When evening came after the Lord Jesus fed the five thousand plus, His disciples took a boat to the other of the Lake where Jesus later followed them walking on the water. The next day, the crowds He’d fed looked for Him and, crossing the lake, arrived in Capernaum…
John 6:25-40 [NLTse]
25 They found Him on the other side of the lake and asked, “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
26 Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with Me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. 27 But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given Me the seal of His approval.”
28 They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”
29 Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the One He has sent.”
30 They answered, “Show us a miraculous sign if You want us to believe in You. What can you do? 31 After all, our ancestors ate manna while they journeyed through the wilderness! The Scriptures say, ‘Moses gave them bread from Heaven to eat.’”
32 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you bread from Heaven. My Father did. And now He offers you the true bread from Heaven. 33 The true bread of God is the One Who comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day.”
35 Jesus replied, “I AM the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty. 36 But you haven’t believed in Me even though you have seen Me.37 However, those the Father has given Me will come to Me, and I will never reject them. 38 For I have come down from Heaven to do the will of God Who sent Me, not to do My Own will. 39 And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those He has given Me, but that I should raise them up at the last day. 40 For it is My Father’s will that all who see His Son and believe in Him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day.”
Sermon
Those of you ladies involved in aerobic-type working out will recognize these hand-weights. When you first get started you use these little weights to work you out with, but after a while these weights become too easy for you and you go on to heavier weights so that you keep having to work. And then when they become easy she got these to keep working….
Us men do the same things. To keep our muscles working and growing we start off with one size weight and when those become easy we go to heavier weights to keep us having to work. And all of us, male and female, exercise buffs know that as you keep working out that what used to be work at one time tends to become easy, and then you have to keep increasing the weight and keep increasing the weight to keep yourself working and growing and growing and growing.
…
In our reading this morning from John, the crowds have been following Jesus around. He’s been teaching them, He’s been healing them, He’s been feeding them. And they want more. And Jesus says to them, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with Me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs.” You can hear Him saying, “You don’t want Me, you just want the stuff I can give you!” And so He tells them, “Don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you! For God the Father has given Me the seal of His approval!”
But we human beings can oftentimes hear – not what the one speaking to us is actually saying, but – what we think he or she is saying. And in Jesus’ statement the crowds seem to hear Him saying, “I’m all about giving you stuff! So far I’ve given you physical stuff. But, here, let Me give you spiritual stuff, too!” And so they reply, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”
But they’re still just focused on stuff: Whether it’s the cool stuff He’ll give them or the cool stuff He’ll give them to do, it’s still just all about stuff and it’s still just all about them! So Jesus says, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the One He has sent.” And today, we, too, can be tempted to make our relationship with Jesus just all about the stuff He might give us; and we, as well, can be tempted to make it just all about us. But Jesus says, uuu “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness!” Jesus says, “Make it about Me! And when you do I’ll fulfill your deepest desires and you’ll always have everything you need.” “Believe!”
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Let me take a minute to teach you all a little Greek before we go on from here. Because in English we use words like “believe” one way, usually when talking about something going on in our heads, like giving mental assent, we say: “I believe you.” But we use words like “trust” and say “have faith” to mean something a bit different, usually having to do with our attitudes and our actions: “Trust Him,” we say, and when we do we’re encouraging each other to act differently because of that trust; or we say, “have faith,” but, again, we’re meaning to let our faith change the way we’re acting or responding in a circumstance.
But in Greek uuu “believe”, “trust”, and “have faith” all translate the same verb: ??????? (P?st-yoo-?).
My favorite way of understanding the difference between the way we use these words in English and the way they were used in Jesus’-day is to look at a math equation. Let’s take 4+4. uuu
Now, 4+4=8. And I can believe that. But in Western culture we have this idea that I can believe that 4+4=8 while writing that 4+4=9 on my tax return. And we say that that’s okay “because that’s how I was raised” or “because that feels right to me”. We have this idea in Western culture that one can believe something without our necessarily having to bring our actions into line with it. “Of course I believe in Jesus,” people will say, without being concerned at all about who Jesus is, what Jesus taught, and how Jesus modeled for us to live and has called us to live following Him.
