"Jesus Is the Answer" John 6:1-27 Sunday Evening Worship Service

So we are in John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

But first I want to just kind of open it up with a story here.

Some years ago I was in a men's group, and this was a particularly good men's group, one where we had actually within a short amount of time started to share pretty intimately about our lives.

And so we were sharing in this one particular evening various things that we were struggling with in the group.

And it so it came up to me to talk, and so I began to talk about a really, really hard relationship in my life.

One that had been a hard relationship for a long, long time.

And if if any of you knew about that particular situation, you would listen to it and you would say pretty much what I was, you know, let's face it.

When we're complaining about an issue in our life, particularly a difficult relational situation, what we really want is the other person to agree that I'm right and they're wrong.

Right?

That's what we really want.

And so that's kind of like, you know, I mean, I knew that this was a really hard situation, and most of the guys were nodding along and saying, Yeah, that's really hard.

Yeah, that's really hard.

There's this one young guy in the group, um, probably in his 20s, and he he must have been balding because he shaved his head.

And he had this way of whenever he was thinking about something, he would look up at the ceiling and then rub his bald head.

And always wondered what's up there on the ceiling that he's seeing.

He would look up at the ceiling and rub his head, and then he would come out with something that was just amazing.

I mean, for such a young guy who was very, very perceptive.

And so he heard my story, and he stops.

Everybody else says something, you know, that's hard, all that kind of stuff.

And he rubs his head.

And he looks at me and he says, you know, Bob, what you shared really, really is hard.

But it sounds to me a lot like you're regarding this guy as a problem to be solved, not a person to be loved.

You know, it's sort of like, okay, I wasn't expecting that.

And it's, have you ever had that situation where somebody is willing to confront you in your sinfulness and they just kind of flay you open and lay it out and say, there you are, that's what I'm seeing.

You see that?

That's what I see.

And I saw myself loud and clear.

It just as clear as it could be.

Bob Hartman, the fixer.

You give me a problem, I'm going to fix it.

If there's a situation, I want to handle it.

If you give it, you know, COVID-19 shows up, I make spreadsheets.

You know, whatever it is.

If there's a problem, I'll try and fix it.

And if that problem is a relationship, especially if it's a relationship between me and you, and I perceive you as the problem, and you stand between me and what I really want, well, then I'm going to try and fix you.

Because you are standing between me and my ability to fix things and be in control of my little world.

Because of all the things that Bob Hartman wants is to be in control of my little world.

You know, I want you to know that, shoot, I this goes back to 1976, so that makes it like 44 years.

I don't do math in my head very well, but it's a long time ago.

A long time ago, that I trusted in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.

Um I I actually had the situation where the guy was sharing, and he said, Jesus must be the Lord of your life.

And I said, Amen.

You know, I went off the throne, put Jesus on the throne.

He's going to be the Lord of my life.

And I believe with all my heart that if you have that when a person trusts in Christ, it has to be a historical thing.

That there has to be a point in your life where you, when you say, This is what I believe, and I make a decision.

And for some people, that decision might be expressed in baptism or something like that.

But for me, it was, in my case, praying a simple prayer.

That Jesus would be on the throne, he would be the Lord of my life.

It was a historical thing.

But more importantly, as the older I get, the more important it is to have your faith be a present tense thing.

Is Jesus the Lord of your life right now?

That's the question.

I mean, it's settled.

Jesus is the Lord of my life.

But what about right now, in the middle of a difficult situation where I so much want to be in control of things?

Is he the Lord then?

Well, obviously, in the big sense, he is.

But am I, does he have that position in my heart?

Or do I still want to be in control?

Do I want to be king?

You know, I love this verse, it's in Philippians 1.6.

You don't have to turn there.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible, Paul's uh saying to the Philippian church, I am confident of this very thing.

He who began a good work in you will work to perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

It's so comforting to know that God is more interested in my sanctification than I am.

He's never going to let me just continue to coast along.

He will work until I come to that place when I see him face to face where I am like Christ in every way a human can be.

He loves me enough to test my faith and move me into maturity.

So if let's turn to John chapter 6, tonight I want to focus on verses 1 through 27.

John 6 · chapter mention

We're not going to do the whole chapter, you can be thankful for that.

