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A series on the crowds that followed Jesus
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
A series on the crowds that followed Jesus
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
We're continuing our series on "the crowd" by looking at the crowds of people that followed Jesus. Let's turn to John 6:1-2:
Sometime after this Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.
A great crowd gathered around Jesus during his ministry because of the many miracles he was performing. But here's something crucial to understand: these people had different relationships with Jesus and different reasons for following him.
Some were regular attendees. Others had simply heard stories about this "Mighty Miracle Man" and came to see for themselves. In the townships where I grew up, a great preacher from one region might travel across the country, and people would come not necessarily out of genuine faith, but so they wouldn't miss out on the gossip and conversation about the event that would dominate the week.
The key insight is this: the crowds had different agendas. No two people in these crowds would tell you the same reason why they came. This raises an important question for each of us: What is your agenda? What is your reason for following Jesus?
There are about 4,000 to 10,000 belief systems in the world. So it's worth asking yourself: why Jesus? In the midst of everything else you could believe, why have you chosen Jesus?
As we read Scripture, we see that people followed Jesus for three primary reasons.
Some people came to Jesus because they wanted healing for their physical bodies. There are many stories throughout the Bible: the crippled man whose friends tore up a roof to lower him down to Jesus; the woman who touched the hem of his garment; the blind man at the pool of Bethesda.
If you are someone who walks in the authority of miracles and the power of Jesus, then sickness is not your portion. It is not wrong to seek Jesus if there's something physically wrong with your body. Isaiah 53:5 tells us:
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his stripes we are healed.
When there is something physically wrong with our bodies, there's absolutely nothing wrong with seeking the Healer in Jesus. This is normal human behavior.
The second reason people followed Jesus was for provision. Let's continue reading in John 6:
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming to him, he said to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" (John 6:5)
Andrew spoke up:
"Here is a boy with five small loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many people?" (John 6:8-9)
Then:
Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." (John 6:11-12)
When Jesus does things, he does them in abundance. There were 12 baskets of leftovers!
God is a Father with cattle on a thousand hills. He meets all of our needs. There is nothing wrong with seeking provision from Jesus. God is a God of abundance—not just enough to survive, but overflow. My prayer is that this year you experience not just enough, but an overflow of his blessing and provision.
The third reason people followed Jesus was for freedom from oppression. Look at verse 14-15:
When the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they said, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. (John 6:14-15)
The Israelites were living under Roman oppression. They had heard the prophecy that the Messiah would come from the line of David—a chosen one from God. But their expectation was political and military. They thought the Messiah would lead a revolution, defeat Rome, and restore the glory days of King David and Solomon when Israel was powerful and conquered enemies.
When they saw Jesus multiply bread and fish, they thought, "This is the one! Let's make him king!" They wanted him to champion a revolution and set them free from oppression.
When we are living under oppression, there is nothing wrong with seeking God to break through it. The church in South Africa was instrumental in bringing down apartheid. Most church people did not pick up guns; they prayed in the streets, were part of their communities, and spoke up against government injustice. Christian missionaries have historically opposed wicked practices—like the practice in India where widows were buried alive, or the practice across Africa of young girls being married to old men. When missionaries and godly people entered these situations, they spoke against oppression and brought freedom.
While all three of these reasons are valid and important—healing, provision, and freedom from oppression—there's something crucial we must understand: these reasons address surface-level needs. They are obvious and easy to see.
Here's the mistake we often make: when someone is struggling for provision, or when their body is ill, or when they're living under oppression, we assume they are necessarily humble or genuine. There's something about physical illness, oppression, and lack that brings a form of humility—not because the person is inherently humble, but because their situation forces them to be.
But Jesus knew this. When you want to test true character, don't test it when you're hungry, ill, or oppressed. Test character when you have everything. Do you still cry out to God and say, "I need you"? Do you still treat people with humility when you have everything? The best time to test who your true friends are is when you have nothing.
I'm reminded of a TV program called "I Blew It." It follows people who suddenly come into significant money, and their whole lives change overnight. They accumulate friends and people of prominence while the money flows. But within a year or so, when the money runs out, they return to where they started—and the friends disappear. When the benefit stops, we see who was really there.
