The Shortsighted

He reminds us of the things we need.

Jesus said I am the bread of life comes to me shall not hunger whoever believes in me shall never thirst the bread that he is offering his reunion with God because that is what human soul is missing. That is what it is craving there missing the best thing because they're fixated on a good thing. I'm your host Molly, but events these days it seems like everyone is always up in arms about something or another fact is that there are so many good causes out there to fight for its overwhelming sometimes, but today Pastor JD is helping us refocus on the most important mission. The mission that actually gives everything else.

Meaning he titled this message the shortsighted part of our series, believe we're looking at the different barriers that can hold us back from getting ourselves legally to Jesus. So let's get started.

In John chapter 11 might have been saved subtly well I'm just not really sure how the series applies to me because I already believe in Jesus but you gotta understand that really what Christian growth is is learning to do really believe in Jesus to really believe in Jesus to take her believe from something that you acknowledging your creed to something you lean the weight of your soul by the believe means to lean your weight apart something.

Think of it as the difference between being in an airplane and believing that the parachute would actually guide you safely to the ground and then jumping out of an airplane are two fundamentally different things that that latter thing that jumping on the airplane is what John would mean when he says believe it is belief in action. It is believed that is legal weight of its sole up on this thing. So whether you're a believer or not. I think there's a lot in here for you. You might be learning to believe in Jesus for the first time there is a large number of you, also, that are are really learning what it means to trust in the believe in Jesus, so there's something here for everybody. So John chapter 6 were in just six short of a counter group who can't believe for two reasons. First, they don't understand the real problem because they don't understand the real problem. They are so focused on quick fixes that they miss the real Jesus and the real gospel when it's right in front of Francis Schaeffer said that if he had an hour to explain the gospel to somebody that it never heard it before the 21st century man would never heard before. He would spend the first 45 or 50 minutes about our on the negative, trying to show this guy that he really was in a hopeless dilemma, but he really was spiritually dead, but there was no possible way he could save himself 45 or 50 minutes of that I would spend the last 10 minutes. Only the last 10 minutes explaining to him the good news of the gospel.

He said that a lot of our evangelistic outreach work fails today because were so anxious to get to the answer that we never have people understand the problem with this group in John six is a perfect example that they don't understand the problem, so they're blind to the solution when it's right in front of now, I think this group today would include a lot of Republicans believe that if societies were just free and they were all democratically governed government would just get out of the way that everybody could drive. I think that group would today include a lot of Democrats to believe that if the rich would just pay their fair share and help the poor that there be enough prosperity to go around this group would include a lot of well-intentioned social activist would include a lot of educational reformers of public school teachers and college professors and those who were working to end world hunger and those trying to stop the sex slave trade good people, many of them working on very worthy projects, many of them even thinking of themselves as Christians.

But the mission and the message of Jesus is secondary to them because they don't understand the real problem here is how you know you're in this room. By the way you're kind of bored with Jesus you don't hate him no problem call yourself a Christian, but you're just not filled with love and passion for him CV sign that you have encountered the real Jesus is that you are consumed with one of those two emotional extremes interferes hatred or consuming love lukewarm feelings about Jesus apathetic feelings about Jesus even positive apathetic feelings about Jesus are sure proof that you've never encountered the real guy. This same group in John six at the end of the chapters give a stumble over believe for a second reason that is because Jesus is going to drop some really hard things. Things that offend them things that cut against the grain things that shatter their worldviews but because they are only looking for a prophet who teaches a new philosophy of life or life coach give them better tips for living, or new social activist to give them a better agenda to go out and pursue politically the world because that's all they're looking for. They are not prepared for a gospel that rock their world and a glorious Savior who will blow their minds and their to look back in Jesus and they're going to say we don't really like this part of you will like this on the part of the year. We think that's awesome at this part right here. This is offensive today will see a lot of people like to appropriate various parts of Jesus message into their own, especially the parts that work with their pre-existing worldviews. Jesus is not a salad bar. Would you take part you I can leave the parts you don't what he is going to tell these people the end of this chapter is you either understand that I am the holy one from heaven and you receive everything that I'm saying you reject me altogether as I am to be middle category.

Tsonga called this group with these two problems. I will call them the shortsighted because they don't understand the real problem they don't recognize the real Jesus.

