Why Would Jesus Say "Eat My Flesh"?! | Jesus Said What?!

Jesus says the bread that he will give for the life of the world is his flesh. What is he saying? He's speaking about a gift that's going to cost him his very life. Jesus knows the cross as a head. That's what he's foreshadowing. He knows what it's going to take to bring the crowd, the life that he is promising them. And it's not to eat bread on the side of the hill is to accept him as their source of life. Jesus gave his life so that we could find our life in him. Welcome to the Infocus Church podcast. This is the fourth week of our series, Jesus said what? And Pastor Brent Gerard takes us into John chapter 6. The crowd Jesus just fed comes back for more bread and he tells them to eat his flesh. Here's the message. One person right now, or in the past, who would it be? Maybe you've been asked that question before. And I know the church answer is, well, of course Jesus. So you don't have to say that. I'll just set you free this morning. Other than Jesus, if you could meet somebody living now or from the past, who would it be? I'm sure most of you all have had, or maybe you have this person that you're like, man, if I could just spend some time, I would love to meet, you know, fill in the blank. I won't fill in the blank for you, but you can. And I'd like to just maybe go out and have a meal with them and talk to them. Maybe it's a celebrity. Maybe it's a sports figure. Maybe it's an innovator or a world leader, a public figure. I don't know. But you probably, like I have thought about, you play out the scenario in your mind and you go think about what you're going to say, the conversation that you might have or if you actually had the time to spend with this person, how awestruck you might be, just to be in their presence. We have like these high expectations of what it would be like to meet this particular person. So let's play this out. Let's just say per chance that you actually were able to meet this person. And you got to go spend some time with them, go out to eat and talk and have a moment where you just, just the two of you. And you're sitting there and all of a sudden you're having these conversations. You begin to notice quite frankly that this person is nothing like you imagined. Like, they're beginning to annoy you, offense you even. Oh yeah, this isn't at all what I thought. I'll bring it down to a level that maybe you've all experienced probably. Let's just say like, maybe I'll take me for example. But when I was single and going off to college and you could probably say to yourself for this particular scenario, you're single and you see this individual that you think, "Man, I wonder if they'd even give me the time of day. I wonder if they would go out with me." Like when I was a freshman and you see somebody that was a senior like, "Man, they're not even going to notice that I'm on campus." But, man, I would love to go on a date with this person. Whoever it may be. Let's just say, for example, say, because this probably has never happened any of you, that you go out with this person. You've got these high expectations because you've got all these feelings going on of how. They're going to make you feel and you get into these conversations with them and you're going, "Man, I can't wait to just spend this time and all of a sudden as you begin to talk a little bit, it's just like nothing in common. No sparks flying." What do you do? And this is it. How I play this out in my mind. They're nothing like I expected. They're not doing anything for me. But here's the thing. That's who they really are. What you had in your mind was a caricature of who they were. But who they really are isn't exactly what you thought. Didn't meet your expectations. We were excited about what they could do for us or how they could make us feel and when it didn't work out like that, we're kind of trying to back out as quickly as possible. Here's the problem. We can bring that same attitude and that same expectation into our relationship with Jesus. We have a picture of what He will do for us. Who He will protect us from. How our lives are going to turn out if we follow Him as we talked about in week one when Jesus said, "Follow Me." And it don't give me wrong. I think we can genuinely seek Jesus and want to be with Jesus and it still be a caricature of Jesus. Like the Jesus of our parents. It doesn't mean that it necessarily was wrong, but maybe it was. It's not really the Jesus of the Bible or maybe the Jesus of our culture or maybe the Jesus of your algorithm. Jesus that we're comfortable with. And then we encounter Jesus in a real way. We meet up with Him in a real way and something Jesus actually says in His Word and to our hearts, challenges of belief that we've been carrying. Like He lovingly calls us to trust Him with something that we want to control. Or He asks us to surrender something that we want to keep. What happens when we encounter Him as King and Lord of our lives and it requires us to surrender something that we want to hold on to? It's at that moment when our expectations meet the reality of who Jesus is. If we're going to allow Jesus to