There are several major events in this 6th
chapter.
We've already studied the beating of the 5,000
, which is really 25,000 when you count the
women and children.
And then last time we were here in the Gospel
of John, we saw Jesus walk on water and coming
up, there's going to be a really great sermon
by Jesus on the bread of life that starts
in verse 32.
But at the core of this chapter is an issue
that's very important and we've already
started
to look into it, the difference between a true
disciple of Jesus and a false disciple
of Jesus, a true follower of Christ and a
false follower of Christ.
There are those who endure to the end faith
fully, and then as we've all probably witnessed
in
our lifetime, there are those who abandon the
faith before they get to the end of the
race.
They even know a pastor who did that.
We can start in verse 60 actually of this 6th
chapter to get an idea of how this chapter
ends so that we can know where we're going.
And remember this, Jesus's followers are all
called disciples, not just the twelve.
And Jesus here, as we get to verse 60, here in
John 6, and the sermon that I just told
you about, he has just finished, as we get to
verse 60, what R.C. Sproul called one of
the hard sayings of Jesus that we're going to
study later.
But then look as you get to verse 60, and we
'll read through verse 69.
Look at that word, many of his disciples.
When they heard this, said, "This is a
difficult statement.
Who can listen to it?"
But Jesus, conscious that his disciples gr
umbled and said at this, said to them, "Does
this
cause you to stumble?"
But then if you see the Son of Man ascending
where he was before, it is the Spirit who
gives life.
The flesh profits nothing.
The words I have spoken to you are spirit and
are life.
But some of you who do not believe, for Jesus
knew from the beginning who they were, who
did not believe, who it was that would betray
him.
And as he was saying for this reason, I have
said to you that no one can come to me unless
it has been granted him from the Father.
As a result of this, many of his disciples
withdrew and were not walking with him anymore
.
So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want
to go away also, do you?"
Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall
we go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We have believed and come to know that you are
the Holy One of God, an incredible set
of verses here."
But as we went through those, did you see the
distinction between the disciples who
did not believe and the disciples who did
believe?
It's pretty stark.
The disciples who did not believe the claims
that Jesus made and the words that Jesus spoke
and the disciples who did believe the claims
that Jesus made and the words that Jesus spoke
.
The false disciples noticed withdrew as a
result of the words that came from Jesus.
But Peter gives the chief characteristic of a
true disciple there in verse 68.
Look at it again where Peter says, "Notice,
you have words of eternal life."
Now again, notice both groups are called
disciples.
Both were followers of Jesus, both groups,
both were students learning from Jesus.
Some were true, a small minority, most many
were false.
I'll go back to verse 64 and there we find a
prototype of a false disciple first.
It says, "But there are some of you," Jesus
says, "who do not believe?"
For Jesus knew from the beginning who they
were, who did not believe.
And then next is the introduction of the
prototype of false disciples and who it was
that would
betray him.
And there we find the prototype of a false
disciple is none other than Judas.
To this day, I say this every time I go
through this portion or I talk about Judas, "
Have
you ever known anybody that named their kid
Judas ever?"
That's how ingrained the person of Judas is
into our culture.
And verse 20 closes out, I'm sorry, verse 70
closes, Jesus closes this chapter out.
Look what he says, "Did I myself not choose
you the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil
?"
Now just as an aside, again, how in the world
could Jesus know at this point that Judas
was going to betray him and that Judas was a
devil if Jesus was not the God man?
There's no way, based on how Judas had behaved
up to this point, that if Jesus were just
a man only, he could have known that.
And for whatever God's purposes are, there
were times when Jesus purposely restricted
his attributes like when he said, "No man
knows the day or the hour, only the father,
not even the son."
But then there were times when his attributes
of omniscience like here are in play
demonstrating
his deity.
There's no other way that you can explain that
.
The story of Judas is a shocking story, really
tragic, maybe it could be most of all human
tragedies because of, think of how close he
was to Jesus himself during all of the three
years of his ministry in his incarnation here
on earth.