What we're going to look at is the is by and large the verses in, if you have colored letters in your Bible, you know, red letters and black letters, we're going to look at the black letters.

The, you know, that sets up all the red letters, all the red words of Jesus in the in the last half of the chapter.

So we're going to look at the two stories there and the verses in between about Jesus taking 5,000, taking loaves and fishes and feeding 5,000 people, probably a lot more than that.

And Jesus walking on the water.

We'll look at those two two things.

Really, that whole part of the what we'll look at tonight sets up the last half of the chapter where Jesus declares, I am the bread of life.

I am the true bread which comes down out of heaven.

In essence, I am all you really need.

I am that which satisfies you.

I am the one who will satisfy you.

And finally, when he starts talking in very confusing languages about eating my flesh and drinking my blood, I think, in essence, he's saying, you must be consumed by me.

You must be consumed by your need for me.

It must be everything to you.

That's what you have to have.

It's always, it's a daily thing.

It's a daily thing.

So let's begin.

John 6, 1.

After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.

I think Jesus is in the region of Capernaum.

They go over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and that's where they are.

What's important, though, is to understand that little after this.

So that's referring back, of course, to chapter 5, which we don't have to turn to, but I'll give you the idea there.

In chapter 5, Jesus heals a man who's a lame beggar.

Okay?

He heals this lame beggar on the Sabbath.

And then he goes on, and he's challenged, of course, by the Jewish leaders for doing that.

And then Jesus says something like, My father's at work, he's always working.

I have to work too, even on Saturdays.

Okay?

So they then call him not only, they're accusing him of breaking the law, healing on the Sabbath, but even more importantly, they're accusing him of blasphemy.

This is what it says in verse 18, or excuse me, yeah, 518.

It says, This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.

They got it.

Jesus is declaring himself to be God, come in the flesh.

They understood perfectly what he was saying.

And if he's not God come in the flesh, then it is blasphemy.

But if he is, then it's not.

So Jesus defends himself at the end of that chapter with calling, it's an informal trial, so to speak.

So he calls five informal witnesses.

He calls the witness of John the Baptizer, who had said, Look, here's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and other things like that.

He calls the uh the witness of his works.

If you're not going to believe me, at least believe the works that I do.

But they wouldn't believe that either.

And then he has the witness of the Father.

Many people would have heard the Father say, From heaven, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased at the baptism.

And of course, the Father's voice speaks through everything else that's happening.

Anything that happens is energized by the power of the Father working through Jesus Christ.

Of course, you have the witness of the Old Testament scripture that's found at the end of chapter 5.

All the prophets speaking of Jesus, and he's saying, you won't believe them either.

And then finally, they're putting all their hope on Moses, and Jesus is saying, You know what's going to happen?

Moses is prophesying about me, but he's going to rise up on the last day and he's going to accuse you.

So that's all the stuff that happens.

And now what you see is Jesus coming in to uh to the uh this region across from Capernaum, and he's going to do several miracles.

What we'll see here in chapter 6 is evidence that Jesus is God.

We'll hear him saying things that only God can say, doing things that only God can do, and and uh demanding of people things that only God can demand.

That's what we'll see in chapter 6.

So let's pick it up.

That was a long introduction, wasn't it, for just one verse.

The rest will go faster, I promise.

Verse 2 a large crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.

And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.

Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.

And lifting up his eyes then, and seeing a large crowd was coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, one of the disciples, Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?

And he said this to test Philip, test him, for Jesus himself knew what he would do.

Philip answered him, Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to have even a little.

And one of the disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, Well, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?

Now, what would you be thinking if you were Philip?

There's about 5,000 men, probably plus women, so what does that work out to?

8,000, 10,000 people minimum?

But let's just roll with the 5,000 number.

That's big enough.

And you think about what is Philip thinking?

Well, I can tell you what I would think.

You know what, Jesus?

I didn't have a problem until you decided to feed everybody.

Nobody came here looking for a meal.

They came here to hear you speak.

It's your idea that everybody gets a meal out of this, and now you're saying, where are we gonna buy what, 25,000 loaves and 10,000 fish?

Where are we gonna get that?

We don't have that in the cash register.

How is that gonna work out?

How are we gonna fix that problem, Jesus?