change our expectations or will our expectations determine whether we're going to continue to follow Jesus. When our spiritual eyes are opened up to see who He truly is, here's the thing that happens. What I want from Jesus must bow to what Jesus wants for me. What I want from Jesus has to bow to what He wants for me. Before we get into our text this morning, we need to understand what happens prior to the verses that I'm going to read. We're going to be in John chapter 6, now there's over 60 verses in John chapter 6. And we're not going to read all of those because we don't have that kind of time. But I do want to set up the context because the context of Scripture and understanding Scripture is super important. So we're in our series, we're continuing in our series, Jesus said what? And this is what we're going to talk about today in John 6. So to set it up, it begins John chapter 6 with Jesus feeding over 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. A pretty familiar miracle story in the Bible that maybe you've heard before. And everybody eats, everybody gets their fill, and there's 12 baskets left over for all the disciples to take home and not eat. Because that's what you do with leftovers. At least we have, that's how it happens at our house. Also, I want you to understand that John tells us that the Passover was approaching. And the Passover approaching wasn't just a side note that was meaningless, it actually meant something. Here's what he's saying, the Passover is when God's people celebrated and remember God delivering Moses and the people of Israel out of Egypt in the miraculous provision that He gave to them. They're remembering what God has done for them, they're remembering the miracle of the bread that came from heaven that fed them. All of these things is what they celebrate at Passover. So imagine the connections that are happening. There's a great big crowd, there's miraculous provision of bread, the Jesus is about to do, and memories of Moses, and the manna, and the wilderness. And all of a sudden there's this connection that the people begin to make prophetically, they go, oh, I see what's happening here. This is the Messiah that was prophesied about. This is the guy that's going to come and save us and make everything alright. It says they wanted to make him king right then and there, but Jesus knowing what they were going to do, and they were going to do it by force, says that he withdrew. Basically, he just disappeared. Kind of like what I do, and a lot of people come over to my house, I just withdraw to my room. And Carla just keeps talking to everybody. That's how it works for us. But that evening, the disciples crossed the lake, and Jesus comes to them walking on water. This is again, setting up the context for this morning. The next day, there's just another miracle right there in the middle of it. I also think the miracle isn't just that he walked on water, but then it says their boat just was at the shore, just like teleported to the shore. Next morning, the people wake up, no disciples, no Jesus. They didn't see Jesus getting the boat, so they don't know where he is, but they go looking for him. They're seeking him out, which sounds good. People making an effort to find Jesus, but when they find him, Jesus addresses why they came to find him in the first place. He tells them that they're looking for him because they ate the bread, they saw this powerful miracle, and they had their fill. That's all they cared about. They experienced the miracle, but they still haven't understood what the miracle was revealing about Jesus himself. So Jesus begins talking about food that endures to eternal life, food that you could eat and never grow hungry again. Jesus tells them the bread that he's going to give for the life of the world is his flesh, and then he says eat my flesh. Jesus said, what? I just think about that for a moment. Outside of maybe a revelation of what Christ has given you who he is, that's horrific. So let's read our text, John chapter 6, picking up in verse 50. But here's the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? I mean, you'd be asking the same question. Say what? Jesus? Jesus said to them very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, now we're going to just elevate it to vampiric states. here. You have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food. My blood is real drink. Some translates to say true food, true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I and them. Just as the living Father sent me, I live because of the Father. So the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Now I mean I don't know about you, but when I read that, I'm like that. You know, somebody's never been in church, never gone to church, never heard anything about that. They read that. They're like, "You're nuts." So we know these people experience the miracle of the loaves of the fish. We know that. That's the context. But now the conversation is becoming personal. And Jesus is asking them to come to him and believe in him as the source of life. Not just physical bread. And Jesus isn't criticizing them for coming to him