I don't know about you, but when I was a young little boy, my mom and my neighbour's mom had a devilish pact that when their sons misbehaved, disciplining them would go for both partners in crime. Each mom had open jurisdiction on the backside of each boy. Now, it would have been great help to me personally if my mom had divulged that bit of information before her hand because I was strutting around my friend's house like I had diplomatic immunity. The horrible truth suddenly dawned on me one day, during a moment of innocently throwing rocks at their pet ostriches. What was bad about that?
And we were swooped upon by this particular neighbour's mom. We were led back into the house, which to me felt like that long walk to the executioner's block. And when we got into the house, we were sent to the bathroom. Now I don't know about you, but that bathroom thing is always super scary. I don't know what it was about it.
Maybe something to do with it being a place of cleaning and washing the sin away or maybe a quiet place for meditation and reflection. I don't know. But as we stood in the bathroom, my friend's mother went to retrieve a thick leather strap off the wall with a very sturdy wooden handle attached to it. From the outset, you could see that this utensil was made for one purpose only, and that was to make naughty boys nice again. Thankfully for me, my friend's mother sort of relented at the last minute and told me to go and wait outside while she dealt with the business at hand.
Without a moment's hesitation, I was out leaving my poor friend behind. And I breathed a great sigh of relief and I stepped outside. But the sound of the loud crack of leather slapping a bare bum, I knew that my friend got my share of the blame as well. And, boy, did he ever and as my friend's mom sort of walked back to the kitchen to hang up this utensil, I thought I saw a little piece of skin still attached to the leather strap. And as it hung there, I read the words that were etched into the leather, or in English, it's ears.
My neighbour's mom definitely had put some ears on my friend that day. Now, our hearing wasn't very great, but we learned very quickly to listen carefully or at least make sure we didn't get caught again. Now perhaps you also know of the wooden spoon or that strap that we call ears. And I'm sure you learned very quickly to listen with your own ears and to avoid the use of this external set of ears. You began to listen to the voice of your parents and to take note of what they said.
This morning, I want us to look at the story of Jesus' disciples, and they asked or were asked the question, whose words are you listening to? Whose words are you listening to? Let's open to John 6:60-70.
If you don't have your Bibles, we'll have that on the screen as well. John 6:60. On hearing it, which was a teaching that Jesus had just given, many of His disciples said this is a hard teaching. Who can accept it? Aware that His disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, does this offend you?
What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where He was before? The Spirit gives life. The flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life, 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.
He went on to say, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the father has enabled him. From this time, many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him. You do not want to leave too, do you? Jesus asked the 12. Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God. Then Jesus replied, have I not chosen you the 12, yet one of you is a devil? He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who though one of the 12 was slated to betray Him. Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God. We come to a point in Jesus' ministry, which was actually a very prosperous and successful time where hundreds of people had come to follow Him. And at this point in time in particular, they had come to hear Him teach in a synagogue at Capernaum. You see, Jesus had become quite a prolific public speaker in a very short time, and people had become very interested in His miracles especially.
Just a few days before this event, Jesus had fed 5,000 people, and all He had were five loaves of bread and two fish. To them, Jesus was a miracle worker par excellence. Perhaps a magician, an outstanding magician, able to wield mysterious powers and create things out of thin air. The funny thing is it wasn't uncommon in this time for travelling magicians or miracle workers or great public speakers or religious fanatics to wander the countryside in that day in a similar way. And everywhere these people went, people from all over the area would come and watch them perform their tricks or listen to them doing great lectures in the public or yell obscenities about the Romans.
And so Jesus was quickly becoming the flavour of the month. He had attracted many disciples, many followers who were apparently keen to learn from this wise teacher. And then we also see that there were others who simply followed Jesus because they could get a free feed. John 6:26, Jesus says, you don't follow Me because of miraculous signs, but because you ate and had your fill. To some of them, He was a vending machine on legs.
