Tested By Teaching

Tested By Teaching – John 6:60-71

Tweet: To “fear the Lord,” biblically, means to be in awe and wonder of his greatness and love.  ~Timothy Keller

The problem with the tweet is that he seems to imply this is all it means — and other understandings — such as  — associating the fear of God with the wrath of God isn’t correct — it is about being in awe of his love and that is the extent. 

Romans 3:18  “No fear of God” — there is no recognition that one’s sin warrants the wrath of God

In our text (John 6), Jesus hasn’t been unclear

Question: Even though Jesus’ teaching has been difficult, will these followers end up believing or leaving? 

“If we are going to profit from this section of the Gospel of John we must be very clear in our understanding of why those who had appeared to be disciples dropped away.”  ~ James Boice 

Did these “understand” Jesus teaching? Yes and no (Jesus was clear but they didn’t have spiritual eyes to see the truth)  A better translation would be “who can tolerate this teaching.” 

Example: Hell

“What is God like? Because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message – the center of the Gospel of Jesus – is that God is going to send you to hell, unless you believe in Jesus. And so, what gets, subtlely, sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that; that we would need to be rescued from this God? How could that God ever be good; how could that God ever be trusted? And how could that ever be good news.” ~Rob Bell

Does the sinner need to be saved from God? 

Romans 5:1-10

Imputation: The righteousness/obedience of Jesus transferred to the believing sinner — the sin of the undeserving sinner transferred to Christ who paid its consequences on the Cross. 

The more one follows Christ, the more they are exposed to difficult teachings (like Hell). 

Some followers try awful hard to not think about difficult things (but at some point, they will be faced with them). 

Emotion and feelings do not take the place of knowing Jesus

We know Jesus by studying God’s self-revelation — the Bible! 

Jesus’ Question:  “Do you take offense at this?” 

The invitation to believe shouldn’t be missed — trust in Jesus — believe in Him and he will give you eternal life!

John 6:66

Christian Deconstruction

We see so many young Christians today who are leaving the faith — and by in large it is because they haven’t been confronted with difficult things — they haven’t thought about the hard truths and realities in Scripture — and when they finally are — these things are made to sound irrational and unloving — they walkway.