Hard Sayings (John 6:51–71) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

SPROUL: Today, we begin with John chapter six  at verse fifty-one. “‘I am the living bread,   which came down from heaven. If anyone  eats of this bread he will live forever,   and the bread that I shall give is my flesh,  which I shall give for the life of the world.’   And the Jews, therefore, quarreled among  themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give   us His flesh to eat?’ And Jesus said to them,  ‘Most assuredly I say to you that unless you   eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His  blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats   my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,  and I will raise Him up at the last day. For my   flesh is food indeed; my blood is drink indeed.  He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides   in me and I in him. And as the living Father  sent me, and I live because of the Father, so   he who feeds on me will live because of me. This  is the bread, which came down from heaven – not   as your fathers ate the manna and are dead –  but he who eats this bread will live forever.’

“These things He said in the synagogue  as He taught in Capernaum, and therefore,   many of His disciples, when they heard this  said, ‘This is a hard saying. Who can understand   it?’ And when Jesus knew in Himself that His  disciples complained about this, He said to them,   ‘Does this offend you? What, then if you should  see the Son of Man ascend where He was before?   It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits  nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit,   and they are life. But there are some of you  who do not believe.’ And Jesus knew from the   beginning who they were who did not believe  and who would betray Him. He said, ‘Therefore   I have said to you that no one can come to me  unless it has been granted to him by my Father.’ “And from that time, many of His disciples went  back and walked with Him no more. And then Jesus   said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go  away?’ but Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord,   to whom shall we go? You have the words of  eternal life. Also, we’ve come to believe   and know that you are the Christ, the Son  of the living God.’ And Jesus answered them,  

‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? And one of  you is a devil.’ He spoke of Judas Iscariot,   the son of Simon, for it was he who would  betray Him, being one of the twelve.” He who has ears to hear the Word of God,  let them hear it. You may be seated.   Let us pray. Father, as we turn our  attention now to this text that we have read,   which indeed contains so many hard sayings, we  pray that the Spirit of truth would intercede   with our weakness and slowness of heart to  understand and illumine these words that we   may grasp them in their fullness and be changed  by them. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

The theologians have a technical term for  it. They’re called the phrases durioras,   or the hard sayings – those sayings that we  encounter from time to time in the Scripture,   which are called “hard sayings”  for two reasons. On the one hand,   they seem to be difficult for us to penetrate  in our understanding, and in that sense they’re   hard. And the other way in which this phrase is  used is that the words seem not only difficult   but at times actually may appear harsh to  our ears. And because we encounter these   hard sayings so frequently in Scripture, and so  often they come to us from the lips of Jesus,   we need to approach them with a posture of  humility that we may be instructed by our Lord.

Let me give this warning to you if I may: that the  discourse that we’re looking at throughout chapter   six, and what I read this morning, provoked the  hearers of Jesus to leave His company; and we have   seen, throughout our study of the book of John,  how often the crowds that came to hear Him lecture   or to witness His miracles would turn on Him in  a certain fickleness when they didn’t like what   He said. But in this discourse we’re seeing that  those who walked away from Him were His disciples. We remember elsewhere in the text that Jesus  commissioned seventy of His disciples to go   over the cities and villages of Israel  proclaiming the coming of the kingdom.   And so at least at one time in His  public ministry He numbered seventy   of His disciples. Well here, that number  is reduced to the twelve, one of which,   we are told, was a devil from the beginning,  even Judas. And so, from the seventy – and   that was a minimal number – the list dwindles  to eleven who receive the teaching of Christ.

Now the reason I warn the congregation for  that is that some of us may indeed profess   allegiance and loyalty to Jesus until we hear  Him teach certain things that we don’t like,   and we also may be inclined to walk away; and  I pray that that will not be the case with us. We pick it up with one of the “I AMs,” where Jesus  said, “I am the living bread.” He had said that   He was the bread of life, and then this portion  of the text He said, “If anyone eats this bread,   he will live forever,” and that the bread that  He gives is His flesh, that He gives for the   life of the world. And at this point the Jews  quarreled. The Jews are skeptical, and they said,   “How can this man give His flesh to eat?” And  Jesus knows this murmuring that’s going on,   and so He reinforces this declaration that  He had made when He said, “Most assuredly,   I say to you” – now notice these words  – “unless” – before I go any further,   every time I run into that word in the text,  I remind you that that word signals something  

very important that is coming. The word  “unless” introduces a necessary condition,   a sine qua non for some desired consequence  or effect to take place. Unless Mr. Maddox   has a good game this afternoon, Bus, we’re  in deep weeds. That’s a necessary condition. And so, what does Jesus “unless” us about here?  Again, in emphasizing the certainty of this   necessary condition by saying, “Most assuredly  I say to you, unless you eat of the flesh of the   Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life  in you.” No life. You might have biological life,   but you don’t have the life that Christ has come  to give to the redeemed. “Whoever eats my flesh,   drinks my blood, has eternal life. I will raise  him up at the last day, for my flesh is food   indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who  eats my flesh, drinks my blood abides in me and   I in him. And as the Father sent me – the living  Father sent me, and I live because of the Father,   so who feeds on me will live because of me. This  is the bread that is come down from heaven – not   as your fathers ate the manna and our dead,  but he who eats this bread will live forever.”

