2023 02 14 Offended by the Jesus who Turns People Away

In this sermon, the speaker continues a series called "Offended by Jesus," discussing aspects of Jesus that are uncomfortable but biblical. The main idea is that in order to have a real relationship with Jesus, we need to know Him for who He really is, not who we want Him to be. The speaker talks about how Jesus turned people away who were seeking something from Him rather than seeking Him. Jesus wanted people who earnestly sought Him, not just His blessings. The speaker also discusses how Jesus turned away people who didn't count the cost of following Him. The sermon challenges listeners to seek God's Word, seek His face in prayer, and reflect on their own ideas of who God is versus who He really is. The goal is to have a stronger, more authentic relationship with Christ. Tonight, we're going to be continuing a series that we started last week called Offended by Jesus, where we're discussing aspects of Jesus that are fully biblical, but uncomfortable. And you might be asking, you know, why are we talking about this? And the reason is because the only way we can have a real relationship with anyone, honestly, is to get to know them for who they really are, rather than for who we wish them to be. And Christianity is ultimately a relationship with God, so we can't have a relationship with someone we don't know. So last week, we discussed how Jesus isn't legalistic like us, which was the softball one because most of us are okay with that idea conceptually. You know, he doesn't have to be fair the way we define fairness. He can deal with justice and grace his way. But tonight, I want to make us more uncomfortable, just because I can now. But tonight, I want to talk about the Jesus who turns people away. Now, you're probably already confused. We'll get into it. Don't worry. But I'm talking about people coming to Jesus in droves, and instead of enlarging his territory or planting a second ministry, he turns them away on purpose. How many of you are familiar with Jesus feeding the 5,000? Just kind of the base of that story. Okay. So just as a real precursor to that, like he's preaching to a huge group of people, 5,000. It's 5,000. It was actually more than 5,000 because if you read it, it says 5,000 and women and children. It's just kind of the way that they counted things back then. But it's actually considerable, it was considerably more than that. And Jesus miraculously fed the 5,000 with two loaves and five loaves and two fishes. The Bible trivia people here are about to come at me. And he multiplied that enough for the crowds, right? So everybody had, and there was more than enough. There was food left over. And that sounds pretty awesome. And right after that was the, miraculously, Jesus walking on the water. He was on a roll and meeting with the disciples. And those are both amazing accounts in themselves. But right after that, some of the people who were in that group of 5,000 plus went to try to track down Jesus when they realized he had left, that he had gone to the other side of the lake, walking on the lake. So he'd gone to the other side and they went to track him down. And that sounds good. More people, people wanted more of Jesus, right? It's hard to find a problem with that. And isn't that what we all want in church? People to want more of Jesus and come back. But this leads me to my first point. The problem was they didn't want more of Jesus. They wanted more from Jesus. Jesus turned away people who weren't really looking for him. They were looking for something from him. He understood the difference. And I'm sure you guys have all experienced this in your own life. There's people who just like to be around you. They don't care what you're doing. You could be sitting there staring at a tree and they'd be happy to hang out with you, right? I don't know why you'd do that, but that's whatever. And then there's other people who, see, and every time you see the phone ring and it's their name or texts come up, you just cringe because you know they want something, you know? They came to him looking for more bread. They wanted more food. And he told them that he was the bread of life. They were looking for something to sustain them right now. And he was saying, I'm what sustains you. It's not this, right? And they thought, you know, bread of life, eternal bread, like that's a refill policy that I can get behind, right? But Jesus knew that they wanted his blessings more than they wanted him, you know? We just sang a song about Jesus being more than enough and before that about how, you know, we just want him and that, but sometimes we want a little more than that. And it's, it's natural. It's understandable. I'm not saying that we're bad people for that. It's completely natural. But do we really want him in all that they, on the other hand, were too shallow to understand the metaphor that he was telling them about the bread of life, about eating his, his flesh and his blood, about the fact that we need to hunger for him more than his blessings. The need, they needed to be long, long to be filled with Jesus, not simply earthly things alone. And he wanted to fill the emptiness in their souls more than the emptiness in their stomachs. So I want to pick up in John chapter 6, 62, 65, their reaction to him telling them all this stuff. And he said, it says, many disciples said, this is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it? Get the little mouth out of the way. Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining. So he said to them, does this offend you? Then what will you think if you see the son of man ascend to heaven again? The spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But some of you do not believe me. For Jesus knew from the beginning, which ones didn't believe, and he knew who would betray him. Then he said, that is why I said that people can't come to me unless the father gives them to me. So the key thing here is that Jesus knew they wouldn't all follow him, at least not all the way until the end. And he wanted them to get what he was talking about, right? He had all these people coming to him and he was sharing these things and he wanted them to get it. And he loved them and he wanted them to change, but he also knew who he was there for and he wasn't going to beg the ones that he wasn't to follow him. He knew who he was there for. I think this is foreign to our minds, right? We want to do everything