11.08.06
Aiming for Jesus
John 6:26-29
We live in a world of aims. In our business lives we are confronted by projects with aims. In our personal lives, we set aims for ourselves – we will get fit, we will lose weight, we will this, we will that. My question tonight is basic: what is to be our over-arching aim in life? What are we to live for? And in particular, whether in ‘full-time’ service or otherwise, why should we give up our lives and serve God? We look around us and we see our neighbours with their beautiful houses, beautiful jobs, beautiful kids and beautiful holidays – they aren’t being tempted, or persecuted, or going through the kinds of trials we have to as Christians. So why do we bother? I have spent a lot of time thinking that question through recently, what with the problems I have had to face in the ministry, and the greater problems some of my ministerial colleagues in the presbytery have had to face. Faced with a lifetime of disappointment and pain, why should we bother serving God in this way?
The answer is given here by the Lord Jesus Christ. Bear in mind, no-one has ever worked harder for the Kingdom of God than He and no-one has ever died in such humiliation and pain as He did. He tells us that it all has to do with our aims in life. In this passage Jesus is speaking to a huge crowd who had followed him not to hear what He had to say, but to eat what He had miraculously provided. And it is in this story that I get the answer to why I should keep going in the ministry and why we all must keep serving God, whatever the cost is to ourselves.
[A] The Danger of Setting Wrong Aims (vs. 26-27a)
An aim is that which you are striving after – it is that which you want. The question is; what are we, as Christian servants, to want in life?
1. The Danger Then – back in Jesus’ time, He could attract huge crowds – but He knew that they weren’t there to get their hearts right with God – but because Jesus performed miracles. The aims these people had centred on this life and what Jesus could do for them here and now:
· Food (vs. 26) – Jesus, having just performed the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, became the hottest property in Israel. Bread was the staple diet of these people, and they had to work hard to get it – either working in the fields all day, or working in other ways to earn enough money to buy it. A bad harvest brought famine and death. So the people of day looked at Jesus as a free-meal ticket. That was their aim in life – to get their bellies filled here and now.
· Freedom (Acts 1:6) – so much for the people in the crowd. But what about the disciples of Jesus? What was their aim? I would like to say that it was pure and righteous, but it wasn’t. Even after Jesus’ death, the disciples of Jesus still thought that what they would get from Jesus would only correspond to the here and now of earthly life – they were looking for freedom from the Romans and the setting up of a worldly Messianic Kingdom where they would rule as Christ’s princes and chiefs.
2. The Danger Now – we have other motives for serving Christ – motives which sound good but are no less worldly than the people of Jesus’ day.
· Happiness – it’s so easy to believe that we must serve Jesus in order to be happy. I’m using the word happy and not content here, because I believe that those who are content are not always happy, and those who are happy are not always content. But perhaps we aren’t so interested in inner contentment – we want happiness – and so we serve Jesus in order to be happy. We see Him as a kind of anti-depressant. That may be true – it may be that knowing Jesus will make you happy, but not necessarily. It was said of Jesus that ‘he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’. Someone made a observation to me about how those who are the most godly are often the most tearful – they cry a lot – they mourn over death, sin and the consequences of sin. The apostle Paul was surely less than happy at the apostasy of many of the Churches he had planted. So don’t serve Jesus in order to be happy. It may be His plan to bless you with happiness, but more than often, He will bless you with pain.
· Status – another reason we put our heads above the parapet and enter into service for the Lord is that we want status. After all, ministers and other full-time Christian workers are well-respected, well at least in the church. We want popularity, we want to be part of a team, of a fellowship – we don’t want to be alone, we want friendship and significance. Now again, there is nothing wrong with wanting to have friends and good fellowship. There is plenty wrong with serving God in order to have status, but it is true that sometimes God does exalt His servants. But surely that can never be a reason to serve God. If we do that then its not God we are serving, but ourselves. Jesus Himself was hated and despised. He died alone, deserted by all but a few. The apostle Paul was hated by his opponents and scorned by many Christians as being poorly spoken. His last letter, II Timothy, records for us that at his defence, at his trial, no-one stood beside him, everybody deserted him. Even his closest friends, people like Demas, deserted him. So don’t come to Jesus looking for status.
