True Greatness (7/8/18 The Book of John #34)

ATTN: Who is great in your eyes?  Who in your mind is “legit?” What kind of person would you look at and think, “This is a great person. He is someone that I would follow!’ How do you assess greatness?

           – Would you look at his accomplishments? He built a business from nothing and now he has 5000 employees? Is he great in your mind?  

           – Maybe his status? The letters in front of his name? Ph.d, M.D., etc?

           To me, how much he has sacrificed for the cause of Christ. That is the mark of greatness. Why? Because Jesus said that whoever wants to be great must be a servant of all. (Matt 20:26) What does a servant do? He sacrifices his time, his money, his position for the sake of others. So, a great person in my eyes are those who sacrificed the most for Christ’s sake.

– A missionary I met in Thailand who was a teacher in Korea. You get pension for the rest of your life  if you work 20 years as a teacher in Korea, but with one year left to go, he felt the call to missions and left his teaching position, gave up his pension and came to thailand.

– Our own missionaries, late mr. and mrs Lee, with only a few years left to retire as an engineer at Boeing, left it all behind and went to China. To me, they are legit. When they spoke, I listened.

Anyone with some business and people skills can build an organization from 0 to 5000. But only those with the spirit of God can leave a successful ministry or organization to do what no other person would want to do.

In this sense, Jesus was the greatest of them all, because having the highest position of them all, He sacrificed the most – literally giving his body – for the good of many. He who sacrificed much for the sake of Christ is great in my book.

Today, in this passage, you see Jesus demonstrating His greatness. What does He sacrifice this time? He sacrifices popularity. He sacrifices a large following. In today’s vernacular, his Youtube video just went from having 1 billion views to being taken off the site.

Context: We are still in the conversation that Jesus is having with the crowd after feeding them bread. 5000 men were fed and they were following Jesus around for obvious reasons. We would too if someone was handing out free money. But Jesus drops the bomb on them and says that He is the bread of life, and not just the giver of bread. Jesus came to be bread and not just to give bread. This does not sit well with the people. After going back and forth between Jesus and the crowd about what it means for Him to be bread, once it becomes clear to them that Jesus was there to give them Himself and not the physical bread, the crowd show their true colors – they stopped following Jesus. The number of followers just went from 5000 to 12 in one morning! What we would call epic failure. And Jesus did this on purpose…

           What lessons can we learn about following Jesus and hard times?

Lessons: 1. Trusting God’s sovereignty may include apparent “failures.”

66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”

           What do you call a pastor who shrinks down his church from 5000 to 12? A failure. He will never be able to get a job as a pastor anywhere with that kind of resume. But that is what Jesus proceeds to do. Did Jesus know that all these people would eventually stop following Him? Yes. V. 64, For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) 65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

           The way I see this is that Jesus is weeding out his disciples. He is pruning. He’s cutting off branches that will only hinder the growth of the kingdom. So, in order to grow the kingdom, He shrinks it first. There are examples of this in the Old Testament as well. When Gideon rounds up a troop of 32,000, God says that that’s too many. And whittles it down to 300. The exactly opposite of what you and I might do – when it comes to war, the more troops the more secure,  but that wouldn’t demonstrate the power of God. And so, God shrinks it down to 300. When it comes to church, the bigger the better, right? Not so to Jesus. He would rather burn the dross and bring it down to the pure core than to carry a large number of people and drag them along when they don’t really belong to the kingdom.

This is so radically different than the world’s method that unless we are absolutely committed to God’s ways, we too will fall away from Christ and no longer follow Him. What this means for us practically is this:

APP: You and I might experience certain “failures” if you are being faithful to Jesus, at least in the eyes of the world. If we are uncompromising in being obedient to Jesus, then we might experience shrinking, rather than expanding, losses, rather than gains, jeers, rather than cheers. And that is what Jesus said will happen to His followers.

“John 15:20, Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”

Earlier on in our church’s life,we have said that as Christians, our very definition of success and failure are different than that of the world – to Christians, success is being faithfully obedient to God. So, when Jonah preached the shortest, half-hearted sermon, a revival breaks out and the whole city turns to God – a great success! But when the prophet Isaiah preaches to the Israelites, people rejected him and turned away from God – a great failure. But who was a success to God? Isaiah. Because he was faithfully obedient to God. Jonah, was reluctant at best.

           In the eyes of the world, there is no greater failure than Jesus. He could’ve had a very large following and became the king of Israel or even the king of the world while he was alive. But he only had a handful of disciples when he died and he died like a criminal. But in the eyes of God, there is no one greater than Jesus.

Check your definition of success.  

2. Hard-to-follow truths will reveal the true disciples.

Put yourself in the shoes of the 12. They were feeling good because there were 5000 people standing with you following the same cause. You started out with just a small rag-tag group and now you are becoming a movement! You can’t argue with success, as they say. Now, you are ready to build on this success and go all the way to win independence for your country and do something historical. But after just one morning encounter, happiness turns to gloom, enthusiasm turns to disappointment.