“Therefore” – that is, because of these words  – “many of His disciples, when they heard this,   said, ‘This is a hard saying. Who can understand  it?’” Well, I’m not sure I do. If you consult all   the commentaries and the scholars of church  history, seeking to understand this discourse   that Jesus has given you will find a divided  house. Many biblical scholars through the   ages have thought that Jesus here is giving  a discourse on the meaning the Lord’s Supper   and that He is saying that unless  a person partakes of the real body   and blood of Christ in the sacrament of  Holy Communion, they cannot be redeemed. I don’t agree with that position, and  I’m happy, on one of the few occasions,   that the majority of scholars hold the position  that I hold with respect to this text, but with   less than dogmatic certainty. And that is, what it  seems that Jesus is speaking about here is not the   Eucharist, is not the sacrament of the Lord’s  Supper – though certainly the Lord’s Supper   calls attention to the significance of this –  but rather Jesus is speaking here in a way in   which He spoke earlier to the woman of Sychar,  the woman at the well, when He talked about  

the living water that He would give to those  who drank from Him. And in a similar passion,   that He will speak in a later “I AM,” when He  says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” The point that our Lord is making is that He is  the giver of supernatural life. He is the living   redeemer who is sent by the living God to impart  eternal life to all who put their trust in Him.   And what He’s saying in words that may  seem crass to our ears this day is that,   “You have to come into me, be united to me, feast  upon me – not just have a tangential cavalier   occasional relationship to me. But if you’re  going to be mine, if you’re going to participate   in the life that I have come to give, you have  to devour my flesh and drink my blood.” He’s   calling for a wholehearted pursuit of union with  Him – without which there is no spiritual life.

In a word, beloved, religion won’t  do it. Church attendance won’t do it.   The only thing that gets us into the kingdom of  God by which we participate in the gift of eternal   life is to be in Christ Jesus, and to emphasize  that our Lord says, “You have to take all of me,   as if you were ingesting me – just as the vine  can only survive if it remains – the branch can   only survive if it remains in the vine because it  is the vine that gives the life to the plant – so   we have to feast upon this bread of heaven. The  bread that came in the Old Testament nurtured the   people of Israel. They ate it ever day. It kept  them alive in the wilderness, but they still all   died. But this is the bread of eternal life  that comes in the person of Christ Himself.

Now other aspects of the hard sayings that  are found in this text, in verse sixty-one   we read this: “When Jesus knew in Himself that His  disciples complained about this, He said to them,   ‘Does this offend you?’” There’s an important  distinction that we have in Christian ethics that   we all need to master, and that is the difference  between an offense given and an offense taken.   Many times we take offense at things people  do or say when no offense was given. We   just didn’t like it. And that happens in the  Christian life, and it happens in the church,   and it happens all the time. We may feel insulted  when nobody insults us. You know, the wicked flee   when no man pursues. The pagan trembles at the  rustling of a leaf. We are sometimes easily   offended by things that should not offend us. Now  I am commanded as a Christian not to give offense,   not to violate people, not to do harm to other  people, and we should try not to do that.  

But sometimes you can be doing exactly the right  thing and offend people because they take offense. Now no one ever spoke more perfectly or  inoffensively than our Lord did in this   particular encounter with His own disciples,  but what happened? They were offended.   Now if people take offense at Jesus, who was  perfect, how often do you think they’re going   to take offense at us, who are not perfect? And so  Jesus said, “Does that offend you?” Maybe it does,   but just wait. He says, “What if you should see  the Son of Man ascend where He was before? What   if you see me clothed in glory, rising  up to heaven on the mount of ascension,   surrounded by the angels, and you watch me  going in my glory. Will that offend you? Of   course not. You’ll be delighted.” And then what  our Lord is saying here, that there are many   things that He says to us during this life  that we take umbrage at, but those are all  

forgotten when we see the truth, when we see His  perfection made manifest before our very eyes. Then He goes on to say some more hard stuff.  “It’s the Spirit who gives life. The flesh   profits nothing.” Now Jesus is not saying here,  “Eating my physical flesh and drinking my physical   blood – that’s not going to give you the life  I’m talking about. I’m talking about a spiritual   eating and a spiritual drinking.” Now He is  talking about a spiritual eating and a spiritual   drinking, but in this text He is not talking about  His body. He is not talking about His physical   being. He is talking about our flesh because  this is a major motif that we hear throughout   the Bible, and we’ve already seen it in Jesus’  discourse with Nicodemus, when He told Nicodemus   unless a man is born of the water and the Spirit  he can’t see the kingdom of God, let alone enter   the kingdom of God. And do you remember what Jesus  said to Nicodemus? “That which is born of the   flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit  is spirit,” and the flesh cannot produce spiritual  