These and a host of other worldly aims give us the reasons we so often seek and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Other reasons can include wanting to build a big congregation, wanting to gain a reputation or wanting to find physical healing. Whatever they are, they are worldly aims and are not worthy of anyone who claims to be a Christian. And, they are food that is perishing – John Buchan once wrote, “What is the glory of man when it all ends in six feet of dirt?” How fleeting happiness is; how soon gone is the respect of men. All these things are like a piece of fruit which goes off so quickly and rots in the compost heap. Why do we yearn so much after that which is perishing and temporary? What I’m saying is that whatever our aims are in Christian service, they must not be merely earthly – in other words, when you ask the question, ‘why should I serve’, the answer is not, because of the status it will bring you; because of the happiness it will bring you; because through serving you’ll grow a big congregation or anything else. Our eyes need to be elsewhere.
[B] The Need for Setting Right Aims (vs. 27)
Jesus is not a comfortable character – as we saw on Sunday morning when we looked at the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, Jesus was a revolutionary, not in the earthly sense of the word, but in its true spiritual sense. He made people feel uneasy about themselves. And nowhere is this more true than in the realm of the reasons why we do things – our aims and objectives. In vs. 27, Jesus tells us three things about what our aims are to be:
1. Enduring Food (vs. 27b) – all the aims we had listed in the first point of this study are concerned with the world which is perishing. But Jesus here says that our eyes must be on another world – a world which is enduring. Now that is not to say that we cannot enjoy this world, it is merely that our aims must not be confined to this world – we must open our eyes and seek after the food that endures. Now in context, Jesus is talking to people who had come after Him because of what He could do for them in the here and now, but here Jesus is challenging them to come after Him because of far more important things – they are looking for temporary satisfaction; He wants to give them eternal satisfaction, and so He says to them that they must not labour for food which perishes, but for food which endures. They must follow Him for His own sake, not just to fill their stomachs with food. The bread Jesus made for them, it would, if left for a few days go maggoty and perish, and unable to be eaten and unable to sustain life. But Jesus is here saying that there is a kind of food which will never perish, and so will always be able to support life – and it is that food they should be seeking after.
Let’s bring this into the modern world – perhaps you want to go into ‘full-time’ Christian service – but after a few months of doing what you feel God has called you to do, you are disillusioned. You aren’t happy; you aren’t respected and you aren’t seeing the results you hoped. And so you feel like giving up. You feel that God has let you down. You might withdraw into a lifelong sulk, never again willing to serve God with all your heart. But, Jesus is here saying that these things are worldly aims – even though they are couched in spiritual language. He is telling us that if we are looking for temporal benefits as a result of serving Him, we are doing the wrong thing. If we will have ears to hear Him, He tells u that the benefits of serving Him do not come in this perishing world, but in eternity. He is telling us about eternal life – that is the ‘reward’ we are working towards – not earthly rewards which rot away and perish, but eternal rewards which endure throughout eternity.
Think about the Apostle Paul: he gave up everything for Christ and yet suffered a lifetime of pain and rejection. If there was anyone who should have benefited temporally from faithful service it should have been him. But he didn’t. And furthermore, he didn’t expect to. In 2 Corinthians 4:17 and 18, after having spent time talking about how he has been dying daily so that the Corinthian Christians may live, he writes, ‘for this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.’ Brothers and sisters in Christ – our reward for service isn’t here and now, it is waiting for us there and then. Our aim must not be worldly status and happiness, but eternal status and eternal happiness.