and being hungry and wanting to be fed. He cared about their hunger. He cares about the needs of people. He actually fed them. That's what he did. So he cared about their need. But the meal was meant to help them recognize, the power was meant to help them recognize, and trust the one who was standing in front of them doing the miracle. They recognized something miraculous had happened, but they drew the wrong theologians from it. They must be. This must be the prophesied king of kings who's come to help us. That's what they're thinking. So they grasped the material possibilities of Jesus' power and what it could do for them while missing the full revelation of his identity and his true mission. They saw his power and again imagining what that power could do for their lives. Now Jesus is calling them instead to believe in him and they're still asking him to prove himself. Their enthusiasm for what he could provide had not yet become trust in who he was. He ever been that way with Jesus, your enthusiasm of what God's going to do for your life has it quite translated into you trusting him with the entirety of your life and who he really is. And that reaches to our hearts as well. When Jesus challenges what we expected from him, will we allow him to shape our expectations? For example, what about the person that faithfully follows Jesus while quietly assuming that faithfulness guarantees a particular outcome for their family, maybe even a pain-free life? I think many of us have probably assumed at one point that if we did write by Jesus, the Jesus would do right by us and our families. If I do this, then I'm pretty sure God's going to bless me and things are going to go well for me. I think this is understandable and I think it's also understandable reasons why people do baby dedication, why people get baptized, why people show up to church on Sunday, why people give. That's why God says it's not just the action that matters. It's what's going on inside of your heart because the promise is that Jesus is offering himself. I don't want anybody to feel condemned about this because the reality is God can handle our misinterpretations of who he is and what he has come to do. Like your motivations or thoughts about Jesus could be wrong, mine have been wrong at times. And I want to invite you, however, to learn and experience more of who Jesus is today. Like Jesus said in Matthew, come and learn of me. Jesus doesn't condemn us for our misunderstanding. He doesn't condemn us for our misinterpretations of who he is, but he does tell us, much like he told this crowd, learn of me. It is I who you seek and need. Ironically, Jesus uses the same miracle that they've jumped to the wrong conclusions about to actually challenge and enlarge their understanding of who he really is. See in verse 27 through 35, and this is prior to what I just read, he directs the crowd to learn that enduring life, his enduring life is what he is pointing to that the miraculous feeding is pointing to the enduring life that he gives as the bread of life. And he's inviting them to learn and believe in him as the one whom the Father sent. But here's the problem. The miracle of the feeding strengthened their expectations of what Jesus could do for them so they weren't very interested in what Jesus was going to ask from them. Do you realize that when we see power, even if it feels like Christian power that just like for them, it can begin to connect with national power. And all of a sudden we feel like this is exactly what God wants and this is how he wants it. Can I just tell you that power and national power is not what God is concerned about. He's concerned about the hearts and lives of every tribe, nation, and tongue worshiping him. So they begin to recognize his significance even though they've got it all messed up. The bread demonstrated power and that power opened up possibilities for them and their minds. Remember their expectations? They're about to meet with Jesus. Like, okay, he's going to provide for us. He's going to give us security. He's going to deliver us from Roman rule. And there's going to be a different future for our people now because he's in power. He's come. That's why Jesus confronting this in our text this morning. They begun to recognize his significance, but they move quickly toward deciding what his significance should mean for them. They want to make him king before they understand the kind of king that he really is. John explicitly records their intention as I said to make him king by force because they could see what his power could mean for them. How it would make them feel. Anybody ever heard the saying, you know, just enough to be dangerous? They knew just enough to be dangerous. Jesus knew that. That's why he withdrew. This is at time. This is dangerous. Same thing he said to Peter. He's like, no, we're not doing it your way, Peter. We're doing it your God's way. They understood just enough about the powerful miracle to become enthusiastic about Jesus and what he could do for them, but that enthusiasm had not yet become a willingness to let Jesus define his identity and his mission and how they would fulfill