Scripture Introduction
A Christianity Today poll (February 10, 1992), found that half of all Americans believe in extrasensory perception. One of every four professing Christians believe in clairvoyance, and almost half in psychic healing. 25% believe the movement of the stars governs the affairs of men and women.
You have seen the effect in the cards and books in the self-help sections at Hallmark and Borders: “New Age Spirituality”; “Do It Yourself Religion”; “The Higher Path”; “Self-Esteem”; and “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
I even found an e-zine entitled, The Care & Feeding of Empaths and Highly Sensitive Persons. “This ezine allows clairsentients and conscious empaths to co-create resources that allow us to tap into the Divine Guidance of our sensitivities.”
Spirituality without Jesus sells; but is it real? Can one commune with God through nature as well as through this worship service? Is God simply a higher dimension reached by an inner journey to the soul? Is it true that “the more you love yourself, the greater your connection with God/Spirit/Source”? Can there be true spirituality without Jesus?
The answer and some of the reasons are given in the text we are studying this morning. Please listen as we hear the grumbling against Jesus and his response.
[Read: John 6.41-59. Prayer.]
Introduction
When I was a kid, school audiovisual presentations were “filmstrips,” a spool of 35 mm film with images—essentially a set of slides on one piece of film. The teacher played a record or cassette tape containing the narration for the filmstrip, and at an appropriate point a tone would sound, signaling the instructor to advance to the next frame.
Things are much better for my kids. Last week, as part of their study of WWII, we watched, The Longest Day, a classic film with dozens of famous actors, including John Wayne.
Much of the action centers on the allies efforts to take Omaha Beach. The Germans had every tactical advantage and hundreds of men were killed by machine gun fire. Eventually, however, cigar-chomping General Robert Mitchum develops a plan for success. A large concrete wall protecting a valley will be destroyed by dynamite and the men will pour through this one area and take control.
As he prepares his men to implement this plan, Mitchum gives a great speech, the culmination of which is: “I don’t care if you are injured; I do not want to know if you are hurt. There is only one condition for remaining on the beach and not following my orders—if you are already dead.”
And sure enough, after the bomb rips away the barrier, Mitchum stands and gives the signal, and troops pour through by the tens of thousands, overrunning the German defenses.
But some men did not rise from the sand and charge. Why not? Because they were dead. And why did tens of thousands get up and risk their lives for the cause? Because they heard the voice of the General. The General did not make them alive; but those who were alive, heard and attacked.
In John 6, Jesus explains (without embarrassment or uncertainty) the doctrine of election: “All that the Father gives me will come to me.” And, “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him.” Why can none come to Jesus unless the Father draws? Because the dead cannot hear the voice of the General.
The Bible claims that the promises of its Gospel are the sweetest and most appealing every uttered. They are words of life, assurances of forgiveness, guarantees of a clean conscience, treats for the soul. If that is true, then why does not everyone respond in faith? Because not all are alive.
All children of Adam are born spiritually dead, unable and unwilling to hear the herald of hope. God must breathe life into a soul before it can believe. Then those who are alive will hear the voice of Jesus, and will follow his command.
This is, of course, offensive to man’s sense of self-worth and so the Jews grumbled when they heard Jesus speak. The same response is heard today when the sovereignty of God in salvation is taught. This should not surprise us—unbelievers inevitably condemn the gospel, for it does not please them. But Jesus does not rebuke in return; instead he teaches us three things. First, he explains why true spirituality is offered only through him—because he is the bread of life. Second, he reminds us that Father must draw people to true spirituality because he is the source of life, not their own doings. Then third, Jesus insists that you can find true life—through faith. The offer is true; how will you respond? To get there, first, please notice that…
1. Because Jesus is the Bread of Life, You Can Only Find True Spirituality Through Him (John 6.41-42)
They see him standing there; they know his family. “What audacious claims you make! You did not come down from heaven; you came out of Joseph and Mary!”
The words are a little bit different today, but the idea is identical: “How can you claim that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life? What about all the other good people? What about the sincere Hindu, or my aunt who is so loving and spiritual? Do you not realize that there are many paths to God?”
Are there? And if there are others, are you sure you can scale them?
The news from the Utah mine collapse has not been good. Over the last several days, in an effort to find the trapped men, holes have been drilled through 2000 feet of rock and rubble. We hope the men will be saved. But for a moment, imagine if the drill comes all the way down and discovers survivors, but the men say, “Do not bother drilling a larger hole; we will dig our own way up. We will not use a shaft of life which comes down; we insist on making our own path back to life.”
Such is similar to those who grumble at Jesus’ exclusive claims. “Are you saying that I am spiritually starving apart from faith in Jesus? Are you saying that I am too weak to make my way to heaven? Are you saying that my only hope of survival is receive what has come down, rather than forge my own path up?”
Yes, that is exactly what Jesus claims. Many efforts are made to ascend the mount of spirituality; none reach the summit. But, one has come down from heaven with the gift of true spiritual life.
• He who was high has been made low.
• He who was holy has been made sin.
• He who was glorified has been despised.
• He did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
This is why we say in the Nicene Creed, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven….” True spirituality is knowing God; that is the life for which your soul longs. We have fallen and cannot lift ourselves back to glory. Rather than grumbling that God has only one tunnel down, let us rejoice in accepting the way he has made. Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven.
