The Bread of Life: Faith Beyond Signs and Expectations

Because here's what this means. Even if your marriage falls apart, Jesus still wants to offer you eternal life. Even if you find community and then someone in that community hurts you or betrays you, Jesus still wants to offer you eternal life. Even if you show up late and all the food is gone, even if you came for a miracle and you don't see a miracle, even if you've heard all of the moral direction that we talk about up here and you've ignored all of it, Jesus wants to offer you and me eternal life. It's why we're here. [00:41:31] (39 seconds)  #GraceRegardless

There will never be enough signs or enough evidence. These people saw miracle after miracle after miracle. Jesus, we just need one more. Just one more. That'll do it. No. What they need is faith. What they need is belief. What they need is trust. They literally missed the verse that he just said. If you believe on him who was sent. I can't believe without a little bit more evidence. That's not belief. There is signs. There is evidence. There is a promise, but it's not gonna get all laid out for us. [00:48:46] (38 seconds)  #FaithOverSigns

So I think we need to be very, very careful about putting expectations on the king of the universe. I have four very simple expectations that I have of God. He keeps his word. He loves me. He's good, and he's in heaven and does what he wants. That's it. That we serve a God who keeps his word in his time. We serve a God who loves us and proved it on the cross. We serve a God that the Bible says he is good and what he does is good, but also says he's in heaven and he does what he wants. [00:33:27] (37 seconds)  #SimpleFaithExpectations

Jesus here sees right through their motivations. He says, hey. It's good that you're seeking me, but you're asking the wrong question. You have the wrong priorities. And this is going to be what happens the rest of this chapter. Every time there is a question, every time there's a difficulty, every time the people have a concern about the things that Jesus says or the things that Jesus does, Jesus is going to point them back over and over again to a very simple truth. He's gonna say, listen. I came from heaven, and I have the keys to eternal life. [00:38:22] (33 seconds)  #HeHoldsEternalLife

Yeah. I understand. I understand how bad your sins are. Your sins are so bad that the creator of the universe had to be tortured to death to pay for them. But he loves you so much that he was willing to do it. It's not simple, but it is the only way it can be given to us. This is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. [00:46:10] (28 seconds)  #CrossCoversAll

I think if you are seeking a sign from God, earnestly seeking, he'll give it to you. I think if you're seeking evidence, if you're really looking for evidence that God is who he said he is, you'll find it. There's so much evidence. There's not a guarantee that life is gonna be easy, but there's a guarantee of eternal life. But here's the thing. If you've got a sign and you're just looking for one more, if you've seen all the evidence and you just say, oh, I just need one more piece of evidence, it's never gonna do it. [00:48:10] (35 seconds)  #EvidenceVsFaith

If you can conquer death, then you can hold me. You can promise to not lose me. If you can be raised up, you can promise to raise me up. We have that truth so we can believe these words and stand on them because his grave is empty. And the only person who can promise to raise me up is someone who's not lying in a grave. [00:56:11] (23 seconds)  #ResurrectionProof

The feeding of the 5,000, the only miracle that's recorded in all four gospels. And we could do a bunch with this, but I want us to notice one thing here before we move on, and it's the three separate prayers that we see that we see in this story. The first group that's praying is actually the people who are praying to Jesus. They're coming to him. They're hungry. They have people who are sick. They wanna be taught. They're asking Jesus to teach them, to heal them, to feed them. If that's not prayer, I don't know what prayer is. [00:28:09] (32 seconds)  #PrayerOfTheHungry

And what is Jesus' answer to them? I came from heaven. I'm going back up. Do you trust me? Do you trust me? And as you run into these things in the bible as you study, and I pray that we do as we're walking this thing out for the next ten, twenty, thirty years, and you run into things that you don't understand, study them, look into them, look at them in the character of God. But sometimes you just get to the point where we'll be like, you know what? I'm just gonna have to trust you. [01:05:07] (30 seconds)  #TrustHisPurpose

And here's what I love about this. At the end of this, we're gonna see a bunch of these disciples walk away. But I think these are a lot of the same disciples that we see come back in Acts chapter two at Pentecost when it says 3,000 people are saved. I think it's a lot of these guys. They had all these questions. They had all these concerns. They they didn't they hadn't seen Jesus raised yet. But once they saw the resurrected Lord, they go, oh, I get it now. [00:55:44] (27 seconds)  #FromDoubtToPentecost

