How to Trust God with Doubts

Doing a series of messages right now.

It's called There's More to the Story.

And uh what we're doing is uh taking some of these passages when you read them, sometimes they're off-putting, sometimes they're weird or like we don't know what to make of them.

How do I interpret this?

Does this say what it looks like it's saying?

And um what I'm trying to do is you know, really spark uh desire in your heart to dig deeper into God's word and to get some of these tools that help you interpret the Bible better so you make sure you get the point that you're supposed to be getting out of it.

Um you ever done that point and flip?

You know, you just you're flip and point, you know, you're like you're like, man, I got I need a word today.

And you take the Bible's like 66 books, you're like, I don't even know you know what to do, and you just flip and point and read, and you're like, this is my word for the day.

Have you ever done that?

Have you ever done that?

And you read it and you're like, no, that can't be it.

Okay.

I'm gonna flip again, okay?

Um, you know, the the Bible's amazing, it's an amazing, amazing, amazing gift.

It's the word of God, and uh, I want to just keep you know adding to our learning so that we can keep, you know, day in and day out learning what we're supposed to learn.

By the way, a little foreshadowing.

Starting this next year, the first 15 weeks of 2025, I'm gonna do a series called Cover to Cover.

And we're gonna look at the Bible in its totality.

Uh, 15 weeks, probably the longest series I've ever done, but it's been a really great exercise.

I've been working on this for months, kind of stepping back and like, okay, if we're gonna start and look at the Bible, cover to cover, you know, what is the meta-narrative of the Bible?

How do we look at it and its different literary styles and how should we be thinking about this?

It's been a great exercise for me to take and kind of synthesize the complexity of the Bible down into uh what seems like a lot, but 15 is gonna go fast.

But it's gonna basically be from January 5th up to Easter that we're gonna be doing.

So I encourage you to follow along with that.

It'll kind of be a continuation of what we've been doing here, um, really just looking at more to the story.

So we'll keep it going today.

We're in John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

If you don't have your Bible, don't worry about it.

It'll be up on the screen.

But you're certainly welcome to follow along.

John 6, starting in verse 51.

This is Jesus talking.

And he says, I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Whoever eats this bread will live forever.

This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

When the Jews began to, uh then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?

Jesus said to them, Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.

For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.

Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

This is the bread that came down from heaven.

Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.

He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

On hearing it, many of his disciples said, This is a hard teaching.

Who can accept it?

Hopefully, this isn't one that you flipped and pointed to, right?

If you flipped and pointed, like, eat my flesh, drink my blood.

It really is kind of a cringe-worthy text, to be honest.

Five different times Jesus says something that uh, you know, clearly is symbolic, but it's kind of like, why would you need to use cannibalistic type language to talk about yourself?

We when you look at this, by the way, it's um even more intense in the setting.

So it says in verse 59 that he did this teaching, he said all of this stuff in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Okay, Capernaum was highly concentrated with Pharisees.

This was an extremely conservative religious environment.

This is where uh that would have been the prevailing culture, would have been a dogmatic clinging to the Torah and to God's law.

And the fact that they're in the synagogue, this is a holy place that we come together and we open up the holy word, the holy law of God.

This thing came from the mind of God.

And we're going to read it out loud and we're going to discuss it and talk about it.

And if you know anything about the Torah, you know that part of their law was around not consuming anything with blood in it.

Uh, you remember in the uh we we talked a few weeks ago about, you know, when Gentiles became part of this movement and there was an issue of circumcision, and so they were like, this it opened up this whole debate that they ended up in the Council of Jerusalem talking about, you know, are we gonna force these Gentile men to be circumcised as adults?

And so they so then it opens up a big debate around 613 laws, which ones are we gonna force them to do in this new covenant where you know some of these ceremonial laws or these judicial laws may or may not be necessary anymore.

What's necessary, what's not.

And if you remember in that council uh in the book of Acts, it they get to where they go, look, here's a few things we want you to do.

Boom, boom, boom.

One of them was don't eat blood.

Don't eat, you know, bloody animals essentially.

