Live Free with Josh Howerton - Who Are You Looking For? | Ep. 261 | Monday, February 5, 2024

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

In John chapter 6, John tells us another amazing miracle of Jesus that shows us more of who He is. With just a few loaves and fish, Jesus fed a multitude. The crowds got so excited about what Jesus did that they missed who He really was. Do you get more excited about who Jesus is or what He can do for you? For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, happy Monday, everybody. Thanks for joining us on the Daily Drive. My name is Mike, and I am honored that you would hang with us for a few minutes as we unpack

God's word and just try to get to know Jesus better. And that is exactly what we're attempting to do as we work our way through the fourth book in the New Testament called the Gospel of John. And if you're really new to the Bible, man, this is a great place for you to start, because it's all about Jesus, what he said, what he did, who he touched, how he loved, who he included, and who he is. and I'm just telling you from personal experience, getting to know Jesus is life-changing. So thanks for diving into this together.

We've already covered five chapters, and today we begin chapter six. Let me ask you this. Do you have any followers on social media? Do you follow people, like on Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook? You can follow me if you like, and when you figure out that I never really participate on social media, you can just hit a button that says unfollow. I've been doing this for the past few years. When somebody goes on a negative political rant or constantly post self-serving or highly inappropriate or hateful stuff, I just hit the unfollow button.

I do. I just don't want to follow that person anymore. It's really easy. You just go unfollow, and it's done. Again, we've been hanging in the gospel of John, written by Jesus' best friend, who says to us, listen, you all really need to follow Jesus. Not talking about a social media follow, but really, like, follow him, because I'm telling you there's nobody like him. I saw and heard so many incredible things. There's no way I have the space to write them all down,

but my whole reason for writing these things down is so you would follow him. And in following him, you might have the life that Jesus offers. So in chapter 6, John records another amazing story, and I'm going to quickly go through the story, and then I want to spend maybe a couple of episodes focusing on the seldom-told story after the story. The scene is like this.

Jesus is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and a bunch of people like thousands were tracking with him because of all the things they had heard and seen. Well, Jesus is sitting on the hillside, and he sees this huge throng of people coming out to him. And he says to one of his guys, a guy named Philip, he says, Where are we going to buy enough bread to feed all these people? And it says in verse number six that Jesus already knew what he was planning to do. He just wanted to engage Philip in the process. And Philip shoots back, feed him?

Excuse me? Do you see how many people there are? It would take a half a year's pay to feed all these people, and still they'd only get one little bite. Feed them? Excuse me? Well, it seems that another one of the disciples, Andrew, Peter's less famous brother, he overhears and says, hey, I've found a kid with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but there's no way that's going to feed all these people. Chapter 6, verse 10, Jesus says this, tell everyone to sit down. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. the men alone numbered about 5,000.

Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people. Afterward, he did the same with the fish, and they all ate as much as they wanted. What? He then tells his guys to gather the leftovers. There's leftovers, and they come back with 12 baskets full. Perhaps one basket per guy is a personal reminder of just who it is that they chosen to follow. Verse 14, when the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed,

surely, he is the prophet we've been expecting, talking about the much-anticipated promised Messiah, Savior. When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself. You know, I love that Jesus never would cave to popularity polls and just give people what they wanted. He would often slip away and refocus so that he could give us all what we would. we needed forgiveness. He would slip away and find the resolve to go through with God's plan of

salvation, to lay down his life, to be a king, but a king on a cross, dying for the sins of the world. That's why he came. But that is not what the people were looking for. They wanted a political Messiah. They wanted an economic savior. They were looking for a military conquer who could come and squash Rome. And after this, they're thinking, maybe, just maybe, he's the one, because I've never seen anything like this. I mean, we've always heard there's no such thing as a free lunch, but apparently there is. Let's make him our king, because we would definitely follow a guy like him. Oh, really? Come on back tomorrow. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I pray you'll follow Jesus. I mean, really follow him today. Have a great day. See you back tomorrow.

Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint. Church slash daily drive.