Clough John Lesson 34
Christ Issues a Warning – John 6:60-71
By way of review John 6 is one two great
political passages in God’s Word that collide with human viewpoint. 1 Samuel 8 denies the validity of the
concentration of power in centralized government. 1 Samuel 8 is the major statement of
that. John 6 is the major statement of
the reverse, a major assault on democracy as practiced by the Greeks, not as
modified and used by the early American Christians. Democracy and the democratic spirit of the mob
of John 6 basically holds that man, corporately considered in the group, has
enough resources to legislate right and wrong, purpose and value. That’s the human viewpoint, that’s the
corporate spirit, that’s the assumption of full blown Greek type democracy; the
third
And Jesus sees this human viewpoint monster at work; at work in the crowds around Him because remember at the beginning of John 6 Jesus is most popular; at the end of John 6 Jesus is least popular. Something happens in John 6 and Jesus torpedoes, He self-destructs as far as a popular mass movement is concerned. People look upon John 6 and this time in Jesus life as a tactical blunder. Why, when He had the masses formed, did He deliberately dump them with one vicious cutting discourse? Why did He do this? Because Jesus saw in all the apparent success the superficial popularity, a very vicious third kingdom Greek monster it was also and He chose to destroy the mass movement rather than let this Greek monster take over, the monster of the crowd, of the mob, dictating that Jesus would fit their political platform rather than letting Jesus shape their political platform. They had the shoe on the wrong foot and they wanted to fit Jesus into their little plan for Messiah. And Jesus, on the contrary, was the Messiah and He would see who would fit into His kingdom.
In John 6 we have a repetition of the same way John has of presenting the Lord Jesus Christ on several occasions. Today we are going to begin with John 6:60 and finish the chapter. As we terminate John 6 you will notice the passage gives less and less talking of what Jesus said and seems more and more to be inflicted with these editorial comments that are injected into what Jesus said by the Apostle John. And since that’s the trend, since we are finishing a major section I think it’s good that we go back and pull this together in the light of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John has as its main purpose on John 20:31, “That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,” …that you may believe that He’s the Christ. Over and over again it’s stated that you are free to reject or accept and if you reject Jesus the wrath of God abides on you. There’s no middle ground, accept Him or reject Him. God loves you or He hates you, one or the other. And there’s a judgment, not in the future in John but in the present. It’s like people walking into a museum and they judge the great works of art, they think, but by their judgments they judge themselves. The idiot that doesn’t recognize a great piece of art shows himself to be an idiot; he doesn’t show the great work of art to be no good. And so people by their response to Jesus Christ judge themselves.
So John has this setup, so to speak, at several points in his Gospel, where he’ll present Jesus teaching about Himself and then He shows you the response and He editorializes. We saw this in John 3 with Nicodemus; remember that chapter started out with the discourse of Nicodemus. How did it end? With John and John the Baptist both making comments and some people accepted and some people rejected. In John chapter 4, the same thing, the woman at the well and that incident, and Jesus began to teach about Himself. And then as you get down toward the end He discusses the response of the people toward Christ. And now in John 6 it’s the same thing; we start off, Jesus teaching, and as we get toward the end of John 6 He pulls the same thing off with us; He shows us more and more how people responded to Christ. So in John 6:60 we come to this last section. We’ve already seen the mob being turned off by Jesus but now in verse 60 we find even the disciples, the people who profess to follow Jesus, the people who had the bumper stickers, “Honk if you love Jesus,” even these people now would begin to fade out and abandon the movement under this harsh continual attack that Jesus was making in this chapter.
In John 6:60 we read, “Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” Now the word, “hard saying,” sklaros, is a word that means harsh saying, not hard, harsh; it’s not hard to understand, that’s a bad translation. It’s “harsh,” it’s not that they don’t understand it, it’s that they do understand it and they understand it all too well. It cuts, it’s abrasive, and it refers particularly to verses 53-54. What did verses 53-54 say? Remember what we said, Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” And you can imagine, though Jesus obviously is using this as a metaphor, nevertheless He was deliberately inciting them with the most aggravational harsh metaphor you could think of; this is violation of Jewish kosher food; you don’t keep blood with the meat in the Levitical laws of food and dialect. And so He says you people are going to eat your meat like Gentiles; that’s what He says. Vicious words to say, drink His blood and unless you do you have no life in you. What harder, harsher, sandpaper grating type phraseology could Jesus possibly have than this.
