s righteousness.
You cannot come to Christ saying you have given money or bought stained glass windows in the church or other nice things you have done. You will not get to heaven by what you do. You will get to heaven by believing in what Christ alone has done alone for you.
What Christ did was of such value that propitiation had taken place. Propitiation means that Jesus’ shedding of his blood on a cross completely satisfied the wrath of God against all sin, past present and future.
1 John 2:2
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Therefore Jesus said, ““This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
John 6:66
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
You can follow Christ because he did something for your family. You can think you are following Jesus because you go to church thinking you have done the right thing.
When you are following somebody then he is going some place. Are you going to follow him to his final destination or will you stop following somewhere along the way, when you cannot accept what he is saying or where he is leading you to.
So a person says, “I will follow you Jesus anywhere except to the cross.”
That is where we follow Jesus to, where he was going. He was going to the cross. Spiritually speaking, are you willing to die with him so you can be raised to new life in Him?
Many people were following him to get fed, to get healed, but they will not follow him to the cross, to watch him die for their sins. They think they could die for their own sins.
Matthew 7:13-14
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
So people reject the message of Jesus by saying, “You do not understand how faithful and diligent I am to keep myself clean. I will not follow you to the cross. You need to follow me where I am going. I do not need to follow you to the cross because I am okay. I am not dead. I am alive. I am okay.”
These people were looking into the face of God, a man walking in perfect love, yet turned their back on him, no longer following because he told them how to be saved spiritually.
They respond to the message this way. “Give me something I can do in church. Tell me where to go, that is, what I can do down here.” Jesus replies, “No. I am telling you what I am doing and if you do not believe in me you will die in your sins because of your unbelief in me”. They said to Jesus, “I am not interested in you.”
Jesus turned to his disciples and said.
John 6:67
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Do you want to leave too? Do you want to go as well? You have been following me all these years. Do you want to go too?
John 6:68
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
For some reason, Peter caught the message. You are not talking about bread, manna. You are talking about eternal life. Where will we go to hear about eternal life? Who can tell us about eternal life except the one who initiated eternal life? Eternal life has to come from God. Who can tell us about God except the one who has been with God.
Recall Jesus had repeatedly told then that he came from heaven. At this time he has also performed miracles. So there is certainly evidence that Jesus is God in the flesh.
John 6:69
69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. You are the Holy One of God. Where shall we go?
In his lifetime, Bob has seen people going to Israel to find Jesus. Where can you go to find Jesus. Read his word. He tells you about himself. At a conference Bob was at, he saw many people reading about the DaVinci code, and gobbling it up. Where do you go for answers for eternal life? Reader’s digest? No. God has given us his word through the prophets and apostles that we are reading today.
2 Peter 1:21
For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Where are you going to go to find out about eternal life? Who are you going to go to find out about heaven if you have never been there? Who is going to tell you about some place if they have never been there?
That is what Peter is saying. “No one has been there except you, Jesus. You came down from heaven to tell us about it”.
John 6:70
70 Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” 71 (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)
I have chosen you. As shared previously, it is God’s will that none should perish. Jesus then says that one of you is a devil and meant Judas Iscariot who was later later to betray him so scripture would be fulfilled that said it had to happen this way.
When he picked Judas, he loved Judas just as much as the others. Judas chose the way of the flesh instead of the way of the Spirit. He was looking for a physical ruler, a political ruler. Judas was thinking, “If I could give him some trouble then I can get him to do what I want him to do”. Judas betrayed him because he was thinking on the physical plain instead of the spiritual plain.
In our country, there are so many political speeches during election time, griping over what people did 30 years ago, judging people’s behavior, trying to trash one another for political gain. Our hope is not in who gets elected. Our hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That does not mean one person would not do a better job than another. My hope is not in who gets elected. My hope is in God who sustains his people. So many presidents have lived and gone in our lifetime. This life is temporary, 70 or 80 years maybe, but not very long.
The ony thing that matters is our relationship with Jesus Christ. So whether a child or an adult, the main question is, “Are you in Christ?” If you are in Christ, you know something that the world does not know. When the day comes and this heart stops beating, then I will go where I belong. I will dwell with the Lord eternally. Bob, being knowledgeable of the business world, he knows what it means to know what a good deal is. A man is selling a car for $10,000. “I have $10,000 dollars and I think your car is worth more that $10,000 dollars. I think your $10,000 dollars is worth more than my car. So we exchange and we have a deal”.
God has said to us, “I have a deal for you”. God has given us a deal of the century! So in essence, it is like God appealing to Bob, “Bob, I want you to live on this earth for however long that I want you to live here. In exchange for that, one of these days I will take you home, never to see sickness, or backaches or even death again, but to live in my presence forever. All I ask, Bob, is that for 70 years, that you allow me to live my life in and through you.” Bob replies, “That’s a good deal! Giving up 70 years of his life for eternal would be like giving up $10,000 dollars for a Rolls Royce.” Indeed, it is far greater than that, to give up something that is temporary, that is here today and gone tomorrow, for life eternal, to know the author and creator of all things, someone who loves you with a perfect love.
