Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Dial In - John 6:16-34 (Ep. 16)

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

Dial In is a devotional series with the intention of helping followers of Christ understand God’s word and love Him more. Jonny seeks to communicate the profound depth of scripture in a digestible and condensed format each weekday. The goal of the podcast is that our “minds would be renewed” as we behold who God is in His word. In this series, Jonny is walking sequentially through the Gospel of John.In this episode, Jonny covers John 6:16-34 in which we see not only Jesus’ power of nature, but also Jesus’ power in His preaching as he urges the crowds not “to labor for the food that perishes.” Jesus urges the crowds to stop living for the temporal and perishable, but instead the eternal and imperishable. Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hi guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. We are in one of the most profound chapters in John's Gospel, and in many ways, one of the most heartbreaking. Our passage today is John chapter 6, verses 16 through 34. These are the words of God. Let's view them as such in Dial In. John chapter 6, verses 16 through 34. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.

It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough, because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them, It is I. Do not be afraid. Then they were glad to take into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. On the next day, the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there

and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the 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. For on him God the Father has set a seal. Then they said to him, What must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. Then they said to him, So in our previous episode, we saw that Jesus feeds the multitudes. And there's 20,000, 25,000 people people there and they are infatuated with Jesus. Jesus spends the entire day amongst the crowds and he's feeding them and healing them and preaching the kingdom of God to them and he's showing them compassion. And we read in verse 15 that they go to Jesus and rush upon him to make him king. Now picture this with me because if we jump to the end of this chapter in verse 66, we are going to see a stark contrast in the crowd's demeanor. After being exposed to the reality of following Jesus and the shallowness and superficiality of their own faith, it says that these same people, the crowd that was obsessed with Jesus, are walking away from him

and rejecting him. Now one thing to note is that Jesus never targets the gullible for easy believism. He isn't obsessed with the crowds. He doesn't love the crowds. No, he is concerned by the crowds and he preaches in response what saving faith actually looks like. There's a lot of sorrow in this passage. And you and I typically might think of the emotion of God on two different spectrums, one being the love and mercy of God and the other being his anger or his wrath. But we don't often highlight his sadness. But God is immensely sorrowful over those who will reject him and choose destruction over life. And we see this all throughout the scripture. In Isaiah 16, 9, it talks about how God will water Moab with his tears, that his heart will sound

like a harp. God is heartbroken. Why? Because of the people's apathy and indifference towards the truth. Isaiah 22, 12 through 14, God is calling for weeping and for mourning because of those who defect from following him. Jeremiah chapters 9, 14, and 31, all detail the tears of God towards those who reject him. Lamentations 2.11, God's eyes fail because of the tears in his eyes over his people. And lastly, we read in Luke 19.41 that Jesus approaches Jerusalem and weeps over it because the ones he came to save had rejected him. Now we saw in verse 15 of chapter 6 that Jesus withdrew from the crowd. He dismisses his disciples ahead of him, and he goes up to the mountain to pray. Now this passage is all about how Jesus is the bread of life, but in the middle of it, there is this miracle that John the Gospel

writer draws our attention to, and that is where I want to draw our attention for just a moment. Now these things take place on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. And this lake is often referred to in the Gospels as the Sea of Tiberias. I've been there a few times. It's truly beautiful. And the sea itself sits 700 feet below sea level and is surrounded on three sides by mountains that rise 3,000 or 4,000 feet up into the air. And here's what happens. Wind pours over those mountain ridges and it creates this cyclone effect on the water and it cultivates great storms. And that's where we find ourself in verse 18. We read that the sea had become rough. So in verse 19, Jesus is walking towards the disciples, straining in the wind and the waves, and he's just walking towards them on the water. We read

the Bible far too casually sometimes, but imagine this with me. They're shouting and they're straining at the oars and there's the howling of the winds and the spraying of the sea in their faces. And they look and squint their eyes and behold, there is a man who is walking on the waves that are currently tossing them. But this man is unfazed because he created the seas. He is in control of the seas. And we read in verse 19 that the disciples were frightened by what? Not the storm at this point, but the one who was unfazed by it. Then we read in verse 20, Jesus responds and says, it is I. Do not be afraid. Jesus tells them, don't be afraid. And when we think of the number one negative prohibition in all of the scripture, meaning what God forbids and commands his people not to do over and over

