This One Belief Changes Everything Series

The gospel of John does not contain any parables. What the gospel of John has in it is

conversations and we learn from those conversations. There’s a conversation that we have with

Nicodemus, there's the conversation that we have with the woman at the well, the woman caught

in adultery. We have a long conversation that takes place in John 6 that we're going to look at

together. It's fifty verses. So I've got my iPad here and I've got things all organized in the

scriptures, which I'll show you in just a minute on the screen. But I want you to see that we're

going to go through these fifty verses and look at a conversation that Jesus has. Because these

conversations teach us some valuable things about our lives, about God, and how we can serve

Him.

John 6 starting in verse 22. Would you stand with me as we read the first three verses just as the

introduction that gets us into the story. Notice it says – On the next day (now the next day is after

the feeding of the five thousand and then at night they had the walking on the water of Jesus and

the storm and so on) the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had

been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his

disciples had gone away alone. And they’re wondering where is Jesus? Of course He took the

shortcut walking on the water. They couldn’t figure out where He went. Other boats from

Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So

when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the

boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.

You may be seated.

Seeking Jesus. Now, we're going to see several responses here that we make toward Jesus. And

there are some people that are seekers. They're seeking Jesus. There are some churches that kind

of designed their whole programs around seekers. Seeker sensitive churches. I think that there

can be some value to that. I'm not saying it's not good, I just think that there has to be a way for

people to get depth. Because once they are attracted to a church by being seekers, they must

come in and understand what it means to be disciples. And that's what Jesus is going to talk

about today. He's going to help us understand what it really means to be a disciple.

So these are the guys who are seeking Jesus. As people come to the Lord, as they start thinking

about the Lord, people have questions. And so if you look in verse 25, it says – When they found

him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” So they

just got questions about Jesus. Now, Jesus is not going to answer their question. Jesus is going to

answer a different question. He says to them – Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you,

you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” In

other words, your bellies are full. Instead of seeking the signs. The signs are the signposts

pointing toward Jesus, that He is the one that’s going to radically change your life. Instead of

looking at the Messiah, the Christ, trying to understand who Jesus is, you’re just after having

your bellies full. We look at that and we go that’s pretty hard.

I think there's some counselors that are just listeners. There's nothing wrong with that. There's

some counselors you go into and you talk to them, and you say, “Hey, I'm having a problem with

this.” Oh, tell me about it.” And you tell them a little bit. “Oh, tell me more.” And so there are

some counselors that are just listeners. Some of us need just someone to listen to us and we can

kind of talk ourselves through till we know what the solution is. There are other kinds of

counselors that when you say to them, “Let me tell you about my problem,” they say, “Let me

tell you what your real problem is. Let's not talk about your husband, let's talk about you.” And

so that's what's going on here. Jesus is saying let's talk about the real issue that's going on here. I

want you to draw attention to the real thing that's going on. When someone goes to that kind of a

counselor, then they come to the pastor and they say, “Oh, that person was not very

compassionate. They didn't listen to me.” But I think sometimes we need that kind of approach