reality. If we would just get that principle  into our heads – understand that in our natural   condition we cannot do the things of God. We have  no strength of spiritual things, no inclination   towards the things of heaven, until God first,  by His Holy Spirit, changes the disposition of   our hearts and raises us from that state of pure  flesh, which the Bible says is spiritual death. This was what engaged Luther in his ancient debate  with Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam when Erasmus   had written his diatribe against Luther, and  against Luther’s doctrine of predestination,   frankly, because Erasmus held on to the idea  that even though we’re fallen there remains   this little island of righteousness in the  soul of fallen humanity by which we can,   pressing the right buttons, incline ourselves  to come to the kingdom or not to come to the   kingdom. And Jesus had already told these  people that nobody could come to Him unless   God did something first because the flesh  can’t do it. The flesh profits nothing,   and when Luther exegeted that passage to Erasmus,  he said, “Dr. Erasmus, that nothing is not a  

little something.” So, if you are resting on the  strength of your righteousness, you’ve missed   what our Lord is teaching here. In your flesh  dwells no good thing, and your flesh cannot get   you into the kingdom of God. It’s the Spirit who  brings life, who raises us from spiritual death. “The words that I speak to you are spirit.  They are life.” Do you hear them? How does   the Spirit make us alive? Through the Word. The  Spirit comes with the Word. He takes the Word   to pierce our hearts, to change the disposition  of our souls. It’s at the Word of God that the   universe was brought out of nothing. It is at the  Word of God that you are rescued from spiritual   nothingness and made alive unto the things of  God. It’s the power of the Word. Do you hear it?

How do you feel when I ask you to stand up there  all that time while I’m reading twenty verses of   Scripture? Does it make you uncomfortable? I  have to tell you, I love it. I love to hear   the very Word of God coming out of the Scripture.  I love to hear these words read aloud. I remember   one of the most difficult pastoral duties I  had when I was very young in my ministry – I   was only in my second year of teaching. I  was teaching at a school in Massachusetts,   and one of the men who had called me to come  there became sick unto death. And I used to   go to Mass. General Hospital every day and sit by  his bed and watched him die a day at a time until   we finally came down to those last few hours,  where all I could do was take some ice and put   it on his parched lips and wipe the sweat from off  his forehead. And he couldn’t even speak anymore,   but I knew what he wanted. I would sit there,  and I would read the text of Scripture to him.   That’s how I want to die – listening to the Word  of God because that Word is life. Jesus said,   “My words are life,” and look at these people.  They just walked away. They don’t want to hear it.

“There are some of you who do not believe.   That’s why I said no one can come to me unless  it’s been granted to him by my Father.” There’s   that predestination again. Verse sixty-six:  “From that time many of His disciples went   back and walked with Him no more.” Finally, let’s  not miss this. He watches the exodus. I don’t know   – fifty-eight of them, sixty of them, seventy of  them. Who knows how large this number of disciples   were by this point. But all those who had taken  offense at the teaching of Jesus bailed out. It’s   a wildcat strike. They leave, and He just watches  them as they depart, and He turns to the twelve,   and like Caesar in his dying moment, “Et tu,  Brute?” “You too? Will you also go away?” And   listen to this great confession of faith by Simon  Peter. Simon says, “Oh no, Lord. We’re never going   away. We love this stuff! We love these hard  sayings that you’ve been laying on us today.”   No, listen to Simon. “Where can we go?  You’re the best we have. We don’t have  

anywhere else to go because we understand  that you alone have the words of life.” Are you ever tempted to leave? I certainly have  been, many times, and I don’t know how many times   these words of Simon Peter have echoed through  my own mind. Where can I go? Am I going to go to   Mohammed and join the jihad? I’m not going to find  the words of eternal life there. I won’t find them   with Immanuel Kant or Jean-Paul Sartre. I won’t  find them in the lyrics of contemporary music.   If I want the words of eternal life, there’s  only one place I can go to get them – to the   one who set His table for us this morning, to the  one who has given to us His body and His blood,   who has given us His life that we can live. And  that’s why I invite all of you who are Christians.   You’re not only welcome to come to His table,  but you are urged to come to His table because  

this is the master’s table, who gave His body  and blood and who descends even this morning,   by the power of the Holy Ghost, through  His divine nature, to be truly present   at this table that when we come to Him we will be  strengthened by His resurrected body. Let us pray. Take now, O God, these common elements of  bread and wine. Consecrate them to an uncommon,   supernatural use – that they may signify to us  your very presence here this morning to touch us   at our point of need. We come to your table with  our guilt, with our burdens, with our fears that   we may leave them there, as we may be touched by  your presence. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.