I'm also reminded of the story of Brother Yun, called "the Heavenly Man," from China. He endured severe persecution under communist oppression, yet his faith remained strong. When interviewed on American Christian television, at the end he turned to the interviewer and said something remarkable. He said the Christians in China are fine—they're persecuted but their faith is strong. "The people we need to pray for," he said, "are you Americans. The abundance and comfort of Christianity in America—in some spaces—is concerning. The type of Christianity I've encountered here is very different from what we know in the underground church, because your abundance has caused you to live a Christianity that is fundamentally different from ours."
After the miracle of the loaves and fish, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat. The crowd realized Jesus had left and began taking boats to follow him. In John 6:25-27:
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."
People were coming back for more—not for Jesus, but for the benefits. They wanted more bread and fish. They wanted the hands, the miracles, what Jesus had done for them. And Jesus says: no. It's time to go deeper.
Jesus begins to use what I would call a sift. He wants to separate the wheat from the chaff. He stops giving them milk and starts giving them solid food—difficult food to swallow. He wants to go deeper into their hearts to see who is really here for Him.
In John 6:48, Jesus says:
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world.
The Jews began to argue sharply:
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus says (John 6:53-56):
Very truly I tell you, 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 them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
This is symbolism—what Jesus is saying is that we must make Him central to our lives, consuming His Word and truth as our sustenance. But at that moment, in verse 60:
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"
Notice the shift: they're no longer just a crowd. They are now called "disciples"—people who have been following Jesus, who have left behind their lives to pursue Him. Women left their husbands and their work to follow this miracle worker. Men left their wives and children. And now Jesus is asking something harder.
In verse 61-63, Jesus says:
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you?... The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are full of the Spirit and life."
Jesus is very offensive. Jesus does not always do what you want him to do. He does not always do it at the time you want him to do it. Yet he promises to be all these things—but he has his own timetable.
Jesus demands of us patience and surrender—not our will, but His will. Many people have left Christianity because God did not act at the time they needed Him to. There is a journey we must do in our hearts and minds as we walk with God, giving our offense to Him.
Think about what Jesus was asking them to grasp: "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood." These are the words of cannibalism. To drink someone's blood, they would have to be dead. You would have to kill them, eat them, drink their blood. It makes no sense—even today, when we have hindsight and we know the story and we know it's spiritual symbolism.
But they weren't patient enough to wait for Him to expand those thoughts. He had given them 12 baskets of leftovers, abundance, but now he wasn't giving them that comfort. He was speaking hard truths that were difficult to understand.
So I want to ask: How do you respond when Jesus doesn't make sense? What do you do when Jesus doesn't make sense? Do you say, "Jesus, I will see you on the other side of 2025," or do you wait within the tension—where He has said this, but this is your lived experience?
God says, "I will supply all your needs." But I can tell you many Christians—including myself—where that is not necessarily a direct lived experience all the time. How do you live within the tensions of Scripture? Do you become stiff-necked like the Israelites? Do you become like these crowds?
In verse 66:
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
These are not just nameless people in a crowd anymore. These are disciples—people who had been following the ministry of Jesus, who had left their families, who had been on this journey with him.
But after Jesus speaks these hard words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood—words they found difficult to swallow—they turn back. They unfollow Jesus.
Where's the food? You're telling us to eat flesh and blood when you could make bread and fish? Why?
But it gets worse. In Matthew 27:20-23, we read about the crucifixion:
The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor. "Barabbas," they answered. "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" Pilate asked. They all answered, "Let him be crucified!"
It wasn't the religious leaders who crucified Jesus. It was His disciples. It was the people who had been following Him, who became disgruntled when He stopped giving them free gifts of food and started challenging them with hard truths.
They couldn't handle it. They couldn't wait long enough for Him to expand and explain these difficult truths. So they turned their backs. And not only did they unfollow Him—their frustration, their disappointment, their offense grew into hatred.
Hatred is a seed. Offense is a seed. Frustration is a seed. These seeds start small, but they grow. And they cause major destruction.
