SERIES: The Gospel of John
How to Lose Friends and Offend People
SPEAKER: Brad Harper
Introduction: Many years ago Dale Carnegie made a classic contribution to American social process with his book How to Win Friends and Influence People. After studying John six this week, I became convinced that if such a book existed in the first century, Jesus had not read it. For if someone were to write a book about the effects of Jesus’ sermon recorded in this chapter, it might be entitled How to Lose Friends and Offend People. At few places in Jesus’ ministry are we so struck with the negative popular effect of his message.
Just prior to this offensive message, Jesus has performed a remarkable miracle, the feeding of the 5000. Surely it was a very popular miracle, and it would seem a perfect time to preach a sermon that would really endear his followers to him. Instead, as Pastor Mike showed us last week, he began to draw their thoughts away from the physically satisfying miracle to the much more difficult issue of faith. He continues this theme in a sermon at the synagogue which would offend and alienate all but his most committed disciples. Those who left him were offended by several key elements in his message. First, they left because of …
Jesus’ offensive message of spirituality.
As we saw last week, Jesus began to chastise them for their materialistic interest in the miracle of the bread rather than in the one who worked the miracle. He says that what God really wants is for them to believe in him, Jesus. He is telling them that the important thing about the miracle is not the bread, but the eternal life offered by the one who broke the bread.
But it seems that many of the Jews of Jesus’ day were just not interested in such spiritual messages. They were interested in a savior, but not one who would promise them internal peace in this life and hope for the life to come. They wanted a political savior who, like Moses, would lead them out of the oppression of a pagan empire. Notice verse 30, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written: `He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'”
Do you see a problem with this request. Didn’t Jesus just take five loaves of bread and two fish and multiply it to feed thousands of people? But this is not enough for them. It’s as if they say to Jesus, “Well yes, you performed a nice little trick of multiplication here. Not bad. But Moses, now there’s a powerful guy for you! He didn’t start with anything; he just made food fall out of heaven. If you can top that, maybe we’ll give you a closer look.”
Jesus addresses their request by taking them up on their comparison. He reminds them that Moses was only a human. And it was not Moses who gave the manna from heaven, it was God. In addition, Moses’ bread was of no greater power than the bread Jesus had just multiplied, for it was simple food for the body that only brought temporary satisfaction. But now God was giving them the true bread from heaven which would not give them temporary bodily satisfaction, but would offer abundant life in this world and everlasting presence with God in the world to come.
The response of these critics is disappointing. In a remark reminiscent of the woman in John four, they hear Jesus’ spiritual message only in physical terms. “Hey, everlasting bread? Now that’s a great idea. Maybe we could even market it! Let’s have it, Jesus.” The spiritual message of Jesus is offensive to them because they are not interested in spiritual things. Like the people of our day, they are dying of a hunger they don’t understand. It is a hunger for relationship with God, but people are trying to fill it with earthly and material realities. The spiritual food Jesus offers is irrelevant to their lives and a rejection of their program.
It is an offensive message to the Pharisees, but to the believer it is a message of fulfillment and joy. For the believer in Jesus is a person who has come to the point of realizing that what the world has to offer in its material goods and human advantages cannot satisfy the real hunger of the heart. Not only can the world’s goods not satisfy, but the world is diabolically fickle in its offerings, often snatching them away without notice or explanation. But Jesus came armed with spiritual food which does not depend on human conditions, and which can never be taken away. Why do you think Jesus found so many listening ears among the down and outers of society? They knew there was no real peace in the world. But Jesus said, “Peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, but my peace I give to you.”
Having struggled with Jesus’ message of spirituality, the next hurdle for these listeners to overcome is ….
Jesus’ offensive message of belief.
Here we see Jesus making the full transition from having given them bread to the fact that he, himself is the true bread of life, given by God. To summarize Jesus’ message of belief from this passage, he says to them in effect,
“The issue is not bread, or even manna. I am the bread of life. I am the one who has come from heaven, sent by the Father. To find real life you must come to me and believe in me. Neither the world, nor release from political oppression, nor miracles, nor all the religious accomplishments in the world can bring you life. Life is found in me alone. The bread of life is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Let me tell you, unless you eat my flesh, and drink my blood, you will never find the life you hunger for.”
At this point, Jesus’ message begins to become very unpopular, and the crowd begins to react in anger and opposition. This message of belief is offensive to many of these Jews for a couple of reasons. First, the message is an offense to their factual knowledge. They are beginning to get the picture that Jesus is saying that he is the Son of God, that his origin in heavenly, not human. Now this brings about a basic problem for this Galilean crowd. Isn’t Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, the carpenter, who everyone knows? How can he possibly be from heaven?