Think about Judas every day during that time
period being with Jesus, eating meals with
Jesus, sleeping under the stars with the group
, seeing firsthand the amazing miracles every
single day, everywhere they went.
But you notice back there in verse 64 that he
's linked with unbelievers.
He's linked with those who reject Christ and
in some ways Judas is absolutely unique but
in other ways, he's not on his own, he gives
us an example of a defecting follower of Jesus
so in that sense he's one among many, many who
follow Jesus for a while and then later
on abandoning him, having had a full
revelation of the person and the work and the
teaching
of Jesus and then later abandoning him and
abandoning the face.
From the big picture perspective, anybody who
has learned the truth followed for a while
and then walked away totally from it, the
truth is in the category of a Judas, anybody.
And this didn't, of course, catch Jesus off
guard.
He's Jesus as I just said.
Again, look at verse 64, "For Jesus knew from
the beginning who they were who did not
believe."
He knew every single one of them in that crowd
that did not believe and who it was that would
betray him.
He gave examples of this in the parables.
And sometimes very directly, he said that
people, there are going to be people who fors
ake
me because of persecution.
There are going to be people who forsake me
because of the love of money.
There are going to be people who forsake me
because they are going to be seduced by this
world system and that's going to become more
important to them than me.
There are going to be others that are
unwilling to sever relationships in their
families
over me.
I mean, there's a lot of reasons like that for
why people walk away from Jesus, but they're
not in play here in this chapter.
This chapter here is much more direct.
The defectors in this situation left simply
because of what Jesus said, because of his
words.
Wasn't about relationships, it wasn't about
the world or the world system, it wasn't
about riches on this occasion, it's amazing,
astonishing.
It's his words that drove them away, words
that we still have to deal with today.
You're going to see some astonishing things
that Jesus says as we go through these verses
that led up to their decision.
He said in verse 63, look at it, the words
that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
And the words that he is referring to there
are the words in that great sermon on the
bread of life that starts in verse 32 and runs
all the way down to verse 59.
He said those words are spirit and life.
In this sermon he talks about his death, he
talks about his resurrection, he also condemns
their false works religious system, the person
and work of Jesus Christ offended them as
it does so many people today, the powerful
declaration that Jesus makes about the
necessity
of believing in him as the Holy One of God and
his death and his resurrection and the
necessity to abandon their false religious
system of Judaism and then he gives this
crazy illustration about eating his flesh and
drinking his blood and no man can come
to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,
all of that that he said triggered their
defection that day.
Again, for many reasons people abandoned Jesus
, but in this case it was his words and
inevitably eventually it always comes down to
that when it comes to Jesus.
These Jews were warned, he told them, believe
and you will have life, reject and you will
be condemned and the vast majority of them
rejected and they still do today and in
American
culture there has been a theology that has
developed that has, we've got some really
and we've talked about this before some really
wrong thinking about the Jewish people.
You have Christians today politically will say
well the Jews are God's chosen people
so you don't mess with the Jews, that's God's
chosen people, well no.
Just to blanket the Jews and to say that from
an ethnic standpoint or to say that from a
religious standpoint is not true.
The only chosen people that God has today are
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and
Paul goes to great lengths to teach us in the
New Testament that the church now is God's
chosen people made up of Jews and Gentiles.
So make sure you understand that, that when we
're talking about the Jews you can be talking
about ethnically Jewish people who may or may
not be believers.
The ones who are not believers but are ethn
ically Jewish are not God's chosen people and
that's
the majority of ethnic Jews that are living in
Israel right now.
That's a fact, you can check that out and then
there are people who may not be ethnically
Jewish but subscribe to the religion of
Judaism.
Those people, all of them reject Jesus as the
Messiah and they are certainly not a part
of God's chosen people whether they live in
Israel or here in America or anywhere else
in the world.