So when you think about like how seriously they took not eating blood of animals, like if they take a rare steak that seriously, think how they then would respond to what probably felt like a very crude, crass way to talk in such a holy place like the synagogue, where Jesus is talking about cannibalism, or at least it sounds that way, to eat his flesh and to drink his blood.

And he says it five times, and it almost seems like he says it more intensely each time.

So this would have been what would have been seen as a real, uh, just just a really almost insensitive way to communicate.

And of course, it ends up in a mass evacuation of people who had been following Jesus uh quickly unfollowed.

So, what's going on here?

Why would Jesus say this?

Um, there's definitely more to the story.

Um, let me uh let's backtrack a little bit.

So you're in we're in John 6, okay.

Right before this story is the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

All right, so uh we've been talking the last few weeks about the synoptic gospels, synonyms similar.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the synoptic gospels.

So you read a story in Matthew, it's likely in either Mark or Luke, or Mark and Luke.

Um, they seem to probably share some sources in their writing.

And then you have John, which is not part of the synoptics, it stands alone.

So very rarely, actually, there's only a few stories that appears in all four of the Gospels.

And this is one of them.

Jesus feeding the 5,000 shows up in all four Gospels.

And so you you know the story uh this large crowd comes to Jesus and they're all very hungry.

And so Jesus takes five loaves, two fish, and he feeds them.

And after he feeds them, they're so excited about what he did, the miracle and the meal, that they want to make him king.

And this seems like if you're one of Jesus' disciples, if you're you're part of his crew, this is pretty exciting stuff because we're really starting to hit pavement here.

We're starting to get some traction, like this movement is starting to move, like we've got people that are being added to it.

And it feels like if you're ushering in the kingdom of God, this this feels like a big step in the right direction.

And yet Jesus um he slips away from the crowd.

And and he he does what what we call an Irish goodbye, which is he didn't even say goodbye, he just gone.

If you ever had a friend, you're like, what happened to happened to Joe, right?

And he's just gone.

It's Irish goodbye, just see you later.

Like you didn't even know, didn't say goodbye, just gone.

So Jesus slips away, you don't know where he's at, and he goes back to Capernaum.

And so this crowd is now like, we're not letting him get away that easily.

And so they track Jesus down uh in Capernaum, they finally find him.

And it says in verse 25, when they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, Rabbi, when did you get here?

Now look at this, verse 26.

Jesus replied, Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed.

By the way, when he says saw the signs I performed, don't see that as you viewed the signs I performed.

See it as you did not understand the signs I performed.

The Greek word here is about discerning or understanding.

So he's saying, you didn't understand why I did what I did, essentially is what he says.

You're looking for me not because you saw the signs I performed or understood the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.

In other words, you liked what I did for your flesh.

In other words, your belly felt good.

And because I satisfied your belly, you followed me.

Verse 27.

Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life.

So Jesus is starting to signal to them, hey, I'm about to speak to you in transformational metaphor.

And so it says, this um don't look for food that don't look work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

For on him, God the Father has placed his seal of approval.

Okay, when we preach about Jesus and do devos about Jesus and talk about Jesus, we make so much of his miracles and his feeding, his healing and his feeding.

And this was, again, what for most people, when they thought of Jesus, when they got excited about Jesus, that's what they got excited about.

We looked a couple weeks ago at a passage that said, uh, I think it was last week actually, where we said Jesus would heal and say, don't tell anybody.

And one in one of the places they told everybody, and it says he couldn't even go into town.

He couldn't go into the city because so many people were coming to him for healing that he had to, he was forced out into the outskirts of town.

He had to he had to go out into the remote places.

So when we think of Jesus, we tend to go right to thinking about his healing, right to thinking about his feeding, right to thinking about his miracles.

And it's interesting because Jesus seems to feed and heal with a concern that feeding and healing is going to get in the way of his ultimate point and what he's ultimately trying to accomplish.

For some people, when you give them what they want, it is kind of human nature.

Sometimes you see this source to give me what I want.

I came for something, I got it, and now it's hard to see past Jesus' ability to give you what you want.

Um let's let's uh think of think of it this way.

Uh in 1943, Abraham Maslow came up with his hierarchy of needs.

