8/27/23 John 6:56-69 “Heaven Will Never Be Boring!”

24 Aug 8/27/23 John 6:56-69 “Heaven Will Never Be Boring!”

8/27/23       John 6:56-69          “Heaven Will Never Be Boring!”

Have you ever gotten tired of something?  I know that I have.  Before I knew Christ, I would get tired of something and I would just quit.  I was pretty much looking out for myself and no one else.  I’m sure that many of you have quit something that you wish you hadn’t.  Part of the problem was that I was trying to fit into society.  That was my main goal in life.  I think that we have all known someone like this.  Things would get tough and I would look elsewhere.  Then Jesus came into my life.  Suddenly, I didn’t fit into society at all.  I had to decide if I was going to follow Jesus or the world.  I chose Jesus and I have had all sorts of repercussions.  Good friends were suddenly not friends at all.  There were many who made fun of me.  There were those that wouldn’t talk to me.  It was during these times that I really developed my relationship with Jesus.  It would have been easy for me to walk away from my faith but I hung on.  And because I hung on and I read and studied the Word, I am before you today.  I wouldn’t change any hardship in my life because the end result is that I’m here this Sunday morning.  Jesus is that great and He is that great for anyone and everyone.  Today, we are going to continue to look at John 6.  A couple of weeks ago, we found that Jesus is the bread of life, the living bread.  Today we will look at what this really means to us.

I would like us to shed a misconception as we take a look at a story from Star Trek.  On this particular episode, there was a fellow named Cochrane who was lost in space and an alien rescues him.  The alien restores his youth and Cochrane lives for hundreds of years.  He finally convinces the alien that he needs to be with people like himself to survive.  Cochrane thinks the alien will send him home to earth but instead the alien captures the Enterprise.  Now he has to explain all this to Captain Kirk, including his eternal youth.  Then Kirk asks what will happen if Cochrane leaves the Companion.  He replied, “I will age again and die like everyone else.”  Then he added that eternal life was pretty boring.   Years later in a newer version of Star Trek, there is a character named “Q” who is also eternal.  He gets so bored that he plays tricks on Captain Pickard.  People that we know tell us how boring it will be playing a harp all the time in heaven.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, heaven will not be boring.  We know this because there will only be good and happiness in heaven and boring goes against any happiness.  Boring is not perfection so you will not find it in heaven.

I’ve only just started and I’m already off track.  A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at how we are to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ.  This was a hard saying for the people of John’s time and it is for us too.  So, what happens is most of the disciples say that this is much too hard to follow and they leave.  Jesus had just fed 5000 and now they are all gone.  What a fickle bunch of people!

The question that we should ask here is, “Who are these people?”  Now I don’t know first and last names here but I think that we can take an educated guess.  Jesus had just finished feeding the 5000 as I mentioned.  Maybe some of these people who left were from this group.  It is a different day now and maybe they are hungry again.  Maybe they figure they got one free lunch out of Jesus so they are entitled to get some more.  They knew about Jesus but they sure didn’t know Jesus.

Or maybe they had been present at one of the healings.  Maybe they saw that Jesus had power over all sorts of calamities.  Maybe they had a sore throat or a broken arm.  Then they came to Jesus and demanded that He heal them.  After all, He had healed others so it is only fair that He heal everyone.  They were looking for our government healthcare and all they found was Jesus’ care.  I don’t ever remember that God tells us anywhere in the Bible that life is fair.  It is not.  What Jesus is trying to do here, through all the physical healings that He performed, is to lead these people to spiritual healing, which is far more important.  Where you will spend eternity is far more important than the sliver in your finger.  These people can only see their own discomfort and they cannot see Jesus for who He is.

There were probably some of these followers who were at Cana when Jesus turned all that water into wine.  I think we can let our imaginations run loose on this one.  The point is that the people who turned away from Jesus that day were people who had no faith.  They were people who were caught up in all the miracles and happenings that Jesus provided.

We have the same thing going on today.  Following Jesus is much too hard for most people to do today.  It is too hard for many denominations.  Many denominations have become tools of the devil.  Anyway, it would actually mean believing in what the Bible says and then going out and doing it.  A few years ago, we had a group called the Jesus Seminar.  If you don’t know this group, I bet they sound pretty impressive just by their name.  This was where a group of heretics came and met to decide if Jesus was who He said He was or if this is all made up.  This really caught the eye of a lot of folks including the media because it suddenly became a lot easier to follow Jesus.  If you don’t have to do the work, if you don’t have to love your neighbor, then it is easy.  It gets really easy to believe if Jesus didn’t die on the cross.

Another group you really have to watch out for today is what they call the emergent church.  This is where many churches and denominations are headed.  They say, “Let’s see if we can fill these pews again but let’s not use the Bible to do it.  Let’s do it with things that people relate to.  Let’s help people to feel good.”  They have even gone so far as to write their own Bible which is called The Voice.  In this Bible the name Christ never appears.  They say that the name Christ might be offensive to some people so we can’t use it.  In other words, it is pure blasphemy!  The emergent church is pure baloney!