And then if that wasn’t bad enough in verse 54 what does He say? “Whoso munches My flesh,” the word isn’t eat, the word is sit there and munch, making a noise. You couldn’t have something that sounds more anti-pious and disrespectful than this kind of thing and His disciples catch it. They’ve associated with Christ, they’re risked their businesses by early retirements and other moves to leave their business so they could be disciples of Christ, they risked everything, they think, to follow Him and He comes out with something like this; He’s made a tactical blunder, He’s made a tactical blunder, so to speak, in the middle of His campaign, He’s lost the crowds and is deliberately offending them. And this is what they’re saying in verse 60? “This is a harsh saying, and who,” not “can hear it,” though that’s a literal translation of what is said, the sense is who’s going to stand around and listen to this kind of thing all the time; who’s able to take this. So their criticism in verse 60 is against Christ’s harshness.
And this ought to be a balance for some of you who have been brought up in this “Jesus loves you” business, Jesus loves this and Jesus loves that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, Jesus does love men, He loves us very much but there’s some things He hates and there’s also an abrasiveness to His character, an abrasiveness which is abrasive not to the godly but abrasive only to the ungodly, for what has it been in this discourse that really has been so abrasive after all. Has it been just the fact that He was out to irritate someone? Not at all. Jesus so designed this discourse that it would be as abrasive as He could possibly make it to those in human viewpoint but it wouldn’t be to those who understand God’s authority, that God has absolute authority, that His word has the last word, not man, that God is the One who shapes history and not the democratic mob by their votes, that God has the final say.
Now if you believe that and you were in sympathy with that this discourse would never bother you; it was not designed to bother you. But on the other hand if you’re the kind of person who has filled within your soul that residual autonomous desire to pal up with God and you and God together are going to move history, there’s going to be a cooperative partnership of equals rather than submission to God and His total rank. If you are that kind of person this is a harsh saying and you will not be able to stand it. That’s what the disciples very, very clearly see. And what is their sympathy with? Their sympathy is with those who are hurt by Jesus works; their sympathy is that Jesus must tone down His divine viewpoint to accommodate Himself to the human viewpoint of the mob; there must be some sort of a compromise here because after all, who with this kind of a preacher, could play the numbers game. We can’t send back to headquarters that we’ve had such a vast increase in the movement in the last seven days, not with a program like this put on. And so the complaint here is against what they perceive to be the stupidity and harshness and unthoughout platform of their candidate. They are frankly embarrassed by Him at this point.
Now verse 60 seems very distant to some of
us but I want you to apply verses 60 to the present situation and let me
suggest some applications of the principle of verse 60. Whenever you are called upon to give
testimony to the primacy of God’s Word over man’s reason, you are going to have
to choose, exactly the same way the disciples chose here. Are you going to say oh, we mustn’t be so
dogmatic about the authority of Scripture for if we are we drive people away,
it’s a harsh thing to say and who is able to bear it. That same kind of mood is the mood that Jesus
rejects here; He deliberately would have you leave the camp if that’s your
attitude. If we, on the other hand, to
say another example, if we were in a situation where it’s called upon to deal
with the grace principle, that we are acceptable only by God’s grace and what
He has provided to restore and move on from our created position and that in no
way do human works aid in the process, human works which are autonomous that
is. If we were in that situation, to
give testimony to God’s grace, and we came out with a harshness of true New
Testament Christianity, that it is by grace and by grace alone, as for example
Luther did, there would be people around that would say oh, that’s a harsh
saying, don’t be that dogmatic, people aren’t going to stand for that kind of
thing. And so again we’d have
defection. So please notice that verse
60 doesn’t apply just to that mob, that day, in
Now in John 6:61 we watch the Son of God in His response to people who think this way. “When Jesus knew in Himself that his disciples murmured at it, He said unto them, Doth this offend you?” Notice in verse 61, again a proof of His deity. In John, several times you’ll see this. Jesus knows within Himself; Jesus can know the depth of our souls and apparently by the way this is used to show Jesus deity and elsewhere in Scripture, such as 1 Samuel 16:7, 1 Kings 8:39 this tendency or this claim that God alone reads minds, we can at least deduce that men do not read minds, nor do demon powers read minds, they are merely good predictors, they know something of the way we think and they can guess the way we’re going to act, based on years and thousands of years of experience. And so in that sense, yes, to a degree they can read minds but not like God does. God knows our heart and He alone does that and so when it says here that “Jesus knew in Himself,” John is giving you a flag to say hey, look at this, look at this, here’s something about Jesus’ character you’d better know, He “knows within Himself.”
