Break with a sermon pt. 4

John 6:35

“I am the bread of life.”

Introduction (This stuff only makes sense in the context of the church)

Mention Stacy

Mention self

Borrowed many ideas from Tim Keller

Holiday meals

1. Everyone is hungry…therefore everyone eats

Now what do I mean by this? Well this is an odd way of saying something that we all know, everyone is living for something. Everyone has something that makes their life worth living. It helps them get out of bed in the morning. It helps them rest at ease at night.

Our hearts are made to be attached to something. The heart is not a vacuum; it must rest its affections somewhere. They just don’t exist by themselves.

Or as I put it, everyone is hungry and therefore everyone eats.

The best example I can think of for this idea is of man desperate girl. We all know these girls; they need a man in their life. Usually what happens is that they attach themselves to one loser to another. Their current boyfriend is in jail; their next one will be a drug dealer. Inevitably what usually ends up happening to these girls is attach themselves to one man who uses, abuses, and mistreats in so many ways. Then they move to another guy who does the exact same thing. It is very easy for us on the outside to say, why don’t you just dump the guy? He is a loser, you are paying all his bills, get out of there. But what they are doing is reflecting something true of all of us. The heart must always be attached to something. That is why they replace their current loser with another loser. It must always be attached to something.

Here is another example. I really like the show biggest loser. The genius of what the trainers do in that show is this: in order to change these people’s lives, they don’t just tell them to stop eating fattening food. They realize that their hearts are attached to the food. Instead they point their heart to healthy living. It is not just enough to say stop doing this bad thing. Instead the bad must be replaced with something good.

This leads me to my next point. Everyone is eating but…

2. Most people are eating the wrong food.

It is very easy for us to spot the people who are living blatantly for bad things. Even the message of the world this time of year is that living for money is ultimately unsatisfying. I was watching the Madagascar Christmas special the other day. At the end, one of the little guys learned that it is better to give than to receive. Even the world knows that living for yourself and monetary gain is ultimately an unsatisfying pursuit.

Or in the case of a man who is always cheating on his wife. He is trying to fill that hunger that emptiness with romance, love, or just sex.

But the Bible takes it a step further. This is what this passage speaks towards. In this passage, the people were searching after political power (6:15). Political power is not a bad thing. Kings are not necessarily bad things. But they were trying to find all their value in life in it. This is bad thing. The Biblical principle behind this is that if you live for anything but God, you are living for the wrong thing.

The danger for most people is not living for bad things. I don’t know if most of us will have the temptation to live for drugs. But the temptation for us is to live for good things that aren’t God.

Or in the case of the suburban man, he tries to fill that hunger with his family or his job. Not bad things, but unsatisfying if made central.

What does this look like? If everything is going ok at work, they have value in life. As long as their family is happy, life has value. As long as they are giving to the poor, then everything is ok, and life has value.

First, it is ultimately unfulfilling, unsatisfying for your hunger to feed yourself with anything other than God. It destroys the soul. “The best temporal blessings do not save us from death – wealth, friends, family, food, a good job. These things cannot even save themselves from death.”

This world can never satisfy the longings of the human soul. Ill. In Greek mythology, King Tantalus was punished in the underworld by being chained in a lake. Its waters reached to his chin but receded whenever he bent down to satisfy his burning thirst. Over his head were branches laden with choice fruit, but they immediately withdrew whenever he reached upward to satisfy his hunger. A symbol of utter frustration, his name is immortalized in the English word "tantalize." So, too, seeking to know God, or to satisfy the human soul apart from Christ is utterly futile.

Second the Bible takes it a step further. Not only are these things unsatisfying practically, but this is idolatry and offensive to God.

Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.
Tim Keller

How can this look practically? People fill their lives with all sorts of good things, but make them ultimate things. They turn things like their family or their career or even good works into an ultimate thing. That is sin.

John 6:26-27, 49. When the people asked for temporal gifts, this is Jesus’ response. You are filling yourself with the wrong things.

How do you know what you are living for? Are you living for God, or have you tried to satisfy your hunger with something less.

The way to test this is by asking yourself, what is my worst nightmare? What if you lost it, you would lose all joy and value in life?

For instance, if something is good and you lose it, you will be sad, it will definitely affect you. We have had many people lose their jobs over the past year or so. If it is just a good thing, it will make you sad. But if it is you hunger’s satisfaction, you will be devastated. It will be hard for you to get out of bed, because how will you know that you are alright except if you excel at your job?

Most people are eating the wrong food. This food first unsatisfying, and second offensive to God.

And this leads us to the final point, here is where the good news lies.

3. Jesus is the bread of life

In light of what we have been talking about and what we have been feeling as human beings since the beginning, Jesus comes along and makes huge claims, not just here, but remember he also said similar things to the Samaritan woman.