It's this pyramid, it's something that's used in the behavioral sciences as a concept of helping to understand human behavior, human desire, and human need.

So go ahead and bring up this pyramid.

We'll work off of this.

Uh, it'll be up on the screen.

Okay, so think of it as the bottom is the foundational, working toward the peak.

So you start with physiological needs.

What are physiological needs?

Things like air, okay, water, shelter, the fundamentals.

And if you if you're in need, a physiological need, it's hard to think about anything existential.

It's hard to think of anything deeper than just I need air, right?

Like if you put me in a headlock, right, and I can't get air, I'm not thinking about self-esteem.

I'm not thinking about being my best self, all right.

I'm not thinking about self-actualization, I'm I'm not thinking about deep stuff.

I'm just thinking, I need air, I'm tapping out, I'm trying to get air.

Okay, I worked um on a mission trip one time and it took a group of people from our church a while ago, 10 years ago, to Haiti, and we worked with Convoy of Hope and Mission of Hope, who basically provides meals at schools.

And so they don't just give meals, they give meals at schools because what they're trying to do is get kids to go to school.

And they said, if we don't have meals at schools, then a lot of these kids don't have meals.

And so what they'll do is instead of going to school, because I can't be thinking about education when I gotta eat, and so they'll go around looking for food, and so they're like, we put food at the school, so they'll go get a meal at school, we'll meet a physiological need, so then they can come and be educated on a much deeper level and be world changers, okay?

And so the reality is if I have a physiological need, if I'm in pain or I am in a physiological need, I can't really think about deep things or much beyond that.

So you start with physiological, then you have safety needs, okay?

This is, you know, how safe do I feel physically, how safe do I feel psychologically.

Uh, one of the greatest compliments that this church has been given a couple weeks ago, a guy said, Man, I feel so safe at this church.

I feel like I can come in and I'm really sincerely trying to find God, but I've been through a lot and it's not all up and to the right.

And I feel like I'm getting the support I need in a safe environment for me to be honest about my questions and what I believe and what I don't believe and what I'm not sure if I believe yet.

And so I just appreciate the safety and the patience to help me work my way to a belief.

Okay, so safety, security is important.

And then, you know, above that, love and belonging, right?

This is think of the family structure.

Families are supposed to provide this.

They they they should really like I don't expect unconditional love from everyone in the world.

I don't expect that.

But it should be in your family, at very least, like in your family should be a place that no matter how dumb you are, no matter what mistake you make, no matter what moment of weakness you had, no matter how much you disappoint somebody, that you should be loved unconditionally there to have a sense of security and belonging.

Okay.

And yet even families sometimes don't have that.

Sometimes families, it's like if I do the wrong thing to the wrong in the wrong way to the wrong person, I'm out of here.

And so if you are in a place where you have your physiological needs met, all right, you feel secure and safe and loved, and you have your people and you have your community, and you know not everybody's gonna love you, but somebody's gonna love you.

And so it creates a sense of security, then now you can go into esteem, which is you know, me finding what I'm good at and developing some skills, and maybe you wrap a career around those skills, and you now have your place in society, and you have your place in the world, and you find your purpose that then leads to self-actualization, which is at the top.

Self-actualization.

This is your best self.

This is I I I found my I'm safe, I'm secure, I have my community, I I love, I give and receive love.

I'm good at some stuff, I know how that fits in the world.

I feel good about my place in the world.

I love the work I get to do.

Praise the Lord.

Like what that's beautiful.

That that's the that's the the peak.

Okay, so so Jesus does physiological miracles, right?

He feeds hungry people, he alleviates people who are in excruciating pain, who are hurting.

And at its best, what it does is it it meets a physiological need, so that now instead of obsessing around my pain or obsessing around the hunger pain, I now can think about deeper things.

I can now move beyond that into what God is really up to.

So at its best, it's removing an impediment, removing an obstacle, and making it so that the noise of my physiological need is quieted, and now my brain and my focus can move on to more.

At its worst, what would happen is a physiological need is met, and now instead of moving on from the physiological need, now Jesus is relegated to or he is minimized down to just the one who can give you what you want.