his mission. In the discourse in John chapter 6, it exposes the distance between their response and expectation of who God is and who Jesus is and who Jesus says that he is. So how do we experience this today? What are you depending on to give you life? Because that's really what here. This is what's going to give us life. If we're in delivered, if we're in power, if we're in a better position, Jesus, that's going to be the life that we desire. What tells you that you matter, that you're secure enough, that your future is worth hoping for? Is it being needed? Is it being successful? Is it having enough money? Is it your political side winning? Having everything work out the way that you planned it out in your mind? Those questions reach into our relationship with Jesus because when we come to him with a very specific picture of what he needs to do for us, he's probably going to challenge it with what he has desired to do for us. And when he does, what we want, we celebrate. I mean, of course, when he answers the prayer, we celebrate. When he does, and it works out exactly like I thought that it would, we celebrate. But what happens when his words challenge our ideal picture of our present and our future? What happens when following him requires us to release something that we were depending on? The crowd made an effort to find Jesus. We see that. We can make efforts to find Jesus. We do. We attend church. Maybe we serve. We listen to a message. We do all of those things and then we still reserve the right to decide which parts of Jesus teaching we'll receive and actually apply. We could be a part of a series like this. Jesus said what? We could have been here last week. We're talking about loving our enemies and we're like, yeah, that's good, but no, I'm not doing that. No, Jesus, look, I love you and all, but I'm not doing that. So where is Jesus calling you to trust him beyond what you understand? Is there something he has said that you keep explaining away? Is there an obedience that you keep post-poning? An outcome you insist that he must provide before you're going to be satisfied with him? Because to feed on Jesus, which is what he is saying here, as he's instructing in this passage, is to receive him as the source of your life. And that is trusting in his words when they confront your expectations of him. Trusting his words when the ideal picture of your life is not really coming to fruition like you had hoped. Trusting him beyond every circumstance, the King of Kings defines his kingdom and what his rulership looks like. And when we place our lives in his hands, we can trust him. See, we can want Jesus in power while still wanting ourselves in charge of what he does with his power. And that's not how the Kingdom of God works. We serve the King of Kings. We don't dictate to the King of Kings. You're listening to the Infocus Church podcast. So far, Pastor Brent Gerard has shown us a crowd that wanted what Jesus could do for them more than they wanted Jesus. If this is speaking to you, send it to a friend who needs it. Next, what Jesus really means when he tells them to eat his flesh. "I think that does leave us with a question like why does Jesus move from giving them bread, which they need to tell them about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and what he is offering them, what he is pointing to, what he is showing them, and repeating in many different ways, is that to eat his flesh and to drink his blood is actually changing everything because Jesus himself is the bread of life that they need, that we need." In John 6.57, he says, "Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me." Jesus already revealed a way to understand what he means in a previous verse in verse 40, when he said that everybody who looks to the Son and believes in the Son will have eternal life, and he will raise them up on the last day, just as he was about to be raised up. Now in verse 54 through 57, he makes the same promise to the person who eats his flesh and drinks his blood. So what he is saying is, believing in him as the Son of God and feeding on him are describing the same utter dependence on him for our life. We receive the life he gives by trusting in him alone for our life. What you think about the picture that he's really painting in so many different ways, because you can know what bread is, you can explain bread's ingredients, you can sit at a table with a lot of other people eating the bread, but the bread has to nourish you, and if it's going to nourish you, you have to receive and eat it yourself. So you can know a lot about Jesus, you can dissect and tell everybody everything about the Word of God that maybe you've learned, you can sit at the table with other Christians who are eating of the bread of life, and you can still not receive it for yourself. There's something deeply personal that Jesus is giving in this invitation. Your spouse's faith cannot become your faith, your parents cannot believe on your behalf, your pastor can explain what Jesus says with great precision, and I hope that I do, but each of us are being called to come to Jesus and trust in him alone for our