The only chosen people that exist on planet
earth from now until Jesus returns are people
who have repented of their sins and placed
their saving faith in Jesus Christ as Lord
alone.
That's it.
No matter what their ethnicity is, every tribe
, tongue, creed, doesn't matter.
That distinction is out now.
It's everyone who believes.
So don't be confused about the Jews and the
chosen people and we've got a lot of confusion
in that area.
And today and even then, when you look at
these people that Jesus is talking to that
are ethnically Jewish, especially back in that
day, when they were rejecting Jesus as
we see this group, many of these disciples
they left, they didn't want anything to do
with Jesus anymore.
They didn't turn from Jesus and go become athe
ists like most of the ethnic Jews are
in Israel today are atheists.
You can look that up and they weren't turning
from Jesus to become agnostic.
They were retreating from the gospel back to
the comfort that they found in the externalism
of this very corrupt form of Judaism that
existed then that still exists today that
is a works righteousness religion.
That's what it is.
And all of that takes us back to our text and
looking into the context of those people
that day when they walked away from Jesus who
they just had witnessed perform incredible
miracles.
Think about that.
And that really wasn't some kind of unusual
event really.
Their spiritual defection is a pattern that's
gone on throughout all of the history of the
church, even the early church.
That's why Paul wrote to the Corinthians "Ex
amine yourselves whether you be in the faith.
Examine yourself.
Take a self test.
Go down the checklist as you know even
bringing up that subject of examining yourself
in
many circles of the church is thought of as
being very offensive.
I dare anybody question the legitimacy of
anybody else's salvation.
Who are you to judge, right?
Have you ever heard that before?
I mean, the fact is this, we can't see into a
person's soul, can we?
I mean, you come down and take the Lord's Su
pper and you're making a public profession
right there that you have placed your saving
faith in Jesus Christ, but I can't look into
your soul and see, oh, that's a regenerate
soul, I can judge your fruit and all the rest,
but I can't be perfectly observing what's on
the inside of you and your soul.
But the fact is beyond that the Bible warns
over and over and over about the importance
of not being deceived or self deceived about
your own spiritual condition.
Only you know with 100% certainty, Jesus
himself said, what, the way is narrow and few
there
be that find it.
How many go in on the Broadway?
Many, many there be who go in there at.
How do they have these warnings in the Bible
if they are not things that we need to be
concerned about?
People run from this like the plague, but we
should run to it.
These are things we should talk about.
These are things we should study about.
These are things we should discuss amongst
ourselves.
You can get too over introspective and that's
wrong as well, but this is not a subject that
we should avoid.
Only the reality is unavoidable.
There is an extensive history of false
discipleship all throughout the history of the
church
and is up until this day.
So this is an issue.
And generally speaking, I think it's fair to
say that very often people are driven away
by the truth itself.
No different today than it was back then.
The true gospel in all of its particulars is
really offensive to people.
So stumbling block, foolishness as the Bible
says.
And so whenever the message of the gospel is
made very clear, there is an opportunity
to discern between the true and the false.
There are a whole lot of people who call
themselves Christian.
I go through my Twitter feed and I see these
examples of things that are going on in the
church in America.
Crazy stuff.
Santa Claus, skyrocketing across the top of
the church in a sleigh, just wildness.
But they would listen to me describe
Christianity, many who profess to be Christian
.
They listen to me describe the Christian faith
and they would say, "Well, I don't believe
like that."
Which is usually followed by, "My God is like
this."
To which I always say, "You're exactly right."
I'm sure he probably is like that because he's
a figment of your imagination.
He's someone that you have made up in your
mind.
We talked about relativism earlier in Sunday
school.
So think about the sheer arrogance of a person
who can see with natural revelation that there
is a God, no question, who knows inside them
because God, as Romans tells us, planted it
inside of them that there is a God for that
person to say, "I think God is like this."
Making themselves their own authority as to
define the God who created all this that our
eyes can see.
Think of the sheer arrogance of that.