Anyway, beware of the emergent church.  Beware of diversity when you see it.  Beware of the term inclusiveness.  Some of these ideas are good but many times they have fallen into the wrong hands and a church without God is the result.  These people who support these ideas today are the same people who walked away from Jesus 2000 years ago because following Jesus was too hard.  Think about that next time someone approaches you saying that the Bible is antiquated and must change.  Think about that when you see denominations that throw out parts of the Bible that are too hard to follow.

Ok, enough of that for now.  I think we have all been around the world enough to know what I’m talking about here.  To put it all in a nutshell from a worldview opinion, God must change in order to operate efficiently in our world.  So, what does Jesus say to these people who doubt Him?  He says, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.”  If you remember back a few weeks, this is another place where we could support the predestination argument.

Anyway, Jesus is telling these people that this is God’s world and we do things God’s way.  Jesus knows beforehand who will follow Him and who won’t.  We like to forget that Jesus knows everything.  He knows the people we know and He knows which ones are following the false trail.  He knows that many will take the wide road to destruction but only a few take the narrow path to righteousness.

He knows the answers but He asks anyway, “You do not want to leave too, do you?”  He asks this of the remaining 12 disciples.  It may seem a little funny that He would ask this if He already knew the answer.  But He didn’t ask this because He needed to know.  He asked the question because the disciples needed to know the answer.

This isn’t even very strange in our world today.  Even though I didn’t like it much at the time, I did have the fortunate experience of having to go to school at least once a year for 8 years.  Our young people in our local schools have the same experience to a different degree.  Whenever any of us take a test for our teacher or write a paper for our instructor, we don’t do it so that we will further educate the educator.  No.  We do it so that we will further educate ourselves.  We need to know the answers so that we can learn.  You can think of many other instances where we learn like this.

So, if you are going to learn, let me ask you this question.  Are you going to follow Jesus or are you going to follow the world?  That is the question that Jesus asks of all of us.  This is the question that many pastors will not ask because it might be offensive if someone cannot answer it the way Jesus wants.  You are not supposed to ask this question because it might make people uncomfortable.  Jesus doesn’t want to ask us this for any of these reasons.  He asked us this because He loves us and He wants us to spend eternity with Him.  It is our choice!

A couple of weeks ago, we talked a little bit about near-death experiences and hell.  I would just like to add one thing to those thoughts.  I have not read of one person who has had a near death experience where they went to hell, who did not have a complete change in life when they were brought back to life.  They may have only caught a glimpse of this terrible place but this glimpse was enough for even the hardest criminals to change their ways.  Jesus doesn’t want any of us to go there.  He wants everyone to come to Him.

So, Jesus knows that many will not follow Him even though He loves us so much that He has done all these things for us.  So, how does Simon Peter answer?  First, I want us to remember who Simon Peter is.  This is the disciple who is always sticking his foot in his mouth.  This is the guy who doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what Jesus is doing or who He is.  This is the guy who is so much like me that sometimes it hurts.  Most people identify with Peter because he is the disciple who seems to be most human.  He asks the questions we want to ask and he says the things that we might want to say.

But look what he says here.  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Just when you think you have Peter figured out, he says something profound like this.

To whom shall you go?  I don’t know about you but thirty + years ago I gave myself to the Lord and I have been trying ever since.  I know that I fail a lot but Jesus is always, always there to help me back on the right trail because He loves me.  He loves you.  My recommendation to you is always follow Jesus.  When you fail, go back and try again and again.  He will help you all the time.  He loves you that much.

He has the words of eternal life.  You are going to go to heaven because of Jesus.  You are going to heaven because Jesus died and took away your sins.  You are going to heaven because Jesus has cleansed your lives so that you may enter the perfect place, heaven.  You are going to a place where there is no more pain, no more death and no more anything which is bad.  You will see friends and relatives in their most perfect state.  And as much as I try to describe heaven, I know that I cannot even begin to feel the happiness and contentment you all will find there.  Heaven is definitely not a boring place.  You will be so happy that there will be no time for boredom.  This place is just so exciting!  Praise the Lord!

And why is it so exciting?  It is because you know that Jesus is the Holy One of God.  There is absolutely no maybe about this.  That’s a fact, Jack!  Jesus is God.  He made this world and everything in it.  He loves everything in His creation and He wants all of us to be a part of it for eternity.  I cannot even begin to imagine what it will be like to spend eternity in Heaven.  I praise the Lord that He brought me out to become a pastor on the prairie so that I will be able to spend eternity with you also.  This is exciting stuff!

If we could get people to listen to this message, we would have converts everywhere.  Unfortunately, this world is controlled by Satan and he has plugged the ears of most people of the world.  We discussed some of these people in the beginning of this message.  They are everywhere and sometimes they are even sitting next to you on Sunday morning.  When you find them, forget about all the bad stuff.  They don’t need reminding of how they don’t know Jesus.  They do need reminding of how much Jesus loves them.

Tell them the message from the biggest mess up in the New Testament, Peter.  Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”  Tell them how great this God really is.  I can’t believe that for once in my life I listened to someone besides me.  I listened to Jesus and I found a love that I had been missing my whole life.  You can have this love also, no matter who you are.  He loves you so much that He wants you to be with Him just as you are, just as I am.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.