John 6:22-29 (Work That Will Never Fade)

Seem in this life. Almost never are they what they seem. Think about work. Work was never meant to be a burden for you. Work was never meant to be a headache for you. You were not meant to lose sleep over what happened to you at work.

You were not supposed to lose time at home away from your family because of work. You were not created to fear that a pandemic, poor performance, an angry boss, or anything else was going to terminate you.

Work was never meant to be painful. Work was meant to be a blessing. Not just for us as individuals but for our families, for our cities, for our nations, and for the world. Work was meant to be a blessing.

Now, maybe you in a limited way have experienced that. You love your job. I certainly love what I do. It's a blessing. Maybe you had a project at work that you finished. Maybe you've built something at home with wood or materials and at the end of it you felt satisfied in what it was that you've accomplished.

That limited blessing is the grace of God in your life. But it pales in comparison to what work actually was when it was first created, when it was first designed, when it was first gifted to humanity.

Because work is not a punishment for our sin, although it sometimes feels that way, doesn't it? Work was actually created before sin. Work was created before the fall. Before they listened to the serpent, before they fell, before they rebelled, before they violated God's commands in their life, work was there and it was meant to be a blessing in their lives.

Now, you think about the original couple. God made Adam and Eve. What did He make them for? He made them to work. He put them in the garden to till it, to work it, to make it fruitful and to make it multiply.

They were to grow in their skills. Day one they didn't really know a lot, but they were to grow in their skills so that they could learn how to work better, so they could pass that knowledge on to the next generation and so that the next generation could help them.

And since none of them would die, they would all work together and eventually the garden would be so full that they would need to use that technology that they learned to expand the garden and to expand it eventually to the ends of the earth.

Had sin not happened, they would have filled the garden full of people and it would have been so full that they would have needed to expand. The garden would have been the first city that was ever created.

And what all of this shows us is that work has two components. We're going to hit this time and time again because I think the nature of work and the thoughts of work have fallen so much so that we need to be reminded of this today and it's in our text.

Work has two components. We were made to work to glorify our God and we were made to work to bring life to the world. Those two elements. We were made to work to glorify God and our work was meant to bring life to the world.

That is the biblical definition of work. Work is our God-ordained effort that brings glory back to God and brings life into our world. Now you think about it. How is that possible? Well, the first people were there to create things.

They were there to plant seeds. Plant seeds means life. And they were to do that with new plants, new vegetables, new garden spaces. That's more life. They were meant to work with the animals. Human beings were put over the animals and animals would have helped them cultivate the soil and plow and do all of those other things.

That's more life. Human beings themselves as they worked together in unity would create new life through the blessings of pregnancy and through child labor and through delivery. You see, work was all about the glory of God and the propagation of new life.

Now you imagine without sin, they would have eventually developed technologies and innovations. The Industrial Revolution happened way too late because we're sinners and our minds fell. You would think if they had not sinned, they would have created all sorts of technology that honored God and created new life.

Work was meant to be a gift from God and a gift from God to us, to our species, so that we can give glory to Him and bring life to the world. But of course, they didn't get very far along in that project, did they?

Because it wasn't very long that man fell and one of the consequences of that tragic fall was that their work was stifled, their work was frustrated, their work was perverted. The cause of it was sin, but the consequence of it was that their work fell.

You think about typical female labor, actually uniquely female labor, because I don't believe what society says that a man can have a baby. Typical female labor was infused with pain and with agony, with miscarriages were introduced because of sin, stillbirths, infertility, all of that is afflicting the womb of countless women in this world today because of sin.

Sin was the cause, the consequence was that her labor was afflicted. Even the children that are successfully born rise up to roll their eyes and disrespect their parents, which is a metaphor for us. Human beings, or parents at least, perform a sort of God-like role in their parents' life in a very limited, very metaphorical way.

We give life to our children and then they rise up to hate us at times. What a metaphor for us in our relationship with God. He gave life to us and yet we curse him with our own lips. It's not just female labor, it's male labor too.