life. And notice where Jesus takes us in verse 56. The person who receives him remains in him and Jesus remains in that person. He's describing a life that is joined to his own. We receive him as the one who saves us, and we continue depending on him as the one who shapes us and sustains us. Which gives me really a deeper question, ask, than whether Jesus can improve my circumstances. I don't need more things. I need more of Jesus. Our life comes from him. He gives a life. I can give a life that not even death can take away your ancestors. Eight men. Yes, that was miraculous, but they died because that was just to sustain them physically. I'm talking about the bread of life. I'm talking about feeding on me in such a way that your life never ends. That Jesus is where your life is found. Period. Jesus is not just a God who provides things. He is our all in all. So my heart felt prayer today as Lord never let your people only look for the gifts of your hands, but those who want to know the secrets of your heart and know you as you truly are. Back to John 6. What is he saying? He knows what it's going to take to bring the crowd, the life that he is promising them, and it's not to eat bread on the side of the hill, it's to accept him as their source of life. That's what he's saying. That's, here's the reason that we can trust Jesus because he gave his life for us. We can trust this Jesus when he challenges our expectations because we have seen his heart and what he's willing to give for us. And his resurrection gives us the strongest reason to trust his promise that he will raise us up to along with him. Look again at verse 51. Jesus says that the bread he will give for the life of the world is his flesh. That word give matters. Jesus pointing us toward what it will cost him to give us life. The one who fed this crowd will give himself for this crowd. He will go to the cross. He will bear their sin. He will enter into death so that they and we can receive forgiveness. That's why John 3.16 has got so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Jesus gave his life for us so that we could find our life in him. So when Jesus calls us to trust him, we have to consider the person that's making the invitation to trust him. It's not somebody who's not trustworthy. His love has taken him all the way to the cross. He knows the cost of giving himself for people who misunderstand him, resist him, mock him, cannot save themselves. And as we said last week, we're his enemies. And then listen to the promise he repeats. He will raise those who believe in him at the last day. The life he gives reaches beyond the circumstances that we are trying so desperately to control or be secure in or to avoid right now. It reaches beyond our final breath and past the grave into eternity. That's the life that Jesus is offering in himself. That doesn't make your needs today unimportant. Again, like I said, Jesus saw their needs and he saw them and he met them. So it's not that your need is unimportant today. He cares about your needs. It just means his saving purposes reach further than your needs and sometimes what you can see. They were looking at what his power could accomplish for them right then and there and their future. He was offering a future that death itself couldn't take from them. Verse 51 grounds that invitation in Jesus' self giving. His call to receive him rests on what he will accomplish through his death and resurrection. Which brings us back to where we began. What happens when Jesus challenges the picture of our life that we've been carrying around in our minds? What happens when Jesus challenges your expectation of what life is going to turn out like when you follow him? When his words confront something that you want or his purposes reach beyond what you even understand. We can bring those questions to him absolutely and you should. We can tell him when you're disappointed. You can tell him when you're frightened or frustrated or struggling to even understand what's going on. Your faith can bring its questions into the presence of the one that your faith trusts. Because ultimately that's what you're doing. I'm bringing my questions that I don't have answers for but I'm bringing them to the one that I trust regardless of whether I get an answer or not. We also need to ask have I made a particular outcome, a condition of continuing to follow Jesus? Have I been saying perhaps without realizing it? I'll trust you God as long as you do this. Maybe today you can name that expectation honestly. You can bring the desire, the disappointment, the uncertainty to God today and ask him to help you trust his words and take the next step that he's made clear. Ask him to help you understand that the King who calls for your trust is also the Savior who gave himself for you. The King who calls for your trust is the Savior who gave himself for your life. So he's trustworthy. What might this look like on Monday morning? Let's play this out. Imagine you've been praying for a promotion. Anybody praying for a promotion? Okay. All of us are. A praying for promotion, praying for gas prices to go down, right? So great. We're all praying