again, it's not murder or theft or adultery. It is the same command that we see iterated from Jesus's mouth right here. It is do not fear. Do not fear little flock we see in Luke. Why don't the disciples have to be afraid? Why does Jesus tell them not to fear? It is because he says, it is I. It's not because the waves aren't frightening. It's because the one who is with them in the storm is Jesus himself. And in Matthew's account of the same story, we see that Jesus gets into this boat and his disciples worship him. He is truly God. And John, the gospel writer gives us this precious reminder in the middle of a chapter about something else, namely bread. Now we see in this text that the crowd is looking for Jesus. They saw that his boat had left without him on it, but now he is gone. So they go to the other side of the sea

and they're looking for him. Now picture this. There are 20, 25,000 people there and they go, where's Jesus? He must've crossed the sea. Let's all get back in our boats. So hundreds, if not thousands of boats are crossing a lake that is eight miles wide because they're on a quest to find Jesus. And they catch up to him in verse 25 and they say, how did you get here, Jesus? And Jesus ignores their question in a typical fashion. And he responds, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw the sign, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Jesus is saying, you saw the miracle, but you missed the sign. You didn't see what it was pointing towards. You want breakfast. You don't want any part of taking up your cross and following me. These people were so fixated on the temporal that

they missed the eternal one who was right in front of them that offered them life. And we're ramping up here in verse 27. Jesus tells them, 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, for on him the Father has set his seal. Now, the battle for bread here in this community was very real, but Jesus tells them not to labor for that which perishes. So what is he saying? Jesus is telling this crowd, don't spend your life merely setting the table

and consuming what is placed on it. Spend your life and pour your soul into that which will last for eternity. He's asking them, what are you doing with your life? What are you spending your life on? Don't gain the world and lose your soul, Jesus is telling them. You've ignored the signs and all you want is a morning meal, but I am offering you myself. Jesus isn't telling them to not work hard or not to provide. He's talking about something else entirely.

He's saying that the fuel behind your life and the zeal in which you live, everything you do now is for a different purpose. It is for a higher goal. It is for Christ because he never perishes. He's telling them, don't live for retirement, live for eternity that will never perish. And they don't get it. So they respond in verse 28, how do we get this food? And Jesus responds in verse 29, Believe. You need to believe. Now, no one is saved merely by believing in Jesus' works or his miracles. Everyone affirmed his miracles.

They needed to believe his words. That's why Jesus often follows up performing a miraculous work by preaching. He is not asking people to merely believe that he has power. He is urging them to believe that he is God. Everybody believed in his miracles, but few believed his words. These crowds were collections of false disciples, earthly desires, but with no heart of worship. They desired fulfillment in everything other than Christ himself. They are more preoccupied with the product of the miracle than the person that performed them. So they respond in verse 30, okay, if you want us to believe in you, Jesus, do a sign, do a trick for us.

What will you perform for us? Our fathers ate manna in the wilderness. What will you do? This is referring to an episode in the Israelites history where God provides them manna in the desert. And Jesus responds and declares that bread might have nourished your ancestors' stomachs, but that could have never nourished their soul. Are you seeing a theme here in John's gospel? Jesus is constantly hammering home a point. Jesus tells them, that entire generation in the wilderness, they partook of the bread, but they are dead. I will provide you food that will enable you to never die and you will enter an eternal promised land. And they respond and say, Lord, give us this bread. We want this bread. And we'll look next time at Jesus's profound response and see

that this crowd who the day before wanted to make Jesus their king will in the same exact chapter reject and abandon him because in verse 60, they say his words were too hard for them. The irony of the character of Jesus is staggering. He is unfazed by winds and waves, but he is heartbroken over those who reject him, over those who refuse to come to him as the only source of life. He urges the crowd, and he urges us today through his word to stop living for the temporal, to stop living in the hamster wheel of life and come to him,

receive him as Lord and live with eternal purpose, eternal fulfillment and eternal security. Stay dialed in.