The crowd mentality took over. One person says something, and we all follow without thinking. We're surrounded by thousands, and our reason becomes numb. We do things we wouldn't do alone. Then later, when we're asked why we did it, we ourselves are shocked.
In South Africa, where we live in a largely Christian nation, many of us grew up going to church. So when life gets hard, that's all we know: go to church, have people pray for you—not because we've given it real thought, but because there's nothing else we want to try. We've gone through many other things that couldn't help, so we think, "Let me just try God."
I think of two people in Scripture who responded very differently when faced with God's hard commands.
The first is the Rich Young Ruler. A young man came to Jesus and asked, "What must I do to get eternal life?" Jesus kept saying, "Do this, do that," and the young man said, "I'm already doing all of those things."
He was on the right track. But then Jesus asked him something hard: "Sell all you have and follow me."
And the Bible says that because he had much wealth, he turned back very sad. He couldn't go through with what Jesus was asking.
The second is Abraham and Isaac. God had promised Abraham that through his son Isaac, he would become the father of many nations. But then God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son—the very son through whom the promise would be fulfilled.
Abraham picked up wood, fire, and his son, and journeyed to Mount Moriah. Along the way, Isaac asked, "Father, I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"
Abraham said, "God will provide."
He didn't understand what God was doing. How could God promise him a son and then ask him to take that son's life? But Abraham said in effect: "In my not understanding, I'm going to continue because I trust you. I believe in you. I've placed my weight on you. I am not walking by my own wisdom and strength, but I'm choosing to trust in your wisdom and strength. If I go ahead and kill him, maybe you'll raise him from the dead. I don't know—but because you've said it, that's what I'll do."
Abraham didn't unfollow. He chose to trust, even in the tension.
In John 6:67, after the crowd has turned away, Jesus asks the twelve:
You do not want to leave too, do you?
Peter responds (John 6:68-69):
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.
Interestingly, this same statement—"This is the prophet who has been sent by God"—was made earlier by the crowd when they wanted to make Jesus king. There was some small inclination that they were beginning to understand who God is. But because He didn't become king on their terms, because God's kingdom is not a physical kingdom with armies and castles, but a spiritual kingdom established within, they turned away.
Jesus moved from the temple—the place made by human hands—and set up residence in our bodies. He moved from the external to the internal, establishing a spiritual kingdom within us.
But Peter and the faithful twelve held on. Even though Jesus didn't make sense, even though the teaching was hard, even though there was no more free bread and fish, they said: "To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
This reminds me of Exodus 32, when Moses went up the mountain to pray and intercede for the people of God. In verse 1:
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."
They were impatient. But Moses went up the mountain regularly to speak to God. The people should have waited.
Instead, they pressured Aaron to melt down their gold and make a golden calf. And they said:
These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.
This is one of the most insane things in the Bible. These were the same people who had physically experienced the sea being parted. They had walked on solid ground through the middle of the ocean. Moses had told them what happened and who was responsible. Yet within weeks or months in the wilderness, they created a golden thing that couldn't speak, and they credited their freedom to it.
The key is the same here: they weren't patient enough. They took matters into their own hands. They wanted to be god unto themselves.
Following God is a daily thing. Every morning, we wake up and decide whether we will follow Him. It's my prayer that we wake up and choose to follow God in the midst of the difficult things that happen—things so difficult to explain that we struggle to understand them.
We are lying if we think we have an answer for every scenario. We don't. There are certain things we will only get full explanation for when we get to the other side, when we are seated face to face with God, asking: "What happened? What did I miss? What was I supposed to do?"
There is a tension as we walk in this life as foreigners. When you are saved, you are a citizen of Heaven. You should be identifying more with the realities of Heaven than with what is happening physically to you on Earth. This is a dying world, a sinful world, and we live in the midst of the consequences of sin.
May we not be like the crowds. May we not be on the right track and then, when the difficult things come along, turn our backs and fashion things out of our own hands—things that make sense to us but lead us away from God.
May we hold on to God when it would be easier to let go. May we choose to hold on to God.