“He knows within Himself that His disciples murmured,” the word “murmur” is exactly the same word that the crowd was doing; exactly the same word that the people did back in the Old Testament when they murmured at Moses. In contemporary American English it means bitch. I hope you understand the nuance of the word. “Murmur,” it goes on and on, it’s in the present tense, continually gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe and gripe in particular about this authority business of the Word of God. That’s the center of the gripe; why does Jesus not go down with the crowd and accommodate Himself to them. So Jesus knows this facetious question, He says, “Does this offend you.” And the word “offend” is a word that means far more than offend. It’s a word which means scandalize, that’s the Greek word, skandalizo, to scandalize, oh, this scandalizes you does it? And it means even more than just scandalize because what do you do basically when you’re associated with a scandal; you try to get out from it, try to separate yourself from the scandal, and that’s what it means, drive you away and cause you to defect. Does this saying cause you to defect from Me? Does this claim of Mine embarrass you so much that you will no longer be associated with My name in public? It causes a scandal.
This word is the opposite of another word John uses again and again, the word meno, it means to abide or continue with Him. Now many devotionals have been written about abiding in Christ and they conjure up all this subjective feeling that goes along with abiding in Christ. But that’s not the way John uses meno, John is using meno as the opposite of scandalize, he means that you’re willing to continue your identification with Christ in a hostile world. And for John, particularly at this verse and throughout the end of this chapter you’re seeing one of his pet themes; that Christ judges people, He drives them, not in the sense He judges them like the Great White Throne yet, but right during this period of His ministry He was judging them by driving them one way or driving them the other way; driving them in the sense of scandalizing them or driving them in the sense to continue with Him. And there are some profound doctrinal results of this kind of point John is making, because John, believe it or not, is using this as a test of your salvation. John is using this as a test of your salvation; if you can take it and not be scandalized by Christ’s claim it shows that the Holy Spirit is working in you but if you do not show, if you phase out and you do not continue it shows that you were never regenerate in the first place.
Turn to 1 John 2:19, John says of the false teachers, “They went out from us,” they were scandalized, they left the movement, “They went out from us, but,” says the Apostle John in 1 John, “but they were not of us,” and then he adds a word of explanation, “for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us,” and the word “continue” is the Greek word meno, and there defined by John himself, he defines how he uses his own word; let John define how he uses “abide,” not somebody else that writes a devotional book. Let the Apostle himself speak for himself. John here uses this word as a sign of salvation, that you continue your identification with Bible doctrine in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and that is a sign of your salvation. And if you flake out and you leave the movement, never to come back again which is the implication here, it shows that you never caught on to what was going on in the first place. You had, maybe, a preliminary illumination, you saw something of doctrine, something of the gospel but basically in the depths of your heart you never responded in the first place to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now let’s come back to John 6 and watch how as he finished this chapter he plays out the theme between meno on the one hand and skandalizo on the other. So Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples were griping, and he says, Does this drive you away.
Then in John 6:62 He asks the next
question, because obviously if men were driven away by the statement that He
just made, surely they would be driven away when Jesus was least popular
and hounded as a criminal and crucified
on a cross and when He left our apparent visible space/time history and kind of
abandoned the movement. Surely if you
are going to leave Christ when He is most popular you will easily leave Him
when He’s least popular. So that’s the
question Jesus asks in verse 62, He says does this offend you now, and “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He
was before,” won’t that offend you more?
Not offend in our sense of the word “offend” but scandalize and drive
you away, and the whole verse, verse 62, is incomplete. The way it reads in the Greek is, not “what
and, but “if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before,” and we
would translate it …. (dot, dot, dot, dot) unfinished sentence. That’s what
He’s saying, oh, this offends you, this drives you away, let me ask you, if you
see Me crucified and buried and I rise again from the dead and I ascend to
where I was before, what happens then.
So you use see very clearly at this point Jesus is getting rid of all
the weak sisters; He’s digging in for the siege that’s going to come.
And periodically this
has to be done; you have to discourage the people who are only in surface
lovers of Jesus and get them out of the way because they get in the movements
way. And later on if Jesus had allowed
these kind of people to stay around in the movement they would have become so
enmeshed in the Christian movement at the very beginning that it would have
fallen apart completely without any solidarity.
He had to purge from the leadership these kind of people, get them out
of here, teach doctrine and teach it so heavenly and so offensively that all
but the regenerate will leave, only the regenerate will stay. Do it this way. And so as He says here, “ascend up,” and it’s
a participle, suppose He says, and he uses a third class “if,” just suppose, suppose
you look and you see Me ascending, and the word “ascending” here takes into
account His death and His descent, His resurrection and His ascent; it’s all
wrapped up, this is the way John just talks about the whole thing. What if you see all this come to pass, “where
I always was,” the word “was” is imperfect and it’s a verb of His
preexistence. And He says I preexisted,
what if you see Me go back to heaven where I was before I was virgin born; try
that one on for size. You see, these tremendously strong theological statements
he’s flinging out at this point. He’s
testing them, John 6 finally becomes a test of even the most intimate disciples
of Christ. Can they take doctrine or are
they going to phase out.
