Like every Saturday night, this past week we had a bunch of teenagers over to our house. I taught a short lesson on John 6:60-71 that I thought I would share.
These few verses are incredibly interesting. See, at the beginning of the chapter just a few days before this happened, Jesus had a huge following. Remember what happened? How many people did Jesus get done feeding? And then what did he do right after that? He walked on water. Because of this, a HUGE amount of people were following him.
But then he started to get to the depth of it. Because really, up until that point, people were just following him for them-self. They wanted to get free food, or they wanted to get healed, or they wanted to see a miracle, or they wanted to see Jesus walking on water again or healing someone.
But then Jesus began to challenge them. He began explaining some difficult things. Really, he started to check who serious about following him. You know, it’s similar to being a Detroit Lions fan. In 2008 they were the only team in league history to ever go 0-16. That’s pretty horrible. And I remember a friend that I had on Facebook was a huge Lions fan. Even at their worst, he would have hope in them and comment about how the Lions were going to win. Obviously, everyone would laugh at him and especially with him living in Chicago, he got made fun of a lot. But that’s exactly the point. He’s a real Lions fan. He’s not just cheering for them now because they’re in the play-offs. He a fan of them when they’re good and when they’re bad.
This is basically what Jesus is asking. Everyone followed him when he was doing miracles and when it was fun and exciting. But what about when things got difficult? What happened then?
We see in verse 66 that most of the disciples left him. It looks like there might have only been 12 left. He went from over 5,000 to 12 in just a few days.
But his goal wasn’t to just lose followers. His goal was to challenge people. His goal was to weed out those who were not there for the right reasons.
And this leads us to an obvious question. In which group are we? Do we only follow Jesus when everything is going good, and it’s fun and exciting. Or do we also stick with him when things get difficult?
If there’s anything we’ve been learning over the past few months, it’s that following Jesus and being a disciple of him is not easy. Loving your enemy is not easy. Caring for others is not easy. Being humble isn’t easy. Being gracious and forgiving and humble is difficult.
So, in which group of people are we in?