In Pastor Jerry Zepnick's sermon titled 'The Offense of the Gospel,' he expounds on John 6:60-71, where Jesus' teachings challenge his followers. Many disciples find His words difficult to accept, leading to a mass exodus of those who cannot fully commit to His demands. Pastor Zepnick emphasizes the difference between mere profession of faith and true possession of faith, highlighting that not all belief is saving faith. The sermon discusses the analogy of Jesus as the 'bread of life,' stressing the need for believers to consume the Word and fully surrender to Jesus' Lordship. This is contrasted against superficial faith that lacks true submission to Christ. Pastor Zepnick calls for introspection, urging believers to examine their faith and ensure it aligns with the teachings of Jesus. The sermon underscores the importance of ongoing spiritual growth and total dependency on Christ for eternal life.

P.J. Schubert Good morning family. Good morning. So this morning we are in the book of John, chapter 6. We're going to finish off chapter 6 today.

No praise of the Lord or hallelujah. It's been a very long chapter and we're winding right down on it now and this is the last of the the first I am which is I am the bread of life Jesus professed himself to be so we will be wrapping up this this chapter today So if you'll follow along in the Word of God, if you need one, there's one right underneath the Kleenex box right there. And so you can read them and weep, as Josh would say. And so it's the book of John, chapter 6, verses 60 through 71. Therefore, many of His disciples, when they had heard this, said, this is a hard saying.

Who can understand it? When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, Does this offend you? What then, if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives flesh. The flesh profits nothing.

Sorry, it is a spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe, for Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who would betray him. And he said, Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my father. In that time many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more.

Then Jesus said to the twelve, do you also want to go away? But Simon Peter answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered them, did I not choose You, the Twelve, And one of you is a devil.

He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve. Father, this morning we thank you for the power of your word. Thank you for this text. Father, help us to understand and believe in the way that you command us to according to your word in you as you are described in your word Lord God that we might have life as your word tells us. Thank you for this text today and I pray for the working of your Holy Spirit this morning in our hearts, in our lives as we purpose to walk in faith, Lord.

Draw nearer to you in Jesus' name, amen. So we see this text comes right off the backside of last week where Jesus told them, you need to eat my body and drink my blood or you have no life in you. And they found this very hard, very hard to accept. So we see as this discourse is growing and going closer to its end, which is the end of this chapter, we see that he's ramping it up. He's not stepping down at all.

So we see the words of Jesus intensifying throughout this whole chapter six. And as well as one word that keeps catching my mind is the word believe. The command to believe. And it started when we started in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish. We see that all the football games, the soccer games, basketball, whatever, you see that sign.

But what does believe really mean? Because it means something different to American evangelical pseudo-Christianity than what Christ meant it to mean in the Word of God. And so, it's going to come down to that. And in the end, we will continue to go through this discourse and still not be able to put our finger on that word believe, other than what it looks like is complete and total death to yourself and submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. A Galatians 2.20 sort of thing.

And so, and that command is required of a true believer. And so as we see in the text today, every crowd of people, especially this one, as large as they were, there's varying levels of belief. There's varying levels of beliefs and mixtures of that. And not all belief is equal. Not all belief is saving belief.

Not all faith is saving faith. And we're seeing that in here. There's one faith that saves among many that don't. And so there's only one. All the rest, they end up in a pickers, and they're going to go on a heat pile and get burned in the end.

So there is one faith that saves among many. And even a kind of faith that has an appearance of godliness, but it denies the power. You'll see that in 2 Timothy 3.5. So it's got all the appearances of it, but it's not saving faith. So in our text today we see in verses 60 through 65, there's a large crowd.

Now this large crowd was the ones that followed Him. They were after the bread and they followed Him and they wanted more. They wanted what He had. They saw miracles, they saw Him, they heard His words, and they wanted more. And so this large crowd of mixed believers or mixed beliefs in In verses 66 or 71 we see a smaller crowd.

