One reason why some of Jesus’ so-called disciples want to leave him comes in v60.
“60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"”
Jesus’ teaching seems hard to them.
Jesus does say some things that seem hard to us.
There’s no point pretending otherwise.
Some of the things Jesus says are hard to understand.
In the Bible, Peter tells us that that are some things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:15-16).
The main things in the Bible are clear and obvious, but there is enough to keep the brightest professor of theology going for more than a lifetime!
It may be that some of Jesus’ hearers couldn’t get their heads round all this stuff about eating his flesh that he’d said, for example, in vv51 onwards.
See their question in v52:
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Perhaps they took Jesus too literally and it just seemed like disgusting cannibalism to them.
If that’s the case, v63 might be part of an answer to them.
They need not to be fixated only on the flesh, but to think about the Spirit too.
Jesus was speaking not physically and literally, but spiritually.
But I don’t think that’s the main issue.
It’s true that some of Jesus’ words are hard to understand.
But the real problem is that some of them hard to accept or believe.
Some of them hard to do.
The word translated “hard” (skle_ros) here in v60 is not so much about something being hard to understand.
It can mean harsh, rough, unpleasant to feel, strong, offensive.
Jesus asks if they find his words offensive in v61, and it seems they do.
They find Jesus’ word intolerable.
“I just can’t accept that!”, they might say.
The problem is not so much that Jesus is speaking over their heads, that what Jesus is saying is too intellectually demanding, too confusing.
It’s not as if Jesus’ teaching is like some complicated differential calculus or some impenetrable piece of algebra that’s beyond most of the class.
Rather, they find Jesus’ teaching too challenging, too difficult to live by, too demanding, too black and white, too full on, too all or nothing, too uncompromising, too uncomfortable.
Jesus’ hearers’ problem is not their lack of intellectual equipment but their lack of spiritual devotion.
The problem is in their hearts more than their heads.
Jesus’ teaching calls for a whole new way of seeing the world, ourselves, God.
Jesus’ teaching is supremely radical, revolutionary, it can seem earth-shattering.
Jesus’ teaching calls for a personal revolution, what the Bible calls repentance, a change of mind.
We need to stop going my own way and start going Jesus’ way.
Daily repentance is needed.
We constantly need to say “no” to self, “yes” to Jesus.
You have to die to self every moment of every day and live for Jesus.
Jesus’ teaching calls on us to put him at the centre, and not ourselves, not to please ourselves but to please him.
Remember what Jesus has claimed for himself.
He said v35: “I am the bread of life”.
That was a very humbling teaching because it shows us that we are hungry beggars in need of bread.
We are as completely dependant on Jesus as we are on our food.
When the people say this is a hard teaching they may well be refering back to the teaching of v58.
V58 – The people of
Jesus’ flesh is a mana, a bread, that people can eat and live for ever.
Jesus is saying, in effect, that he is greater than Moses.
Moses gave the people bread that kept them alive for a while.
Jesus can give them life for all eternity.
“I am the bread of life” is a staggering claim.
It’s not a claim any of us could make for ourselves without being candidates for the loony bin.
Jesus is claiming to be the bread of life, that he alone can give true satisfaction.
And it is hard to believe that.
Wont I be missing out if I live as a committed Christian?
E.g. my friends are going out and getting drunk, wont I be missing out on the fun if I don’t go along with it all?
E.g. Maybe you’re unmarried and there seem to be no suitable Christians on the scene and you feel time is ticking by.
What if I die a virgin, sad and alone and lonely?
How can I be satisfied without a sexual relationship?
E.g. can I really afford to give 10% of my income to the church? Wouldn’t I rather spend that on myself?
Is it worth living as a Christian?
Jesus says that he alone can give true satisfaction.
It’s hard to do some of the things that Jesus says:
e.g. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Mt 22:37)
love your neighbour as yourself (Mt 22:39)
Do to others as you would have them do to you (Mt 7:12)
Seek first the
We must deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Christ (Mt 16:24)
Go the extra mile (Mt 5:41)
Turn the other cheek (Mt 5:39)
We must hate our father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even our own lives if we are to follow Christ (Lk 14:26) – not literally, in comparison to X, put him 1st
Someone once said, “it’s not the bits of the Bible that I don’t understand that trouble me. It’s the bits that I do!”
There is plenty there to be going on with, isn’t there?
If you love a challenge, the Christian life is for you!
There could be no more wonderful or demanding way of life.
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” (G. K. Chesterton)
We want a convenient, entertaining, interesting, helpful Christ – a divine comfort blanket, a cosmic-vending machine, a genie in the bottle, there in case of emergency at the end of a prayer, a diverting conversation topic – not a Jesus who is Lord.
Jesus is Lord and we can only have him at all if we have him as Lord.
We must have the real Jesus as he really is, as Lord.
Will we believe God’s word even when it says things that we find hard to understand or difficult to accept?
After all, it’s nothing to believe God’s word when we happen to agree with it anyway!
The Bible is there not just to confirm our prejudices, but to renew our minds and transform us (Rm 12:2).
Are we willing to be rebuked and corrected by the Bible when necessary? (2 Tim 3:16)
Are you willing to believe that homosexual behaviour is offensive to God, even though our culture celebrates it?
Are you willing to believe that woman shouldn’t preach to men or lead churches if that’s what the Bible says, even if our culture thinks that’s out-dated male-chauvanist nonsense?
Are you willing to believe that the world was made in 6 days, if that’s what the Bible teaches?
Or do we want an intellectually respectable Bible accommodated to our culture? – a Bible with all the difficult bits left out?
In our passage, v66, many deserted Jesus.
It would seem that over the last century or so, thousands in this country have deserted Christ – will we remain faithful to him?
Sometimes sticking with Jesus means we will be in a minority.
The true disciples were in this passage.
We are today in our culture.
It will be costly to follow Jesus.
There may be persecution.
Many times in the history of the church, Jesus’ true disciples have been called on to lay down their lives for him.
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