"To Whom Shall We Go?" (Nettleton) | John 6:60-71

Fellowship Hall

05.31.2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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SPEAKER_01 0:16

Please stand for a reading from John six verses sixty through seventy-one. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I've spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him. And he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away as well? And Simon Peter answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. And Jesus answered them, Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Good morning. Welcome again to Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church. My name is Will Nettleton. I'm one of the pastors here. We're glad you're with us this morning, especially if you're a visitor. Welcome to you. We're glad uh to have you with us this morning as we're continuing our study in the Gospel of John. And as we do that, uh just before we begin, just want to take a moment of personal privilege. As you can see in the announcements there in your bulletin this summer, uh, I will be on sabbatical starting tomorrow. And so I just want to take a moment to say uh thank you. Thank you to the session and to the other pastors and to you. Uh we are able to do these kinds of things because many people are willing to carry the load so that we can. And so thank you. Uh, thank you for the gift to me and my family. We are so grateful. Uh, I love getting to be a pastor. And I love getting to be a pastor here. Uh, it is one of my favorite uh things, one of the favorite gifts that God has given me. And so we are excited about this season of rest and refreshment. And we're looking looking forward to coming back uh for the next season of growing in grace and glorifying God and giving our lives away with you. So thank you for the gift of that. One of the other reasons I love being a pastor is there are many weeks where I am studying a passage to get ready to preach it to you. And uh it's another place where I get overwhelmed that this is my job. Uh I get overwhelmed that I get to do this, that I get to study God's word for a living, and I get to have it work on my heart throughout the week. And I get to come and talk with you about it. And this was one of those weeks because uh this passage did a number on me. And here's why it got to me: because the road splits in this passage around Jesus. The crowds and the disciples have two options. They can embrace what Jesus is saying, that he, as he's been saying throughout this bread of life sermon, that he is the bread of life, that he is the one who's come down from heaven to offer them everlasting life, life they need, life that they will die apart from for forever. They can spend eternity dying or eternity living, and he's come to offer them that life. Or they can walk away from him. And what we see in our passage is that the overwhelming majority of them walk away. What Jesus is saying is too hard to stomach, and so they leave. But in the midst of the darkness of all that unbelief, we also see a bright light piercing through. And we see it in Peter's confession. I wonder if you heard it. When Jesus looks at them, at the ones who are left, and says, Do you want to go to? Peter says, Lord, to whom would we go? Where will we go? You have the words of eternal life. You are the Holy One of God. It is the profession of faith for all of us who have placed our faith in Christ. Where else would we go? You have life. And so that is the question for us this morning. Which road are you taking? Will you join the crowds and walk away? Or have you, with Peter, believed and come to know that Jesus is who he says he is and that he has the words of eternal life? You can see the way we're gonna break down the passage there in your outline. We're gonna look, first of all, at that difficulty of Jesus' teaching in verses 60 and 62, and then the result of it in verse 66 that makes the crowds walk away. We're gonna see Jesus unpack for them the necessity of divine intervention. The way that we are able to embrace this difficult teaching is because God draws us to Himself. See that in verses 63 through 65. And then finally, we're gonna see the essence of two, of true faith, and we're gonna see that in Peter's confession, but we're also gonna see it in the way that Jesus pulls out a contrasting uh option. And we see that in the way Jesus describes who we know to be Judas Iscariot. We see there again the two roads that are laid out for us. So that's the outline, that's how we'll try and navigate the text this morning. Before we do that, let me pause and pray, and we'll ask God to bless our time and his word together. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, I'm reminded of the words of Jeremiah when the words of your book were found, and he ate them, and he said they were sweeter than honey. He said they were the joy of his heart. And so I pray your word would be that for us this morning. Even as Peter says here, you have the words of eternal life. And so would you give those to us this morning? I pray the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing to you, our rock and our redeemer. It's in Jesus' name that I pray. Amen. Back in 2017, there was an article in the Atlantic called What It's Like to Learn You're Going to Die. What It's Like to Learn You're Going to Die. And the article was about palliative care doctors and nurses who have to deliver the news to a dying patient, and how patients experience what they called the existential slap of realizing that death is near. They talk about how people who are in that seat, who are receiving that news, most of the time they kind of cycle back and forth between denial and acceptance. Because all of us know, I mean, conceptually, we're aware, you're gonna die. But if you're anything like me, like most people, you think about that as kind of something out there far off in the future. You know it's coming someday. But it's a very difficult thing for that date to move from the far horizon into your present reality, into a very near timeline with a fixed date on a year that's not that far away. And in the article, they talk back and forth about how people process this, and they talked about one patient who, when she was told her diagnosis, simply picked up her things and walked out. And they asked her if everything was okay, could they help her understand anything? And she said, No, I don't need to hear anything else. I don't want to know anything else. I reject this. And she left. And she never came back. In complete denial, she walked away. There are some truths for some of us that are simply too hard to accept. I was thinking about that article this week because in verse 66 we encounter some of the saddest words in the Gospel of John. Many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. The truth which Jesus presented them was too hard to accept, and so they walked away. So let's look at that, the difficulty of Jesus' teaching in verses 60 through 62. Let's read back there. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? So we begin with this assessment from some of Jesus' disciples about what he's been teaching in this sermon after the feeding of the 5,000, all that we've been looking at the last few weeks together. And their takeaway is it's too hard. And what they don't mean by that is that it's too hard to understand. The Greek word literally means it's offensive, it's too harsh. They get what he means. They're very clear on that. They don't like it. It's too hard. Who can listen to it? Why is that? Why don't they like it? Well, if you remember the last few weeks of looking at this chapter, Jesus has made multiple pretty radical claims. He's claimed to be the bread from heaven that offers them eternal life. And many of them have known Jesus for a long time. Many of them are also from Galilee, many of them know him from Nazareth, and they even have this commentary kind of throughout of, we know his parents. This is Joseph's son. What's he talking about from heaven? He's from Nazareth. We remember that. We know you. So on the one hand, he's making these elevated claims about himself that they find offensive. So he's thinking too highly of himself, but then he's also being kind of, he's talking in language that they find debased and kind of untoward. It's inappropriate the way that Jesus is talking. He has all this language about you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And the only reason that is not as offensive to us is because we've heard it all our lives. To them, it is cannibalistic. They're Jews as well, and so they don't eat anything with the blood in it. And so on the one hand, Jesus is claiming too high of things for them, and on the other, he's being too earthly and gross and weird. And so all of that is probably in view when they say this is a hard saying, who can listen to it? What do they mean? Dealer's choice, pick any of it. It's all offensive to them. And Jesus ups the ante in verses 61 and 62. And in fact, he says, You think that's bad? Wait until you see what comes next. And he starts using this language of ascension. It's actually language we've heard before in the Gospel of John. The last time he used it was back in chapter 3, when he referenced the bronze serpent in the wilderness. Do you remember this? He said, The Son of Man is going to have to be lifted up like that, and all who believe in him will have eternal life. And we know from the rest of the story that he's talking about how he is going to be lifted up on the cross. And so the commentators go back and forth here about when Jesus is talking about this language of lifted up and ascension, is he talking about the cross or is he talking about the literal ascension after he rises from the dead? That story we know from Acts chapter 1, where Jesus goes back up into heaven. And I think that's more likely based upon the fact that he's saying where I was before. But I actually don't think the options are mutually exclusive. I think Jesus is referring to everything they're going to have to watch happen with him between now and when he ascends back up into heaven. And I think that especially includes the cross. So I think the summary there, what he's basically saying is if you have found what I've been saying so far offensive, you're never going to be able to handle what I have to do next. You're never going to be able to accept all that's going to come after this. Remember, they are looking for a political messiah. They're looking for someone who can lead the charge against Rome and take Jerusalem back for Israel. And Jesus is saying, I am that true king, but it is not going to look like that. I am going back to where I was before, to the throne of heaven, but to do that, I'm going to have to be lifted up in another way. I'm going to have to take another throne. The reason the gospels