Look at it. It says that thorns and thistles grew up from the ground in which the man was going to till. All the days of his life he was going to have to produce life out of the soil through his own blood and sweat and tears, which means that in order to get life out of the ground, he's going to have to die a little each day until the dust from which he was made swallowed him up.

Our work is cursed. Think about it. It's not just our physicality, it's also our thoughts about our work. We were made to be happy to go to work. We were made to be joyful in our pursuits. Now, I know this doesn't afflict anyone here, but how often have we complained about our bosses, we've grumbled about our co-workers, we've yelled at our kids, we've not been very happy about the work that God has given us to do, we've resented God for the work that we've been given to do.

I know, again, it doesn't apply here. We no longer see work as a blessing, we see it as almost like a necessary evil. It's not the way that it was meant to be. And because we think that way, we live that way, don't we?

Our thoughts often produce our behavior. We think that work is a curse, so we go to work and we waste time and we procrastinate. And there's many days where we know that we could do better, where we could be more creative, where we could be more innovative, where we could have given more effort to our jobs.

I love this story in the Reformation. A man came up to Martin Luther who had just gotten saved and he said, I'm saved now, what should I do, Luther? And Luther said, well, what's your job? And he said, well, I make shoes.

He said, go be the best shoemaker ever. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. Because Luther understood that our work is act of worship, but yet how often in our fallen nature do we go to work and we fake it?

We go to work and we siphon off resources from our company, playing on Facebook and pretending like we're not. We all have done it. Personal calls, shopping on Amazon, how many furniture items have you bought while you're at work?

Or accent items or whatever. Or daydreaming about some beach somewhere, which I can understand. We've forgotten what it means to work for the glory of God and to work to bring life to the world. We've forgotten.

If you think about it, work was meant to bring life to the world. Look at the nation that we live in. How many oil spills have happened because our work has now been cursed? How many animals have died in the ocean?

I'm not an environmentalist and I don't hug trees. You know, I don't. But we are supposed to bring life to this world, not kill it. I just read an article about a man who was an abortion doctor. Think about the insanity of that.

We are supposed to glorify God and our work and bring life to the world. And here this man is getting paid as a legal serial killer, murdering infants. He had 3000 in his home, stored in his garage, in his basement, in different bags.

And it was all because he was so cheap that he didn't want to pay for it to be dumped somewhere. So he kept it. That's the height of how far we've fallen. Our work is supposed to bring glory to God and bring life to the world.

And look at where we're at. Now that's, it's disgusting. It's awful. But God did not leave us without hope. In the midst of all this darkness, in the midst of all this tragedy, the Lord even as early as Genesis 3 said that he was going to send a Deliverer.

And that Deliverer was going to redeem us. And that Deliverer was going to redeem us not just of our sin, that Redeemer was going to deliver us of our fallen nature. And our fallen nature includes the way we work.

So if you think about it, Jesus Christ came to redeem us as his people so that we can now work for the glory of God. And so that we can now work to bring life to the world. Redemption doesn't just cover, we're going to send, God's going to come and send you to heaven.

God's bringing heaven down into you so that you can do what God has called you to do to the ends of the earth. That's the hope that we have. And that's what we're going to discuss today in this passage, because Jesus discusses it in this passage.

The first part of this sermon, now that we're past the introduction, is we're going to look at Jesus and his examination of fallen work. And then once we've done that, we're going to look at how Jesus is the only hope for work to be redeemed and restored.

So if you will, turn with me to John 6, 22 -29. If you don't have it, it will be on the screen behind us. And let's read God's word together. The next day, the crowd that stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other small boat there except one.

And that Jesus had not entered with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples had gone away alone. There came other small boats from Tiberias near to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks.

That's the miracle of the feeding of the 5 ,000. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boat and came to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you get here?

And Jesus answered and said to them, Truly, truly, whenever Jesus says that, it's important. Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because of the signs, but because you ate the loaves and you were filled.

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father God has set his seal. Therefore they said to him, What shall we do so that we may do the works of God?

And Jesus answered them and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom the Father has sent. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we know that the widespread effect and the fallout of sin has tainted and mangled and perverted so many aspects of our life.