You know, you can tell I could get a little heated in the face of Jesus, that's why.

Never mind.

You know, but do you ever feel that way?

That you didn't have a problem until somebody puts a monkey on your back and says, okay, now you got to go fix this.

Well, wait a minute.

I didn't have that ten minutes ago.

Now it's my problem.

What's that all about?

And what do you do when the problem comes from God?

Okay, you can't ignore it.

You can't just go, well, I'm not gonna do that.

When the problem comes from God, what about that relationship that's really, really, really hard in your life?

And you know that problem is actually not just there, it's actually something from the Lord.

And he's calling you perhaps to be an ambassador in a very difficult situation.

Well, what do you do then?

You know, here's what we tend to do is we look at the situation and we size up our potential to respond to that situation.

What have I got?

It's the beautiful question that Andrew's asking what are these for so many?

What have I got for this difficult situation?

I can't fix that guy.

What am I gonna do?

And it feels hopeless.

As long as it look I'm looking at myself and my potential to address this situation, there will come times where you have to feel like it's hopeless because it is.

Our world is filled with things like that.

If you think about racism, it's it's more our our country is more divided right now than I can ever remember in all my life.

Politically divided.

And today we were chatting, a bunch of us were chatting after our ABF about she works, she's in politics, so she's kind of on the inside.

And when you think about the political machine that works to get certain candidates elected, and you think, okay, it's just so, it's so messed up.

What am I gonna do about that?

Or you have COVID-19.

I've never seen a country of people so afraid of everything all the time.

I could preach a whole sermon on that, but I'm going to avoid it.

I'll never forget what Tim Kimmel said one time about Christian parents who were just afraid of everything.

They were afraid about the kids next door, they were afraid about public school, they were afraid about this, they were afraid about your kids getting sick.

They were afraid and and Kimmel's looking, he was actually, I was sitting right about there, and he's up here talking.

He says, you know what?

Christians shouldn't really be afraid about anything.

What's the worst thing they can do?

Is you can die and then you're with Jesus.

Why are we so afraid?

And I'll go, I will say it.

You think about, you think this is gonna protect me from death?

Really?

I mean, it might keep me from getting something, maybe, but not this particular one, because I think I've been using this one since March.

You know.

You definitely don't want to borrow it.

But think about that.

Am I really gonna put my hope in a few millimeters or millimet, whatever that would be, of cloth or paper?

Really?

I'm gonna put my all my hope, I'm gonna put the weight of my hope on a mask.

A mask is a wise thing to do, and it's a loving thing to do for someone else.

But don't trust in masks.

You know, there's an old song that uh goes back in the 70s where I would came from.

Um actually, I still like disco.

I'm sorry, it's just a thing, you know.

There's an old song, Andre Crouch, where he's saying, Jesus is the answer for this world today.

Above him there's no other.

Jesus is the way.

And it's just pretty much the same thing over and over again.

That's a wonderful song.

As I was doing the sermon, I couldn't help but sing it all the time.

But you know, you think about the world around us and you think about things like COVID and politics and racism.

You go into your office and you start singing that song and see what people say.

It sounds simplistic and silly.

How's Jesus going to fix that kind of stuff?

Well, let's move on.

What you see here in the in the upcoming passage is perhaps an answer for that.

Verse 10, uh, Jesus said, Have the people sit down.

Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed to those who were seated, so also the fish, as much as they wanted.

And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, gather up all the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.

So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

So Jesus, in this case, he does fix the problem.

It's an impossible situation.

Five loaves, two fish.

He turns it into, I'm gonna guess, if you just take it and bang it by, what, five thousand or ten thousand, you get twenty-five thousand and ten thousand fish.

Not bad.

Not bad.

And it said that everyone had as much as they want.

You know, here's the situation.

Jesus is compassionate and gracious, and he does answer specific prayer and address our specific worldly needs.

He really does do that.

But too often I just want a fix for my problem so I can get back to being in control of my life.

You know, the problem here is not that you have 5,000 hungry men.

The problem is that you have 5,000 plus 12 who don't know who Jesus Christ really is.

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

And my problem isn't this little knot that I'm trying to untangle.

The problem is as long as I'm focusing only on that knot, I will never, ever, ever see Jesus.

So you might wonder, how does that fix anything, though?