That crowd thinned out real fast. Everybody pretty much left. And so in this smaller crowd, you have the mass exodus of what is the soft believers, those who couldn't tolerate the commands that Jesus had in front of them. You wanna be a believer in me, here's what it looks like. And they couldn't handle that.

They were the professors of the faith, but not the possessors of the faith. And so you have this mass exodus, but they appear genuine before being put to the test. And that was the purpose of Christ ramping up these teachings that He had, and the thinness out. He could see their hearts. He knew the hearts of all men.

After the test of difficulty, they took off. They couldn't handle it anymore. They fled. So they can't stand the heat as to what it really means to believe. And now I'm going to go back to John 3.16 again.

Your favorite verse, right? That all who believe, well I believe, Excellent. This is a sort of universalism almost. Like we talked last week. We can have the elements and we can give them to everybody, and everybody's going to heaven, right?

Nah, sorry. And as Jesus in his compassion for that crowd and for us today, he gives these analogies for us to understand. For our small minds, I'll speak of mine at least, small mind that has a problem comprehending high spiritual matters, he gives us these analogies that a child should be able to understand. An analogy in this case of eating, eating bread. And in this, we have to make a connection that there's a difference between being around bread and consuming bread.

It's like, if I wanna go fishing, I can't sit in a parking lot in my boat with my fishing pole in the hand. I'm not gonna catch anything. I'm not doing anything. It looks good up close. You can take a lot of pictures.

It's not doing anything. And at the same time, you could be a round bread, but if you don't consume it, it's not gonna do your body any good. So that the order is first believe and then eat, right? We believe, We put our trust and our faith in Him, and then we consume the Word. This is what I'm talking about, the bread of life right here.

And it talked about that in John, and I'll get to that in John 1, 1, and 2. And I did last week as well. So as we see it in the text today, to believe means to actually consume Jesus. It means that to give yourself wholly to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You surrender your entire life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

You surrender your entire life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You are not your own anymore. He owns you. You live in Him. He lives in you.

And His compassion, and you're self-holy to His compassion, His attribute traits, Your humility, Your conviction is all under Him. And as we see in passage 60 through 71 today, in any crowd, there are a mixture of beliefs. And sometimes we see a disconnect. And I've been to churches or I've known Christians where you've got the professors of the faith, but all of a sudden there's this disconnect here. They can't get along with these people or their habit is this or that.

And they've got a lifestyle that doesn't align with what they say. They're a professor, but not a possessor. There's a disconnect that you can't really reconcile with the Word of God. Not with the true Word of God as you eat it, and as you read it and know it, there's a disconnect. And Jesus is saying that there's not room for that.

And that's what the mass exodus was about. They couldn't handle what He had to say about Him being the Bread of Life. It was hard enough when He said, I've come down from heaven, I am the Bread of Life, come down from heaven. That was hard enough, but now it's the next level. So this shows your complete dependency on Christ, and it's ongoing.

It doesn't stop. It's not that you surrender your life to Christ, and then you just go and live the life that you want. It's an ongoing surrender. You'll feast on Jesus at the initial point of your salvation and throughout a believer's walk. Throughout your entire life, you will need Jesus, you will love Jesus, you will grow closer to Jesus, and He will become larger in your life because you know Him greater, and you surrender more to Him, and you become smaller in your life because He becomes larger, because you love Him more and more.

And you understand that this world is temporary and that life is really about the glory of God and your surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And so you'll feast on Jesus throughout your life. And there is no break. There is no time when, well, you know what? I've done this long enough.

I'm a good person now. I can stop because I think I'll go to heaven. So you realize your need for Him and that you can't live without Him. So this is, in trying to put a finger on a definition, I could give you a million of my words, but my words mean nothing. God's word means everything.

And so here we have John 15, 4 through 11. It reads, Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I and him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So you will be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you.

Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, You will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. There is no joy in life, people, aside from Jesus Christ in you. That is the standard.

The first point I have today is called the turn off. And that is in the beginning of this text, the life of A true believer is one that wants to more than anything assimilate his life to Jesus Christ, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and to have him as your own without anything in between. You want Jesus, and you don't want anything in between. Not even a piece of paper could slip in there. Because there's nothing more important than your life with Jesus.