often use this enthronement language to talk about Jesus being on the cross. There's this upside-down way in which that is his throne. It's when he's crowned. And verse 66 gives us the ultimate result of all of this for the crowd. It's too much. It's too much for them. And so they walk away. For us this morning, it's important just to realize Jesus' message is always an offense. It's always an offense. If you have not been offended by the claims of Jesus, it's possible you've missed them. Now we're not first century Jews, and so what offends us is different than what offends them, but there is still plenty to be upset about. Let me give you just one from this passage. Think about what Jesus says in verse 65. No one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father. He repeats that three times in John chapter 6. No one can come unless the Father grants it. If that's not offending you, it's because you're not thinking about it. There is nothing more offensive to the modern American mind than you cannot do it. He's saying you can't do it. You don't have what it takes. It's not within you. That's what he's saying. You need help from the outside, you need divine intervention, which is what he talks about next. So let's go there in verses 63 through 65. Jesus says, It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him. And he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father. So they have asked this question. After deciding that Jesus' teaching is offensive, they've said, Who can listen to this? And Jesus goes on this kind of winding answer to basically say, Nobody, unless the Father gives it to you, unless the triune God intervenes. I wonder if you notice that we have all three members of the Trinity mentioned right here in these verses. He says it's the Spirit who gives life in verse 63. He says his own words, he's the Son of God, the Word made flesh. His words are spirit and life. And then in verse 65, he repeats something he said already: no one can come to me unless it's granted to him by the Father. So we can't save ourselves. What do we need? We need the Father to draw us to the Son, to give us the life that comes by the Spirit. We need the Father to draw us to the Son, to give us the life that comes by the Spirit. We are not going to overcome the difficulty of Jesus' teaching by just trying harder. No, Jesus says the flesh, us on our own, is no help. We can't do it. We need God to intervene. So how does that work? At first glance, even as I'm unpacking some of those Trinitarian things, you may be just thinking, I don't, I'm not following. I can't wrap my head around what you're saying here. Jesus is saying the spirit gives life, his words are spirit and life. What are you saying? Jesus is actually repeating a pattern that we have seen throughout the scriptures. The Spirit of God and the Word of God often are working together to bring life. If you think back all the way to the beginning of the Bible, first page, Genesis 1, verse 2, the Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the deep at the very beginning. And the very next thing that happens is that God starts speaking. The Spirit of God and the Word of God. And what happens? Everything, actually. Life comes out of nothing. Order comes out of chaos. The Spirit of God and the Word of God bringing life. Ezekiel has this vision. The Holy Spirit takes him out to this valley that's full of just bones. These skeletons that have just decomposed into piles of bones. And the spirit asks him this question: can these bones live? And Ezekiel wisely says, You tell me. He's like, I don't know. I don't know what we're doing out here. And the Spirit tells him, preach to the bones. And Ezekiel starts prophesying, and the bones start rattling and coming together, joint over joint, and their bodies grow back. But they're just standing there. You realize they're not alive yet. And the problem is they don't have the breath of life in them. Now here's what's interesting: the Hebrew word for breath, ruach, is also the word for wind, and it's also the word for spirit. And so what happens next in Ezekiel 37 is this incredible wordplay where the Holy Spirit tells Ezekiel to preach to the breath and to summon the breath from the four winds. It's this wordplay where he's using the same Hebrew word over and over and over again. And what he's saying is, call the Spirit, because what they need is the breath of life. Remember what happened back in Genesis when God made man. What did he do? He breathed. And so Ezekiel has this moment where he's preached to the bones the word of God. They've come back together. And the Spirit tells them to summon the Spirit and preach to the Spirit. And then all of a sudden they have life. They come alive. The Spirit of God and Word of God bring life. Side note, this is why we do this every week. This is why we open up God's word and we ask the Holy Spirit to bless it. Because we believe when the Word of God goes forth and the Spirit of God is present, dead people come alive. That's what we believe. That's why we do it every week. Now, what does this have to do with John 6? Let me bring you us back there and see if we can connect some dots. In verse 63, Jesus tells them, It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. What I think Jesus is saying there is your flesh cannot help you. You are like those skeletons in the valley of dry bones. You're basically the walking dead. You need the spirit to give