Focusing on Jesus.

What's fascinating is you go back in John's gospel, even back to chapter 4, you have this woman who's a Samaritan, strike one, who's on the outs with all the women in the city, strike two, who's been married five times, strike three.

And there's a fourth strike.

She's living with a guy who's not married.

Now you just think about all that, okay?

And then she meets Jesus, she starts talking about the Messiah.

Jesus says something to her, a Samaritan woman, he says to no one else in the Gospel of John.

He pulls it all back and says, She says, I'm looking for the Messiah, and he says, I myself am He.

Can you imagine being that woman?

And you get it?

God is standing in front of you right now?

Well, who cares about anything else in life?

And she runs off in the city and says, Well, I'm going to tell you about this man who told me everything I've ever done.

Of course, they all wonder what in the world's going on, and they chase her back to see Jesus.

Now here's the thing.

At the end of that story, she's still a Samaritan.

She's still been married five times.

She's still, I don't know what she's going to do with that guy that she's living with.

Probably all the other women in the town still hate her.

You see, really, all those things didn't necessarily change.

All the complexities of her life that she took into this situation, well, they're still there.

But seeing Jesus made all the difference for her.

And so I just want to know, how does that work?

How does that work?

You know, how does it work that Jesus is the one who really meets our needs?

He's the one that's not, I didn't say that right.

He's the one who is all that we need.

And so then what about all this stuff over here?

And you know, really, the more I think about it, I can't explain it.

I can't explain how God's gonna work things out with that Samaritan woman.

I'm going to assume that he does.

And some of it you just can't fix.

She has to live with and pay the consequences.

But she still has a Lord and Savior who's greater than all those things.

And my difficult relationship, I don't know if it's going to get resolved.

And I don't even know if that's the point.

The point is that God is a redeemer, and rather than coming to us and saying, you gotta fix this, and then come to me, what God seems to do time after time after time is to buy up, that's what redeem means, to buy up the mess we make of our life and redeem it somehow in ways that we can't explain.

Just like we can't explain how he could take five loaves and two fish and multiply that.

Or how he does any other miracle in the Bible.

What he's asking.

And say, Will you trust me?

And that leads us to the next part.

But before we get there, let's look at a couple of verses here.

Most of the time, people don't get it.

They have no idea who they're dealing with.

You see this in verse 14.

When people saw the sign that he had done, Jesus had done, they said, This indeed is the prophet who has come into the world.

And perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again into the mountain by himself.

Because those folks don't want Jesus.

And really, they want a fixer.

They want the one who's going to give them more bread.

They want the bread maker so that they don't have to work for a living.

They want someone who will satisfy all their physical and daily needs.

They want that, but they don't want Jesus as the Lord of their life.

And Jesus will have none of that.

And how much of our prayer is like that?

God, I just want a little help.

I just want a little help.

Have you ever said that?

What a little help.

I mean, God's looking and saying, you need a lot of help.

But I just want a little help.

Help me get out of this mess and I'll take care of the rest.

You know, just help me to do that and I'll get along.

And there's nothing wrong and everything right with praying for health and a good job and a life partner and a place to live, situations in life.

God wants us to bring all those things to him in prayer.

But the question is, and this is a hard question, is what I'm really asking for is for God to continue financing my independence.

In other words, give me a little help so I can stay in control of my life.

Sometimes what God does is he puts us in a situation where it's beyond your control so he can make us realize that we don't have control over our own life.

That we really do need Jesus for everything.

Here's a terrifying thought.

What if COVID never goes away?

What if there's a COVID-20?

I'm not trying to cast fear into your hearts, but there is.

We just haven't seen it yet.

Because there was an 18 and a 17 before 19.

It comes around just about every year or two.

Here's the deal.

What if, this is the thing.

What if I have to depend upon God literally for every breath I take?

Well, that's kind of scary.

I don't want to think about God that much.

I feel like doing a Jim Gaffigan at this moment, saying, He's a pastor, and he's saying that.

It's true, and you're exactly the same.

We want to be in control of our own lives, and God routinely tests our faith to show us that we must trust in him.

Let's move on.

When evening came, verse 16.

When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.

Now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.

The sea became rough because of a strong wind was blowing.

And when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near to the boat.