2. Because Jesus is the Bread of Life, You Can Only Find True Spirituality By The Father (John 6.43-46)
In the 16th century, a Roman Catholic theologian named Erasmus explained his doctrine of free will, that “power by which man may apply himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation or may turn away from the same.” Erasmus admitted that man is weakened by sin, but by applying himself to spiritual concerns [seeking God] he is made fit for the gift of grace. Man’s choice removes the barrier to God’s giving help. So, according to Erasmus, the Father draws people in the same way that a farmer might urge his donkey to move with carrots before its nose. The gospel smells good, but the free will of the donkey must chose to come.
Martin Luther was aghast at this explanation. He said to Erasmus: “Your thoughts of God are far too human.” Yet Luther also praised him, saying that of all his opponents, only Erasmus “attacked the essential issues…. You have not wearied me with extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, and indulgences—trifles! You, and you alone, have seen that this is the hinge on which all [the whole of the Gospel] turns; you have aimed for the vital spot.”
So these men believed this issue and a correct understanding of these verses was central to the Christian faith. And here is how Luther explained it: “Man’s will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills…. If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shall have and hold it” (Bondage of the Will, 103,4).
So which is it? Carrots urging, or God determining? “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him.”
Fortunately God makes the truth clear. The word “draws” is used seven other times in the New Testament. Once by Jesus: “I will draw men to myself.” So Jesus equates his works with that of God the Father, but the word is not yet defined. Of the six remaining uses, one is “drawing” a sword from the hilt, two are “drawing” fish from the water in a net, and three describe “dragging” people where they do not want to go.
The conclusion is inescapable: God forcibly drags people to Jesus because we are determined to run the other way.
James Boice: “The word always implies resistance to the power that draws…[yet] the resistance is never successful. The fish do get to shore. Paul and Silas are dragged before the magistrates. The sword is withdrawn. As Leon Morris notes in his commentary: ‘There is not one example in the New Testament of the use of this verb where the resistance is successful. Always the drawing power is triumphant.’ People resist. In this their depravity is seen. But the power of God always overcomes the resistance in those whom he has determined before the foundation of the world to give to Jesus.”
This is precisely why C. S. Lewis said that in 1929 “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England” (Surprised by Joy). He knew that his heart resisted God; yet he could feel the Father dragging him to joy.
Trusting Jesus requires releasing confidence in yourself; and no one does that unless the Father drags him free from the futility of faith in self.
3. Because Jesus is the Bread of Life, You Can Find True Spirituality (John 6.47-59)
New Age Spirituality sells so well because people are hungry for meaning and spiritual significance. Thus two things which the Bible teaches are revealed.
First, we are created for greater glory than to eat, drink, be merry and die. God has placed eternity in our hearts. Nothing here, nor even everything here, will satisfy. You know that you want more—not just more in quantity, but a different quality altogether. We hunger for significance. (Example, Robert Hansen story in film, Breach. He wanted to be thought significant to the FBI for telling the organization that our security was weak. When the FBI bureaucracy spurned him, he felt his life was of no significance. So he determined to prove his ideas were worthy of consideration by being the mole who betrayed his country. Obviously, the man was really messed up, but the emphasis on the universal desire for significance—(you know the feeling, don’t you)—was a powerful theme through the film.)
Second, it shows the extent people will go to make their own way of life. The teaching of Jesus, if true, is extremely humbling. He says that I am obstinate, and will not come to God. He says that my thinking is darkened, so that I cannot understand his ways. He says that I am blind and deaf and lame—even dead to spiritual realities. Yet man-made religion sells, because it does not humble sinners.
Is there any hope?
Jesus here uses the metaphor of eating and drinking his blood and flesh to say to us: you can have the life you long for, if you receive God’s gift from heaven. Will you trust him? What does that mean?
• Will we quit believing in our own definition of happiness and receive Jesus’ description?
• Will we refuse to grasp after the world’s formula for success, and chew on what Jesus says makes a man great?
• Will we close our eyes to television’s picture of glamour, and embrace the pursuit of an inner beauty which never wrinkles or fades?
• Will we spit out the fraternity’s description of fun, and drink in the joy of sober self-control?
• Will we release the treasure we hoard on earth to store up rewards in heaven?
• Will we lay aside our efforts at self-promotion to pick up the privilege of looking out first for the interests of others?
• Will we drop our hopes of retaliation and share in the Father’s delight to forgive?
What does it mean to eat Christ’s body and drink his blood? Certainly not that some priest’s “hocus-pocus” transforms the Eucharist into a cannibalistic snack. It is a metaphor for faith. If Rome had read the fathers they would know, for Augustine wrote: “Believe, and you have eaten.” Will you eat the words and ways of Jesus, making them your own? Will you believe that to know him is life?
4. Conclusion
Martin Luther: “If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I might do, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God or whether He required something more. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him. “No one shall pluck them out of my hand, because my Father which gave them to me is greater than all” (John 10.28-29). Thus it is by [God’s grace] that many are saved; whereas, by the power of ‘free will’ none at all could be saved, but every one of us would perish.” (Bondage of the Will, 313-314).