And so I simply say to people when I'm talking
to people about this, I try to understand,
"Well, how do you define God?
Well, who do you think God is?"
I always say, "Well, somebody's got to have an
authority that you can appeal to to define
God."
And look, we all get one life to figure this
out.
And I just happen to be one of those people
that believes that God has defined himself
in the pages of this book.
I'm just one of those people.
That's what I believe.
I don't look to myself to define who God is or
how He operates.
I look to this book and wonder of wonders, I
don't know, maybe it's a coincidence, that
it's the number one selling book in the
history of literature.
Wouldn't you think that if God revealed a book
to man that it would be the number one
bestseller?
Well, lo and behold, it is.
And so you come down to the point of, really,
with this idea of relativism, in that idea,
you can make God whoever you want him to be,
and that's true for you.
Or you can say, "No, I reject that."
I'm definitely not smart enough to define who
God is out of my own feeble brain.
I have to appeal to an authority.
And that's what it comes down to with what
Jesus was saying this day.
Do you believe His claims?
Do you believe who He is?
So in this situation here, false disciples
have collected around Jesus in this situation.
And last time we started into an outline, do
you remember, you might remember as I start
to give it to you, that gave us the
characteristics of a false disciple.
You said, first of all, false disciples are
attracted by the crowd.
Remember I said that?
I gave you that illustration.
There's a dynamic in the crowd.
A crowd attracts a crowd.
You just want to see what's going on for
anything else.
And this crowd that collects around Jesus,
here in John 6, was drawn in by His miracles.
And they were astounding.
They would draw anybody in if you saw one of
them.
And secondly, we learned that the false
disciples are fascinated by the supernatural.
These crowds came together, massive crowds.
Remember tens of thousands of people because
of the prospect and the promise that there
is going to be something today that is
miraculous, that's fixing to go on with this
man.
My neighbor just told me about it.
He saw it yesterday.
And so now I'm here today to see if what he
said is true, supernatural.
It's crazy.
This even still works today, even when the
people who promise it can't really deliver
it.
There's going to be a healing service tonight.
Bring your crippled family members, right?
Why does that attract people?
Mostly because people are so desperate on a
multitude of levels, either physically or
spiritually, emotionally.
Thirdly, we saw how false disciples think of
only the earthly benefits immediately
after the miracle of the 25,000 people.
Do you remember?
What was the people's response?
They tried to take Jesus and they wanted to
force him to be a king.
Remember?
There was nothing about spiritual reality in
their response, nothing about salvation.
What did they want?
They wanted free food, the best health care
that could possibly be had, and oh, by the
way, conquer the Romans while you're at it,
Jesus.
We'll have those three things, please.
They only had a carnal enthusiasm for worldly
things.
They wanted freedom.
They wanted fulfillment.
They wanted satisfaction in their lives.
But all of those things only on an earthly
level, there was no interest from these people
in the eternal, the spiritual, the theological
, and what kind of things attract people of
Christianity in our day, like this.
I mean, we don't have Jesus here doing
miracles.
Well, sadly, it's much more shallow.
Things like Christian diet programs, have you
ever seen this?
Oh, yeah.
I'll get them in.
As they're only interested in temporal things,
I kid you not, one of the bestselling
contemporary
Christian books is a Christian diet plan, from
a Christian perspective.
There's nothing wrong with a diet.
You know, hey, you need to lose some weight,
no problem.
But what I'm saying is if that is a big deal
in the church, that it's one of the best
selling
books coming out of the Christian faith.
That is another example of how the church
collects false disciples, because here are
people who are only looking for temporal
solutions.
Oh, I want to lose some weight.
So I'll go on a diet in Jesus' name and read
some Bible verses while I'm doing it.
I mean, that was Judas.
Why was Judas in the group?
He wanted to be in on the benefits of the
kingdom of Jesus.
He saw the miracles.
He knew they were real.
And toward the end, when he started to kind of
figure out, because Jesus is saying it
now, that Jesus was going to die and he wasn't
going to conquer the Romans, he tried to get
out with as much money as he could get.