some more things. You've worked hard to try to get this promotion. You've tried to do your job with integrity. The extra money would help your family, it would help you and you believe you're ready for the responsibility then somebody else gets the promotion. You're disappointed. Of course you are. You wanted it. You cared about it. But as you sit with the disappointment, you begin to notice something else. You're angry with God because somewhere along the way, Lord, I'm asking you to do this for me became Lord. If you're really taking care of me, you will do this for me. And now that expectation is affecting how you treat people. So you go to work now and the person who received the promotion sends you a message asking for some information they need to finish a project that you're both working on together and you have it and you could help but you find yourself thinking, let them figure it out. Apparently they're the one with all the answers. I mean, that's just like hypothesis there of what you might think. There's a moment right there where the message that we're talking about meets your life. Before you answer, you bring what is happening in your heart to Jesus and you tell Him the truth. I wanted this promotion and I'm hurt and I can feel myself wanting this person like we talked about last week to fail. Then you remember who's receiving that prayer. This is the Savior who gave Himself for you. Your disappointment, listen, your disappointment has not erased His love for you. That decision at work has not taken away the life that you have in Him. You can still ask your manager on his questions. You can still ask for a promotion. You can still pursue opportunities, but you no longer have to make this person pay for your disappointment. So you send the information. You give them what they need to do. You shared work well, the disappointment may still be there when you press in, but you've taken a real step in trusting Jesus with your life. His words are beginning to have a real response to govern your responses that your hurt won't control you. Now your situation may have nothing to do with the promotion, but it has something to do with what God is doing in your heart right now. It could be a conversation, it could be a message, it could be a decision that you're trying to make, but that you're waiting for wherever disappointment has been deciding your response, will you trust Jesus? What's Jesus already made clear about how to love, speak, or act, and bring Him your expectations that you're struggling to release and ask Him for the grace to follow Him into that particular moment and to live the life that He has for you. See Jesus gave His life so that we could find our life in Him and that life reaches into Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday, and through the rest of the week in unanswered prayers into messages that we're about to send that we shouldn't into all of those things. I do want you to notice as this conversation unfolds that many of Jesus' disciples struggle with what He said so much so that they eventually leave. They walk away from Jesus. They stop following Him. Jesus asked the twelve after many believe, "Yes, this is this probing question, so do you want to leave, too?" You want to go, too? And then Peter gets one of the most honest heartfelt answers that I have said in my life again and again. Where else will we go? Jesus, you have the words of life. See what He's all of a sudden seen and known now? Jesus has the words of a "turn life." Yeah, this is hard and yet this is difficult and Jesus, we don't understand, but you have the words of eternal life. Peter's confession centers on who Jesus is and why He's worthy of trust, not just their difficult circumstances. Check this out and let it set you free this morning. The passage never says that Peter understood fully everything that Jesus had just been teaching. This confession, though, shows that trust in Jesus can sustain us while our understanding of Him is still developing. Yeah, I don't understand everything, but you have the words of life, so I'm staying. Jesus, you are the word of eternal life. And although we're not told everything Peter understands at that moment, we hear whom He trusts in and that question reaches us today as well. What happens when following Jesus costs you something you thought following Jesus would protect? I didn't want to ask myself that question this week. I kind of don't like that question at all, because there have been plenty of times in my life where I thought following Jesus would protect something that I lost, a relationship, he's approval, a sense of belonging, it could be for you, you could still feel that loss and you could still wish things were different, but you can bring that grief to Jesus and say, I don't know how this story is going to unfold, but I know the life that I need is found in you alone. And Peter identifies Jesus as the one with the words of eternal life, his answer places the focus on Jesus' identity and Jesus' trustworthiness. And I was completing this message this week. Last night I was in the bed and Carla had just gotten home and she was unpacking