The Hard Sayings of Jesus
Notes
Transcript
The Hard Sayings of Jesus
The Hard Sayings of Jesus
60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
Hard - this greek word is used 5 times in the NT… it means harsh unbending
What jesus is saying is dogmatic and unwavering
I am the only way
I am the bread of life
I am life eternal
By accepting me and eating of my flesh and blood you have eternal life
Jesus is getting down to the final appeal
You seen the miracles
You have been fed on the hillside
I have lectured you about true bread
You understand what it means coming down from heaven
The problem is you view it as harsh
You view it as manna nor bread from heaven ‘
You past is clouding your future
Stop laboring for food that perisheth
27 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.
50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.
No matter how much you spend, no matter how great it taste you will get hungry ....
This concept of Jesus being the messiah and following him as the bread of life was just too much .......
A look at the Christianity today has a similar position
Deny yourself? Take up a cross? Who wants to do that?
24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. 26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Yet that's what Jesus requires of you and me and anyone else who would follow Him.
Faith in Him demands a willingness to make any sacrifice He asks.
The hard truth about Christianity is that the cost is high...
Too many people just want a Madison Avenue Jesus to make them well, make them happy, and make them prosperous.
But Jesus Christ isn't a personal genie. He is the Savior.
He died in agony to satisfy the wrath of a holy God and to forgive the sins of humankind.
On the surface, it makes sense. The Christian’s mandate is to make disciples, so why not make church more attractive to unbelievers? Spice up the presentation. Tone down the preaching. Tell people that Jesus will meet their felt needs.
Does promising the lost that Jesus can fix their lives bring them any closer to salvation, or are we selling them a synthetic gospel that cannot save?
For the sake of bigger congregations, are churches today diluting or even neglecting the gospel?
The hard or hash saying would be followed up later in the gospel ....
By sacrifice
By serving
By trials
BY commitment
This was just the beginning of soem hard saying of Jesus
28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? 29 Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, 30 Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. 31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? 32 Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. 33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
The hard saying was causing a dispute
I. The Dispute
I. The Dispute
52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
The quarreled among themselves ...
NIV - the argued sharply
CSB- the argued
What we lean from this text is that among themselves they were arguing
That means some did understand what Jesus said.
They were quarreling
Some of the Jews were still thinking in terms of literal, physical bread and flesh.
Their thoughts were unable to rise above the things of this life.
They did not realize that the Lord Jesus was using physical things to teach spiritual truths.
And so they asked among themselves how this mere Man could possibly give His flesh to be eaten by others.
A parachute opens only after you jump out of the plane. Faith precedes sight and prepares your soul to understand, your heart to believe, your will to obey.
All your questions of “How?” are answered by yielding to the authority of Christ, as Paul did when he cried, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
Due to the quarreling among themselves some got what Jesus was saying
Illustration of a dispute
Some got the
The Jews railed to grasp the fact that the Lord was using a figure of speech and concluded that he was suggesting some form of cannibalism: the literal eating of his flesh[1]
Hard saying will cause disputes even among Christians
“We shouldn’t expect popularity. What should we expect? Paul gave us the list: affliction, crushing, persecution, being knocked flat, and always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus.
That doesn’t describe some mystical asceticism; it simply means that He was always on the brink of death, always ready to die, always being pursued by some who were plotting death.
BTW some Got it ......
The hard saying was iterated
II. The Detail
II. The Detail
53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. 58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. 59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.
53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
6:53 Once again Jesus, knowing all things, realized exactly what they were thinking and saying.
And so He warned them solemnly that if they did not eat His flesh and drink His blood, they would have no life in them.
This could not refer to the bread and the wine used at the Lord’s Supper. When the Lord instituted His Supper, on the night in which He was betrayed, his body had not yet been broken and His blood had not yet been shed.
The disciples partook of the bread and the wine, but they did not literally eat His flesh and drink His blood.