As everything was falling in on him.
You remember that money burned in his hands
and his soul, and he created so much guilt
for himself.
He wound up committing suicide, right?
He was driven the whole time by the love of
money and the desire for prestige and power
and elevation.
Oh, when Jesus conquers the Romans, I want to
be in the inner circle of the group, was
what Judas was wanting.
And then, fourthly, false disciples have no
interest in true worship.
No desire for that.
Remember last time when we went through verses
16 and 21, Jesus walked on the water and we
combined John with Matthew and Mark to get the
full account, and what was the immediate
response of Jesus is believing 12, "Truly,
this is the Son of God," and it says next,
and they worshiped him.
That was their response.
True disciples are worshipers of Christ.
They're like Thomas, doubting Thomas.
What did he finally wind up saying?
My Lord and my God.
He called Jesus God.
But what these false disciples, there's no
humility as we've been learning about in
Ephesians.
There's no meekness.
There's no holy awe of God or Jesus.
They come for the external.
They come for the show.
They come for the promise of some kind of
temporal fulfillment.
There's no longing for the glory of God in
their life.
There's no seeking to exalt Christ in their
life, and that brings us to a fifth
characteristic.
False disciples seek personal prosperity, and
this is really just a nuance on what we've
already been looking at, but it's going to be
helpful to see this.
Look at verse 22.
Let's now get into the text.
It starts out the next day, and that's the day
after the feeding of the 25,000, the crowd
that stood on the other side of the sea.
You know what that means?
They're still there where the feeding took
place.
They haven't moved.
They're still on the eastern shore, and it
says next, "They saw there was no other small
boat there except one, and that Jesus had not
entered with his disciples into the boat,
but that his disciples had gone away alone."
So when the previous day ended, after Jesus
fed everybody, remember, he told the disciples
,
"Y'all go."
Remember, they got in the boat and they left,
and Jesus wasn't in the boat, and the crowd
knows that.
They know he didn't leave.
That's why they stayed all night.
This massive crowd, 25,000 people, as good of
a meal that they ate, that they were going
to need to see what was on the breakfast menu.
So they stayed all night, but Jesus was not
there for breakfast, to give them breakfast.
Verse 23, "There came other small boats from T
iberius near to the place where they ate
the bread after the Lord had given thanks."
So you know what happened?
The word had spread around the lake about what
happened.
I mean, can you imagine?
Wouldn't you want to have told somebody about
what you saw, what you experienced, the food
that you ate?
So now you have more people coming from the
western shore in these little boats.
And again, put yourself back in this time
period, the battle for food was daily.
I've told you many times, there's no grocery
stores.
We don't have any idea what it's like to
struggle for you to get your next meal.
That was daily life for all these people,
especially the common folks.
So here come the little boats.
After they got word from Tiberius, they're
coming to the location where the miracle
happened of the feeding of the 25,000.
They want to see words going around that lake
overnight.
And now you got even more people.
Look at verse 24.
"So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not
there, nor his disciples, they themselves
got into the small boats and came to Capernaum
seeking Jesus."
So they get over there, Jesus isn't there, the
disciples aren't there.
And it seems that maybe what happened is those
people got back into their boats and they
took these other people with them.
They all packed in these little boats for this
little flotilla that's going back across
the lake to Capernaum.
As they knew, Matthew tells us this, that
Jesus had established himself in the town
of Capernaum back on the other side.
And you could be real sure that what's on the
majority of these people's minds is one
thing, food, free food.
And for sure, they've still got it on their
minds.
We're going to take him by force.
We're going to make him a king.
Free food, miracle health care, no more Romans
.
That's the plan here, okay?
So they head back across the lake to Capernaum
and they arrive on the shore, verse 25, when
they found him.
On the other side of the sea, they said to him
, "Rabbi, what did you get here?"
You know what that implies?
How did you get here, right?