Right here we need to stop a moment and touch briefly on the relationship between faith and knowledge. You see, there is nothing technically wrong with their question; in fact, it is a good one. The problem comes with the overconfidence they have in their own knowledge. And we modern people in the Age of Science have an even a greater problem of overconfidence. This overconfidence is amazing since even the continuing discoveries of science repeatedly show us that things we knew for sure only a few years ago are now recognized as complete misunderstandings. So it was that these skeptics knew that Jesus had completely human origins. The problem was that they knew nothing of the virgin birth. In our pride, we think human knowledge is such a bedrock of life, but, in reality, it is a rather fragile thing.
It is the nature of faith to force us to confess that our knowledge is more tenuous and incomplete than we think it is. Faith asks us to believe in what we can’t see or fully understand. Faith asks us not to put God in the box of our experiences and perceptions, and to believe that he can and does act in ways that are mystifying to our finite minds. But these critics had their boxes tied up too tight. God must act according to their ways or not at all. So, in spite of his miraculous power, Jesus could be nothing more to them than a man.
Secondly, Jesus’ message of belief was offensive to them because it demanded a commitment from them that they were not willing to make. When Jesus tells them that they must come to him and believe in him he means much more than that they should think he is an OK guy and give mental assent to his message. He is saying they must make a total life commitment to him without reservation as the only one who can give them life. Jesus makes this point most graphically when he describes his flesh as the bread of life and insists that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood or they will have no life in them. On the surface this idea is offensive to the Jews, not only because, when taken in a literal sense it is a repulsive idea, but because they were forbidden by law to consume the blood of any animal.
But Jesus is obviously not speaking literally here. He is communicating that as God provided food in the wilderness to keep life going, now, in Jesus, he is providing the only source of eternal life. And as the blood of sacrifices promised forgiveness to come, now Jesus brings forgiveness of sin in his own sacrificial death. And Jesus is using this graphic illustration to tell them that they cannot find this life by simply smelling the aroma or taking a little taste. They must commit themselves to the whole meal, assimilating by faith all that Jesus is in his life and words.
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Friends, when Jesus asks people to follow him, he never tries to hide the cost. Yet it’s amazing how many who call themselves Christians seem to have had little more than a tiny taste of Christ. They give mental assent to the key doctrines and may even go to church regularly. But they seem to have little in the way of the true life Jesus promised. Their satisfaction level and joy seem to ride the roller coaster of personal achievement and circumstance, just like everyone else in the world. Tragedy leaves them without peace, and suffering leaves them without hope.
It seems that Jesus has drawn a line in the sand with the crowd that has followed him, saying, in effect,
“Look friends, I know it’s been fun so far. You’ve enjoyed the miracles, you’ve heard some untraditional messages, but now it’s time to face reality. If you want to stay with me, you have a decision to make. All of this is not about miracles, and it’s not about free food. It’s about the fact that I am the one and only savior of the world, sent by God to bring you eternal life. If you want that life you have to decide to follow me and believe in me with everything you’ve got, or you might as well not come at all.”
It’s an offensive message, but to the believer it’s a message of life. Jesus said, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” Jesus tells believers that when we commit ourselves unreservedly to him, we remain in him. By faith we remain always in his power and influence, and he continues to make us more like himself. He remains in us, telling us that in the midst of a dying world he will fill us with his presence to bring us life, a life that cannot come from the world but, as Jesus would say in John chapter 7, is like a never-ending spring of living water, springing up from within us.
Jesus’ offensive message of divine sovereignty.
He has told them that they must come to him and believe in him for eternal life, but then he tells them that it is God who will draw people to follow Jesus, and no one who is not drawn by the Father can come. Now divine sovereignty, election, predestination, whatever you want to call it, is a thorny problem indeed. But there is no getting around it. Not only does scripture clearly teach it, but the very existence of an infinite, eternal God, philosophically requires it. But it is so offensive to the self-centered human mind and spirit. It is offensive to the ideas of free will and human ability. Nevertheless, there it is.
Do I have the time this morning to explain how God’s sovereignty and human will can mutually co-exist? No. Could I fully explain it if I had the time? No. Can I live with the tension between the two? Yes. You see, on the basis of my human experience, I don’t sense that God’s sovereignty forces me to do anything I don’t want to do, or keep me from doing, anything I really want to do. It’s like a professor of mine once said after a long argument with a non-Christian about this issue. “Do you want to know if you have been chosen by God to be a Christian?” “Yes,” the man answered. “Then get on your knees and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior right now. Then you will know that indeed you have been chosen.”