So what happens is they chase this man to Capernaum and they go, Can we have another?

And he says to them, You're not here because you see the deeper thing I'm trying to show you.

You're not here because you really want to know what I mean by the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

You're not here because you're willing to go wherever I want to take you.

You're here because of what I did for your belly.

You're here because I met a need.

And instead of having that need now move to the side, and now you can think about deeper things, you've now become hooked on this need.

You've become hooked on, and now you just simply you can't even see me beyond just the source of me appeasing your flesh.

And and so when they come to Jesus, this is what they come to him with.

And so what John does here is he highlights this really, it's it's actually a beautiful piece of literature because what he does is he takes, goes back to the Exodus story, which would have been to this group of people one of the profound, if not the most profound, story in the history of their of their nation.

And he goes back to that story and he does something powerful.

He takes, um he takes their ancestors and the flaws of their ancestors and the mistakes that they knew that their ancestors had made.

And he says, Look how, like you know what they did wrong, but what you don't know is you're doing the same thing they did.

So he takes the Exodus story and he's laying it right over top of their current reality.

All right, so look at this.

He says in John 6.32, Jesus says to them, Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread of heaven, but it is my father who gives you true bread from heaven.

Okay, when he's talking about bread from heaven, he's alluding to what in the Exodus story is called manna.

So think of it like this they were in bondage to the Egyptians for 400 years, 400 years of slavery, and they beg God for deliverance.

And it says in Exodus, God heard their cry.

He hears their cry.

And so he raises up Moses as a deliverer, and Moses leads them, all right?

God parts the Red Sea, they go through the Red Sea, and you know, their enemies are vanquished, and now they go into the wilderness.

So they are now free in the wilderness, but I got all my worldly belongings, I'm carrying it with me.

I'm a nomad now, and so now I'm in the wilderness.

Technically, I'm free because we're not in Egypt anymore.

I don't have an oppressor anymore, but now we're in the wilderness, and now how are we gonna have provision?

So God begins to provide food for the nation, and it's called manna, and it's basically he says in uh he says in Exodus 16, uh chapter 4, or verse 4, chapter 16, verse 4, he says, I'll provide food.

I will bring bread from heaven so that you can eat.

So this is what he's alluding to when he says uh Moses who has given you bread, he says it's not Moses that gave you bread from heaven, but it was God who gives you true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Sir, they said, always give us this bread.

And Jesus declared, I am the bread of life.

Now, again, this is for those that for those of you that remember the book of Exodus, you remember the I am.

That rings a bell, right?

You remember when um Moses goes to the burning bush and God announces himself as I am, and he says, I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.

He says, On what authority?

Like, what am I gonna tell Pharaoh to let let these people go, let your people go.

Who who?

Who are you?

Who should I tell him sent me?

He said, Tell him, I am sent you.

I am sent you.

And so that that again, this is a huge part.

They all would have caught this.

In fact, when Jesus says, I am the bread of life, I am the manna sent from heaven.

Whoever comes to me will never go hungry again, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

That's verse 35.

Look at verse 41.

At this, the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, I am the bread of life that came down from heaven.

So this is what's starting to really send them sideways.

They liked him a few minutes ago when he was making uh loaves and fish, and when he was filling their bellies, and they came to him and said, You know, give us another.

And he said, You're only here because you think you know what I'm up to.

Will you follow me?

Will you walk by faith when you don't like what I'm up to?

This is a good time for us to call a little timeout, do a little introspection for ourselves, because it's so true.

Let's not get so caught up, you know, judging everybody in John 6 that we miss everybody here in December of 2024 in Columbus, Ohio.

How many times do I, how how how willing are you?

How willing am I to follow God's plan and God's path if He takes me down a road I don't like?

If He Don't give me what I want.

If he doesn't give me what I think I need, if it doesn't hit my belly the way I want it to, if it doesn't do for my flesh what I want it to, I mean, it's it's easy to follow him when he's filling your belly with good food, but what about when he's taking me in a direction that's uncomfortable?

What happens when I learn something confusing?

What happens when God isn't lining things up in the way that I prayed them or the way that it seems like God would do for sons and daughters who he loves?