And they were frightened, and you would be too.

But he said to them, It is I, do not be afraid.

And then when they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

Now, if you're the disciples, again, what would you be thinking?

The other gospels say that they thought that Jesus was a ghost or some kind of phantom coming across the water.

They're probably asking themselves, who is this or what is this coming across the water towards us?

Now I can tell you what they weren't expecting.

They weren't expecting Jesus to come walking across the water towards them.

Not one of them was sitting in the boat, bailing and rowing, saying, Oh, if only Jesus would come walking across the water and help us out of this mess.

Not one of them was expecting that.

And when you think about it, you know, I have the fix all planned in my mind, how God should solve my problem.

And there are times when Jesus does a miracle that lines up with people's expectations.

They come to him for healing and he heals.

They come to him for casting out a demon and he does that.

But I didn't do a study on this, so I don't know exactly, but I guess that most of the time, when Jesus does a miracle, it's not something anybody was looking at or looking for.

The man who is uh who was a lame beggar, he wasn't even asking to be healed.

Nobody was saying, oh, let's go to Jesus, he'll make 5,000 loaves, turn it into 5,000 loaves or 25,000 loaves of bread for us.

Nobody was doing that.

He did something totally unexpected.

You can go through the Gospels and you can see all kinds of miracles that Jesus does, and it's always out of the realm of what we expect.

And the point is this if God is going to provide a fix for my situation, it's probably going to be something I'm not even looking for.

I'm praying for it down here, and God is saying, Oh, this is what I'm going to do.

And it's going to have much grander ramifications than you being the Lord of your own little life over here.

In this chapter, Jesus sent the disciples to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

Um, and you have this big storm that's coming up, they're rowing and the bailing, and and and uh you know, it's just a mess, and and uh it just reminds me how I just want to just move on here.

I'm getting all flustered.

There's something in this situation in the boat that I do want to talk about, and it's fear.

When things in our life are out of control, we get afraid.

And this little paragraph points to the best answer for fear that there is it's the presence of God.

Jesus responds to their fear how?

By saying, I am here, do not be afraid.

I've heard it said that the command repeated most often in the Bible is fear not, fear not, especially when the person's in the presence of God.

But there's this command in the Bible, don't be afraid.

It's usually followed with something like, I am here, I am with you.

Don't be afraid, I am near.

Think about this.

Jesus says, be afraid, but inside what I'm thinking is, I have good reason to be afraid.

And if you think about it, you have good reason to be afraid.

Our lives, this world is a dangerous place, and our lives are fragile, fragile things.

They really are.

We have uh an enemy who exists to trip us up and purposefully make it make things more difficult.

And to put us in this state of fear.

And we live under a curse of death.

How about that?

That one comes from God.

We live under a curse of death, but then here's the thing: if we live long enough, it will lull us into a delusion that that sickness and accidents and violence, COVID-19, well, that's for other people, not for me.

The late David Pallison said, you know, if you live long enough, every single thing that you value and hold dear, every single person that you love, if you live long enough, it will go away.

Until at the very last you lose even your own health and your own life.

So we have good reason to be afraid on the world's terms.

We live in a very, very dangerous place.

So why this command that's all through the Bible?

Don't be afraid.

Because someone stronger than death is near us.

That's why.

The only person who conquered death is by our side.

What fear needs most is the right person, and that person is Jesus Christ.

And he's coming towards our boat, and like the disciples, we must welcome him into the boat.

The word welcome there is the same word that you see earlier in John chapter 1, where he says, As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the children of God, even those who believe in his name.

John 1 · chapter mention

And that's what we must do.

We must welcome Jesus in.

We must welcome him onto the throne of our life.

He must be Lord.

And only then do we discover how to overcome fear.

You know, I remember when I was seven years old and living in San Diego with my father and mother.

Um he was in the Navy.

And so it was one afternoon, and we were at some kind of picnic.

Must have been a Navy picnic or something.

And so my father was a very big man, and he was extremely strong.

Now, maybe that's just a seven-year-old perspective, but trust me, as I got older, I found out how strong my father really was.

And so one time he wanted to lift me up and put me up on his shoulders.

And he'd never done that before.

And I was terrified.

I'd never been up that high before.

Seemed like a thousand feet up in the air.