Now John 6:63 He goes on to explain Himself, explaining Himself by dualism that He used earlier in John 3, the contrast between spirit and flesh. And the idea always in John is not just the Greek idea of the spirit as the immaterial but the spirit as the moral and ethical, what is righteous and what is just, God is a spirit, He’s ethically the spirit, not just immaterially, and so what Jesus says in verse 63, “It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh doesn’t profit a thing [profits nothing]: the words that I have spoken unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” So in verse 63 Jesus now gives us His own interpretation of what He has just said because here He’s digging even more close, to make sure that even those standing right by Him are going to understand, that every man in this crowd has volition and every man is going to be given the opportunity of choice whether he stays with it or he fades out. So Jesus wants this message absolutely clear. He says I’m going to go over what I just said to this crowd when I was talking about munching on My flesh, when I was talking about drinking My blood, and I’m going to explain it to you. “The spirit that quickens and the flesh profits nothing,” well that still doesn’t tell us too much. But then He defines what the spirit is associated with, “the words that I have spoken unto you,” …the words that I have spoken unto you, not the experiences we have had but the doctrine I have taught you, that is the spirit. Now here is really a hard saying, this is a scandal for most people, sloppy thinkers in evangelical Christianity today because what Jesus is doing is repeating something that happens at several points in the Bible, actually it’s the undercurrent of the whole Bible.
I want to take a little break and show you some of these verses that tie spirit and doctrine together or spirit and words because the thing that has got to our day, because of a misinterpretation that doctrine is Spirit-less, and what you need is the doctrine and the Holy Spirit’s work. And this has led in practice to essentially saying that the Word of God is not complete but what you need in addition to is some other work of the Holy Spirit, as though doctrine is insufficient and must have something added to it by the Holy Spirit. That’s not true. What the Holy Spirit does is he reveals the doctrine but He never works against or in diversity from doctrine.
Let’s go back to Proverbs 1 for a study of these two words, “spirit” and “words.” Proverbs 1:23, if people would just understand this elementary point about the “words” it would solve this whole jazz about God the Holy Spirit is doing a special work in these latter days and somebody hits Joel 2 and they see that thing about the Holy Spirit is going to get poured out in the latter days, why these are the latter days and so the Holy Spirit must be pouring out and we go look for every spooky nitwit thing that’s going on and say that’s the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. Now nothing could be further from the truth. Do you really know what Joel’s talking about in that passage when he talks about in the latter days the Holy Spirit is going to pour out on all flesh? What it’s talking about is the reopening of the canon of Scripture to the human race. When the Holy Spirit pours out the Holy Spirit gives verbal revelation and adds to the canon of Scripture. Now unless somebody has recently written Revelation 23 the Holy Spirit is not pouring out in our day and will not pour out in our day. The canon is still closed and will remain so until after the rapture of the Church. There is no application whatsoever of Joel 2 to our present day charismatic situation. The test is that if the Holy Spirit pours out there has also got to be a complete and total addition to the canon of Scripture. And people in the charismatic movement have arrogance but very few of them are so arrogant to say that they are writing the 23rd chapter of the book of Revelation.
Let’s look at Proverbs 1:23, here is wisdom and here is one of your key places in the Bible to see what the Bible means when it uses these words. Now just look at verse 23 without all this advance doctrine and just look at what common sense tells you verse 23 is saying. Here’s wisdom, wisdom is being pictured here as a woman and the reason, as I’ve said when I went through Proverbs, is that woman, when she is functioning within the divine viewpoint framework, is a helper to her husband; she is a helper made for her husband. A man cannot really fulfill his calling without his wife. That’s a simple statement; men may not like that but that’s the truth of the Scriptures. Women have a vital role to play in the life of men; it is true that behind every great man in history there was a great woman; that always is the case, if you want to understand a man by the name of Martin Luther, read the biography of Katharine von Bora his wife, and so on down through history. These men have always had women that were godly and doctrinal and stable, and they always helped them, and those women have earned their rewards because in their husband’s glory is their glory, and when their husband has fulfilled his calling they also share in the reward as the helper shares in the labor. This is where the women’s lib movement has gone on, on the women’s lib basis the woman could never spiritually get her rewards because she’s not locked down to a place where she can get the rewards. So it’s just a lost cause as far as that’s concerned.
Now in Proverbs
Now let’s turn to Ephesians 5, the other passage, “be filled with the Spirit,” another passage that is given to a lot of this subjectivism. Granted, again we face a section of Scripture that sounds for all the world, at first glance, sounds for all the world like a charismatic type experience, being filled with the Spirit. “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.” All right, just from Ephesians 5:18 you would think that this refers to some sort of glubbety glubbety glub experience as you are filled, filled, filled, filled, filled with the Spirit. But if you study Scripture and look at parallel passages where the same author is talking about exactly the same thing, you see, in fact, it means nothing of the sort. Look at the context first so you’ll be convinced of this. What is the context? Ephesians 5:19-20, immediately after this experience we see thanksgiving, and then what do we see in verses 21 and following, the rest of the chapter? The relation in the second divine institution. What do we see in chapter 6:1; relation of the third divine institution.