And verse 60-65, there's this huge crowd of mixed belief. They don't have true faith in a personal Savior in Jesus Christ. And true faith in reality is a personal and it preserves us to eternity. So true faith is an eternal endeavor. It's an eternal thing.

And it's everlasting life. And this hard statement in the beginning, it says, therefore many disciples, when they heard this, said, This is a hard saying. It's a hard saying. The term disciple doesn't mean Christian. I have many people throughout the decades that I've discipled that have gone on to go back to the lifestyle that they had.

A disciple does not mean Christian. It's a layman. It's a follower, a pupil, a learner. And it doesn't mean Christian. And I think we confuse that sometimes.

So here there were disciples among the people of that large crowd following Jesus, but learning does not mean a surrendered life. It does not mean your conviction to your heart has brought you to a place of complete submission to Christ. This verse tells us that this is a hard saying. It's not a hard saying because it was hard for them to understand. Culturally, they understood what was going on here.

They understood His words. They understood this eating my body and drinking my blood. It wasn't a grotesque thing to them. It didn't mean that to them for the most part, but because it was demanding. They couldn't tolerate Christ saying this because it was demanding.

What they're saying by calling Jesus' words hard is that what Jesus requires of them, it's just too difficult. And if you had to be honest today, most people would say, That's too difficult. I cannot do that. Up to now, it's been okay. But when you call a people to die to yourself and to live in Jesus Christ, That's a whole different level.

What do you mean, die to myself? Well, nothing I have is mine anymore. It belongs to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean you have to sell everything and give it to the poor. It's that you are under the authority of Jesus Christ.

You are a steward of everything you have. It belongs to Jesus. And your life looks different once you do that. And so they're saying by calling this hard, It requires them to change too much. It's way too demanding.

Up to now, it was okay, but basically they're saying, okay, Jesus, you want me to be so close that I assimilate my life to you and abide in you, that my life becomes your life. I don't know, that looks like, I gotta give up a little bit too much. I don't know, but there's this command in 1 Corinthians 6, 17 that says, But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. What about the rest? You're not one spirit with him.

And in verse 61, we have this grumbling, and there was in verses 41 and 42 as well. But they can't understand how He came down from heaven or how Jesus tells them to eat my body and drink my blood. So does this offend you?" He's asking them and us today. This is a question for us. We're not doing a history lesson here.

This is speaking to us saying, Okay, what does he mean by belief? And are we willing to believe? Because in John 3.16, he says, "'For God so loved the world "'that He gave His only begotten Son, ' "'that whosoever believes in Him "'should have eternal life.'" Okay, so there's a promise with a condition. You'll have eternal life if you believe in Him. This is what belief looks like.

Are we ready to believe in Him to this level, to this point? So he's asking them, does this offend you? Is this a stumbling point for you? Of all the teachings that I've given you already, and now this is what will cause you to stop and say, hold on a minute, I don't think I can do this. I have to surrender my pride.

I have to surrender my works. I have to surrender my time. I have to surrender my job. I have to surrender everything. And this is not to just be a super Christian.

This is not to be a next level Christian. This is to be a ground level nothing in the Kingdom of God. This is to be a base believer. This is His command. And this offense, it's there.

But Jesus answered in Matthew 11, four through six, and he said to them, go and tell John the things which you hear and see, the blind see in the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them, and blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me. And so the second point today is verse 62. If you look at verse 62, it reads, what then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? This is an amazing text.

See, the Son of Man ascend to where He was before. And this is so encouraging to me because Jesus demands of us, you abide in Me, and you're so close to Me that it can be considered as eating and drinking. That it takes on that much importance. But even that is a small thing. Even that's a small thing.

And it reminded me that what is our sacrifice here? And we talked about this. What if I told you there's something you could give up here that would gain you eternal credit? Would you give that up? And it's a given.

It's an absolutely yes. And so what about this? He told them, you consider this, eating and drinking, that it takes too much. But even that is a small thing, he's saying. You can't handle the saying about eating my body and drinking my blood.

