Living Stones – Thursday, October 5, 2017

This is a hard one

John 6:60

Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”

The things that Jesus says present us with challenges. We are challenged to accept Jesus as the final authority and we are challenged to be prepared to commit to the moral demands of His words.

Jesus had just finished the discourse about His body and His blood and this had created a stir among people who have come flocking Him initially because of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.

Verse 60, where the final movement of this chapter 6 of the Gospel as recorder John begins, says that the people responded to Jesus’ words by saying “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” or as the NIV puts it “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

Some scholars tell us that the Greek word used there is more in the context of accepting as opposed to understanding, suggesting that the real challenge presented by the words of Christ is not an intellectual challenge but rather a moral challenge.

We can hear the words and we can understand them as words but the implications of those words can be very hard for us. Sometimes the very words that people speak are difficult to understand and the actual intent of those words can be in doubt.

Not too long ago, the Chief Justice of Guyana gave a ruling in a highly publicized case. There were all kinds of reactions to his ruling ranging from acceptance to hostility. The Chief Justice hardly spoke about his ruling, but on one of the few occasions when he did he said that most people who were talking about his ruling had not actually read it. He was of the view that reading his words would bring about a different understanding.

Jesus spoke in very simple language most of the time, and so the challenge for those who heard Him was not to understand the words as words but to accept what those words imply. When the people here had to confront what the words of Jesus meant, they grumbled among themselves that it was a hard teaching that was too difficult to accept.

There is a huge difference between the words of someone like the Chief Justice of Guyana and the words of Jesus. We can spend time teasing out the words of Jesus and arguing about the meaning but HE declared, in verse 63, that the words He spoke “are spirit and they are life.”

In other words, there is another dimension in which the things He has spoken need to be embraced, and usually, this is when and where we confront the challenges.

Every day we run into people who have heard the scriptures. People who know the main themes, stories and teachings, but for them these are just words. They like the discussions and the arguments, some of them like to pose questions to see if we know the answers. They want to argue doctrinal views and positions and to match intellect and knowledge bases. But when we come down to the big question everything is different. – Do you accept that Jesus is the final authority and are you going to let your life be determined by his word?

Are you going to abide by His hard sayings?

Think on these things:

1. Is there any demand in the Scripture that you find difficult to live by?
2. Can you think of something you stopped doing or changed because the Scriptures said so?
3. Can you think of anything that you were comfortable with only to later discover that it doesn’t line up with the Scripture?

Prayer focus:

Let us pray today that we would, more and more, be doers of the Word and not hearers only.

In His Grace

Pastor Alex