But not in Greek. No. When Jesus calls us to pist-yoo-o
He is calling us to believe Him as well as to believe in Him;
He’s calling us to trust what He’s spoken and to act on His words;
He is calling us to be convinced of what He’s told us and to do our part to have our thoughts, our feelings, our words, and our actions reflect what He’s told us;
trusting Him so that we’ll be what He’s told us to be and do what He’s told us to do!
And that’s why Jesus says that pist-yoo-o-ing can be work, because there is often opposition to believing Him – pist-yoo-o-ing Him. Because our family might not want the truth to come out. Because our boyfriend might not want us to save sex for marriage. Because our business partner might not want us to report everything to the IRS. Because our daughter might want us to buy her immodest clothes. Because our realtor may encourage us to tell a little “white” lie. There can be opposition to pist-yoo-o-ing – to actively believing – as Jesus calls us to. And that’s why He recognizes that it can be work.
Believing can be work when money’s tight and you don’t want to tithe. Believing can be work when you don’t want to forgive the other person or ask for their forgiveness. Believing can be work when others around you seem to have so much and you feel like you have so little, and when everything you worked so hard for is falling apart around you: It can be work to believe.
Because it’s easy for worriers to worry, but it can be work for worriers to cast their cares on the Lord and trust Him through a situation. It’s easy for control-freaks to control, but it can be work for control-freaks to surrender and wait to see what God provides. It’s easy for addicts to work or drink or eat or use or whatever is the addict’s addiction, but it can be work for addicts to face their fears and anxieties and the disappointments of life un-medicated. When we hear that someone’s been talking about us it’s easy to believe that rumor and respond in whatever way, but it can be work to meet with the person or persons involved to get the facts. It’s easy to make a promise and keep it as long as the promise suits us, but it can be work to keep our promises even when they start to be inconvenient and hurt. It’s easy to do those things we want to do or remember to do, but it can be work to do what’s necessary to keep track of our commitments and do every-(even-little)-thing we’ve said we’d do. It can be work, but all of these things and so much more is what believing – pist-yoo-o-iing – in Jesus is all about.
“Don’t just listen to God’s Word,” James writes. “You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.” (1:22) That’s pist-yoo-o-ing. “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to Hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.” (Matthew 7:14) That’s the way of pist-yoo-o-ing.
And, of course, all of this is why the apostle Paul’s can make his famous statement in his letter To the Romans that, uuu “But people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God Who forgives sinners,” (Romans 4:5) because Paul’s not talking about some head-knowledge cut off from attitudes and actions that live it out, Paul is making clear that “people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their pist-yoo-o-ing in God Who forgives sinners.” And so James can write, not that works make one faithful, but uuu that faith, “Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.” (2:17) “Pist-yoo-o in Me”, Jesus says.
And it can be tempting to avoid God’s Word – never reading the Bible ourselves, not being a part of a Bible Study, not making a priority of Worship – thinking that then we don’t have to face, thinking we won’t be held accountable for, what “believing in Jesus” really means and calls us to. And yet until we jump in the pool and start practicing swimming, water will always seem too much for us. And until we start doing the work that Jesus has told us that believing in Him can be, it may always seem hard and forbidding.
Of course, what’s work for me may be easy for you, and what’s easy for me might be work for you. So what’s work for each of us may be different.
But with swimming and weightlifting and anything we’re good at, and love doing, now that we had to first work at and apply ourselves to learn how to and grow to be able to do it: What might start out as challenging and frightening and too much for us, over time, as we exercise our faith and grow to more and more have the heart and mind of Christ; as we obey God’s Word and go about the “work of believing”; that which was once “work” grows to be “easy”; and what we once did by sheer duty, we grow to do out of sheer joy; and what we once did fearfully and self-consciously, now we begin doing seeing that it’s part of God’s calling on our lives, and recognizing it’s part of what God made us and called us in Christ to be!