2. Sovereign Saviour (vs. 27c) – so far, we have talked about service, rewards and eternal life. But let’s remember how eternal life comes to us – it is the sovereign gift of the sovereign Saviour. He tells the people that the food which endures, which they are to work for, ‘the Son of man shall give you’. This food is a gift of grace. It is not earned – no amount of work can procure it, it is a gift. The people of Jesus’ day didn’t get it, and in vs. 28 asked Him, ‘what may we do in order to work the works of God?’ They thought that there were good works they could do to earn eternal life. But they didn’t realise either the holiness of the God with whom they were dealing and how He cannot tolerate even the slightest of sins, nor did they realise that salvation and eternal life is a gift which God gives, not a wage which man earns.
What about us? We may talk a great deal about being saved by the grace of God, about how there is nothing a man can do which can earn his own salvation, but do we believe that is true not just for our conversions, but also for our whole Christian lives? Do we believe that as Christians we have eternal life and that no action or inaction on our part will change that? In other words, when we are working for the Kingdom of God in whatever sphere, how are we to think about ourselves? The answer is that we are not to boast or lord it over others – because everything we are and have is a gift of God’s grace. We cannot look down on any other Christian, or any non-Christian with a superior attitude, because all that we are is God’s doing. This is a real challenge, especially perhaps for the older Christians amongst us, or the ‘more active’ Christians amongst us – we work hard, perhaps we have a lot of Christian experience, and we are tempted to boast in all we have given up, or all we have learned, or all that we do for Christ. But at the end of the day what separates us from everyone else has nothing to do with us, it has to do with the sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. God saved us through Christ so that no-one may boast. In other words, we don’t, we can’t do things for worldly status, because that very desire is the opposite of all we’ve been saved from. Salvation is a gift so that we cannot boast. Service for Christ is a gift so that we cannot boast. And eternal life is a gift so that we cannot boast.
3. The Bread of Life (vs. 35) – we’ve seen that Jesus gives the food which endures to eternal life – it’s a gift of grace. We’ve also seen that the food itself endures, so that it may give eternal life. But what exactly is the food? Is it something Jesus gives to us – some kind of magic potion – is it aspects of Christian character – is this food joy, peace and love – is it even aspects of salvation – forgiveness, adoption, glorification? No, it is none of these. In vs. 35 Jesus tells us that He is the bread of life. Jesus is the dispenser of the food which brings eternal life because He Himself is that food. In other words, the people of Jesus’ day shouldn’t be running after bread, or even after teaching, but after Jesus Himself. He is to be their ultimate aim – not what He can give them, but He Himself. The same people who accepted what Jesus gave them at this point rejected Jesus Himself a couple of years later shouting ‘Crucify Him’. It is Jesus Himself who is the food which endures to eternal life. It is He who sustains the Christian life throughout the long ages of eternity – and not through something He gives us, but with His own precious presence.
What am I saying, in conclusion? I’m saying that we don’t serve, we don’t minister, in order to get worldly kudos or see worldly results. Rather, we serve because we’ve got our eyes focussed on the world to come. We serve not in order to win eternal life, we serve because we already have eternal life. And we serve ultimately, because we want Jesus Himself – not the gifts He can give us – but we want Him – and we are willing to do anything to get Him. We are serving because we have half an eye on heaven, in which the Lord Jesus now waits to receive us, waiting to embrace us and spend eternity with us. And how do we find the strength and life we need to serve Jesus in this way? We find it in Jesus Himself. As we serve, as we tire ourselves out working for Him, He comes to us and refreshes us by giving us Himself. Just as after a hard day in the field the exhausted farmer came home to a strengthening meal from his wife, so as we work hard for Jesus we find His presence in our lives strengthening us and renewing us in the inner man.
What are you aims in life? Please, pray through what I’ve said tonight – you can find the text of this study on the St. V’s web-site. If you are disillusioned with life, pray through these things and ask yourself hard questions. If you can’t be bothered with serving God, pray through these things and ask yourself hard questions. I pray that each of us, whoever we are, would have our eyes focussed today, and every day, upon Jesus. AMEN