What does he offer?

Read John 6:32-40

1) He offers life to all (6:33)

2) He offers to satisfy and sustain life (6:35)

3) He offers to receive all (6:37)

4) He offers authority and truth (6:38)

5) He offers security (6:39)

6) He offers eternal life (6:40)

Is this not great news? Is this not good news to hear? After hearing how everything else will fail or leave you, Jesus stands up and says I am the bread of life. All other bread is stale compared to me.

What are the objections?

But there are a few objections in the crowd, just as there are more than a few objections today.

I remember the other day at Starbucks; I was reading my Bible during my break. One of our regulars came up to me and asked me what I was reading. I showed him and I even got him to read a few verses. I told him how exciting and interesting it was. His response was that the Bible was fine, but he had other things to read. In part, what I think he was saying was, this is not as important as you want me to believe it is.

Jesus’ audience responds the same way. John 6:41-2

Jesus responds with the same thing he said earlier. All this other bread, it cannot satisfy or sustain you. I am the bread of life.

All other objections we can think of today, Christianity is a failed system, but you don’t know how the church has hurt me, there is not really a God, I don’t have time: Jesus’ response is enough, I am the bread of life. Here I am, believe in me, have faith in me. That is his offer.

Conclude

Everyone out there is filling themselves with something. They are living for something and trying to find satisfaction with some bread. Some choose family, others career, and still others money. All of these will not satisfy.

I want to conclude today by reading a hymn I found and then a Bible verse that stands as an offer to all of us.

Bread of life

Bread of heaven, on thee we feed,

For thy Flesh is meat indeed;

Ever may our souls be fed,

With this true and living Bread;

Day by Day with strength supplied,

Through the life of him who died.

Vine of heaven, thy Blood supplies

This blest cup of sacrifice;

Lord thy wounds our healing give,

To thy cross we look and live:

Jesus, may we ever be

Grafted, rooted, built in thee.

Isaiah 55:1-2

12/13

While religious affections must be a part of true religion they are by no means saving grace.  The affections of our hearts towards God should not be condemned or ignored, for they are a great part of Christianity.  They should not be lifted above everything else.  We are not saved by how joyous our heart is.  You are not a Christian because you sing loud in church.

Look at the Galatians.  At one point, they had high esteem for Paul and his message about Jesus.  They rejoiced in it.  Gal. 4:14-15.  But he still said of them, Gal. 4:11.

Or look at the affections of the Israel after the Red Sea episode.  They sang out for joy after their deliverance.  Exodus 14:30-31, Ex. 15:1.  How quickly though they turned from joy to grumbling.  These same people hardened their hearts and fell in the desert.  

But the most striking example is in the life of Jesus.  On one day they cut off branches, shouted Hosanna, and laid their clothes in from of him.  Their affections were high.  But how many of those people later turned away and hid, or cried out crucify him?  The affections for him fell when he no longer road on an ass, but was a marked man by Rome and the Pharisees.

All of this nature is quelled and dead, when this Jesus stands bound, with a mock robe and a crown of thorns, to be derided, spit upon, scourged, condemned and executed. Indeed, there was a great and loud outcry concerning him among the multitude then, as well as before; but of a very different kind: it is not then, Hosanna, hosanna, but Crucify, crucify. (Edwards Religious Affections Part 2).


So our affections must be a part of our religion.  But they by no means save us.  Rather they should be a reflection of our salvation. 

12/8

Here are a few quotes from Edwards Religious Affections to round off the first part of the book:

as may have a great tendency to stir up the passions of weak and ignorant persons, and yet have no great tendency to benefit their souls: for though they may have a tendency to excite affections, they may have little or none to excite gracious affections, or any affections tending to grace.


If true religion lies much in the affections, hence we may learn, what great cause we have to be ashamed and confounded before God, that we are no more affected with the great things of religion. It appears from what has been said, that this arises from our having so little true religion.


But is there anything which Christians can find in heaven or earth, so worthy to be the objects of their admiration and love, their earnest and longing desires, their hope, and their rejoicing, and their fervent zeal, as those things that are held forth to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

There also the hateful nature of our sins is manifested in the most affecting manner possible: as we see the dreadful effects of them, in that our Redeemer, who undertook to answer for us, suffered for them. And there we have the most affecting manifestation of God's hatred of sin, and his wrath and justice in punishing it; as we see his justice in the strictness and inflexibleness of it; and his wrath in its terribleness, in so dreadfully punishing our sins, in one who was infinitely dear to him, and loving to us.

12/7

But here comes the balance of everything.  Having only religious affections is just as dangerous as having no religious affections.  