From our bodies which ache and break with each passing year, to our minds which struggle to remember the good things of God, but seem to never be able to forget the bad things that happen to us. Lord, we pray that your redemption, which is available to us in Jesus Christ, would not just be something that we say amen to and raise our hands in praise over, but Lord, it would become something practical in our lives that affects everything, that begins transforming everything.

And Lord, I pray that it would include even the way that we work. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, if glorifying God, or if work is glorifying God and bringing life to the world, then this crowd was doing the exact opposite.

They were not glorifying God, they were dishonoring God, and they weren't bringing life to the world, they were hoping to bring death. To a point, Jesus as their king would have caused at minimum civil war, tons of death, and they had no idea who Jesus was, so even their foundation was failed and flawed.

But we also know that that's sort of the context of what's been going on. In John 5, for instance, Jesus enters into the city of Jerusalem, and when he gets to the city of Jerusalem, one of the first things that he does is he heals a man who had been broken for 38 years.

So Jesus goes into the city of Jerusalem and does a work that glorifies God. Jesus enters into Jerusalem and does a work that brings life to this man. He's doing the two parts of work. What do the Pharisees do when they respond?

The Pharisees accuse him of breaking the law, which is dishonoring to God, and then they threaten to kill him, which is not obviously bringing life. Do you see the contrast that John is drawing there?

Jesus and his disciples leave Jerusalem. Jesus goes to the mountain of God, and he starts teaching his disciples, and he starts healing his disciples. What is he doing? He's doing work. He's doing work that glorifies his Father, and he's doing work that brings life to the people.

He's physically healing them, and he's teaching them the law of God rightly so that now their souls are even understanding and having life brought to them too. Jesus is doing the work of God, and look what happens.

Just like the Pharisees, the crowd seizes him, and by force they try to make him their king, which tells us that they don't really know him. They're not glorifying God in this work that they're doing, and they're not bringing about life.

So when we get to John 6, when the crowds have just seen Jesus do the greatest miracle that they'd ever witnessed in their life, they got it all wrong. They demonstrate to us that they have a fallen, corrupted nature that is affecting the way they work.

Now, I want you to look and see how this unfolds because Jesus is Redeemer. He's not going to let us live in our fallen nature if we're his. If we're part of the world, we're not going to be redeemed.

But if we are part of his people, he's going to redeem us. Look at how this happens. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you get here? Basically, what they're doing is they're saying, why did you leave us?

We had a job offer for you. It was called King of Israel, and we wanted you to do our work instead of the work of God. Now, that's not exactly what they're saying, but that's what they're saying. They wanted Jesus to be the most powerful person in the country so that he could set up a bread-heavy welfare state.

That's essentially what they wanted. But look at how Jesus responds to them. Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life. He's talking about fallen work here. So the first act of redemption that Jesus is going to bring is he's going to identify what the fallen nature is.

It's in our own life. Think about it the same way. You can't repent of the sin that you don't know you're committing. Jesus is going to identify the sin. He's going to tell them how that they were perverting work, how that the damaging effect of the curse was fueling their behavior.

Again, cause and effect. Sinful nature is causing it and it's affecting their work. Now under the surface, we know that these people are not regenerated. They're not saved. They're not born again. They're not following Christ.

And even if they were following him, he hasn't died on the cross yet so their sins are still not forgiven. So the sin in their life is fueling their inability to work. Their work is not glorifying to Jesus and their work is not bringing life to Jesus.

And Jesus is going to examine it. Look at what he says. Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs but because you ate the loaves and you were filled. What Jesus is doing here is he's saying that you are trusting in your sinful appetite rather than trusting in God.

And he's actually saying that you have gotten worse since the last time I've seen you. I'm going to explain that. In John 4, Jesus was in the region of Galilee. Jesus was in the town of Capernaum. Jesus was healing a nobleman's son in front of crowds that were in Capernaum.

This same crowd is now here in Galilee in John 6. This same crowd is now here in Capernaum in John 6. And this same crowd has just witnessed a miracle and Jesus is juxtaposing where they were with where they are now.