60 When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?…66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”

What this means is not that what Jesus said is hard to understand like Calculus is hard to understand. But that it is hard to follow. I think Jesus made it crystal clear to them what He is about. That, He came to be bread more than to give bread. And He laid it before them: Either choose me or the bread. And they chose the bread.

So, this fateful morning’s encounter between Jesus and the people, forced the people to choose and reveal what they were really following. They weren’t following Jesus. They were following bread.

APP: This hard truth from Jesus created in the minds of the people what Henry Blackaby calls a Crisis of belief. Crisis is belief is when in a Christian life, we come to a crossroads of decisions to make. Will we do what makes sense to us or will we act on faith and do what God tells us to do even though it would be difficult. We must choose. And all these so called “disciples” chose what made sense to them rather than acting upon their faith. They hit a crisis of belief, and they chose the life without Jesus, which is really death.

I think several times in our lives, the crisis of belief will come to us as we are having to make some major decisions. And it is at those critical moments, how we decide will show whether we are true disciples or just pretenders. Whether we are about following Jesus or following what He gives.

ILL: I was talking with a young lady who had been dating this man for years and the time came to either go on with this young man and get married or break up. Time was working against her as she was in her mid-thirties and she wasn’t getting any younger. (No, I’m not talking about Dara. So, please don’t be calling her and asking her if she’s about to marry someone! =) You don’t know this young lady I’m talking about) The only problem is that he’s not a believe. She’s in love with him but he’s not a believer. But she is. What is she to do? Crisis of belief. She knows what God said, that believers are not to marry an unbeliever. But her heart is telling her something else. Does she follow her heart or does she follow God? Crisis of belief. Can she trust God? Will doing it God’s way better in the end than doing it her way? That’s the crisis of belief.  

APP: I wish we had more of “If I perish I perish” type of believers today. Whatever the consequence may be, even if I lose my life, I will do it trusting God. “If I lose my job, I lose my job” type of workers. Not compromising our values.

Daniel 3:17 “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. 8 But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

So, even if God will not deliver us physically at this point, we will do what is right before God. Could we be this kind of conviction-driven people?

Young people, could we become this kind of radical follower of Christ? Even if you will be pegged as a loser, Jesus freak, weird, unbalanced, could you say, “If I become unpopular, I become unpopular,” and horror of horrors, “If I lose my friends, I lose my friends. I will follow Jesus?”

The disciples just witnessed the epic dissing of Jesus by the populous. They faced a crisis of belief. Will they follow the crowd or will they follow Jesus?

3. Carefully consider the alternative to Jesus

Who would you turn to if not Jesus? Yourself? The crowd turns away from Jesus in this passage, but we must ask, who are they turning to, then? If no longer following Jesus, who are they following? Themselves? Caesar? The next guru who will tell them what they want to hear?

Through the gospels, Peter says really dumb things but then he says some really brilliant things as well. I love Peter because he is so much like us in that he is real. He can be that screw up of a man who seems like a bumbling idiot, and yet god’s spirit was in him and flashes of redeemed brilliance come out every now and then and this is one of those moments.

66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. 67 So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

What an awesome answer! It must’ve occurred to Peter to consider the alternative to following Jesus. As he saw all these throngs of people leaving Jesus and no longer following Jesus, he must’ve thought of perhaps doing the same. But then he thought, if not Jesus who? Who speaks like he does? He teaches the Scripture like He does? Who lives the Bible so perfectly like He does? He doesn’t get all of what Jesus is about, but he saw enough to convince him He is the Messiah, the son of the living God. The alternative to following this eternal life is to follow eternal death! And Peter saw it.

APP 1: Have you considered the alternative to following Jesus? When you come to a crisis of belief, have you really considered deeply about what or whom you are choosing if not choosing Jesus? I think people are very vague about this and haven’t really thought about it. They thought about not following Jesus, but they haven’t really thought about what they would be following if not Jesus. What are our alternatives? Who or what else would satisfy our soul like Jesus? For how long would it satisfy us? Is it in this life only or forever? Have you considered the question posed by Jesus, “What good is it if you gained the world but lost your soul?” (Matt. 16:26)

APP 2: I want you to think about this now before you come to a crisis of belief. I think the time to choose Jesus over the alternative should not be when we come to the crisis but before the crisis.

Time to choose Jesus over the alternative should not be when that alternative is in the form of money and you have lots of it because you just landed a great job. Should I tithe or should I not? That question can be answered a lot more easily if you are not sitting on a pile of money and you start thinking it’s yours because you earned it.

Choosing Jesus over the alternative should not be when that alternative is in the form of a good looking guy or a pretty girl in your bedroom with your parents out of the house.

Choosing Jesus over the alternative should not be when everyone around you seems to be “sensible” and not give priority to Jesus or His body, the church.

Peter, I believe has thought through this. He wasn’t simply jumping on the bandwagon just because now many people were following Jesus. Perhaps because he started following Jesus when He wasn’t big – he’s one of the original 12. So, when it got down to 12 once again, it didn’t phase him much.

CONC: In your long journey with Christ, until death do you together, learn to embrace certain seeming failures. What people think don’t matter. Only what God thinks. Remain true to Jesus as you hit your crisis of belief. Consider the alternative to Jesus if you must. He has the words of eternal life.