And, you know, so now I'm up on his shoulders and I'm whining and complaining.

And I'm sure he thought, well, pfft, get this through putting me down.

You know.

Here's the deal.

There was no way on God's green earth that my father was going to drop me.

I didn't weigh that much.

But I was afraid.

Because I just didn't trust him.

And we have a God who is much more trustworthy.

Alright.

You also have this whole thing of Jesus being God come in the flesh.

He says, Don't be afraid, I am with you.

And of course, I am in the Gospel of John is a it's a flag of the name of Yahweh.

Any Jew would get that as they're reading this gospel.

They understand that Jesus is saying, God is here, don't be afraid.

And then you have this wonderful phrase, okay, again, things that we can't understand in the Bible.

It's in that category.

Immediately they're on the shore.

Okay, I guess you could say that they had been rowing and they were about a hundred feet out, they just couldn't see it for the storm.

I don't think so.

I think Jesus gets in the boat, immediately they're on the shore.

How did that happen?

I don't know.

And I don't know how God resolves the issues in my life, but I do know that since trusting in Christ and walking with him, things have not always been easy.

But I definitely know that he's in control.

He's in control.

So let's conclude here.

Let's look at the verses 22 and following.

On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had only been one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered that boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone.

Other boats from Tiberius came near the place where they had eaten the bread, and 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.

I was tempted to put up a map and show you all the travels around, but this is just a wonderful picture of how people scurry around when they're trying to find some kind of solution for their problems.

Just imagine that.

They're all over the place.

They're going to this side and that side.

That's a good picture in your mind of what we do.

We're like rats in a cage.

We're just running around trying to solve the problem.

When they found Jesus on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you get here?

And Jesus answered, I love the way he confronts them right here.

He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw the signs.

How direct and truthful he is.

Not because of signs, but because you saw and got your fill of the loaves.

You know, this question that the people are asking, How did you get here?

I don't think they really cared how we got there.

It's their awkward way of trying to get back into his graces so they can get more bread, so they can proceed to make him king, so they can do all the things to meet their own needs through this person who's going to be their problem solver.

And Jesus concludes there in verse 27, don't work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.

He's talking about himself, of course, which the Son of Man will give you, for on him the Father has set his seal.

And I'll leave the rest of those red verses for somebody else to preach.

But let's just take this away.

The fact is, I want to fix.

Jesus wants me to want so much more.

Jesus wants me to desire him.

And I just want to fix.

I'm so easily satisfied.

I want to fix for my difficult relationship.

And you know, if God is gracious and that works out, then what?

Because apart from Jesus, that's still not enough.

God wants me to be consumed not by my problems and by my ability or inability to fix those problems.

He wants me to be consumed by Jesus Christ.

He wants me to want that more than anything.

From in the morning when I rise to when I come to die.

He wants me to be singing, I need Jesus.

Give me Jesus.

So I'm going to ask you, what are you facing right now in your life?

Is there a problem to be solved rather than a person to be loved in your life?

There is one person, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the primary person to be loved.

He must be loved first.

Love him and all those impossible people, all those impossible situations.

Well, I wish I could say they would just go away.

Maybe they will.

Maybe they won't.

But I can say this.

If you love Jesus with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, your perspective on life will change.

You stop looking at your lack and you become aware of God's supply.

You become aware of that word we call God's grace in our life.

You stop looking at the storm and you look to Jesus who says, I am here, trust me.

Love him first and foremost.

And as I do that, Jesus does something not to my difficult relationship, but he does something to me.

The fixer.

And when that happens, and that person in my life, that difficult person, they stop being a problem to solve.

And he becomes a person to love.

That's right.

Lord, there is no one on earth or in heaven that we desire beside you.

And we confess, God, our sinfulness of wanting to be in control.

We could say it's our nature, Lord, and of course that's true.

We could say it's because we're deceived by the devil, and of course that's true.

We could say all kinds of things that are true.

But nonetheless, you have faced us this evening with your word.

So would you give us your grace to do that thing which many of us have done a long time ago in placing Jesus on the throne of our life to be the Lord of our life?

Would you help us to renew that again tonight?

I pray this in his name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.

It's my prayer that if you live in the D.C.

area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church, you can go to iBC.church.

Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.