Peace.
Jesus never answers their question, not for
one second.
He ignores it.
He doesn't say, "Well, what happened last
night is I walked out on the water in the
middle of the lake and I met up with the
disciples and then I willed us to instantly be
back at
the dock in a moment of time."
And now here I am, though, he doesn't say that
.
If he had say that, that wouldn't have
convinced him of anything if he had said that
because
they had just been the participants in one of
the most amazing miracles that ever has
been and they still didn't believe in who he
was, so it wouldn't have mattered if they
had known that he instantly willed them back
to the dock or that he had walked on the water
.
Verse 26, here's how Jesus responds to what
they ask him.
And again, that's repeated throughout John to
emphasize, look at it, truly, truly.
Here comes his answer.
And that's repeated over and over to emphasize
critical statements Jesus makes.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not
because you saw the signs, but because
you ate of the loaves and were filled."
And what he means there, of course, is you
seek me not because of what you saw in that
miracle feeding and the healing, also remember
that he did that day, and that those things
have driven you to acknowledge who I really am
.
No, you're not here because you followed the
signs that clearly point to me as Savior
and Lord, you're here because you're hungry.
You're here because you ate a meal and now you
want another free meal.
These are the first candidates of the
prosperity gospel, the social gospel.
Jesus wants to feed you.
Jesus wants to fulfill all your desires.
They want to have their needs met.
They wanted Jesus to give them whatever they
wanted, and everything that they wanted was
temporal.
Everything they wanted from Jesus was in the
here and now.
Still happening today, isn't it?
This is being offered as the genie in the
bottle who fulfills all your temporal needs.
But that is a total misrepresentation of Jesus
for which all false teachers will be held
eternally accountable.
As verse 27 makes clear, look at verse 27,
Jesus says, "Do not work for the food that
perisheth."
He's saying you are pursuing completely the
wrong thing.
Anything that is temporal, temporary,
superficial, earthly, physical, big picture,
don't spend
your time and your effort on the things that
are going to perish.
Look next what he says, "But for the food
which endures to eternal life which the Son
of Man will give to you, for on him the Father
God has set his seal."
What a profoundly important verse that is.
So many people who go to church regularly
today in our culture desperately need to
understand
the point that Jesus is making right there.
Stop seeking what perishes.
Stop seeking the earthly stuff, the wood, the
hay, the stubble.
Eat the food that endures for eternal life.
And what is that food?
It's him.
Look what he says in verse 35, same chapter, "
I am the bread of life.
He who comes to me will not hunger, and he who
believes in me will never thirst."
In verse 41 he says, "I am the bread that came
down out of heaven."
It's him.
Notice how he says back in verse 27 at the end
, "For on him, Jesus, the Father God has
set his seal."
That means has authenticated.
And that was Peter's message on the day of P
entecost when he stood up in Jerusalem that
day and said, "Men of Israel, listen to these
words, Jesus, the Nazarene, a man attested
to you by God with miracles and signs and
wonders."
God put his seal, authenticating Jesus, by
empowering him to do the miracles and the
signs and wonders to point to himself as to
who he is.
And Jesus is telling these folks, "You ignore
the signs.
You ignore what they point to, and what they
demonstrate is for you, you're just hungry."
He wants some more food, and that's all you
can think about.
Stop working for the food that perishes, he
says.
Work for the food that endures to eternal life
, which the Son of Man will give you,
he says.
And again, what is it?
He says later in this great sermon we're
fixing to study, look down in verse 51, "The
bread
also which I will give for the life of the
world is my flesh."
He's making his terms clear.
Believe in me, believe in who I am, and why I
came.
I came to die.
I came to rise again according to the Father's
plan, believe the gospel.
The terms have never changed, they're still
the same today as they were then.
You can always get a crowd to get their needs
met, to get their desires fulfilled.
But folks, I want you to see out of this
section of verses that that is never, ever
what Jesus
offers, never.