Now come to Colossians, written by the same author dealing with the same problem talking about the same experience and at the end of Colossians 3 what do you see in Colossians 3:17? “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father,” so you have the theme of thanksgiving. What do you see in verse 18 on down for a few verses? The second divine institution operating. What do you see in verse 20? The third divine institution operating, and so on. And what do you see at the head of all that but verse 16, “And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom,” there’s your parallel to the filling of the Spirit and that’s the other word for it. Now if people would talk about the “word of Christ dwelling richly” instead of filling of the Holy Spirit, just say those two things to yourself and you can see the difference. If instead, in our generation, we hadn’t gone around in a nationally subjective environment with this filling of the Holy Spirit business and had instead used the vocabulary from Colossians, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” it would have made all the difference in the world because it would have kept us from slipping off into this morass of glubbety glubety glub stuff. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” would emphasize the content of Scripture, and learning it and applying it. But we’ve been misled by Christian leaders who insist on using these subjective little passages, the passage isn’t subjective it’s the words can be interpreted subjectively and that’s the problem.
Now come back to John 6 and Jesus is simply doing the same thing here when He says “the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit.” You can’t divorce the words from the Spirit. Do you know why you can’t? It even goes back to a more elementary thing than Proverbs 1. In the Bible, well just in normal life, how are words made? These words, we’re not talking about written words, they’re oral words, how are oral words made but by breath going through your mouth and it’s deformed by the way it comes through your teeth and your tongue and so on, the way you open and close your mouth. It is made by breath, and what is the “spirit” or pneuma in the Bible but breath? And so there’s where you had it originally start, when I pour out My breath I’m speaking, I speak words. So that’s how the word “spirit,” “pour out the spirit” and say something came to be; that’s the physical imagery behind it. And so today when somebody talks about the pouring out of the Spirit as utterly independent of Bible doctrine they’ve just collapsed the whole concept, just destroyed it, and Satan, of course, has taken great advantage of this. So John 6:63 lays it on the line that Jesus Christ’s teachings or the doctrine of Christ is the spirit and the life. And that is what those people are to look for. What is the meat and what is the manna? Doctrine. That’s what it is!
Now having said all that and having explained it, in John 6:64 Jesus begins what would amount to almost a lament, “But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray Him.” In verse 64 the word “but” is the strong conjunction of contrast, all, it’s abbreviated in this version but the idea is it’s the strongest contrast in the language, as though there’s a tremendous contrast between verse 63 and verse 64. Well, what’s the contrast between verse 63 and verse 64? The contrast in verse 63, the words or the doctrine that I have spoken unto you, the spirit and life, what would be the natural thing that would follow verse 63 if you didn’t have 64 there? Well, if Jesus was giving out life why doesn’t everyone receive it? And so the word “but” in verse 64 is a strong exception that shows disappointment on Jesus part. He says though I teach and My teachings are life, even as obvious as it looks that everyone would be attracted to that kind of thing, “but, there are some among you that are not believing,” there’s a sadness in this conjunction; sadness over the fact that He’s offered life free and even under those conditions people will not accept. “Some of you do not believe,” this is addressed to the disciples, the bumper sticker crowd, who are in name associated with Jesus and yet He says you don’t believe. I want you to notice that. There’s a little naiveté in Christian circles that everybody that names the name of Jesus is somehow a Christian. It ain’t so! In the final analysis God the Holy Spirit is going to have to be the one that decides. In every Christian group you are in danger of having many people that will profess faith and profess conversion, and profess to be illuminated by the Holy Spirit; they haven’t been illuminated in their life.
So he continues, John adds an editorial, “For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not,: so this is put in here to again protect Jesus’ person from misinterpretation. John wants us to stop at the period at the end of “believe not” and he wants to tell us, hey, wait a minute, Jesus is saying this not because He’s disappointed as such, He is disappointed, but it’s more than disappointment, He’s also revealing something. Disappointed yes, but not just disappointed; He’s telling us something about what He sees in that crowd; remember He saw something in the mob, that Greek monster that He wanted to kill and now the people very close to Him, His very disciples, He sees something in them that He doesn’t like. He sees faithlessness, He sees mere superficial profession. And He doesn’t lie that; He even sees treason among His closest friends. Jesus is aware of this.