The problem goes back to the shortness of site so I get into it to begin reading the verse 14 summarize verse 13 verse 40 John chapter 6 opens up with a problem and that problem is that the people that are listening to Jesus are hungry, not metaphorically hungry but actually physically hungry, she Jesus had a lot to say because you had a lot to say his sermons would often go on for a long time, not 45 or 50 minutes what you people complain about the right, but all day. In this case, Jesus started his sermon sometime after breakfast starts straight through lunch all the way to dinner. It takes a little break after dinner and he turns to his disciples and he says to them, man. It looks like these people were getting hungry there start to get kinda cranky.

What do you think I should do now verse six tells you that this was a test question because he already knew what he was going to do so. This is like up a pop quiz. So the first disciple to respond to this is found in the gospel will is Peter and respond to Mrs. what a dumb question.

Jesus is like 20,000 people here. I know your Bible says 5000 a millikelvin has a household with a Donna Krause she got that when a wife and a couple friends and your kids, whatever.

So he had about 20,000 people here Jesus. That's not a real question we are without the capacity to feed 20,000 people. This is cookie talk you got it you gotta send them home. We can do it fail. Right second person to speak is Philip, you'll see that there were something seven yet Philip says well 200 denarii I Jesus is not enough to buy food for these people, even for each of them to have just a little, but you gotta read that with the sarcasm that is intended to hundred denarii I is eight months wages so what he's essentially saying is all yeah Jesus. That's a great idea.

We could all go get jobs right now. We could all work for eight months we can save all of our money and then pulling together and then bought by each of these people want to smoke something and I'm sure that's going to help the fact that there hungry right now fail right.

Finally, one of the disciples. Andrew says well about a little boy whose mama packed him a lunch and he says that he's willing to share with you, Jesus.

If you're hungry, so you can just got backstage real quick and easy as lunch will like to know the Strachan body will everybody a song Jesus loves me, or something like that you know and then and then we'll come back up and you can eat started off so well. Didn't fail. So Jesus takes a little boy's life. The five loaves and two fish. He prays already start to distributed well as the disciples were distributed as it is in their hands, it begins to multiply and as it multiplies. They can get away fast enough and soever everybody is eating everything we can possibly eat. They take up what's left of this little boy five loaves and two fish.

What I call before Hebrew happy meal and they take the leftovers of that Hebrew happy meal and they collect well bushel baskets full to overflowing. Verse 14. So when the people saw the sign that he had done.

They said this is indeed the prophet who is come into the world. Verse 15 perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king stopped there for a second there, excited what this guy just did they can imagine if this guy was the head of our nation meet this guy can do this with five loaves and two fish.

Imagine what he could do with the stock market talk about healing the planet is not what's on top of storms we would just fix Medicare you can remove the need for, but notice what Jesus does for 15 but Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. Now that's a kinda strange reaction is not because usually preachers like crowds taken from one because that lets you know that your message is connected but just when the crowds really get into Jesus when it's taken off when he's trending right trending on twitter EI tells it gets out of their this is not shyness on Jesus part, by the way know he is avoiding disaster eternal disaster could use either missing the point didn't come the end world hunger, at least not at first as important as in the world hunger is he's got something even more important than that, and they are missing it there missing the best thing because they're fixated on a good thing, he goes up on the mountain and hides until nightfall and after nightfall. He takes an evening stroll on the sea, not by the same mind you, but on the sea and he walks over to the other side will somebody are over there. Solomon tweeted about CM so the crowd number 25 finally find him on the other side of the sea is is Rabbi. How did you get over here. Verse 26 no explanation, no inflammation at all for 26 is answer them truly truly remember those in the gospel, Java, Jesus drops truly, truly, let me binge again serious bone growth. Truly, truly, on this is truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking a not because you saw the signs but because you ate your fillable loaves do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.

He's got a different kind of bread that he's offering.