But instead of feeding them again, Jesus began teaching them what the miracle of the feeding of 5,000 really meant. He said that the miracle was a sign and that it pointed to Him. The 5,000 were fed and were so full that 12 baskets of bread were left over, but now they were hungry again. And Jesus had to explain to them that they needed to have the bread of life, the bread that was sent from heaven. And if they had that bread, if they had that bread, they would never be hungry again.
Can we have this bread? They asked. And what did Jesus say? He said, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry again.
Can you imagine hearing that for the first time? Like, how strange would that have sounded? But Jesus didn't stop there. After that strange statement, He would later go on to say, if you eat this bread, you will live forever. This bread is My flesh.
You must eat My flesh and drink My blood. And the Bible says on hearing that, many of His disciples said, this is a hard teaching. Who can accept it? He wants us to do what? Eat His flesh.
Drink His blood. We're not cannibals. And so what did they do? They left. Now imagine, I don't know, I know that apparently public speaking is one of the worst fears that people have, but imagine if you were doing a presentation or a speech, and while you were talking, people started leaving one by one.
And you obviously just had to keep going and one by one people were walking out. First, just a handful, then more and more until only a few people are left. And Jesus sees this happening, and He asks a question that is so laden with emotion. It's almost shocking. The vulnerability in these words is amazing.
He says to His disciples, the 12 that are left, you don't want to leave Me too, do you? Jesus, the sovereign God, the Son of God, the messenger, the Word of God, the courageous leader that He is, and yet in this moment, His vulnerability is surprising. And then Peter answered Him, and today I want us to really look at the three statements that he made at this time. The first one is not really a statement, but a question back at Jesus. Have a look at it in verse 68.
Lord, to whom shall we go? To whom shall we go? Peter was beginning to show the growing understanding that the disciples sort of started having about who Jesus really was, he showed what a true disciple of Christ really saw. You see, there were many followers of Jesus, but only few disciples. Only a few faithful adherents to Jesus' cause.
The majority of Jesus' followers had now deserted Him, going back to their own homes, their workplaces, their friends. They had turned their back on Jesus to find another lord perhaps, another great leader to follow. They didn't fully grasp who Jesus was and the uniqueness of this message of the bread of life that He was trying to teach. The message that said that He in fact is the only Lord and that beside Him, there is no one else. That you would always be hungry again.
His teaching was eat My flesh. And the follower's response was, well, that's a bit hard to swallow. What John wants to teach us is that there are true disciples and that there are false disciples. In fact, the false disciple can't be called a disciple at all because he doesn't follow anyone. He doesn't have a master in his mind.
And so you are either a disciple or you're not one at all. You're either a full blown disciple or you're not. There is no such thing as half blown. There is no middle ground. And so Peter asked himself, has there ever been a reason in the past that Jesus hasn't proved Himself completely faithful?
And the answer is there really wasn't. Jesus, over and over up until this point, had showed to them who He was. And Jesus did what He said He would do. And when Jesus spoke, what He had said became true. Jesus had been completely faithful, had acted with complete integrity.
But this is a good question we have to ask ourself as well. Honestly, what reason is there to not surrender myself to Him? What reason is there not to surrender myself to Him every single day? Think about it in the past when your heart has simply trusted Jesus. Were you ever anxious?
Haven't you found that the Lord is compassionate and is a generous master? And hasn't a moment of simple faith in Him given you much more peace than all the planning and all the strategic thinking and all the organising ever could? Then don't change your old and faithful king for a new and false pretender. Don't exchange your old and faithful king for a new and false pretender. Charles Spurgeon once wrote, he said, who barters gold for dross?
We will not renounce the Son until we find a better light nor leave our Lord until a brighter love shall appear. And since this can never be, we will hold Him with a grasp immortal. Who exchanges pure precious gold for chaff, for rubbish? For the uncertainties ahead in our lives, can you think of anything that can arise that will make it necessary for you to abandon ship and serve under a new captain? Under a different captain?
Hasn't the Lord proven Himself to be faithful? And so why do we run? Why do we forsake? Why do we give up and turn our backs? So with Peter, we say, Lord, to whom shall we go?