And John 6:65
continues after the first part of verse 64 so if you want to put a parenthesis
in your text around that editorial remark so
that you’ll catch the flow and the flow will keep with you, you can do
that because Jesus’ remarks begins in 64, “There are some of you that believe
not, [65] Therefore said I unto you, that no man can
come unto me, unless it has been given unto him of my Father.” Now what He’s saying here is that all around
Him at this point there are dozens and dozens and dozens of people who have
followed Him in
Now
John 6:66, and John is accustomed to do he reports what happened after this was
said. “From that time many of His
disciples went back, and walked with Him no more.” What had John said? “They went out from us because they were not
of us, because had they been of us they would have continued with us.” They were scandalized, instead of meno, abiding with us and continuing
with us, they were driven away by the Word of God, so let them go, history will
pass them by. “From that time many of
His disciples went back,” now the word “went back” is interesting because it
doesn’t really mean “went back,” it means they went back to what they had
left. The idea is that they left their
businesses, they’d left and given up certain things to associate themselves
with this apparently popular Messianic movement that was taking place. And the closer they got to the candidate and
the more they heard the candidate’s platform the less they liked it until
finally the break point came. When they
really saw what Jesus was claiming they hated Him. What does that show? It just shows that they were slow learners
and when they finally learned the truth it drove them away.
Therefore
application, you can have a Christian group and you can have people in that
group who will gladly associate, simply because there are a lot of attractive
people. I don’t just mean physically
attractive people in a Christian group, all the girls suck in all the guys and
all the guys suck in the girls, that kind of thing, social type thing, but
there are just people with attractive lives and a lot of people are attracted
to Christian groups, not because of doctrine but because they simply enjoy
being around decent people and they’ll associate; and it’s not hard to pick up
the vernacular of a group and finally you kind of blend in with it, but then
the more you are with this group the more exposed to the Word of God you
become, the more you say wait a minute, I don’t buy this stuff and the longer I
hear this the more foreign it becomes to me until finally I just cannot stand
all that doctrine stuff, I’m just going to take off and go some place else
where I can just have my social needs met but not have all this doctrine
business. And for this reason the
disciples left and never, apparently these who left at this point, never came back
again. And John’s estimation of them and
his analysis of this defection is simply it shows that they are unsaved.
Now
in the rest of the chapter Jesus deals with the inner inner circle; He’s dealt
first with the mob; then He’s dealt with the disciples and now He deals with
the twelve men closest at hand. Notice
the progression because He’s going to weed out at this point as much unbelief
as He can. John 6:67, “Then
said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?” But it’s more powerful than that; what it
says in the Greek is are you making up your mind to leave? Are you planning on leaving, that’s what He’s
asking, because if you are, leave now.
This is one of those great invitation passages! But the funny thing, the Church in the 20th
century doesn’t practice this kind of invitation; it’s the opposite invitation,
out the door. A few churches do. But this is an invitation by implication to
get out of here, take off, and it’s a test of His twelve most entrusted
friends. And it’s over an issue of
doctrine.
And
then you have this magnificent reply of Peter.
Peter is often used as a spokesman, he apparently had the biggest mouth
of all the twelve, and Peter was a good believe, he just was a little fast with
his mouth and slow with his brain a few times but Peter was a good believer
because one thing that’s great about Peter is that he let it all hang out. When Peter goofs, everybody knows it. Now John the Apostle is not like that, John
harbors things; he’s a different personality; this is another fascinating study
some of you ought to make because some of you still are convinced that you have
to have a (quote) “Christian personality,” (end quote). There’s no such thing; there are certain
kinds of personality and you just were born with that and you’re not going to
change. Now there are moral dimensions
to the personality, yes, and those are changed but your personality type
doesn’t change.
For
example, a person could have artistic inclinations, you’re born with that, you
have a capacity in that direction. Now
whether you become a Christian or not isn’t going to change that artistic
talent you’ve got. If you are a
Christian you’re going to try to utilize that artistic talent in a direction
pleasing to the Lord, and if you’re not you’ll utilize it in a direction
displeasing to the Lord but you will utilize it one way or the other. And what Christianity does, it doesn’t change
your artistic talent. What it does is it directs it ethically and morally. Some of you are tremendously creatively
people. Within this congregation we have
some individuals here that are tremendously creative and I’ve noticed
something; the more the Word of God works in their soul the more creative they
become in the sense that the more they want to use their creativity, train it
well and use it to expound the Word of God with. And this is one of the great pleasures I
think any pastor-teacher obtains after teaching the Word and teaching the Word
and teaching the Word and teaching the Word, you begin to see this bloom in
people, spontaneously you see this happen.