And if you can't handle that, how about seeing me ascending back into heaven? He said, I've come from heaven. I am the bread of heaven. He told them, what if you see me ascending to heaven where He had been? Because He told them, I came from heaven.

What about when you see me ascending back into heaven? What will you do then? If you can't handle this, how are you going to handle that? In John 1, 1 and 2, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

It proves and it shows that He came from heaven. And now He's going to be going back up to heaven. And if they can't handle this, what are they going to do when they see Him being the God of heaven? When they see His deity? When you see that, will you yield then?

He's asking them. You don't see it now. And I've told you. What will you do when you see that? Will you finally yield to them?

Will that be the point? Because what I'm telling you now is actually the easier thing. See, essentially, Jesus is telling them, if you stumble now at this teaching, what about when you see, I'm the Son of God, What about you see my true divinity in all of my glory? And not just Lord of your life, but Lord of everything. Lord of all.

Crown Him Lord of all, right? What about when you see Him? You will have to crown Him Lord of all. When you see Him ascending, then what are you going to do? And why not just cut to the chase and glorify and give your life to Him now rather than waiting until then?

And He's saying to them, do we not see it? Or do we see it? And we just refuse to submit to Jesus. And that's our question too. That's our question too.

Are we submitting to the Lord? Are we giving our life to Jesus? Here, when we can. Do we see his glory now? Do we read his word and just pine for more?

Do we want more? Are we consuming him? Do we lift him up? Is he Lord of our life? Verse 63, it tells us, it is the Spirit who gives life.

The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to are Spirit and their life. The Spirit telling them they cannot receive His words because they come from the Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't dwell in them to open their understanding, their spiritual eyes. They don't have them.

And so they don't see it. Jesus saying that they don't have the ability to spiritually walk with Him because they are still in the flesh. Spiritually, they're dead. And the reality in here is that something that I think we can grab onto in growing in Jesus is the reality that He says is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing.

The flesh profits nothing. We could do a study on that for 10 years and not come to the end of it. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life. The flesh profits nothing.

And so the Holy Spirit doesn't dwell in them. They don't have that understanding. And so Jesus is trying to get them to understand. And His patience and grace and mercy and love that He still has for us today. He still loves us enough to just nurture us through and give us and spoon feed us His word.

He loves us that much. Gives us these analogies. 1 Corinthians 2 14, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. So the people Jesus was speaking to, and you and I, which He is speaking to. I don't feel like I need to say that, but I feel like I need to say that.

He's speaking to us through His word. Our born that way, we're born that way. We're born in the flesh and the flesh has no hope. And that's what you are naturally. It's inherited from your father Adam.

There is none. So no spiritual profit comes from your natural state. To gain spiritual understanding is a work of God. This is a sovereign work of God's grace. It's received at your salvation and continuing as you abide in Christ.

So verse 64, he says, there are some of you. He says, but there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who would be, who they were who did not believe and who would betray him. There are some of you, and again, in a crowd that's this large, there's bound to be those that were not true believers. And the truth number one is that not all who follow Jesus believe.

And we need to understand that reality as we walk through life. We look at a person and we say, why are they doing that? How come they're vexing me so? And my response is we're expecting saved behavior from unsaved people. You can't expect saved behavior from unsaved people.

So that's one point. There's not everyone who professes Jesus, possesses Jesus. And so it's not all who follow Jesus are believers. So that's not what I'm saying, but what Jesus said, and Jesus knew because God the Father told him in John 6, 35 through 37. 6, 35 through 37.

He says, and Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. And he who abides in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me.

And the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. I will by no means cast out. Ephesians 1, 3 through 5, there's so many verses in this text about that. And It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will." This, our salvation is nothing that we can hang our hat on. This is a work of God.

More passages on this are John 17, 6, 9, Romans 8, 29, and 30, John 10, 25 through 29. See, God's Word tells us to examine ourselves, to be sure that we're of this true faith. His Word challenges us to know that we're saved and not just going along with what we're being told. With others for the good feeling. Because it's cool.

