Let’s pray. We’ve just sung and it is the prayer of our hearts, where else can we go, Lord? Where else can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have so many voices clamoring for our attention, but no other voice will speak to us the words of eternal life. O, how we need You, more than we need cable news, more than we need Twitter or Facebook, more than we need the newspaper, more than that phone call or text or e-mail, we need to hear from You. Speak, O Lord, for we have nowhere else to go. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
Our text this morning comes from John’s Gospel, chapter 6. The end of chapter 6, beginning at verse 60 through verse 71, the end of the chapter. John, chapter 6, beginning at verse 60. So we spent a few weeks the feeding of the five thousand, walking on the water, and then the bread of life discourse, and now we have the response to Jesus.
Verse 60: “When many of His disciples heard it, they said ‘This is a hard saying, who can listen to it?’ But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, ‘Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and Life, but there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray Him, and He said ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.’ After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil.’ He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him.”
We all face watershed moments in life where we have to decide between two very different paths to take. Some of those moments as we approach them seem obvious: Marriage, career, where we’re going to life, where we’re going to go to school. Some are smaller, but can still affect our lives for years. I remember when I was in fifth grade; at my school that’s where you picked out the instrument that you wanted to play, and ever since I was in third grade, ’cause I had an older brother two years older, I had been thinking, oh, what, what instrument was I going to pick? He picked the trombone, and I knew that I wanted to play the trumpet, and I’d been waiting for two years for that exciting day when I was going to go to instrument day and I was going to walk through and I was going to pick out a trumpet and have my parents pay for a trumpet and I was going to bring it home and not practice my trumpet. So I went to instrument day and prior to that you have to, I had to, we had to take some musical tests where they sort of measure your aptitude and what you might be good at and, you know, they sort of look at your, your lips and the size of your mouth and your embouchure and it was very scientific, so I went in there coming to pick out my trumpet. But they told me, they said, “well, Kevin, you, you scored pretty well on some of your musical tests. You don’t want to just play the trumpet.” I don’t know whoever was playing the trumpet, but that’s what they said, ’cause you know they always have lots of trumpet players. And I don’t know if they knew how to appeal to me, but they picked the right way—appeal to my pride. [laughter] And they said “Kevin, you really could play the French horn.” Wooooo. I think they were just thinking “we have 18 k...