you life. And Jesus has the spirit. We know this. If you've been with us in the Gospel of John, we were told back in chapter 1, John says, I saw the spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Jesus. In chapter 3, verse 34, we learn that Jesus has the Spirit without measure. It's how he speaks the word of God. It's why Jesus can now say in our passage the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. That is, they are the product. Of the life-giving spirit. And so they generate life within you. As Jesus' words get inside of us, they bring life. So how do we get them inside of us? We believe. You take them in, you believe them, you embrace them. But there's just one problem. And Jesus puts his finger on it in verse 64. People don't. We don't believe. And then he adds in the kicker in verse 65 they can't. They can't unless the Father draws them. Okay, so let me get this straight. I can't get eternal life on my own. The flesh is no use. I need the Spirit who gives life. And I get that through believing the words of Jesus. So I need to come to Jesus. But I can't. Unless the Father draws me. Is anyone starting to get frustrated yet? Join the crowd. Literally. Look back at verse 66. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. It's too much. The gospel has always been offensive. This idea that you and I need saving. The Bible is so clear. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. That's what Paul says in Ephesians 2. It's not something we can do ourselves. We have to go to Jesus, and even that is something we can't do on our own. The Father has to grant it. Or as Paul says in Ephesians 2 later on in that passage, it is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It's a gift so that no one can boast. This is what's offensive about the gospel. You have a problem. You're dying. And there's nothing you can do about it. In fact, you're not just dying, you're dead. You're not drowning, you're not struggling, you don't just need Jesus to throw you a little life rap and pull you into the boat. You're dead. It's over. You're at the bottom of the ocean of your sin. And the only way that you can be brought back to life is for Jesus to come down there, to take your dead corpse, to bring it to the surface, and to breathe new life into you. That's the only way. How are you with that? Are you ready to walk away yet? What do you do with this? It's here that we turn to the essence of true faith in verses 67 through 71. So look back there with me because we get the responses, both good and bad. So Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away as well? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed, and we've come to know that you are the holy one of God. Jesus answered them, Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him. So the crowd leaves. We're left with Jesus. We know the twelve are there. There might be a few more, but it kind of feels like we've gone from 5,000 that got fed, plus their families, to just these guys. Everyone else is left. And so Jesus puts this kind of testing question to them. Do you guys want to leave too? And he's phrasing it almost as if, because he knows they need to answer. He knows the answer. They need to answer. They need for themselves to know. What are we going to do? We going with them or are we going with him? And Peter makes this beautiful profession of faith. Where else would we go? Notice the depth of this. Peter says, on the one hand, Jesus, the alternatives are not great. There's not a lot of good options out there. This actually is part of what we're saying as Christians. We think every other religion, every other worldview, every other way of life, in the end, do not answer the big questions in a satisfactory way. And then we also think to say that none of the religions are right, and to be atheists or agnostics basically forces us to pretend that our lives have meaning. When in the end we know they really don't. We kind of have to create our own meaning, eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow we die. And so we have this moment where with Peter we say, where else are we going to go? What else are we going to do? And that can make it sound like Jesus is the least bad option. That is not what Peter means. That is not what Peter means. The reason we don't want to go anywhere else is not because of how insufficient those other options are, though that's true. It's because of how Peter finishes his confession. Jesus, you have the words of eternal life. Peter affirms what Jesus says earlier. Jesus had said, My words are spirit and life, and Peter says, We know. We've experienced it. We believe and we have come to know that you are who you say you are. You are the Holy One of God, the one set apart to make all wrong things right. We know. And so we're not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere. That is the essence of true faith, this rejection of all other alternatives. Where else would we go? But even more than that, it is a deep experience of the life-giving power of Jesus' words. And we expect, I expect, as I was reading this passage, that Jesus would say, Well done, Peter. You expect him to kind of have that moment. And he doesn't. Do you notice what Jesus said? Did I not choose you the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil. Kind of a downer. A pretty amazing confession. And Jesus starts talking about one of them's a devil. Why is Jesus doing this? What