While Jonathan Edwards writes about this back in the 1700's, I think it has become a more divisive and more prominent problem in our day.  The reason is that we have the charismatic movement today.



Here is the problem.  Many in the charismatic movement have much religious affections.  They are excited about God.  They want to see him working.  They know he is powerful.  Those outside the movement though hear some of the things some charismatics teach (see how careful I was) and hear blatant heresy and lies from Satan.  

A perfect case study is the "outpouring" of God's Spirit last year in Lakeland, Fl.  This revival started small and they grew bigger and bigger.  Eventually it was filling up the Lakeland Civic Center and then moved out to the airport.  They claimed miracles and healings.  However it came to an abrupt halt when the leader was caught in adultery.  Now I don't know the man's heart.  But this caused so much work that he had done to fall apart. 



People outside the charismatic movement see this and misuse of Scripture and deny religious affections in general. However this is moving from one extreme, Christianity is all affections and excitement, to the other, Christianity has no affections or excitement.  This is the problem of being off balance, you fall over.  


"There are false affections, and there are true. A man's having much affection, does not prove that he has any true religion: but if he has no affection it proves that he has no true religion. The right way, is not to reject all affections, nor to approve all; but to distinguish between affections, approving some, and rejecting others; separating between the wheat and the chaff, the gold and the dross, the precious and the vile." (Edwards Religious Affections Part 1) 


We have to be careful.  When we see the most excited man for Christ, he might just be excited for Christ, or he might be a wolf in sheep's clothing ready to carry some away. 

12/6

"But yet it is evident, that religion consists so much in affection, as that without holy affection there is no true religion" (Jonathan Edwards Religious Affections Part 1).


So we continue with talking about affections. Again the point I am aiming at here is that true Christianity is not just knowing stuff. It is not just doing good works. It is not just in our minds, nor in our hands. But it is also in our hearts. Where does our affection lie? And this is important because our heart is the fountain of our beliefs and actions. So we continue


The Bible presents a clear picture of a heart that has no affection for God whatsoever. This is a heart that leads to disobedient acts and an unbelieving mind. It is the hard heart. Here are a few passages to consider.


Ole' Pharaoh would not listen to God. Why? Exodus 7:1-3, Exodus 7:13-14.


Israel in the desert disobeyed God because of their hardened hearts, which led to unbelief. Psalm 95:7-11


In this passage, the Pharisees 1) refused a healing of an injured man, 2) refused to believe Jesus as the Messiah, and 3) worked to kill Jesus all because of their hardened hearts. Mark 3:5


And in Paul's missionary work, some in the synagogue refused to believe in Jesus as the Messiah because of their hard hearts. Acts 19:9


Now we can see that a hard heart leads to 1) unbelief and 2) disobedience.

The opposite of a heart of stone is a heart of flesh and a humble heart. Ezekiel 11:18-19. It is a gift from God. He changes our hearts from stone to flesh. This moves our affections and causes obedience.


2 Kings 22:19. It causes us to repent of our wrong ways and turn to God, asking for his grace and mercy.


This idea should change our perspective. We need to watch our hearts. Are softening or hardening towards God?


Also, this really changes how we preach. And it should affect how we pray for non-Christians. It shows why some people do not come to Christ. We are not just in the business of reaching people's minds, but we also aim at the heart. The heart is the fountain of belief and unbelief, faithfulness and faithlessness. Aim at the heart.

Finally, watch your heart. You are the only one who knows it. Proverbs 28:14

12/3

Not only does the Bible calls us to affections, but our religious actions do as well.

For instance prayer.  When we ask God for things in prayer (hopefully that is not the only time we pray), he already knows what we need and how he will answer the prayer (Matthew 6:7-8).  But prayer and asking for God to work in our lives prepares our hearts for how he will answer.  When we pray our affections turn to God.  When he answers our prayers, our affections turn to God.  If we ask nothing of him, it is not as if he stops caring for us, but it may be that we have stopped caring for him.  

Or when we sing praises to God.  Yes, it does bring him honor and I bet it brings him joy.  But it also calls our hearts to find love, joy, and fulfillment in him.  I find myself sometimes singing familiar words, but my affections for God being renewed.  

Finally, preaching, in part, revives and renews man's affections for God.  Preaching does not just rise to the mind, cause us to scratch our chins, and say well that was a provoking thought.  No, also burrows down deep into our hearts.  Long after anyone else remembers the sermon, you still remember that line that stirs at your heart.  Preaching does not necessarily have to be new information.  It just has to go to our hearts and renew our affections for God (2 Peter 1:11-12).  Good preaching hits the heart as much as the mind (maybe even moreso).  

So when you pray, sing, hear a sermon, or read your Bible, let these actions calls your affections back to God.  He is a great God.  He deserves and fulfills our affections.