There's only one Lord. There's only one saviour, and that is Jesus Christ. And this leads us to our next statement. Peter says, You have the words of eternal life. Now the concept of life in the gospel of John is actually really profound.
If you were to do a study on it, you would see that the noun life occurs 36 times in the gospel, and that is a lot. Guess how many times it's used right here in chapter 6 alone? 12 times. 12 out of 36 times. In chapter 6, it is mentioned just the one time by Peter right here, and the other 11 times, Jesus is the one talking about life.
So after this long sermon that He gives in which He mentions life 11 times, you can understand why Peter says, I think He's talking about life. And after Peter heard Jesus saying things like, I am the bread of life, He who believes in Me has everlasting life. Whoever eats of My flesh and drinks of My blood has eternal life. Peter realised that Jesus has something to offer them. He is offering them life.
Later on in chapter 10, Jesus would actually state why He came to Earth in this way. He says, I have come that they may have life and life to the full. So what does Jesus mean when He tells us He is giving us life? Well, the gospel of John states that Jesus can authoritatively give life because He is the origin of life. In the beginning, John 1:1, was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
Verse 3, through Him, this Word, all things were made. The life of the whole creation has its origin in the divine logos, the Word that became flesh. He is the power that creates life. And then throughout the gospel, the word life when used in reference to Jesus specifically highlights Him to be the power that creates a state of living. The life that Christ offers is a gift that He can give because He owns the concept of life.
Why? Because He is the creator of life. 1:3, 5:21, 26. He gives the world its life. 6:33.
He gives His sheep eternal life. 10:28. In this sense, He is the life. John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He is the bread of life.
He is the light of life. He grants living water, and He is the living bread. His words make a life because they are spirit and life. All these things come from Jesus' teaching in the gospel of John. So when we think of Jesus giving us eternal life, we might think that He is giving us a life in eternity.
We think of it as a future thing where we will be with Jesus in heaven, but the life that Jesus wants to give is more than that. The life that Jesus gives in the gospel of John, He gives now. When Jesus spoke about life, He didn't relate it to life after death, but life now for the believer, for His disciples. And friends, Jesus wants to give that life to you and me. By putting our trust in Jesus completely and surrendering our life to His purpose, we will experience life that no one else can offer us.
And that is the promise. We will experience life that no one can offer us because it is only Jesus that can give it. Jesus desires to heal broken hearts. Jesus desires to heal doubts about the future, to heal even depressions and addictions. But more than that, He challenges us on what we think life really is.
If you think life is about self-fulfilment, He challenges you to think again. If you think life is about gratifying your desires, you can think again. What I wanna ask you this morning is are you really living? Are you really living? What is your life all about?
Because life without Jesus, the Bible says, is no life at all. Whose words are you listening to? If His words are life. This week when you go home, whose words will you listen to? The words of life Peter confessed are only found with Jesus, and you can search through the whole world and never find the life that you are longing for.
Whose words, friend, are you listening to? Peter said, You have the words of eternal life. And then the last statement Peter makes is he says, we believe and know that You are the Holy One of God. We believe. We put our objective faith in You as the Holy One of God.
Now this is an Old Testament idea. Meaning, someone that was the Holy One of God was a person consecrated or set apart by God in order to fulfil His purposes. And the verbs that Peter uses here are a little strange. He says, we believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.
We believe and know that You have been set apart by God Himself, the father, to do something amazing, something unique. But why did he use the verbs believe and know? Couldn't he just have said one or the other? I mean, they could convey the same message, but I believe it conveys two different aspects of what faith is. This is where the Greek words convey a deeper meaning.
The verb to believe in Greek doesn't only convey a belief in something that is not able to be seen or touched, like, you know, I believe my car is still in the car park even though I can't see it. It is not something that conveys a belief about something that is not able to be seen or touched. It is also an aspect of putting one's confidence on something. So in other words, Peter was saying that despite all these people leaving Jesus, he still felt confident. He still felt safe that Jesus was the consecrated one of God.