we can to make our churches as exciting, cool, welcoming, or as relevant as we can. Because the last thing we would ever want to do is do something that would make someone not want to come back. Yet Jesus did it on purpose. Not that being cool, welcoming, or relevant are bad things, but he didn't beg people to stay. He just offered the truth and he didn't do this because he was like a forward-thinking guru that wanted everybody to live and let live and had developed their own truth. It was because the truth doesn't need believers to be true. Something is true whether we believe it or not, it doesn't need us to believe in it to be true. A square is a square whether or not you and I believe it. But just after our earlier reading, people started leaving. At this point, many of his disciples turned away and deserted him. Then Jesus turned to the twelve, his closest twelve disciples, and he asked, Are you also going to leave? Simon Peter replied, Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life. We believe and we know you are the one, the Holy One of God. Some people might read this. I think we tend to sometimes look at the people in Scripture through a nobler lens than is realistic, perhaps. I think we look at Peter here and I'm like, wow, oh man, what faith Peter has. Good for him. If only I could have the faith. I don't really read this personally, and this is conjecture, but I don't really read this personally as Peter, just this bold declaration of like, you have the words of life, we would never turn. I read this more as Peter, like, what's the alternative? Like, you have the words of life, like, I mean, it's awkward, it's uncomfortable, I guess, what you're saying, but like, if you're God, what else am I supposed to do? Like, of course we're going to follow you, kind of thing. You know, I think it's more of a, as a matter of fact, like, well, we're stuck with you now, kind of thing, you know? And Peter's response here is our big takeaway. Many things about Jesus are different than we expect, but what other hope do we have? Jesus alone is our hope. We have to change ourselves to match his plan instead of changing him to match ours. So this really begs the question, though, why was Jesus turning people away? And that leads me to my second point, is that Jesus turned people away who didn't count the cost. Luke 9, 57 to 62 has this to say on it. As they were walking along, that's Jesus and his disciples, someone said to Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go. But Jesus replied, foxes have dens to live in and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to even lay his head. He said to another person, come, follow me. The man agreed, but he said, Lord, first let me return home and bury my father. But Jesus told him, let the spiritually dead bury their own dead. Your duty is to go and preach about the kingdom of God. Another said, yes, Lord, I will follow you, but first let me say goodbye to my family. But Jesus told him, anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. These people said that they were ready to follow Jesus. They were eager. Isn't that who we want? Yet each one had a condition. And interestingly, the first man didn't even say his L loud, but Jesus knew it. He knew they didn't understand the cost of following him, and he wanted those who understood the cost. Now, I want to be clear here, because I think a lot of us, including me, reading this verse and these ones, these two right here in particular, feel like these sound like incredibly reasonable requests. Right? I mean, maybe that's just me, but that sounds like very reasonable. And yet Jesus is like, no, that's not good enough. And I think what this is about here is not so much that if this person had wanted to follow Jesus, that Jesus wouldn't have let him bury his father, or that, you know, that sort of thing. I don't think it's so much about that. It's just that that's the first thing his mind went to, right? It's not about burying the father or not, it's that the first thing his mind went to when he said, come follow me, is all of the things that would delay it, right? And I think we've been there sometimes. We feel like God wants us to do something, something, and it might not be a big, grand thing, you know, it's maybe just like, we just feel in our soul, we had a fight with somebody, and we're just like, you need to apologize, right? And you just feel that deep down, where you're like, okay, God, I will do that, but first I got to do this, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'll do that, but I've got these very practical things that I need to take care of. But you just can't, it's just gnawing at you, right? And you keep feeling it, right? And so I think what Jesus is talking about here is, it's not that other things don't matter, right? You know, we are here, when Jesus is a huge part of our life, he's the number one thing in our life, but that doesn't mean you don't do the dishes, right? If we've got to do, I mean, maybe you guys don't, I'm not judging, but we still have things that have to get taken care of in life. And are we letting those things that can happen five minutes later, get in the way of following him when he says follow, right? I think that in our well-intentioned attempts at evangelism, we focus a lot on what God will do for us, for, you know, the freedom in Christ that we'll have, the forgiveness, the grace. But I think that sometimes in doing so, we unintentionally water down or misrepresent what the Christian life is like. Jesus said that the world will hate us. Will our friends think we're weird for our faith? 