Look at what he says. You don't seek me because of the signs. You seek me because of the food. This is what Jesus is saying. In John 4, when I was healing the nobleman's son, you wanted to follow me because of the spiritual signs that you were seeing.

And now you've gotten even worse because now you want to seek me because of the physical signs that you were seeing. You have fallen even in your own pursuit. Because failed spiritual seeking is wrong.

We don't seek Jesus for a sign. The Bible says a wicked and adulterous generation seeks God for the signs that he can perform. That's wrong. But they're not even seeking him out of the spiritual compulsions in their mind now.

They've forgotten spiritually who Jesus has said that he is. And now they're just looking for a full belly. They've gotten worse. They have fallen even further in their sin. They've gone backwards. Now how does this relate to work?

The most basic thing that you and I are commanded to do is give glory to God and to know God. The most basic thing. So here we have a situation in John 4 where they're attempting to know God. They got it wrong.

And in John 6, they don't even know him anymore and they've gone backwards. Their motivation is now being even further perverted. And there is a spiritual lesson in all of this that I think we ought to understand.

These crowds again were not saved. Jesus hasn't died for their sin. They don't have the Holy Spirit inside of them, but they're getting worse. And there's a particular reason why they're getting worse.

It's because he has withdrawn his presence. The crowd was left to their own devices and their own devices are alienating them further and further and further away from God. You see, what this teaches us is that we, if we're going to be found by Christ, we must be sought by Christ.

Amen. Yes, that is true. But if Jesus doesn't seek us, we can go further and further and further and further away from him. Sin is not neutral. All the sinners in the world are not equal in their propensity towards sin.

All of us without Jesus Christ and all of us without the restraining power of the Holy Spirit would be worse than Hitler. You see, biblically speaking, there is an act of grace that God has given to the world where he constrains even unbelievers in their sin.

Hitler was not a surprise. Hitler is what all of us would have been without God's restraining grace. Romans 1, when God withdraws his presence from people, they become worse. He gives them over to a debased mind and they become worse.

It is an act of grace. I don't know if I've not prayed this prayer lately. I'm motivated to pray it tomorrow that I'm thankful America is not worse. I'm thankful that the world at large right now is not worse because if God withheld his spirit from the world, it would be worse.

You couldn't walk to your car in safety. You couldn't lock your home and go to sleep at night and lay your pillow on your head and think that you're going to wake up in the morning. This world would be sick and this is what has happened.

We know that Jesus hid from these people. We know that he pulled himself back from these people. It says when they tried to force him to make him king, that he withdrew from them and they could not find him.

When God withdraws his presence from people, they get worse. There's a spiritual lesson there. There's no person who's neutral to sin. I can hold out my Bible and when I let go of it, it's not going to fall or it's not going to levitate here before us.

It's going to fall to the ground. If I were Randy Johnson in his prime and I could throw a baseball at a man holding a glove 100 miles an hour at 60 feet, we might not notice it, but at 600 feet, that ball is still going to touch the ground.

It cannot break the law of gravity. A gun, if I were to get a high powered rifle and fire it into the air, it will go a long way, but eventually gravity will bring it down because it cannot break the law of gravity.

We cannot break the law of sin on our own. We can't. Because if God lets go of us, if his hand that's holding us and restraining us is pulled away from us, we will inevitably fall further into darkness.

We just will. Like the crowds who are going deeper into sin, so too would you and I if it weren't for the restraining power of the Holy Spirit and praise God for everyone here who's been saved by Jesus Christ who now he's made an atonement for all your sins and he's broken the power of sin and death in your life.

It is a big deal to be saved. It's not just you raised your hand at a campsite someday or one day or you filled out a welcome card at church and you checked the box that you wanted to get saved. You were transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into light.

You were transferred out of the magnetic pull of sin that was going to grip you and hold you and pull you down into hell. The power of that has been broken in Jesus Christ in your life. It is a big deal.

Another spiritual lesson in this passage is that the same sun that warms the flowers scorches the earth. The same sun that warms and gives life to the flowers also scorches the earth. Think about it this way.