Or I fit in here. We get from having a good feeling from having a little bit of Jesus, but we're not surrendered to Him. And there's no such thing as having a little Jesus. You either have Jesus or you don't have Jesus. And so Jesus is saying to the crowd, there are some of you who do not believe.

He is showing mercy on them that they would check themselves and be sure that they do believe. This is the way that God shows mercy on us is to knock us upside the head, to kick us off of our road of comfort right into the pickers, to wake us up so we get out of there and we get a clearer view of His path for our life. This is God showing love to us. And so, He's showing mercy to us by that. He is showing mercy to these people by this hard saying.

He is showing mercy to us by driving this in our heads for a month now about Him being the bread of life. Isaiah 55, 6, and 7 reads, Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

He will abundantly pardon. There's no one that has gone so far from God that God will not pardon you. There is no place that you've been and no one that you know that God will not receive and pardon and love and cherish and adopt as His child. There is no one. And so verse 65, it gets in a little deeper.

And he said, therefore I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my father. So This discourse has this in here multiple times. This doctrine is woven right through this discourse and it is so tight in a way, become of it, that we have to understand that our salvation is not our work, It is God's work. This is not our good doing, our good works, or our anything. And so this is the same that we've gone through every Sunday for the last month, that God draws us to Jesus.

We are God's gift to Jesus. God loves us so much for God so loved the world. Remember? God's love for lost humanity. Then God draws us and Jesus saves us.

So, this isn't a matter of our works. We need to talk about genuine faith. And it's never only a matter of human decision. It's never a matter of human decision. Jesus is reiterating God's sovereignty involved in selection for salvation.

So each person is to seek after God, but even of those who do seek and seem to follow Him for a while, if it's not a true salvation, they're gonna return, they're gonna turn away at the hard teachings. They're gonna turn away when the going gets tough. They're not gonna wanna put up with the sacrifice that needs to be given to follow Jesus. So as we read in the text, verse 66, it reads, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. Then Jesus said to the 12th, do you want to go away?

And I can understand this because I know how it feels to be a minister of the word of the Lord and to have people come and then leave. They come, you pour your heart out, you invest in people. And Brother Rick has been a pillar of that. And you pour your life into them. And then after a time, they walk away.

And I feel that in Jesus as he turns to disciples. And he says, are you going to leave too? I can feel that. I understand that. Verse point three is verse 66 through 71, and that is that not all that follow Jesus truly believe.

It's easier to follow a Jesus who just gives us benefits than a Jesus that requires us to adhere to his word, a Jesus that gives us commands and tells us that This is salvation. It's a crucified Christ that we worship. And in verse 66, it says, in that time many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. They went back. Did you catch that?

Many of them went back to go back. They went back to what was behind them. They judged their past as more worthy to pursue than Jesus Christ. And if we have to be honest, I think that some people, even here today, we walk in Christ and we go to a point and then we look at our past and we say, well, I'm going to have that too. And we want to have that too.

Our life has not surrendered to Jesus Christ. By turning away, they showed their unbelief and desired their old life more than they desired Jesus Christ. It proved they never had true saving faith. So what ensued in the crowd was this mass exodus. And I've used this verse before, and it's so relevant, but 1 John 2.19, they went out from us, but they were not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. None of them were of us. None of them were of us. There's a quote that I'm going to read by a man by the name of Justin Coupe. It says, The modern church counts attendance.

Jesus looked for fruit. That difference matters because you can fill a room and still fail to make disciples. You can pack out a service and still have people who never obeyed Jesus. You can build a crowd and still produce spiritual infants. Jesus never told us to gather spectators.

He told us to make disciples. Fruit is not more seats filled, more lights, more programs, more people dependent on one man's sermon every week. Fruit is people obeying Jesus, people walking in righteousness, people being delivered from sin, people making disciples, people multiplying the life of Christ into others. A church can look successful on the outside and still be barren in the kingdom. So maybe the question isn't how many people came.