He knows that he could world hunger, and he could restore world peace and he could ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people and still not have dealt with the real problem to jump out of her 34 so they said to him, sir. Give us this bread always. They don't get the physical bread. He's talking about is just a picture of the real bread that he is offering from heaven. Verse 35 so they said to him, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger whoever believes in me shall never thirst the bread that he is offering his reunion with God because that is what the human soul is missing. That is what it is craving for Blaise Pascal famously called the void in every human heart that whether you believe in God or not there is a vacuum. There is a void. He said that you don't exactly know why it's there. What it's hungering for but you spend the majority of your life trying to figure out what will settle that emptiness and some for a while when you're a teenager you try try crazy style view drug drugs and alcohol in some accident he settled down Utah marriage. The neutron career success in the drive retiring well pleases.

None of it.

None of it ends up working because that holes in the shape of God himself. It was a whole that was created by God for God and until you get God back into the right place in your life. Nothing that you will do will satisfy not the best romance… The greatest amount of money that you can achieve Jesus.

You see, did not show up with merely external fixes because there was, get this, nothing external that anybody could give us not even Jesus. There was nothing external that anybody could give us not even Jesus that would satisfy the starving condition of our souls. It was God that we were missing. It was God, but his gospel would restore to us our soul craving you see is not for something our soul craving is for some one and until we been reunited to that someone.

Our souls will always be famished and corrupted.

This is a recurring theme throughout literature and movies. If you study literature and movies best hundred years as technology develops, people start to postulate what's it like somebody gave the ability to live forever. One of the recurring themes is pretty fascinating. Is it never ends up well. Somebody figures out how to live forever, but they end up being miserable because we know we know there's a disc a difference between merely existing and really living in merely existing forever is not really what were after reports.

What is it mean to live forever. When the Bible talks about eternal life is not just talking about existing forever. By the way, that's actually the definition of health hell is you born existing forever just apart from God that you might say that you have two options for eternity. You go to a place of eternal existence or you go to a place of eternal life God offers eternal life not just eternity of existence. He offers eternal life, which is not a quantity of time. It is a quality of existence. Jesus or they say back.

Verse 28.

What we gotta do to be doing the works of God.

I will tell us how do we obtain this heavenly bread to get this bread of God were 29 Jesus said to them, this is the work of God for you that you believe in him whom he has said that something you can do this is a bread be given to you as a gift. You were powerless, you see, to restore what was lost to God himself did the work of restoring your salvation. The bread here, by the way, is a great picture of the gospel in order for bread to be your body. The good it has to be broken your teeth after break it up into pieces and she went up Jesus would be broken for us so that he could feed us in order for water to do you any good. It has to be poured out test report out and into you.

Jesus blood would be poured out suite become the water applied to us the meal for our starving souls would be provided for entirely by God are part was simply to take any despite.

Lastly, our participle to come and drink before that are part is to look at live all the work of salvation.

God did, and he gives you a job. Three different ways of saying the same thing that healing is there, look at it and live. The water is here taken, drink, drink the bread of life is here.

You don't manufacture it you don't produce it. You don't work for. I do all the work port on the one he's broken. I make the bread I die I resurrect the dead, you just taken eight that's it, which shows you by the way, and those that little there's several set of verses there so you do two things get this that distinguish the true gospel from every false gospel ever populated. Whether that gospel gospel since Christian or not.

There are two things that distinguish the true gospel from the false gospel to word you will remember this will help you whenever you're talking somebody even a percent of super Christian. These two words have to be the dominant things in the gospel number one God, I know that sounds like crazy but that I would be to say that but I do God, the true gospel's primary focus is reconciliation with God. Jesus would not let his ministry in John six become primarily about an end world hunger, or prosperity for all campaign even though those things are both morally and super important when it looked like it was about to become that he ran away from it because our problem runs much deeper than anything that could be fixed by food in our stomachs are closing about education in our brains or even just us and our governments should wait until a true gospel from a false gospel is that the real gospel has as its primary focus. The reclamation restoration of God to us in the changing of the human heart so that it loves and adores God because it is fundamentally flawed. The true gospel is about God. It has as its primary focus reconciliation with God. The locus of its hope is God.

The focus of its affections is God. John Piper says it this way, the gospel is not a way to get people to heaven. Most of us think right now most of us would first like to receive Jesus. Somebody asked me… Do we know for sure will be go on while you think will die at night, but for whatever reason, it's always always praise if you died tonight you know that you go to heaven I don't so I better ask is I want to go to heaven but gospel is not a way to get people to heaven.