Will I continue to follow?

And so, and now look what it says here, by the way.

So it says, at this the Jews begin to grumble.

All right, now this is again, this is part of the literary uh genius here of John.

So he says in in John 6, 41 that the people began to grumble.

That word grumble, all right, would would spark your mind back to Exodus 16.

So back to the Exodus story, Exodus 16, 2 and 3.

It says, in the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

So John is showing us that the same mentality that was in existence at the Exodus and the people who God led out of captivity, who are now free in the wilderness, being provided.

All I have need of, his hand is providing, and yet they begin to grumble because the provision of God no longer tastes as good as it used to.

Verse 3, the Israelites said to them, If only this is Exodus 16, 2 and 3, verse 3, the Israelites said to them, If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt.

There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.

But you have brought us out into the desert to starve this entire assembly to death.

So what's happening here?

Again, the attitude of the nation was for 400 years they're in bondage, praying for a deliverer.

And what happens?

God hears their cry and meets their need, and he raises up Moses.

And now they're out in the wilderness.

And while they're out in the wilderness, God's providing food.

But the food and God's provision is no longer good enough because I'm tired of eating the same thing every day.

And so, in so doing, what happens in human nature is we start to calibrate to our surroundings, and so we become short-sighted instead of being in the habit of looking back and going, wait a second, I may not be to the promised land yet.

I may not be where I want to be, but I'm certainly not where I used to be.

Look where God has brought me from.

Instead of thinking about where God's brought them from, now they started to look back at Egypt and captivity as the good old days.

The good old days.

When we used to sit around and eat meat whenever we wanted.

How easy it is when you aren't getting the meal you want and your taste buds aren't doing what you think they ought to do, and you're not where you want to be to forget about the prayers that God has answered, the things that God has delivered you from, the journey that you've been on, that He's been faithful to you over and over and over again, and yet there's something about the flesh, there's something about the belly that I start to not be satisfied.

I want more.

And so what Jesus is doing, this is a there is so much to this story.

What Jesus is doing is he's using stumble and grumble, and he's using um you know he's using this imagery.

In fact, look look what it says.

It said in verse 41, John 6, 41, that they begin to grumble.

But look what Jesus gives them a gift in verse 43.

He says, Stop grumbling among yourselves.

So John says they were grumbling, but that's kind of between him and us because we're reading his narrative.

But he says, Jesus says to the people, stop grumbling.

Even that word was to send them back to a moment to give them an opportunity, to give them an opportunity to go, wait a second, wait a second.

Maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way.

Wait a second.

Maybe we're not able to really see what Jesus is up to because we simply want him to fill our belly the way we want it to be full.

Jesus, by just saying grumble, was to catch their attention.

And so again, if so, this would have hearkened them back to Exodus 16.

Remember when we used to sit around pots of meat.

So, what John is doing here, and what Jesus is doing, but John is helping us with, is John wants you and I to go back to Exodus 16 and to look at the mindset Jesus is trying to deliver them from.

And to go back to when they said, you know, it'd been better if we had died in Egypt.

It'd have been better.

Oh, remember the good old days of bondage when we used to sit around the pots of meat and eat, and then Jesus goes, Yeah.

He says, I'm the bread of heaven.

You want pots of meat, eat my flesh, drink my blood.

And he says it five times.

Says it five times.

Um Jesus does here what is a pretty common uh ancient uh Near Eastern teaching tactic and a rabbinic teaching tactic, which is this you tailor your teaching to the heart of your audience.

So if you have an audience who has a receptive heart, they're truly open, then you give them a parable or you give them something that anybody can understand from a child to a PhD, highly educated to just uh no education at all, you can understand the parable, and then you you hide some gold nuggets in there, but ultimately you're you're you're you're you're serving them up.

But what would happen is a lot of the rabbinic teaching, especially when you had a stiff-necked, hard-hearted audience, what they would do is they would actually, instead of trying to take on the burden of making the teaching so palatable and so clear that I put it and it rhymes and it's a perfect sound bite, and you'll never forget it, they actually make the teaching more difficult.

Because they're like, in order for you to get this wisdom and this divine wisdom, you're gonna have to really want it.