Maybe the question is what kind of people are being produced. So after the larger group of disciples thinned out, you'd assume that at least the smaller group that was left behind believed. So after all, these were those that followed Jesus everywhere. These are the ones that followed him ever. They ate meals together, all their meals together.

They traveled with him. They listened to his preaching. They saw his miracles. They were taught at his side. They prayed.

They sang hymns with Jesus. They went to feasts with him. They slept in the same places that he slept. They did life together with Jesus. So you would think that this group of twelve closest ones would for sure be the lock.

They had the profession too, but they would have to be there. But according to the verses, we'll find out that not all were real believers. Even with Jesus in their midst, 24-7, how incredible that would be. It's a matter of a person's heart. And their heart did not belong to him.

And I want you to hear me this morning because this is too important eternally to get this wrong. It is possible. It is possible to be close to people of God. It is possible to be close to the things of God. It is possible to be close to the things of God?

Is it possible to be close to the word of God? And yet be putting on a charade. Or to be self-deceived, not really believing in the heart. By trusting in Christ. We're called to check ourselves.

And in verse 10, it tells us, he had 5, 000 plus women and children, but now there's 12 that remain. And he looked at them and said, are you gonna leave too? See, this preaching today, and this text here, this is not a great recipe for modern day church growth. This just is not going to work to tell, to have people come in and say, Jesus said that you need to surrender your life to him, that you need to die to yourself, and he lives in you and you live in him. And So, we're all born sinners and you need to repent.

That's not a good pattern for church growth. To preach the truths of Scripture as non-negotiable and not negotiable. And Preach them as non-negotiable and don't offer an avenue of compromise. It doesn't help add more to the local church roster. See, as in Bible times, people today will say, this is a hard thing, who can listen to it?

That's going to be us today. People leave thinking, I'd rather go back to who I was. At least it's familiar, it's easy, or life's hard enough as it is. I'll go to a church that doesn't preach these hard commands. I'd much rather listen to someone give me an encouraging pep talk than hear this guy yelling every Sunday about what Jesus wants me to do, about what surrender in Him is, but to not make demands on my life.

I kind of like it the way it is. Why mess things up? Why ruffle the feathers up? Why do that? Or I'll find some preacher or group that will be more in tune with my lifestyle and my life choices.

After all, didn't Jesus love everybody? Jesus is love, right? So I can go on and sin as much as I want. He's going to forgive me, and I can do whatever I want. That's not the Jesus of the Bible.

That's the Jesus of the culture. The reality is, Jesus does make these demands. He did back then and He still does today. And so here we see how that congregation, that crowd of followers of Jesus, went from thousands to twelve. So with only twelve disciples left, did Jesus' lessons and demands on them get less?

Did He say, whew, now it's just the 13 of us, so let's take a breath of fresh air and forget about all them high commands and let's do this and that. No. He asked them if they want to leave too. That's what He did. So verse 68, right here is where we need to come to.

But Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. That was Simon Peter's proclamation. With all the unbelief going on around them, and everybody scaling away, it's so easy to follow the crowd and just kind of like, okay, I'll catch you later. No.

Peter pronounces Jesus' lordship. This reads as a completed ongoing action. It's not a one-time proclamation. It's an ongoing action. It's a wholehearted conviction.

And as Peter proclaims him as the Holy One of God, this is a title for Jesus also used in Mark 1, 23, and 24. A demon called him that. A demon recognized and he gave that title to him or allowed that to be used. And it's used of God the Father in the Old Testament in Isaiah 40-25. It says, to whom then will you liken me, or to whom shall I be equal, says the Holy One." See, Peter proclaims Jesus divine, God in the flesh.

He's saying that you, Jesus, as he acts as a spokesman for the 12, and so This thinned the crowd out fast. So John 5.18 reads, Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. And That's the thing that's going on yet till today. People want to kill Bible Jesus. It sounds rude, doesn't it?

It sounds like you're kidding. No, I'm not. They want to kill Bible Jesus, replace Him with one that fits their narrative. And that's exactly what has happened. In our culture, in the past, in the present.

