John 6

A few Sundays ago as we were reading through the Gospel of Mark someone asked me where the salvation message was in Mark. Each Gospel tells the story from a different perspective. Mark tells a lot about the events that happened and not so much the teachings or sayings of Jesus.
Now that we are reading the Gospel of John I hope you can see that John focuses more on the teachings and sayings of Jesus. You can notice that we are six chapters in and already Jesus teaches about being born again (chapter 3), the living water (chapter 5) and the bread of life (chapter 6) as ways to understand salvation. Each teaching is a little different way to look at relying on Christ. John makes clear the message is salvation comes through Jesus Christ.
The reaction in chapter 6 to Jesus talking about being the bread of life and "eating his flesh" causes an interesting reaction. We may miss it because our minds are taught to think of communion here, but imagine not knowing about communion and being told you have to eat someone's flesh. I am not fond of cannibalism, so that would turn me away.
It says in verse 60 that some followers of Jesus said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" And that response is a fear of many pastors. My goal is to help people grow in their faith and become better disciples of Jesus, followers of Christ. However, Jesus has some hard teachings that people may say if that is what is required I am not willing to do that. People often want an easy faith. People want the basics we need to get by.
But faith in Jesus is not about getting by. Many times Jesus talks in an all or nothing mentality. God will not be satisfied until all of our life belongs to him. Does that mean he doesn't love us if we still hold back some of our life? No, he still loves you, but he also wants to call you to more.
Jesus does give some "hard teachings," but they are also life-giving teachings. When you hear a hard teaching of Jesus I encourage you not to disregard it, but try to dig into it to understand what Jesus is really calling you to and see what life it might bring in your life.