Transcript for Closed Captioned 8-23-2009 Message, Zion, Torrance, CA

Text from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, used

by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Let us rise for the reading of this morning's sermon text

recorded for us in John's Gospel, where we read from

Chapter 6, beginning with verse 41:

At this

the Jews began to grumble about him because

he said, "I AM THE BREAD THAT CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN."

They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph,

whose father and mother we know?

How can he now say, 'I CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN'?"

"STOP GRUMBLING AMONG YOURSELVES," Jesus answered.

"NO ONE CAN COME TO ME UNLESS THE FATHER

WHO SENT ME DRAWS HIM, AND I WILL

RAISE HIM UP AT THE LAST DAY.

IT IS WRITTEN IN THE PROPHETS: 'THEY WILL BE TAUGHT BY GOD.'

EVERYONE WHO LISTENS TO THE FATHER AND LEARNS FROM HIM

COMES TO ME.

NO ONE HAS SEEN THE FATHER EXCEPT THE ONE

WHO IS FROM GOD; ONLY HE HAS SEEN THE FATHER.

I TELL YOU THE TRUTH, HE WHO BELIEVES

HAS EVERLASTING LIFE. I AM THE BREAD OF LIFE.

YOUR FOREFATHERS ATE THE MANNA IN THE DESERT,

YET THEY DIED. BUT HERE IS THE BREAD

THAT COMES DOWN FROM HEAVEN, WHICH A MAN

MAY EAT AND NOT DIE. I AM THE LIVING BREAD

THAT CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN. IF ANYONE EATS OF THIS BREAD,

HE WILL LIVE FOREVER. THIS BREAD IS MY FLESH,

WHICH I WILL GIVE FOR THE LIFE OF THE WORLD."

This is the Word of our Lord. Let us pray:

Glorious and Gracious God,

may the words of my mouth and the meditation

of each of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight,

our only source of hope and comfort. Amen.

The congregation

is seated

before Pastor Dave

begins the sermon.

Dear Followers of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

How weak our human nature is.

How truly weak we are,

because even when we look

at the great heroes of faith in Scripture,

take for example the prophet Elijah.

I don't think we're going to argue that he is one

of those saints of the Old Testament who stands out

as someone who is powerful and

strong in the Word and in the presence of the Lord.

I mean we have that picture of

him standing before those hundreds of

prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel,

taunting them, mocking them,

laughing in their face

that all of their whining, yelling and hollering and

cutting themselves can't bring down the fire

from their gods to consume

their offering.

Yet after Elijah poured water upon water

on his altar and prays to God,

God ignites that and consumes his offering.

And in the strength and the power of God,

Elijah and his men go out and slay those prophets of Baal.

We see the mighty Elijah.

And yet immediately following that,

we hear what happened in our

Old Testament text.

He went out under a broom tree

and cried to God that he was the only one left.

All of Your other people ...

they've all fallen away.

They're all worshiping Baal. I'm the only one left.

God, I want to die.

How quickly the human spirit

can go from trust ...

to despair.

The same thing is true of

those thousands of people that Jesus fed

in that simple miracle with the loaves and the fish.

They followed after Him.

They wanted to spend time with Him. They sought

Him out for the miracles that they saw Him doing.

They came to Him and Jesus proclaimed that

He was the One who had come down from heaven.

And what does John record for us?

They began to grumble

among themselves. Who does HE think HE is anyway?

Isn't this Joseph's son? How can HE be the one

who's gonna stand up in front of us and claim

that HE came down from heaven?

How quickly and easily,

we as human beings, even after seeing

the WONDERFUL POWER and STRENGTH of GOD displayed,

can turn around

and focus only on us.

And only on

our own simple human reason

and only on our own selfish needs.

And get so turned around

that we can't listen

to what our Father has to say.

We cannot listen to what God the Father has in store

for us and has planned for us and all of the blessings

that He has given to us because we just

don't wanna hear it!

And Jesus is the One who stood in front of those people

and in history He stands before us

and points us to the Father,

directs us back to His Father.

Yes, He IS the Son of God who

left behind the glories of heaven

who was with God from the very beginning,

who with the Father and the Holy Spirit

came together and said: Let us create this world.

Let us do this in a miraculous

and special way, it was the Word

that God the Father used

to create the world. He said: Let there be light

and there was light!