Churches today who follow the man-centered
growth plan are collecting false disciples
by the droves, tens of thousands.
It really is a tragedy.
They come for the temporal benefits that they
are told Jesus is ready to give you, even
peace and purpose and fulfillment.
When you say that's what Jesus is going to
give you, but you don't give them the gospel,
you're giving them a false hope.
They watch the show, they love the music, they
get all caught up with trying to fulfill
their own earthly satisfactions.
In Jesus' name, of course, in Jesus' name, and
they come away sometimes even feeling
good about themselves, all of that except for
the fact that they really have no interest
in the bread of life, really.
Only what these false teachers are claiming he
can gift them.
If you preach narrow is the way, few there be
that find it.
No man who puts to his hand to the plow and
looking back is fit for the kingdom.
You have nothing to offer God but your sins,
so repent, acknowledge your spiritual
bankruptcy,
put all your focus into the person and work of
Jesus Christ as your substitutionary atonement
in his person and work.
God is holy, we deserve his wrath, hell is
real, death is certain, eternity is forever,
and it's coming very soon for every one of us
preach that message right there and watch
what happens with the crowd.
Sometimes, sometimes when God wills, that'll
attract a crowd, sometimes, but I'm here to
tell you it's not an exaggeration for me to
say that if you sent me next Sunday to preach
that message that I just quickly gave you in a
large majority of churches in our area,
in our community, I would never be invited
back.
We got proof of that right down the street.
I was 17 years ago, I was asked to preach down
at the largest Baptist church in our
community.
I've never been asked that.
They don't even think about it.
And that's really sad, isn't it?
And listen, I've told you this before, this is
what I'm repeating.
We shouldn't look down on those churches.
For sure we shouldn't look down on those
people.
There are Christians in those churches that
are starving to death and they don't even
know it.
Instead, what we should do is pray for them.
Pray that God would send somebody with the
courage to stand up and open the book and
preach the words of the book that are
uncomfortable for people to hear, to preach
the truth without
compromise, and that God would grant the
people ears to hear it.
That's what we're lacking today.
So many cases is simply courage.
The gospel is offensive, hell is offensive,
God's wrath is offensive, but you can't escape
it in his book.
Well, we've only gotten about half of the
characteristics of the false disciples in
this chapter.
Now, next time, it's really crazy.
We get into the reality that false disciples,
one of their characteristics is they make
demands on God.
Can you imagine that?
They think that they should control what he
does and he should do what they say.
That's very popular today as well as I'm going
to show you.
So come back next time and we'll study all
about it.
Well, we are humbled by a section like this.
And Lord, the makeup of our church is one that
has not been affected by the pragmatism
of today to do whatever works to get people in
, but simply here to just preach the truth.
That should never be an occasion for us to
have pride.
Instead it should provoke the opposite
reaction in us, not pride that we know more
doctrinally
and we're more doctrinally straight with the
truth than in other churches know it.
It should bring about the greatest sense of
humility that we can have because truly we
know that we believe this way because of your
grace, and that there but for your grace would
go us.
But for whatever your purposes and your
reasoning is, you have brought us a different
path to
the whole fast to the authority of your word,
a whole fast to your truth, every ounce of
your gospel, all of your word, the parts that
make us comfortable, the parts that make us
uncomfortable, it doesn't matter.
It's all your word and you have brought us to
the place of believing that Lord, not only
all we can say is thank you, but the only way
we can really say thank you is an expression
of giving our lives to you and whatever you
would have us to do to live out this truth
that you have brought us to.
I pray that for every Christian in this room,
Lord, I pray for all of our church family,
for those who are out sick and the rest, lift
them up to you that you would heal them and
bring them back more than, and for any that
come here on a regular basis that does not
matter, Lord Jesus Christ, in saving faith, I
pray for you to draw in, and for the rest
of us, Lord, I pray that today and each Sunday
when we study your word, we would go out
of here with a deeper understanding of who you
are, what the Christian faith is all about.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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