Nevertheless, this doctrine remains an offensive one to many unbelievers who raise all sorts of questions about fairness and narrow mindedness. But to believers, it is a message of comfort. It’s a great thing to find out that there is someone beyond us who has been in control of the events of our lives without us even knowing it. A few years ago, on my wife’s 30th birthday, I really blew it. You see, I’m not really into birthdays since I was born on December 27th, a rather anticlimactic day to have a birthday. But Robin is, especially landmark birthdays like number 30. I thought I did OK. I took her to dinner, which was a good start. But for a present I gave her a coffee mug. Wrong choice! Well, the next year I made up for it. I took her to dinner, which she thought was quite enough for a 31st birthday. But when we got home, about 20 of our friends were waiting in our dark house to surprise Robin. After she let out the scream that flattened Cincinnati, she had a great time. The best part for her was to know that I had arranged the events of her life without her knowing it to bring her a great blessing.
Friends, our salvation is not based on our feeble ability to choose God, but on his sovereign ability to draw us unto himself. And not only to draw us, but to keep us. For Jesus said that whoever the Father draws to him he will in no way drive away. Because God has chosen us, there is nothing which can separate us from his loving choice.
Jesus’ offensive message of the cross.
You might wonder where it is that we find the cross in this passage, for it is not obvious. But Jesus commonly uses imagery, especially noted by John to refer to his crucifixion and resurrection. And it seems that whenever Jesus talks of being lifted up or ascending, it is his crucifixion he has in mind. In John 3 he said he would be lifted up like a healing serpent. In John 17 he speaks of ascending to where he was before, with the Father. But that road to the Father made unavoidable stops at Gethsemane and Calvary.
In this passage Jesus puts it like this. “Does what I have been saying offend you? Is it hard to take? What if you see the Son of Man, the one sent by God to save the world, murdered on a cross and then ascend back to God from where he came? Would that shake up your materialistic and religious plans?” Here again, Jesus returns to the fact that they have totally missed the boat in their expectations of God. God’s most important goal is not to save them from political oppression and restore their domination over Palestine. God has sent his Son to save them from their sin and give them eternal life. And so it is that Jesus finally tries to make all of this as plain as possible, telling them that the message God is trying to get through to them is about spiritual life, not about dreams of worldly advancement.
To many of Jesus’ followers this message is simply unacceptable. The savior they want will help them reestablish their political kingdom. Certainly, he will not die and then return to God. What a waste that would be! And so, the message of the cross is offensive also in this generation. After all, we are a civilized people. How could a civilized God require that his own Son die to pay for our sin? How barbaric!
And is the cross barbaric? Is it offensive? Yes, yes it is. Who could rejoice to watch soldiers pound iron stakes through the hands of the Son of God, to see his body oozing with blood and to listen to his labored breathing as he slowly suffocates? Who could watch with satisfaction knowing that the Son of God was dying for what we did wrong? And all this because, for some reason, God could not simply say to a sinful humanity, “It’s OK, no big deal”? That’s right.
The cross is offensive alright. We evangelicals tend to clean it up a bit, choosing to display empty crosses to proclaim that Jesus has risen from the dead. But the empty cross is meaningless without the occupied cross. And to receive the life that he has to give, we must humbly kneel before his lifeless body and face the horror that we deserved to be there, not him. No, there is nothing pleasing about the cross. But for the believer it is the sweetest message of all. For in the cross God has saved us from everlasting death, and without it Christ’s mission would be a failure.
Well, if Jesus’ purpose in this message was to weed out the uncommitted, it worked to perfection. The text tells us that most of his followers left him at this point. The language here means that they turned back to what they had left behind them, back to their former way of thinking. Then Jesus turns to his most faithful, the twelve, and asks if even they too will desert him.
Conclusion: Is Jesus’ message a difficult one for you. I suggest that if it isn’t, you’re either not human, or you haven’t yet really taken it seriously. The message of Jesus is not some simple, syrupy, sweet message of love and human warmth. Yet amazingly, that is the picture painted for us by our prevailing culture and even Liberal Protestant Christianity. Jesus is a sensitive prophet who builds everyone’s self-esteem and never points out faults. I’ve wondered why anyone would want to crucify someone like that! No, Jesus comes to us, confronts us with our sin, tells us our obsession with climbing the ladder of human success is a waste of time, and assures us that if we don’t want to die, we must commit our lives to him without reservation in the face of some problematic questions for which we will never have answers in this life.
There are two sides to the message of Christ. The side most enjoyable to talk about it the side of grace and forgiveness. But to fully know his grace, we must face the other side of his message, the side that is offensive to our self-confidence, our pride, our intellect, and our emotions. So offensive that Jesus might ask us if it is too much for us to face. May our answer be the same as that of Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Indeed, there are two ways to go. The harsh way of Jesus that leads to life, or the way of the world which leads to death. Maybe you’ve been on the Christian bandwagon for a while, but you’ve never really come to terms with the kind of commitment Jesus is calling you to. You need to face that reality. Maybe you’ve never decided to follow Christ, sensing that his message just demands too much of you. You need to consider the alternative.
DATE: January 24, 1993
Tags:
Offense of the Gospel
Belief
Divine sovereignty
Cross