100% they will, yes, they will, not all of them, some of them will. I mean, they killed Jesus and most of the 12 disciples for it. They didn't really up their popularity. You know, grace, forgiveness, freedom in Christ are all amazing things and absolutely part of it. But we can't ignore the fact that Jesus didn't try and sell the good news with fine print, right? He took that fine print and he made it bold and up front, letting people know that there's a cost to following him. Salvation is his free gift, but following Jesus is not without its price. And this is a version of Jesus which can offend our sensibilities. It's a version of Jesus which sounds bad for church growth numbers, but it's the real Jesus, the only Jesus worth believing in. And belief in the real Jesus is the only way to have true church growth in our hearts. Jesus wants people who earnestly seek him. Christianity is not a part-time endeavor. It's supposed to be our all. To kind of wrap things up, I want to tell you guys a story, a personal story to help point us towards a challenge that can make this message worth your time. When I lived in Halifax, I remember I had a good buddy who was also Christian, a different, say, denominational background than myself, so we saw a few things differently. This is the silly, petty things that, if you've grown up all your life in church, ends up happening sometimes. But we both believed in Jesus, but there was a few things that we disagreed on. And we, not that we had arguments about it, but we liked to debate, if you will, some of these finer points. And I remember I got frustrated, though, at one point. I was just like, I don't, I really don't agree with this thing that he is saying. And I remember telling him, if you could convince me that your viewpoint is true, I'd sooner become an atheist than switch over to your version of Christianity, because that's not a God I would want to serve. And while, I'm going to be honest, I still disagree with the viewpoint that he was putting out. He said something that I will never forget, and that challenges me every time I bring this story up. He said, so you're saying, Chris, if the truth about God was one you would not prefer, even though it were true, you would abandon Him. I was like, okay, I need to shut up now. And that really convicted me, and it still convicts me. Will we abandon Jesus or abandon our preconceptions about Him? You know? And here's the thing. Like we kind of talked about last week, you know, God doesn't owe it to us to look fair. He also doesn't, and that applies, though, to every area of our preferences. He doesn't owe it to us to make sense. I wish He did, but He doesn't, you know? He doesn't owe it to us to fit into the mold of what we would like, and I would challenge you that if everything about, and this is kind of what this series is about, if everything about God is comfortable to you, then that's probably not God. It's probably a version of God that we have created. You guys are probably familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia, right, written by C.S. Lewis, and there's this great line that they say a bunch of times about Aslan, who, of course, is meant to represent Jesus. And they say that He is not a tame lion. He is a good lion, but He's not a tame lion, and it's really meant to kind of represent to us that, like, yeah, like, there's going to be things about God that don't always feel comfortable or match up the way that we would like, but He is good. Don't let us mistake that that means that He is not good. So each of us has a choice today, and repeatedly throughout our life, will we serve the God who is or the God we wish was? We're not supposed to make Jesus in our image. We're supposed to be made into His. So this week, I want to challenge us to seek out God's Word and to seek His face in prayer, to do some self-reflection about who we think God is and who He really is, and if we're willing to let go of ideas and get on board with His, we'll have such a stronger, more beautiful relationship with Christ, rather than a relationship with our imaginary version of Him. And I was really thinking about this as I was putting this together, too. Something I want to throw in there, too, is that this same concept applies to every relationship in your life, not just your relationship with God, but it absolutely applies there, too. Most of the times when we have arguments, whether it's with a spouse, a family member, a friend, a workplace person, a coworker, whatever, a lot of the conflict comes from the difference between who we imagine that person to be or would prefer them to be, even if we know that that's not who they are, the way that we prefer them to be, versus who they actually are. And the sooner we can accept who they are, that doesn't mean we don't challenge people to grow and change, but they have to be on board with that. We can't push them down that road. But the part that is our own responsibility that we can take care of is being okay with who they are and doing what we need to do, and I'm not saying that that means that we ignore terrible, toxic things, like there's things that happen like that in relationships. But at the same time, we have to be willing to, even if somebody has toxic traits, we have to be willing to accept, well, that's who they are or who they are right now, anyways. It doesn't mean they can't change, but I have to be aware of the reality of who they are right now, instead of trying to change them, because I can't change anybody. I can sit here and speak to you guys, even from the Word of God, and I will not change a single one of you unless you are willing to change and let God do a work in your own life. That is neither within my ability or responsibility, and it's not within your ability or responsibility for the people in your life, either. You can't change them, but you can accept where they are, pray for them, but recognize that things are going to go a lot smoother when you realize who they are and respond accordingly with whatever that looks like in those situations, and it's the same with God. We have to come to Him with who, to who He actually is, rather than who we imagine Him to be. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we want to get to know who You are, who You really are, not just who we want You to be, but we want to want what You want. We want to want who You really are, and sometimes we don't really want You to be who You really are, Lord, but help us to want You to be who You really are. Help us to respond to who You are, Lord. Shed light onto the areas in our life, Lord, that we are responding to You, or treating You a certain way, or just thinking about You a certain way, Lord. Whether it's the legalism we talked about last week, whether it's this idea, Lord, that we can come to You with all these conditions, and when we have to come to You wholeheartedly without conditions, or Lord, maybe it's that we feel like we're not worthy, that we don't measure up, Lord, and that we've got to get it all together to be okay with You, Lord. When we don't, You love us anyway because of who You are. Lord, help us to set aside any of the unhealthy ideas that we have about You and trust You for who You are so we can have a real relationship with You. In Jesus' name, amen.