we're going to find in the rest of the gospel is that the line between belief and betrayal is going to be very thin. Judas is going to betray Jesus. But Peter, who's making this confession, if you remember, is also going to betray Jesus. You remember? He has that astounding confession later. He says, I'll never leave you, though everybody else falls away, Jesus, I never will do it. And Jesus even tells him on the front end, you're going to deny me three times. And then it happens. The line that runs between Judas and Peter is not, that gap is not as big as we want it to be. The difference in the end is that Peter keeps coming back. Jesus keeps drawing him back, and Judas doesn't keep coming back. This is a sober reminder for us in the church. The crowds have walked away. We might think of the crowds like those out in the world who've outright rejected Jesus. But Judas and Peter are in the inner circle. They have stayed with Jesus, at least for now. Judas is so haunting to me. He has experienced the personal call of Jesus to follow him. So often, if you're like me, you think of Judas as kind of this like cartoon villain kind of twirling his mustache over in the corner, waiting to get Jesus, right? That's not it. Judas is so ingrained into the life of the disciples. He's so much like them that when Jesus says stuff like this, one of you is going to betray me, they're like, Well, who's he talking about? Judas had the money bag. We know this from elsewhere in the gospel. He was trusted with responsibility. Even on the night that Jesus is betrayed, if you go back and look at Mark's gospel, the Last Supper, they're sitting around the table, and Jesus is saying, one of you is going to betray me. He's repeating this again. And they're leaning over to each other like, is it me? That's how in Judas is. He walked with Jesus. He saw things that only the 12 saw. He heard things that only the 12 heard. He is almost as close as you can get, and in the end, he will end up being a million miles away. Is that us this morning? Judas is this haunting reminder that it is possible to spend your life closer to Jesus, so close, almost all your life, and then to miss everything about him. It is possible to come to church, to volunteer regularly, to be an elder or a deacon or a pastor, and to miss Jesus. Judas was a disciple. But Peter is this beautiful reminder that an alternative is possible. It is possible to believe and come to know that Jesus is the Holy One. As I've been talking, I know some of you are hanging on to Jesus by a thread. And what I just said about Judas will crush you if you do not remember the story of Peter. Even after this beautiful confession, Peter's gonna fail. He's gonna do it over and over again. Even after Jesus ascends up into heaven and he's been restored, there's this moment that Paul tells us about in his letters where he has to go confront Peter to his face because he's messing up again. Peter's life is one long up and down story. And yet in the end, Jesus never lets him go, but brings him all the way home. I mentioned this morning, and we'll close here, two roads for us. We can go the road of the crowd, the road of Judas in the end. We can find Jesus' words too hard to stomach. Or we can go the bumpy, winding, up and down road of Peter and say with him, Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. So since I don't get to preach to you for three months, let me say it again this morning. If you have never come to Jesus, there's life in his name. All the other answers are unsatisfying. Christians throughout history have found life in him. Many of us are here this morning because we have found life in him. You have the words of eternal life. Where else would we go? Come to Jesus. The thing you were looking for is here. It is in these words and in his spirit. You can live forever as you were meant to live. The thing your soul hungers for exists. And his name is Jesus. Come to Jesus Christ and live. Now you may think, I thought you said I can't. I thought the Father has to draw me. What about all that stuff? Let me tell you something. If you even think about wanting to come to Jesus, the Father's already drawing you. So you finish the job this morning. Secretly, it'll be him finishing the job. You finish the job. Come to Jesus this morning. Come to him and live. And those of you who have, examine ourselves again and cling to Jesus. Where else would we go? Let us not be like Judas that was so close and missed it. When we fail, come back again. There is a Jesus ready to restore you. All that the Father has given to me will come and I will never cast them out. So for the first time or for the thousandth time, come to Jesus Christ and live. Amen. Let me pray. Father, we know you have to do it. You have to save us. You have to draw us to Jesus. We are sobered by these words about Judas and about so many who turned away. I think Jesus, even though those words that you said in the Sermon on the Mount, that there's going to be those on the last day who are going to say, Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name? And you're going to say, I didn't know you. We want to know you. And so would you do the miraculous work of raising dead people to life this morning? And would you draw us back again, those of us who, like Peter, find ourselves failing over and over again? Would you come bring us back to Jesus that we might live forevermore? We ask all these things in his name. Amen.