And right now you don't want it.

And if you don't want it, here's what I'm gonna say eat my flesh, drink my blood, you can have no part with me.

I'm gonna say it five times in your synagogue, in Capernaum, to the place that pretty predictably what happens is people vacated, see ya, too difficult, tough teaching.

Who can get this?

This guy's out of his mind.

He's talking cannibalism.

What what sort of sacrilegious dude is this?

And they leave.

And so, what what rabbinic teaching would do if you have a hard heart, I'm gonna make it hard for you to find it.

And if you want to find it, you'll find it.

Reminds me of a story.

I don't even know if this story's true, it but it's a good one.

It was told to me.

It was see, pastors need to say that, right?

I I have I have a I have a friend, I have a friend one time who he he told a story in a service, and I was like, I saw him afterwards.

I'm like, was that true?

And he goes, I've never told a story of something God couldn't have done.

I'm like, that's okay.

Um so I don't know if this story's true, but it was told to me by a Marine, okay, and that has a great, that has a great punchline.

By the way, if you're here and you're in a different branch of the military other than Marines, don't get offended, all right, because this is a this is a marine heavy story.

Okay, so this Marine tells me a story that um there was a high school assembly, and they did a 45-minute school assembly to allow these military recruiters to come in and recruit at the school assembly.

And so the first uh the first one up, um, well the principal told these three guys, we got 45 minutes, you each have 15 minutes to recruit for your branch.

So the first guy up in the army and he gets up and he takes 20 minutes, he goes five minutes over his time, 20 minutes to talk about how great the army is and all the benefits of being in the army.

And then he goes and sits down, and then the guy from the Navy, the Navy recruiter, gets up and he goes for 20 minutes, five minutes over, 20 minutes to talk about how great the Navy is and all the benefits of being in the Navy.

If you join the Navy, here's how great your life will be.

So the Marine gets up and he's only got five minutes.

These guys took 40 minutes out of the 45, he's got five minutes, and so he steps up in front of the entire student body, and for four and a half minutes he doesn't say one word.

He just looks at every single student, slowly pans the room, looks every last person up and down, looks in the eye, gets all the way to the end for four and a half minutes, and with his last 30 seconds, he said, Hey, um, I'm from the Marines.

I've looked at every one of you.

At best, there's only two or three of you that even have a shot at being a Marine.

I'd like to see those two or three after this assembly.

And every guy in the whole school, you know, line up.

I don't know if that's true if you're in the Army or Navy.

Please don't be offended.

Please don't email me.

Uh it's a Marine story, okay.

But the the point is, the point is that instead of leading with the benefits and how easy it was, what he was ultimately doing is showing how tough it was.

And what Jesus does with this teaching is instead of making it so easy, he's talking to a bunch of people who are so, they are so at the mercy of their own belly, of their own flesh, of their own predetermined dreams, of their own predetermined ideas of what the kingdom of God is and what God ought to be up to, and what they wanted Jesus to be.

They were looking so much for a transactional Messiah that they missed the transformational work that he was doing, and they couldn't see it and wouldn't see it, and he gave them a history lesson, and he talked to them about grumbling, and he talked to them about manna, and they still didn't want to see it.

And so what he did was he took it and made it even tougher.

And guess what happened?

The opposite of what happened at the school assembly.

Instead of everybody lining up, everybody ran for the hills.

And Jesus says in John 6, 66 through 68, he said, at this point, many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.

Verse 67.

Then Jesus turned to the 12 and asked, Are you also going to leave?

And Simon Peter replied, Lord, to whom would we go?

You have the words that give eternal life.

And friend, I think I think it would be a big mistake for us to rush out of here without having our own soul-searching moment.

Jesus had somewhat of a conflicted relationship between his healing and miracles.

He healed people because he wanted to remove a physiological need to show his mercy, his grace, his love.

You see Jesus show up to a crowd and he had compassion, it says, like sheep without a shepherd.

So he saw not only their physiological needs, he saw their safety and security needs, he saw their community needs, he saw every one of their needs.

And what he did was he met those needs in order to cause pain to subside so that you could see beyond.