We're continuing our series on "the crowd" by looking at the crowds of people that followed Jesus. Let's turn to John 6:1-2:
Sometime after this Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.
A great crowd gathered around Jesus during his ministry because of the many miracles he was performing. But here's something crucial to understand: these people had different relationships with Jesus and different reasons for following him.
Some were regular attendees. Others had simply heard stories about this "Mighty Miracle Man" and came to see for themselves. In the townships where I grew up, a great preacher from one region might travel across the country, and people would come not necessarily out of genuine faith, but so they wouldn't miss out on the gossip and conversation about the event that would dominate the week.
The key insight is this: the crowds had different agendas. No two people in these crowds would tell you the same reason why they came. This raises an important question for each of us: What is your agenda? What is your reason for following Jesus?
There are about 4,000 to 10,000 belief systems in the world. So it's worth asking yourself: why Jesus? In the midst of everything else you could believe, why have you chosen Jesus?
As we read Scripture, we see that people followed Jesus for three primary reasons.
Some people came to Jesus because they wanted healing for their physical bodies. There are many stories throughout the Bible: the crippled man whose friends tore up a roof to lower him down to Jesus; the woman who touched the hem of his garment; the blind man at the pool of Bethesda.
If you are someone who walks in the authority of miracles and the power of Jesus, then sickness is not your portion. It is not wrong to seek Jesus if there's something physically wrong with your body. Isaiah 53:5 tells us:
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his stripes we are healed.
When there is something physically wrong with our bodies, there's absolutely nothing wrong with seeking the Healer in Jesus. This is normal human behavior.
The second reason people followed Jesus was for provision. Let's continue reading in John 6:
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming to him, he said to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" (John 6:5)
Andrew spoke up:
"Here is a boy with five small loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many people?" (John 6:8-9)
Then:
Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." (John 6:11-12)
When Jesus does things, he does them in abundance. There were 12 baskets of leftovers!
God is a Father with cattle on a thousand hills. He meets all of our needs. There is nothing wrong with seeking provision from Jesus. God is a God of abundance—not just enough to survive, but overflow. My prayer is that this year you experience not just enough, but an overflow of his blessing and provision.
The third reason people followed Jesus was for freedom from oppression. Look at verse 14-15:
When the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they said, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. (John 6:14-15)
The Israelites were living under Roman oppression. They had heard the prophecy that the Messiah would come from the line of David—a chosen one from God. But their expectation was political and military. They thought the Messiah would lead a revolution, defeat Rome, and restore the glory days of King David and Solomon when Israel was powerful and conquered enemies.
When they saw Jesus multiply bread and fish, they thought, "This is the one! Let's make him king!" They wanted him to champion a revolution and set them free from oppression.
When we are living under oppression, there is nothing wrong with seeking God to break through it. The church in South Africa was instrumental in bringing down apartheid. Most church people did not pick up guns; they prayed in the streets, were part of their communities, and spoke up against government injustice. Christian missionaries have historically opposed wicked practices—like the practice in India where widows were buried alive, or the practice across Africa of young girls being married to old men. When missionaries and godly people entered these situations, they spoke against oppression and brought freedom.
While all three of these reasons are valid and important—healing, provision, and freedom from oppression—there's something crucial we must understand: these reasons address surface-level needs. They are obvious and easy to see.
Here's the mistake we often make: when someone is struggling for provision, or when their body is ill, or when they're living under oppression, we assume they are necessarily humble or genuine. There's something about physical illness, oppression, and lack that brings a form of humility—not because the person is inherently humble, but because their situation forces them to be.
But Jesus knew this. When you want to test true character, don't test it when you're hungry, ill, or oppressed. Test character when you have everything. Do you still cry out to God and say, "I need you"? Do you still treat people with humility when you have everything? The best time to test who your true friends are is when you have nothing.
I'm reminded of a TV program called "I Blew It." It follows people who suddenly come into significant money, and their whole lives change overnight. They accumulate friends and people of prominence while the money flows. But within a year or so, when the money runs out, they return to where they started—and the friends disappear. When the benefit stops, we see who was really there.