It's a way to get people God. The primary gift of the gospel is God himself.

Indeed, until you feast on the bread of Jesus himself.

All the other things that you're seeking all the other times a lesser kind of bread or just to leave you hungrier John Piper again. Indeed, there are 10,000 gifts that flow from the love of God, but none of these gifts will lead the final joy if they did not. First let God some of you come back to church. Are you looking for some secondary deal forgot to give you. God really got my family got kids not to raise him.

I got a work in my marriage with my wife and now they were to make it to God. I balance my life ever like to go to heaven when I die. The purpose of these leg of the yard stuff. Great 10,000 gifts to wait for you when you come to God but until they have led you to God himself until you possess God who is better than all those gifts, every one of those gift matter how good it out suite will leave you hungry. CS Lewis had a great statement on is all of this syphilis said, it seems that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but to week. We are halfhearted creatures, fully about drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to allies in other words were mess around with temporary bread when what God offers us his bread was so fixated on whether or not our lives are filled with this kind of bread that we miss the fact that infinitely satisfying bread is offered to us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea, we are far too easily.

Please.

And that's our problem on a great statement that means, by the way church with the monies politics and all these activist causes are secondary. Hear me correctly on this. I'm not saying they're not important.

The Bible commands us to love and bless and take care of our neighbors, but as important as all those political and secondary agendas are they can never displace the centrality of the gospel message in our mission you see our generation is I say our generation to college students.

I know that I'm 19 years old and most of you 39 years old. But you know what our generation. Our generation is a very because driven generation. It everybody got company's role in the given back. That's all. Until the company is good or not good to get back I call the Bono factor. Everybody's got a cause hereby got bracelets with different initiatives that appear there's wretched Tom shoes on their feet brightness as this is who we are and that's all well and good. It really is. But we can never lose the focus that Jesus died for Tom's soul and Jesus provided bread for of life for Tom's soul because people don't just need shoes on their feet.

They need forgiveness of their sins. They need the bread of God's presence or we don't want. Well clothes well fed people die go to hell with free shoes on their feet. Yet we want to alleviate suffering. Of course we do. That's a Christian's duty, but the most significant suffering of all his eternal suffering.

The suffering of the soul. Starting from being separated from God. So yes, we want to put bread in their stomachs. We will always do that but more importantly, we want to point them to the bread that is given to them from having anywhere hearing for them actively can't forget that Jesus is the bread of life.

The only thing that can truly satisfy their soul. You're listening to Senate life with pastor JD Greer to listen to this message again to catch up on previous messages in this series, visit JD Greer.com today.

Sometimes we think of the gospel as a one-time event that occurs at your conversion, but that's a pretty shallow view Internet get Molly this is a theme we talk about a lot here.

Some of life.

The gospel is not just our ticket to heaven.

The gospel is an entirely new basis for how we relate to God, to ourselves and others. You experience the power of the gospel in your life, not just by learning a bunch of new things about Christianity widening the circumference of your knowledge about life going deep into the knowledge of who God is and what he's actually offered to you in this incredible grace that he shown in the gospel of love that he demonstrated we want you on this program. We want you to not just know gospel doctrine. We want you to taste the sweetness of the gospel job and it was the great theologian of the 18th century.

He always talked about how it's one thing to know with your head honey sweet but then another to have the taste of honey for the first time is one of things we've we produce to help you with that is is a new 20 day devotional and I've attempted to make it clear that devotional in a day by day format what God has done for us in the end, just the wonder of who years that that will take you deeper into the wonder of the gospel. The devotional book is called simply what is the gospel you can get yours today JD Greer.com. I would love to be able to to give you this is an assistance helping you rediscover the wonder of the guys, JD. This brand-new 20 day devotional written by pastor JD comes with our thanks when you donate to support this ministry at the suggested level of $25 or more special bonus again this month for no additional $10 you the book of John Scripture note, but the Scripture note that combines the text of the gospel of John, with wide margins and online pays for notes beside each page of tax ample space for notetaking is perfect to record reading and elections in notetaking during never joined us in our mission to go deeper into the gospel of Jesus Christ given 14 and when you can't remember your company 335 28 x 20 easier to give online Molly minutes. Be sure to listen again Wednesday night