Secondly, the phrase we know uses the word ginosko, the Greek word ginosko. And when ginosko is used, it carries a sense of knowledge that is learned or acquired. There's a difference in those two words in Greek regarding know. The word is a knowledge that is learned or acquired. In other words, you know not to put your hand on the stovetop because you put your hand on the stovetop before.
You'd learned not to do that and got burnt because of it. So when Peter said he knew that Jesus was the Messiah, he knew it because he had experienced it. He was there when people were healed miraculously. He was there when 5,000 people were fed. He heard the powerful teaching Jesus had given.
But for us now, we can also know Jesus by our experience of Him in our lives. He lives in us, and He works within us, and He works through us. Zeb can testify to that young lady last night that it was not his persuasion that led her to give her heart to the Lord. We know that when we have prayed for the Lord to save and to heal and to rescue, that it wasn't our willpower. It wasn't our nice vibes that changed anything.
It was the Lord that came through powerfully. We know because we have learned. Knowing Jesus is so much more than mental assent that He exists. It is knowing Him in our bones. In our bones.
This whole story in John 6 reminds me of the movie Hook. Do you remember that one? The one where Robin Williams plays Peter Pan. And remember the scene where Peter having tried really hard to convince the Lost Boys that he's in fact the real Peter Pan, just grown up. He fails to impress them.
He's old. He's got a bad back. He's unfit. How can this be the great Peter Pan? And one for one, the lost boys leave Peter, all except the littlest boy, the least important boy who comes up to Peter, stares at a face that was much older with much more wrinkles, looks at the bumps on his face, touches it, pulls at it, flattens it out a little bit, and then realises, hey, guys.
It's Peter. At this crucial time when everyone had started leaving Jesus, it was down to Peter to examine this man Jesus. He had to look Him up and down. He had to ask the hard question, is this man really who He says He is? Is He the real deal?
And then he says, You are the real deal. I know it. I have confidence in it. And I've experienced it. Friends, no one can fully know and believe in Jesus unless they have experienced Him.
No one can fully know and believe in Jesus unless they have experienced Him. This week, we have the opportunity again to look into His eyes, to touch the scars in the hands and His feet, to feel the warmth of His presence in our spirit, and to know that He gives life. Jesus, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life. We know and we believe that You are the Holy One of God.
Don't put yourself on the throne anymore. Avoid making yourself the king of this life. Spend enough time in God's Word, hearing His Word. Spend enough time in prayer speaking to Him. Let the Holy Spirit soothe your heart with Jesus' words of life.
Let it be known that open house church, that we are renowned for our listening skills, that we listen to the words of the saviour who gives life. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, our Lord Jesus, we come to You again this morning in need of You, in need of Your life. Forgive us, Lord, when we have looked to other captains, to other masters in our life. Forgive us when we have taken on the responsibility of our own future and placed that responsibility on our shoulders when there is absolutely no way we can control that future.
Forgive us for listening to the words of Satan who deceives, who tricks, who misleads us. Forgive us for the weakness in our flesh. Lord, but thank You for Your Word, for its truth, for its life. And that life, Lord, we are experiencing right now. Thank You for the confidence that we can have that once we place our trust in You, once we have experienced You in our hearts, Lord, You'll call us Your disciples.
Lord, in this morning, we confess, we profess that we are Yours and You are ours, that we know and we believe that You are the Holy One of God, the Messiah, the one who has come to save us. And, Father, for the anxieties and the fears in our hearts, for we believe that You are so much more capable at handling those things than we are, at taking care of those things than we are. Lord, You are so much greater than those things in our lives. Lord, we don't want to exchange our gold for dross. We don't want to forsake the preciousness of You for anything less.
And we just pray, Lord, in this week for the decisions we have to make, for the path that You will guide us down, for the troubles that have followed us into this building, Lord, that You will conquer, that You will guide, that You will heal, that You will restore. We are desperate for the life that You want to give us. We thank You for it breaching into our very lives even now, and we pray that You will continue to grow that, expand that, fill that in our souls. We give You permission to do that, Lord Jesus. Amen.