I'm also reminded of the story of Brother Yun, called "the Heavenly Man," from China. He endured severe persecution under communist oppression, yet his faith remained strong. When interviewed on American Christian television, at the end he turned to the interviewer and said something remarkable. He said the Christians in China are fine—they're persecuted but their faith is strong. "The people we need to pray for," he said, "are you Americans. The abundance and comfort of Christianity in America—in some spaces—is concerning. The type of Christianity I've encountered here is very different from what we know in the underground church, because your abundance has caused you to live a Christianity that is fundamentally different from ours."
After the miracle of the loaves and fish, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat. The crowd realized Jesus had left and began taking boats to follow him. In John 6:25-27:
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."
People were coming back for more—not for Jesus, but for the benefits. They wanted more bread and fish. They wanted the hands, the miracles, what Jesus had done for them. And Jesus says: no. It's time to go deeper.
Jesus begins to use what I would call a sift. He wants to separate the wheat from the chaff. He stops giving them milk and starts giving them solid food—difficult food to swallow. He wants to go deeper into their hearts to see who is really here for Him.
In John 6:48, Jesus says:
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world.
The Jews began to argue sharply:
How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus says (John 6:53-56):
Very truly I tell you, 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 them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.
This is symbolism—what Jesus is saying is that we must make Him central to our lives, consuming His Word and truth as our sustenance. But at that moment, in verse 60:
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"
Notice the shift: they're no longer just a crowd. They are now called "disciples"—people who have been following Jesus, who have left behind their lives to pursue Him. Women left their husbands and their work to follow this miracle worker. Men left their wives and children. And now Jesus is asking something harder.
In verse 61-63, Jesus says:
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you?... The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are full of the Spirit and life."
Jesus is very offensive. Jesus does not always do what you want him to do. He does not always do it at the time you want him to do it. Yet he promises to be all these things—but he has his own timetable.
Jesus demands of us patience and surrender—not our will, but His will. Many people have left Christianity because God did not act at the time they needed Him to. There is a journey we must do in our hearts and minds as we walk with God, giving our offense to Him.
Think about what Jesus was asking them to grasp: "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood." These are the words of cannibalism. To drink someone's blood, they would have to be dead. You would have to kill them, eat them, drink their blood. It makes no sense—even today, when we have hindsight and we know the story and we know it's spiritual symbolism.
But they weren't patient enough to wait for Him to expand those thoughts. He had given them 12 baskets of leftovers, abundance, but now he wasn't giving them that comfort. He was speaking hard truths that were difficult to understand.
So I want to ask: How do you respond when Jesus doesn't make sense? What do you do when Jesus doesn't make sense? Do you say, "Jesus, I will see you on the other side of 2025," or do you wait within the tension—where He has said this, but this is your lived experience?
God says, "I will supply all your needs." But I can tell you many Christians—including myself—where that is not necessarily a direct lived experience all the time. How do you live within the tensions of Scripture? Do you become stiff-necked like the Israelites? Do you become like these crowds?
In verse 66:
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
These are not just nameless people in a crowd anymore. These are disciples—people who had been following the ministry of Jesus, who had left their families, who had been on this journey with him.
But after Jesus speaks these hard words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood—words they found difficult to swallow—they turn back. They unfollow Jesus.
Where's the food? You're telling us to eat flesh and blood when you could make bread and fish? Why?
But it gets worse. In Matthew 27:20-23, we read about the crucifixion:
The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. "Which of the two do you want me to release to you?" asked the governor. "Barabbas," they answered. "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" Pilate asked. They all answered, "Let him be crucified!"
It wasn't the religious leaders who crucified Jesus. It was His disciples. It was the people who had been following Him, who became disgruntled when He stopped giving them free gifts of food and started challenging them with hard truths.
They couldn't handle it. They couldn't wait long enough for Him to expand and explain these difficult truths. So they turned their backs. And not only did they unfollow Him—their frustration, their disappointment, their offense grew into hatred.
Hatred is a seed. Offense is a seed. Frustration is a seed. These seeds start small, but they grow. And they cause major destruction.