The Lord Jesus was simply stating that unless we appropriate to ourselves by faith the value of His death for us on Calvary, we can never be saved. We must believe on Him, receive Him, trust Him, and make Him our very own.
54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
6:54 By comparing this verse with verse 47, it can be definitely shown that to eat His flesh and to drink His blood means to believe on Him.
47 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
In verse 47 we read that “He who believes in Me has everlasting life.” In verse 54, we learn that whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life.
Now things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.
He is talking about a belief!
55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
6:55 The flesh of the Lord Jesus is food indeed, and His blood is drink indeed.
This is in contrast to the food and drink of this world which is only of temporary value. The value of the death of the Lord Jesus is never-ending. Those who partake of Him by faith receive life that goes on forever.
56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
6:56 A very close union exists between Himself and those who are believers in Him. Whoever eats His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him, and He abides in that person.
Nothing could be closer or more intimate than this. When we eat literal food, we take it into our very being; and it becomes a part of us. When we accept the Lord Jesus as our Redeemer, He comes into our lives to abide, and we, too, abide (continually dwell) in Him.
57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
6:57 As a Man here in the world, Jesus lived because of the Father, that is, by reason of the Father. His life was lived in closest union and harmony with God the Father. God was the center and circumference of His life.
58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
6:58 This verse seems to summarize all that the Lord has said in the previous verses. He is the bread which came down from heaven. He is superior to the manna which the fathers ate in the wilderness. That bread was only of temporary value. It was only for this life. But Christ is the Bread of God who gives eternal life to all who feed on Him.
6:59 The crowd had followed Jesus and His disciples to Capernaum from the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee. Apparently the multitude had found Jesus in the synagogue and it was there that He delivered the message on the Bread of Life to them.[1]
wow -what great detail
Belief is eternal life - spiritually fed by God ....
This was a hard saying
some just could not and will not accept.
The hard saying caused difficulty
“The message of the cross is not about felt needs. It is not about Jesus loving you so much He wants to make you happy. It is about rescuing you from damnation, because that is the sentence that rests upon the head of every human being. And so the gospel is an offense every way you look at it. There’s nothing about the cross that fits in comfortably with how man views himself.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
III. The Difficulty
III. The Difficulty
60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
By this time, the Lord Jesus had many more disciples than the original twelve.
Anyone who followed Him and professed to accept His teachings was known as a disciple.
up to this point is was
miracles
free food
healings
but no belief ....
However, not all who were known as His disciples were real believers.
Now many of those who professed to be His disciples said, “This is a hard saying.”
They meant that His teaching was offensive. It was not so much that it was hard for them to understand, as that it was distasteful for them to receive. When they said, “Who can understand it” (literally “hear”), they meant, “Who can stand and listen to such offensive doctrine?”
There will be a difficulty
some will not believe
some will pervert
some will alter
We as a church must stand firm on the truth:
I understand why John Knox said, “Give me Scotland or I die. What else do I live for?” I understand why pioneer missionary Henry Martyn ran out of a Hindu temple exclaiming, “I cannot endure existence if Jesus is to be so dishonored!”
“The truth divides people. The more fundamental the truth, the deeper and wider the division. The goal of Christian preaching—the goal of presenting the gospel, the goal of the church—is not just to open the door so wide that we can suck everybody in and make them feel comfortable. The goal is to preach the truth to as many people as possible, so that we can sort out the true from the false.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
“Some people are just die-hard critics. You can’t avoid them, and you can’t win them over, whether you try to spin the gospel to suit their tastes or you tell the truth and hope God will work in their hearts.
They’re not even looking for the truth. They just want to find everything wrong with Christ and Christianity, which is a tragic response. In the end, the truth will be justified by what it produces. And they may not know the truth until it’s too late.”
― John F. MacArthur Jr., Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus
“Theodore Roosevelt once said, “There has never yet been a man who led a life of ease, whose name is worth remembering. Certainly when the Lord calls us to be His disciples, He does not call us to a life of ease.
Have you accepted the hard words of Christ
6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
Is this saying too had for you?