They don't get it, do they? Jesus is like, listen. I'm here to give you life, eternal life. And they're like, okay. Cool. How do we earn it? And he's like, I I said, give. I'm here to give eternal life. And there's their thing over and over again is, but how do we learn it? What what what works must we do? And Jesus said this, this is the work, singular, of God that you believe in him who is sent. I think this actually becomes a stumbling block, a difficulty for many people. [00:43:15] (33 seconds)  #BelieveNotEarn

And I need to be reminded of that, and I need to teach on it, and I need to think on it because it's what Jesus says to this crowd over and over and over again. I'm here to offer you eternal life. All those other things are wonderful. Jesus says, I can have that you have life and that more abundantly. He says, seek me first, and all these other things will be added to you. Absolutely. But we seek him and the life that he has first, and those things come with it. It's so important. [00:42:10] (31 seconds)  #SeekHimFirst

That's what Jesus is talking about. It's like it's not enough to just think you know who I am. It's not enough to just listen to me. It's not enough to just follow me. Those are all good, but ultimately, you have to partake of who I am. I've talked to people before and they're like, yeah. I tried Christianity. It just didn't work for me. And I'm like, hold on. You tried having the Holy Spirit, one of the members of the Trinity, creator of the universe, come into your life and dwell in your heart, and that didn't work for you, you did not try that. [01:00:42] (41 seconds)  #ReceiveTheSpirit

It's a phrase we'll see over and over again. Down from heaven is in verse 32, fifty, fifty one. Jesus is like, listen. from heaven, and I came for a very specific purpose. It is to give you eternal life. Eternal life is in verse 27, verse 40, verse 47, verse 51, verse 54, verse 58, verse 68. Every time these guys come to Jesus with a request or a question or an issue, Jesus is like, listen. There's a very simple truth that I want to point you back to. [00:38:55] (39 seconds)  #DownFromHeaven

If you struggle with the idea of Jesus being God, incarnate, creator of the universe, there is really one piece of evidence that you need, and that is that he died, and then he not died. He rose from the grave. He conquered death. That is only God. Only God does that. And it is one of the most provable facts in history if you study through it. But Jesus will say this, listen, I know you don't get it now, but what if you see me raised up one day? [00:55:09] (35 seconds)  #ConqueredDeath

What happens from the beginning of chapter six to the end of chapter six that makes so many people walked away from Jesus. And why would we wanna spend an entire evening talking about that? I think it's really, really important to see. Because as we go through this chapter, I think there's many, many reasons, many difficulties that people have with Jesus, many things that cause them to walk away at the end of the chapter. And as I've been in church for twenty, thirty years, I've seen many Christians in church week in and week out. And then over the years, I've seen them fade. [00:24:16] (43 seconds)  #WhyPeopleWalkAway

So many of the miracles that God does in our own lives, other people will only know about them if we tell them. I've asked this question before, but I think it bears repeating. How many of you guys have experienced something in your life where you're like, yes. That was a miracle God did in my life. I saw God work in a miraculous way. Okay. That's most of the hands in here. When's the last time you told someone about it? Right? [00:36:50] (27 seconds)  #TellYourMiracles

Because here's the first principle. Jesus is not gonna be the type of king that they anticipated. He's not gonna be the type of king that they hoped for. He's not gonna be the type of king that they imagined. See, these Jews had been waiting for millennia, for centuries for Messiah. They were praying for Messiah. They were eagerly seeking Messiah. And what they thought is when Messiah comes, he's going to conquer our enemies just like Moses did. And who are the enemies at this time? It's Rome. [00:31:20] (33 seconds)  #NotAPoliticalMessiah

And here's the thing that I know from years of walking with the Lord, from years of studying the Bible, there's some hard things in here. There's some really hard things in here. And the more I study them, the more I see that they line up with the character of who God is and how he's loved and how he does good things. But there's some hard things I still don't understand. There's some passages in the Old Testament of of genocide and these rules and right there's just some things where you go, that is a hard, truth. [01:04:35] (31 seconds)  #HardTextsHardFaith

But then people go the other direction, and they're like, well, it can't be that simple. Don't you know how bad I am? Don't you know all the sins that I've done? Don't you know all the things that I've thought, the things that I've said, the people I've betrayed? God can't just wave a magic wand and forgive all that. I can't just I have to do something to earn my forgiveness. It can't be that simple. Don't you know how bad I've done? Don't you know how bad I've been? [00:45:44] (26 seconds)  #GraceNotWorks