The crowd mentality took over. One person says something, and we all follow without thinking. We're surrounded by thousands, and our reason becomes numb. We do things we wouldn't do alone. Then later, when we're asked why we did it, we ourselves are shocked.
In South Africa, where we live in a largely Christian nation, many of us grew up going to church. So when life gets hard, that's all we know: go to church, have people pray for you—not because we've given it real thought, but because there's nothing else we want to try. We've gone through many other things that couldn't help, so we think, "Let me just try God."
I think of two people in Scripture who responded very differently when faced with God's hard commands.
The first is the Rich Young Ruler. A young man came to Jesus and asked, "What must I do to get eternal life?" Jesus kept saying, "Do this, do that," and the young man said, "I'm already doing all of those things."
He was on the right track. But then Jesus asked him something hard: "Sell all you have and follow me."
And the Bible says that because he had much wealth, he turned back very sad. He couldn't go through with what Jesus was asking.
The second is Abraham and Isaac. God had promised Abraham that through his son Isaac, he would become the father of many nations. But then God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son—the very son through whom the promise would be fulfilled.
Abraham picked up wood, fire, and his son, and journeyed to Mount Moriah. Along the way, Isaac asked, "Father, I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"
Abraham said, "God will provide."
He didn't understand what God was doing. How could God promise him a son and then ask him to take that son's life? But Abraham said in effect: "In my not understanding, I'm going to continue because I trust you. I believe in you. I've placed my weight on you. I am not walking by my own wisdom and strength, but I'm choosing to trust in your wisdom and strength. If I go ahead and kill him, maybe you'll raise him from the dead. I don't know—but because you've said it, that's what I'll do."
Abraham didn't unfollow. He chose to trust, even in the tension.
In John 6:67, after the crowd has turned away, Jesus asks the twelve:
You do not want to leave too, do you?
Peter responds (John 6:68-69):
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.
Interestingly, this same statement—"This is the prophet who has been sent by God"—was made earlier by the crowd when they wanted to make Jesus king. There was some small inclination that they were beginning to understand who God is. But because He didn't become king on their terms, because God's kingdom is not a physical kingdom with armies and castles, but a spiritual kingdom established within, they turned away.
Jesus moved from the temple—the place made by human hands—and set up residence in our bodies. He moved from the external to the internal, establishing a spiritual kingdom within us.
But Peter and the faithful twelve held on. Even though Jesus didn't make sense, even though the teaching was hard, even though there was no more free bread and fish, they said: "To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
This reminds me of Exodus 32, when Moses went up the mountain to pray and intercede for the people of God. In verse 1:
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."
They were impatient. But Moses went up the mountain regularly to speak to God. The people should have waited.
Instead, they pressured Aaron to melt down their gold and make a golden calf. And they said:
These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.
This is one of the most insane things in the Bible. These were the same people who had physically experienced the sea being parted. They had walked on solid ground through the middle of the ocean. Moses had told them what happened and who was responsible. Yet within weeks or months in the wilderness, they created a golden thing that couldn't speak, and they credited their freedom to it.
The key is the same here: they weren't patient enough. They took matters into their own hands. They wanted to be god unto themselves.
Following God is a daily thing. Every morning, we wake up and decide whether we will follow Him. It's my prayer that we wake up and choose to follow God in the midst of the difficult things that happen—things so difficult to explain that we struggle to understand them.
We are lying if we think we have an answer for every scenario. We don't. There are certain things we will only get full explanation for when we get to the other side, when we are seated face to face with God, asking: "What happened? What did I miss? What was I supposed to do?"
There is a tension as we walk in this life as foreigners. When you are saved, you are a citizen of Heaven. You should be identifying more with the realities of Heaven than with what is happening physically to you on Earth. This is a dying world, a sinful world, and we live in the midst of the consequences of sin.
May we not be like the crowds. May we not be on the right track and then, when the difficult things come along, turn our backs and fashion things out of our own hands—things that make sense to us but lead us away from God.
May we hold on to God when it would be easier to let go. May we choose to hold on to God.