That filled this planet with all sorts of wonderful and

marvelous animals and insects and birds and fish.

To show His creative power

is the One who took special care

in creating man

and creating woman.

And bringing them together

to support each other, to love each other,

to BE together

in God's love.

Jesus came from His Father and He showed

what His Father was to the world. There was no one else

who had ever seen God except the One who came from God.

Jesus told that to the group of Jews

that were there. Understand if you want to

see God and know what God is,

then you look at Me. Look at Me

and see 'cuz I was WITH God;

I AM God and I am here among you.

IMMANUEL.

GOD WITH US. And Jesus

wanted those people to STOP grumbling amongst themselves, to

STOP and put aside what they thought

they knew to truly HEAR

what God had to say.

That they wouldn't get past

the fact that they saw Jesus as the son of Joseph.

But He was the son of man.

Yes, born of Mary, but also

the Son of God. He had to be

both true God and true man to come

into this world and accomplish

the plan of salvation that the Lord had put in place

because human beings had brought sin into the world.

Adam and Eve in the

perfection of the garden,

STILL looked on the fruit that God had told them

NOT to eat of and thought it was better for them

to eat it. They thought that they knew better.

They thought that they wanted something more.

They took that fruit and ate it and brought sin

into the world. They conceived children that were

born in sin, with original sin.

And they passed that down from generation

to generation, to us

which we will pass on to the next generation.

The corruption of sin ...

it's punishment by death ...

that there is no escape for humanity

other than

the salvation that Jesus brought to this world.

Other than His own flesh ...

the very flesh that He would sacrifice

for the forgiveness of all sins.

The very flesh that

would be ripped apart

with the tortuous whipping that He endured.

The burden and the punishment

that should have been placed on you and on me

and on every person He

carried in His body.

The pains that He suffered

was your pain and my pain.

His flesh was torn apart

by those nails that placed Him on the cross.

His side was split open by that spear.

That came to show

that He was truly dead.

He offered Himself and His body as the

sacrifice for sin.

And the Father has brought

that information to us.

What a glorious and wonderful news

has come to us by the power of God.

We weren't looking for it. We didn't want it.

We were those enemies of God born in that original sin

running away from God and trying to do everything

that opposed Him. But God in His love

sent us His Holy Spirit,

gave us His Word.

Maybe it was through loving

parents who brought us to the fount ... font

to have ourselves baptized

using that sacrament of God,

having the Word applied with water.

Maybe it was a friend who shared with us

the truth of God's Word.

But it was God using those people

to give us

His gift of faith by the power

and the strength of His Holy Spirit.

And without that, we would be lost eternally.

Forever.

We would be condemned

to hell and all of its torments

eternally.

But yet we have heard what the Father has done.

We have listened to His Word.

We have looked to His Son.

We have been encouraged by the Holy Spirit

to BE one of His children. And as the Apostle Paul

reminds us: It's time for us to be

an imitator of God. To put into practice

the things that we know.

To stop being so consumed on ourselves

and to look outward to others.

To be kind and compassionate.

To get rid of all of the malice, the anger,

the bitterness, the rage and the brawling.

To love each other

and be compassionate

so that others will see Christ in us.

So that we, too, will point others

to God, with that one key thought ...

forgiving ....

the sins of each other

as Christ has forgiven us.

And we do need to remind ourselves of that fact daily.

How often we take pleasure

in the fact that daily that old Adam

within us is drowning our

baptismal waters.

To rise with Christ in His resurrection and

strength and power and commitment. To go out and

live the life of faith.

Daily we need that reminder.

To listen to our heavenly Father. To hear

what He has to say and to put that into practice

in our lives.

Otherwise we're gonna be like Elijah

who sat under the tree and wanted to die.

But yet God came to him with these words.

In that gentle whisper

He said: Elijah, get up.

Go back and do the work

that I have for you to do.

Jesus came to those people who were gathered together

in front of Him and said stop grumbling,

look to God,

see in Me the Bread of Life

that will give you eternal life.

Live in that joy. Live in that

presence. God comes to us in His Word

with the encouragement that we need to

sustain us to lead this life

into our life eternal.

Therefore I encourage each of us

to listen to the Father.

Amen.

Let us rise.

Now may the peace of God which goes beyond

all of our understanding keep your hearts

and your minds and especially your lives

in the one true faith unto life everlasting.

Amen.