Accepting Satisfaction

INTRODUCTION

• Have you ever tried to explain something to a person only to have that person not understand a word you had to say?

• Jesus has just fed the 5,000 and now because of His love for the people He is trying to lead them to Him. The crowd is fixated on the physical world. This does not seem to be a terrible thing from their perspective after all; they are living in the physical world.

• They are under the bondage of Rome; the simple things in life are not simple. Daily survival is a chore.

• Within this context Jesus is trying to teach the people there is a better way. They are just too hung up in the grind of everyday life to really grasp what He is saying to them.

• Have you ever felt that way, just too caught up in the grind of life to really listen and understand?

• The people were hungry; Jesus was offering them food that would satisfy them for eternity.

• This sounded too good to be true. The people bit, they wanted the bread out of heaven until they heard Jesus tell them a little more about it.

• The people were not ready to accept the gift Jesus wanted so desperately to give to them. This had to be a bit frustrating and heartbreaking to Jesus.

• I think it would be like trying to share something of vital importance with your child only to have them not get it.

• Why didn’t the people readily jump at Jesus offer?

• Why it that people today is are not ready to give their lives to Jesus? Is it because people are just evil? NO, they are not ready.

• Today we are going to look at three things that need to happen before a person will accept Jesus into their lives. I am not just talking about people coming to church and being religious, I am speaking of getting a person to the point where they will really give themselves over to Jesus.

SERMON

In order to accept the satisfaction Jesus offers you must:

I. REALIZE THAT JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD (41-43)

• In verse 34 when Jesus spoke of the bread that came from heaven that would give life, the crowd begged Jesus for the bread.

• Now that Jesus reveals that He is the bread that came out of heaven, the crowd is not too eager to take Him up on His offer.

• This is really not that unreasonable response on the part of the crowd. Let’s look at verses 41-43 to see why they were skeptical. READ 41-43

• The crowd knew Jesus was something special or else they would not have desired to make Him king the day before at the feeding of the 5,000.

• The people have seen Jesus perform the miracles, but as far as they were concerned, they knew that Jesus came from Joseph and Mary. It did not make sense to them that He had come down from heaven when they thought they knew who His earthly parents were.

• Jesus was offering the crowd eternal life, He was offering to them the very thing they were looking for, but they were not willing to accept it because they still did not realize Jesus was the Son of God!

• The crowd knew what Jesus was saying when He claimed to be the bread of life, the opponents were correct in their understanding of what Christ meant; but they were aroused and angered by it. Why? Evidently Christ’s lowly condition on earth was the great stumbling block to their acceptance of him.

• If Jesus had come as an all-powerful monarch, in riches, splendor, and earthly glow, they might have been willing to receive him; but a poor, lowly, suffering Messiah, without property or social position, whose chief followers were fishermen, and who had nowhere to lay his head -- such a Messiah they reviled and detested, their human pride refusing to believe that such a one came from God. His lowliness and poverty, and finally his death of the cross -- these things were the stumbling block to the Jews.

• 1 CORINTHIANS 1:23 says, “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness”

• Jesus was a stumbling block to the Jews because He was not the type of Messiah they wanted. Remember back in 1 Samuel 8, the Jews wanted an earthly king so they would be like the rest of the nations. God as king was not good enough for them.

• The crowd was not willing to accept the fact that Jesus was the son of God.

TRANSITION INTO TODAY

• Jesus is offering eternal satisfaction to us still today, but we have the same stumbling block the Jews of Jesus day had. Jesus is not the Jesus we want.