The same Jesus that you and I interact with who causes us to love him, who woos us and who gives us life is the same Jesus who when he pulls his presence away from the world it causes them to hate him and to revile him.

Same sun, same member of the Trinity, same person. In this passage we see that the disciples are being pursued by Jesus. He walks out onto the water to reveal himself to them and they receive him. What a metaphor for salvation.

Jesus walked out into the storms of our life, revealed himself to us before we ever received him and then because of his revelation we welcomed him joyfully into our heart. But what a metaphor for unbelief.

The people want to force Jesus into their own paradigm. They want Jesus to be a moral teacher. They want Jesus to be a good person. They want Jesus to be just another religion that's going to make them satisfied.

When you try to force Jesus into your paradigm he departs from you and he lets you bumble around in the darkness forever. What a metaphor. We can't seek God without God's help and unless God provides aid to us we will go further and further into the darkness.

Over time we'll grow colder. Over time we'll grow harder. Over time we'll grow more selfish, more prideful, less truly loving and less gracious and less forgiving. I don't know if you guys have seen The Lord of the Rings.

I read the book before I saw the movie. Great choice to do it in that order. But there's a man named Smeagol who turns out in the end to be a man named Gollum. He was just a regular guy from a fishing community and he saw this ring down in the water and he reached down and he grabbed it and it became instantly the thing that he was consumed with and obsessed with and he loved it and he clinged to it.

And in his clinging to it it ended up affecting his mind. He became mad and his body ended up becoming mangled and twisted so that at the end you couldn't even recognize Smeagol anymore because he was so much like Gollum, like that thing, you couldn't even recognize him and what did it do?

It propelled him over the edge of the cliff into the fiery lake below. J .R .R. Tolkien is purposely telling the story of sin. He's telling the story of what it means when you fall in love with your sin and you're consumed with your sin and it mangles your soul and it distorts you to a place that you're not even recognizable anymore all the way into the point that it makes you stumble over the edge into the fires of hell.

I have a friend, or I had a friend, he loved Jesus or he said that he did and he gave himself over to sin. And over six months goes by, he's not the same kid that I knew. A year goes by, he's personally attacking me and my family.

He's alienated himself from everyone that he loved. He is not even the same person because his sin and his love for sin has distorted his own person. That's what the power of sin is in our life and all of us if we weren't for the power of the Holy Spirit would call out for it.

It would be our precious instead of Jesus being the thing that's most precious to us. Now that's the sin, right? Jesus is talking about the cause, which is the sin, but also the effect that it's mangled our work.

So let's get back to the text. Verse 18, or sorry, I'm going to make a point. Jesus says that their God is their stomach instead of God being their God. Paul says this in Philippians 3, 18 through 19.

For many walk of whom I often told you and now tell you even weeping that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their appetite, whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

This is a portrait of the unbeliever whose appetites and whose passions have caused them to make their bellies their own God, food their God, entertainment their God. Just like the crowds that Jesus was addressing.

And I will say this, every single person who doesn't have the Holy Spirit will make a God out of anything and they will worship it. It doesn't have to be Baal or Zeus or anything else. It can be the stock market, it can be your job, it can be your family, it can be your performance.

We will make a God out of almost everything because we are idol making people. And those idols will twist you and mangle you just like we've said. But ladies and gentlemen, we do that as Christians too.

What is so interesting to me is that Jesus Christ died and crushed the power of sin and yet we run back to the troughs of hell. We lay down an everlasting Savior and we pick up temporal pleasures. Now those things don't have ultimate power over us and the power of them can be broken through repentance.

But we often do. We cling to things that are earthly instead of things that are heavenly. We're drawn down towards performance instead of resting in His presence. We fill our appetites full of sex and notoriety and image and materialism and hedonism and everything else other than Jesus.

We hunger and thirst for corruptible things instead of hungering and thirsting for Christ. And now we even go a step further. When we do that, it affects our work because there is a connection between our work and our worship.