All
right, that talent was there basically, it’s just that the Word of God calls it
forth in a godly direction but it doesn’t wipe out. If you’re an artist, then be a Christian one;
if you have inclinations toward leadership, then be a Christian leader. If you are a natural follower type, then be a
Christian follower but don’t change your personality because someone who led
you to the Lord had a certain kind of personality and you’ve always looked up
to them, or somebody who teaches you the Word has a certain kind of personality
and you always want to mimic that.
That’s not the point; the point is to let God the Holy Spirit work with
you, with your personality type.
And
John the Apostle had a very quiet kind of reflective personality. You can see it the way those two men
approached the tomb; John comes up to the tomb and he looks in and he sees it
and he stands there. All John has to do
is stand there, all John has to do is see something and he stops and he thinks
and that’s sufficient for him. Peter,
wham, just charge right in, because he’s the kind of guy that has to just see
right up there, to him action is more important than thought. You see this the way he writes; when you
learn Greek and you start to translate the first place you translate is John,
good thoughtful sentences. Then you read
Peter, the guy can’t even finish one, it’s sloppy, very sloppy, 2 Peter is
worse, as he got older he got worse. So
Peter naturally has that kind of personality.
All right, here you see Peter come out and Peter has something that’s
good in what he says and something that John, being more reflective catches
Peter and he catches what Christ is doing here.
So Jesus turns to the group, and notice in the old King James it’s “ye,”
will you all, are you all thinking of leaving too.
John
6:68 “Then Simon Peter answered Him,” and notice he
answers as the spokesman; at this point it’s more or less the self-appointed
spokesman because nobody asked, I’m sure John didn’t ask Peter to talk for him,
but Peter is the first one… you know, nobody is saying anything, somebody do
something; that’s Peter, and so he’s going to do something. And so he says, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” Not shall “I go,” he’s speaking for the group,
“to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” So here is a magnificent confession that
Peter makes; it shows that at this point Peter has absorbed something and most
of the disciples have absorbed it, most of the twelve have absorbed this, and
that is… and this is a good point about why John insists that it’s meno that’s a sign of salvation, this
continuing with Jesus is, in fact, a sign of salvation. Why?
Because in Peter’s confession, where he says, “to whom shall we go?”
What
does that tell you that Peter’s perceived in his soul? That there is no other option left and so
this is why John is saying that when meno, or abide, that kind of person that
stays with Christ, the reason he stays with Christ is because he’s
convinced. It doesn’t means perfection;
this is not teaching perfectionism. All
it’s saying is that the person hangs in there, confesses sin and so on and the
reason he hangs in there is because he’s convinced there are no other live
options; he knows… he knows for a fact, for truth, there are no other
options. But for the person who plays
with doctrine, for the person who in John’s word is scandalized by doctrine,
who departs, the reason he departs is because he thinks the grass is greener on
the other side of the fence, that there is indeed someone else to whom we can
go and get the same services, that I am not yet convinced that Jesus is THE
answer, I’m convinced He is an answer but not the answer; there are other live
options available and so I’ll leave and go find them.
So
this may be just a few words in verse 68 but these words are so loaded with
insight into the depths of our hearts and how the Holy Spirit works there that
they ought to be meditated upon for some time until it catches you what he’s
said here. What he has said again is
that those who remain, who are the true believers, have understood there are no
other options than Christ crucified and risen again… no other place you can go,
no other cult, no other teacher, no other philosophy, no place, no teacher, no
other answer, only Christ, period! Now
as God the Holy Spirit works in your heart He is going to build this. We can predict this on the basis of
Scripture. This will be the thrust of
His work in your life, to convince you there are not other options because
until He’s got you convinced there are no other options, you may be tempted to
go in another route.
And
then in John 6:69 Peter continues, “And we believe and have become sure,” both
of these are perfect, we have believed with results which continue to the
present and have become sure with results which continue to the present, “that Thou
art that Christ,” and in the King James it says, “the Son of the living God,”
but in the original text it apparently reads, “Thou art that Christ, the Holy
one of God.” Now Peter confesses true
faith here and this is why the Lord Jesus Christ saw Peter and accepted
Peter. It wasn’t that everything Peter
said and did was right but it was rather that Peter was a man whom you would
say is on positive volition. Now one
thing in verses 68-69 is wrong, and Peter is very susceptible to making this
mistake as anyone is who has their mouth in high gear and their brain in
neutral, and that is overstating the case.
Peter is the spokesman, the self-appointed one for the twelve, and He
says “we Lord,” all of us, one, two, three, four, dot, dot, dot, twelve, all of
us have believed and all of us have become sure.
So
Jesus gently corrects Peter and He looked at Peter and He says, John 6:70, “Jesus
answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is” literally “a
Satan?” [71] “He spoke of Judas Iscariot
the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the
twelve.” John, being reflective, perhaps
on the outside of those twelve men, sat there that day and watched the
conversation between Jesus and Peter.