We could see beyond.

And here's what's interesting: what Jesus ultimately is gonna do is he's going to train his disciples to have faith in him, to be able to see the deeper work that God's doing even while they have a need.

In Matthew 10, he's going to send them out as sheep among wolves, insecure environments, dangerous places.

And he's going to say, Look, I'm sending you out, no coin purse, no walking stick, no change of clothes.

I'm actually going to put you in a state of need.

And I'm going to send you into unsafe environments because your faith, the substance of things hope for the evidence of things not seen, a revelation of God so clear that I'm able to trust Him that my God will supply all of my needs according to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.

That if I need it, I'll have it when God wants me to have it.

And so I'm going to be able to not be so focused and fixated on my hunger pangs or what I think I need.

I'm not going to make a God out of my belly and my flesh.

I'm not going to only follow if I get it all and it all lines up and I like what he's saying and I like how he's saying it.

I'm going to follow even when I'm confused.

Lord, where would I go?

You have the words of life.

I'm following you.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

No turning back.

Even when I don't get it, look, I don't get to eat my flesh, drink my blood.

I don't know what you were doing there.

I don't get it.

It doesn't seem like what you would do when you got everybody starting to follow.

I don't know why you'd run them off, but Lord, I don't know, but I'm still in.

I'm still in.

I'm going to continue to follow you.

And I'm not going to be incapacitated in the meantime.

I'm going to be able to, in the midst of my unmet need, in the midst of my hunger.

Paul says it like this later on when he has an even deeper revelation of it.

He goes, I've I've learned a secret.

I've learned a secret.

He goes, I've learned how to survive with a whole lot and with nothing at all.

He says, I've learned how to be hungry and I've learned how to be full.

He said, I've learned plenty, little, a lot, a little.

I've been in danger and I've been in safety.

And he goes, and what I've learned is this in every situation, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I'm able to, even with extremely disrupted flesh and needs, physiological, psychological, esteem, safety, love.

Even in the midst of need, I can see past the need.

Faith allows me to not just be a bystander to what God's doing, but to walk by faith, to look past my need to the deeper work that God is doing.

And this is ultimately, this became the cutoff point for people in John 6.

You know what?

I'm not following anymore.

I don't like what he's up to.

I don't like how he said that.

I don't like how this is playing out.

And Jesus' disciple said, No turning back.

I'm going to continue to walk by faith.

And so today I want to take a moment and pray with you.

Maybe you're here and you say, you know, I have been so focused on an unmet need.

Maybe it's a physiological need, maybe it's a love and relationship need, maybe it's a safety and security need.

Okay, maybe it's an esteem.

You just go on, I don't feel important enough.

I don't feel like my life matters enough.

I don't feel respected enough.

It could be a hole somewhere in there.

And today, instead of allowing that to be the stopping point for your faith, today allow God to not only show up and begin to meet those needs, but also in even in the waiting period, to be able to see beyond just the needs that you have and just look in deeper into what God's actually up to in your life, in and through you.

Let's pray together.

Why don't you stand up on your feet?

I'm going to invite the prayer team to come down.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

Lord, a message like this I know hits us all in different seasons.

There are some of us when we talk about the need, the need sometimes that becomes an obsession.

It takes our whole focus and sometimes becomes a hindrance in our relationship with you.

I thank you, Lord, for moments like this that focus us around the fact that you're doing something different.

And this might be really hard to accept.

Maybe very difficult to receive because of the amount of confusion.

Something seems wrong about it.

And yet, Lord, I pray that you would give us the faith that Peter and the 12 had to say, I don't get what's going on.

I don't, it doesn't really add up like I want it to, but I will follow you.

I will continue to walk trusting you, Lord, for you have the words of life.

You have the words of life.

So help us, Lord, as your sons and daughters, to be able to come into a sense of relationship with you that even while needs are unmet, to be able to look beyond at what you're up to.

And yet, Lord, we do come to you in time of need.

Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with asking for help.

Nothing wrong with asking for provision.

Nothing wrong with asking for healing.

We do.

But yet, Lord, we will continue to walk by faith, regardless of how that plays out.

We love you and praise you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.