Sin is the cause, our work falling is the effect, but there is a connection. Our work is worship and worship is our work so that if we are pursuing a life of sin, it will affect every aspect of our lives.

It just will, especially when it's Christians. Because we have the Spirit of God, we should be the very best workers in our company. We should be the most trustworthy stewards of money. We should be the most productive people in our jobs because we don't work for our bosses, we don't work for us, we work for God.

We should turn in the most creative proposals because our proposals honor the Lord who died for us. We should be the most joyful, life-giving people in our places of work because of what Christ did on the cross for us.

We have everything we need in the cross of Christ. We don't need money, we don't need anything else to be happy because we can be happy in Christ. That's the first point. Our work has fallen, but Christ is going to redeem work in the believer.

So let's look at now what work should look like. Verse 27. Jesus is telling us now what work is supposed to be and is going to be in him. He says, Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.

For on him the Father God has set his seal. Jesus is saying to the crowds, do not work for the things that perish. Don't work for earthly empires like this crowd is doing. Don't work for a earthly kingship like this crowd is doing.

Don't work for the things that perish. Work for the kingdom of God. Work for the thing that's going to last and echo into the halls of eternity. For us today, don't go to work for money. That's too low for you.

Don't go to work to provide for your family. That's too low for you as a child of God. Don't go to work for your performance or to pay your bills or to scratch our itching egos or anything else that perishes.

Go to work to give glory and honor to God. Go to work in order to bring life to the world. And when you do that, you will have the things that you need. It says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else will be provided to you.

Don't make your life about things that will never last. Make your life about something that will never fade. Instead of working for money, bring glory to God. Your bills will be paid. You'll probably get promoted.

You'll probably be the most responsible person in your organization and your boss will love that you were there. Not because you're working for him. Not because you're working for money. Not because you're working to pay your bills.

You're working for God. Your work is to bring glory to God and life to the world. We can drive to work for the glory of God. Wouldn't that make society a better place? Wouldn't that bring more life? We can get out of our car to the glory of God.

We can love our coworkers to the glory of God. We can be honest, sensible workers like Christ to the glory of God. We can be to work on time. I'll tell you this. New England is an awesome place. I love it.

But time is relative here. In the South, it's like a prideful thing. If you're not five minutes early, you're ten minutes late. Here, it's a little bit more relative. Ten minutes late, still on time at times.

But if we serve a God who was perfectly on time when he came to redeem us, we can be on time at the places we've committed to be. And we can do this not because we're wrapped up in ourselves, we're wrapped up in him.

That leads to our third point. How is Jesus going to redeem work? This is what he says. Therefore, he said to them, what shall we do so that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God, that you would believe in him he has sent.

What Jesus is saying is after the long failed history of work, after all of the bosses that abused their employees, after all of the employees who did not work and had to be fired because they wouldn't show up to work and everything else in between, after the long failed history of humanity with thorns in the fields and thistles in our wombs and everything else, all of that Jesus is going to bring about redemption.

Jesus Christ came to the world who no longer knew what true work was so that he could show us the true works of God. And I want you to think about it this way. Jesus lived out his life perfectly to the glory of God in front of us.

He lived out his life perfectly bringing life to us. And in his final act, the final thing of work he did was when God got the greatest glory. Think about that. When Jesus was on the cross, he was doing work.

This was not Jesus's moment of greatest defeat. This is his moment of greatest victory. As Jesus marched up the cross for you and I, he was doing work for us. He was doing work that glorified his father.

It says that when he was lifted up, it was the greatest moment of God's glory. Two thousand years ago, Jesus did work for you and I. Two thousand years ago and billions and billions and billions of lives have come out of one act of work.

One shift on a cross led to now two billion, three billion, four billion lives. Jesus Christ on the cross did work. Hebrews 1 .3 says he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of God's nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

And after making a purification of four sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. I want you to draw those two thoughts together. He is the imprint of God's glory, making purification for our sins.

So when he did that, he was glorifying God and bringing life to the world. But I want to tell you in Christianity, we often we often act like state workers. I worked in a jail for seven years and in a state employment job, one person has a shovel and ten people watch.