and I was in there for a while and she's like, are you tweaking your message that much? I'm like, no, yes, I don't know, because I recognize a tendency to misunderstand Jesus in myself. There have been times, if I'm honest, I want Jesus to be my fixer, like we're the family, like the mob family, you know? And I want Jesus to fix it, go get them, God. I mean, like that's literally my mind, God, could you make this problem disappear? Because many times the problems have been painful relationships. I've had more than I even care to have to recount. People I love, people I laughed with, people I cried with, people I walked through hard things with, and when those relationships change, I cried out to Jesus because I was hoping he'd put everything back together because I thought that's what he promised. It wasn't wrong to ask him to fix it, it's not wrong to ask him to fix it even now, but here's the question I have to face, have I made getting that relationship back a condition of trusting him for my life? If the conversation never happens the way I hoped, if the other person never understands my heart or actually believes the worst about me, will I still believe that Jesus is good? And has the words of eternal life? That's a harder question to live than it is to preach, but by God's grace, I often see that Jesus has given me a reason to trust him that reaches deeper than whether this or that situation ever works out the way I expected. He gave himself for me. He entered into our suffering, he bore our sin, he rose from the dead, and you and I can bring all of our losses to him. All the loss that still hurts, we can ask him to sustain us, examine our hearts, teach us how to love faithfully while the story remains unresolved. Why? Because Jesus gave his life for us so that we could find our life, and where else am I going to go? You have the words of life. That's the truth that we need in the middle of this life, for an abundant life now, and an eternal life that goes beyond death. As I mentioned, to notice at the end of this chapter many of his disciples stop following Jesus, people who had already walked a good distance for some time with Jesus. They decide not going any further, that's it. That message right there, I'm done. Which brings us to a question that should hit us right back in this room this morning in each of our hearts and lives, and to ask God, is there a place where I've decided I will follow Jesus this far, but not any further than this. John wrote this gospel because he wants us to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that through believing in him that we can have life now, abundant, and free, and eternal. So as we read this story, we need to understand that we are being invited to respond to what Jesus has said about himself. What do we believe about Jesus? Are we willing to put our hope in our trust in Him? What happens when His words challenge our expectations of Him? That's where this gets uncomfortable. We come to Jesus with something we want Him to change, then as we listen to Him, we discover there's something in us that needs to change. A belief we need to surrender, a relationship we need to give up, a desire we need to examine, a part of our life that we've been keeping under our own authority that needs to come under the authority and the Lordship of Jesus. This morning by the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm asking that you would identify where you have made a particular outcome, a condition of trusting Jesus, and bring that expectation under His Lordship this morning because Jesus alone has the words of life for you today. When you struggle to entrust yourself to a king whose purpose you cannot control, what you have to remember, and what you have to discover as that this king who gives himself for you that you may live is a king who is worth trusting with the entirety of your life. He is trustworthy. So when he says something as bizarre as eat my flesh and drink my blood, what he is saying is, I am the source of your life. Do not put your hope in anything else in this life. Nothing else will sustain you and keep you eternally except me. prayers that you would all turn to him this morning in whatever way that you need to, putting your hope and your trust in him, even when you don't understand what's going on. He's trustworthy, he's proven it. Amen. Let's pray, Heavenly Father, thank you so much. With every head bowed and every eye closed, I'm asking you to bring every fear, every doubt, every question to the foot of the cross this morning. Jesus, we're listening for you this morning. Even as we sing these words about our need for you, Jesus, we speak your name into every situation, into every relationship, into every fear, into every disappointment. God, we speak the name of Jesus because you alone have the words of life. Thanks for listening to the Infocus Church podcast. Here's the line to carry into your week. Jesus gave his life for us, so we could find our life in him. If this message helped you, send it to someone who needs it. Find us at infocus.church and on Instagram at Infocus Church. We'd love to see you on a Sunday in Augusta.