And he watched how Peter just so aggressively out of responding to the
Lord just kind of over-responded and got off balance and Jesus drew him back
and kept him in balance, wait a minute Peter, don’t say “we all.” Speak for yourself, don’t speak for all
twelve. And so Jesus doesn’t let… He
doesn’t reprimand Peter because Peter basically meant what he said and he was
correct, he just overstated the case and Christ must not allow us to deceive
ourselves and so therefore the Lord Jesus Christ corrects and He says “one of
you is a Satan.” It’s the word diabolos; what does He mean by this?
Satan
is the proper noun referring to Satan the devil, but it can also mean a common
noun as the accuser or the prosecutor, the one who is always accusing. Now to understand what he is doing this tells
us something for the first time about the character of Judas Iscariot. Right away Jesus pictures this man as a
Satan. Now what kind of a man is Judas
Iscariot, there’s been a lot of theories of why Judas betrayed Jesus; he has a
political deal going, or he wanted to force Jesus’ hand or something but this
passage tells you a little bit why Judas betrayed Jesus. Judas, as an accuser… now what does Satan do
when he accuses us? Well, what Satan
basically is doing is claiming that God is unfair toward himself. He is challenging God’s justice, He is
challenging God’s righteousness, He’s saying God you were unfair to permit
these people into your kingdom, this is a violation of your righteousness. Why does Satan like to challenge God’s
righteousness and His justice? What is
it about God, what has God done in history that really hacks Satan. Well, what has He done for the human race but
provide grace salvation. Satan never had
an offer of grace, Satan had to choose between God and he chose but he was
never offered grace like man was offered.
And this hacks him, that creatures have this chance, that God is
gracious. Why, that’s unfair. So basically what makes Satan Satan is his
animosity to grace, his animosity for God to show His character and His love
this way in history. How dare God do
this. He impugned God’s character.
And so taking all that truth and applying it to Judas what can we determine about this man’s character. He was a man who basically had a deep animosity to Christ’ grace toward man. Judas Iscariot, the man who kept the money, the man who would have the records, the man who might be a perfectionist, who would always be meticulous… after all, why did the disciples give the bag… he was the treasurer of the group, why would a man who would be a traitor be accepted as the treasurer of the group. Why would you pick a treasurer? You’d pick a treasurer, a man who was fastidious, a man who would keep good records, a man who would always give an accounting for every last cent, a man who would be as perfectionist as possible. That kind of a person makes a good man with the books. And Judas was a good man with the books. And it was that very thing that made him a good man with the books that was a fatal flaw in his soul because Judas apparently was the man who hated Jesus Christ’s and His grace, he despised what Jesus was doing for men. And this gives us a clue what operated in his heart all along, all the way up until the last supper, when Jesus offered him the sop and said go ahead, do your thing.
All during the time that Judas Iscariot came in fellowship with Christ he hated Christ’s grace toward the woman at the well, he probably seethed as he saw Jesus Christ offering grace to this low class woman. And Judas probably came out a very upper class type. I picture him from this and some other passages in John as a very righteous person, not at all the murderer that he’s often pictured. Some people picture Judas Iscariot as a pitch fork and fangs walking around like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or something. Not at all, you would have been quite pleased to have Judas on your administration; he was an excellent administrator.
And so we find at the last, in verse 71, “it was he who was about to betray Jesus,” and this is one of those little subtle ironies of John. See John, remember, doesn’t waste words, he’s very economical in his use of words, but what has he shown us? In verse 70 Judas is called a Satan, a man who hates grace; and in verse 71 the fatal words, “he was just about ready to betray Jesus.” Now I don’t think he’s saying that Judas at this point was thinking consciously I’m going to betray Jesus, I’m going to betray Jesus, I’m going to betray Jesus. That’s not what he was thinking. What he’s saying is that the principle in his soul that made him a Satan, this hatred for grace, was just about ready to cause him to betray the great one of grace; it was just about ready to play itself out in history. So along with John 6 we’ve concluded this whole chapter, we’ve had a sorting and a judging of the ways, judging of the ways that began with the masses of people that had been fed, over 10,000 people were fed at the beginning of this chapter. What do we end the chapter with? Only 11 people for sure… only 11 out of a possible 11,000. Quite a reduction in numbers; denominational headquarters wouldn’t like to get this kind of report.
For the
application and final verse to summarize this turn to 2 Peter 1:10, we talked a
lot about Peter. Peter apparently never
forgot the lesson that day and it emerges in one of his epistles. One of the
great things, if you study the Gospels and watch the different writers of the
New Testament you’ll understand why they said certain things later on in Church
history. That experience with Christ so
colored their lives that it just popped up in their writing. 2 Peter 1:10, here we have a reflection of
that day in