They want one that's not so demanding. Yet Peter boldly proclaims as this fact, this full faith, We will go nowhere else. Is that your proclamation? Are you going to leave or are you going to stay? See, in the world today, the dividing line, It's not national.

It's not this country versus that country and this battle versus that battle. It's not racial. It's not anything else. It's spiritual. It is Jesus.

Those who believe, not just follow, but they believe Jesus is the Son of God and have life in His name, and those who deny Him and don't have life in them at all. That is the dividing line right there. There are two kinds of people in this world, that's all that matters. Those that have their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life and those who do not. So where do we get this kind of faith like Peter had?

Where do we get that faith from? We get it from God the Father, the Father in heaven. If you truly believe in Jesus, it's because God chose you, He gave you faith, And the application point is that we need to humble our heart before God today. Ask Him to save you from your sin. To change your will to His will.

We see him for who he is. And we submit our lives wholly to him. He authors, and only he offers, salvation. So look at the last couple verses, 70-71. Not all twelve.

There's one is a devil. All 12 had a purpose in the plan of God, but John, there's the purpose of Judas and the prophecy of Judas. The purpose of Judas is John 17, 12. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me I have kept, and none of them is lost except the Son of Perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

That's the purpose, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. That's the purpose. That the Scripture might be fulfilled. And the prophecy is, even my own familiar, Psalm 41.9, even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me." And then we have, we have Proverbs 16, four, the Lord has made all for himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom. See, in the end, God will be glorified.

This is not about our understanding or our happiness. This is about the glory of God in the end. So we see here that in any crowd, there's a mixture of people, believing and unbelieving. And the fact that not all who follow closely, truly believe, Matthew 13, 37 through 43 shows this well. It explains the parable of the wheat and the tares and the weeds, which represent true and false believers.

They grow right next to each other. They're so close. And you can't pull the weeds out because the wheat will come with it. And so it's saved for harvest time, which represents, like I said, true and false believers. It's a deep reality of any church in the world today on this side of the return of Jesus.

Jesus is coming back. Any church that you go to, it's gonna have wheat and it's gonna have tares. According to Jesus, there will always be weeds among the wheat. We will best know them by their fruit though. This is the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5, 22 and 23.

But the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law. So today's sermon isn't a challenge to look at what our church is like. I don't want us to look across the aisle and look at... It's not primarily to see that, but that's important as well.

Rather, This is a call for each and every one of us to examine our own hearts. Because in the end, in Matthew 7, 13 and 14, it says, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction. There are many who go that way. Many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life and there are few who find it.

Few who find it. I beg with you this morning, find it, continue to just go after it, to plot your course. See, this is Jesus' invitation to come to Him on His terms, but To come to Him on His terms. The crowd wanted the easy way in because Jesus doesn't bend or compromise. They kept to the path of destruction.

So we need to pray to God to increase our faith. To walk closer to Him and pray that He would help me walk that difficult path. And as I go through any sermon, there's quite often a hymn comes into my head as I'm doing it. And this one, I thought it was called No Turning Back, but it's not. But there is the song, and it was written in the 1800s in a village called Assam, India.

And I would have thought this would have been an American song. And there's a man by the name of Knoxing, and he and his whole family converted to Christianity in this small village. And the village chief didn't like it. He demanded that they renounce their faith. And when they refused, he said, I have decided to follow Jesus.

And he watched his family face execution. His whole family was brutally murdered in front of him. And after he saw that, he wrote the words, the cross before me, the world behind me. That's what he wrote after he watched His wife and children get murdered. His unwavering faith later sparked a revival.

And that village, that entire village came to know Jesus. Including the chief. I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. I want us to know that this morning. Jesus, we thank you for your love and your grace and your mercy on us.

This morning, Lord God, I pray that our hearts would be moved to one that just trusts in you. Father God, for our life, for our wellbeing, for our future. Father, I just pray that our hearts would be moved and transported to a place, Lord God, that it's never been so close to you, Lord. Help us, Lord God, to have that simple faith. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.