Discover the Jesus pattern and how to apply it to your life part 5

Welcome to episode 134.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 134. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to continue teaching on the Jesus pattern. I know we were on step 2. The first step was, I must be about my Father's business. And then the second step, I was going to talk about the Father's business, but God kind of had me talk about the Holy Spirit. So if you didn't catch the last 2 episodes, that's where I introduced the Holy Spirit and how it's— he is the absolute best friend that I've got, and how I talk to him all the time, and I listen and I hear things. But mostly when the Holy Spirit talks to me, it's through God's word. And he says he will lead us into all truth. And Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And Jesus said, these words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life. All of the things, they all go together. If you hadn't figured it out, that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Father God are three separate entities, but all one. And don't even try to get me to explain the Trinity. I don't have an exact grasp on how all this works. I've seen the three parts. They're all the same element. You've got water that's three parts. You can have steam, you can have ice, and you can have liquid water, and they're all three considered H2O. I don't know how it all works. I just know it works. And I know all three of these people are working separately but together, and it's amazing, it's awesome. And I think you need to get involved in these three. And I want to continue talking about the Jesus pattern. And remember when Jesus was in the temple as a little boy and he told his mom in Luke 2:49, and he said to them, why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? Well, that leads me to wonder, well, what's the Father's business? You know, we've all heard, and I've heard people, and I've prayed for God's will and all of that stuff, but that's just so generalized. If you don't get an answer to your prayer, then you can say, well, I guess that just wasn't God's will. Well, what is God's will? What is God's business? What is doing the business of God? And I think we need to dig into that before we can just assume that every time you ask a prayer and it doesn't get answered, then you're so, well, it must not have been God's will. Well, did you seek and keep seeking? Did you knock and keep knocking? Did you ask and keep asking? That's what Jesus told us to do. Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it will— should— the door shall be opened unto you. Because everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and everyone knocks, the door is opened. And I paraphrase, I know I probably butchered that, but the whole idea is that we just got to stay on this thing. We just got to keep going, and we got to keep digging deeper, and we got to keep digging deeper, and this part of this turning this page in this Jesus pattern. Jesus was about his Father's business. Jesus was not going about doing his own thing. Jesus heard from the Father, and this is what he— he was sent from the Father, and he was sent to do this one thing. And we're going to pick it up in John 6:26. Jesus answered them and said, most assuredly 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 labor for food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal on him. Then they said to him, What shall we do that we may work the works of God? And isn't that a great question? Jesus was getting on to them because, look, I just fed the 5,000. Y'all are following me around. Because I filled your belly. Jesus is saying, you know, don't waste your life just feeding your gut. You need to start searching out the food which will endure for everlasting life. Then the people asked that question, what shall we do that we may work the works of God? And have you ever wondered that? What can I do to make sure I'm doing God's work? You know, I'm just doing— I just need to do God's work, brother, or I just need to do God's work, sister. What is God's work? Well, here is Jesus' answer. Then Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent. That's it. Pretty simple, straightforward answer. This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent. John 6:29. And if you're looking at your Bible, this is the work of God, that you believe in him— him is capitalized— whom he sent is also capitalized. So both of these pronouns are are formal, they're capitalized. So we need to believe in him, which is Jesus, whom he sent, which God sent. So this is the work of God, that you believe in Jesus who God sent. So if you believe in Jesus, you're doing God's work. That's the work of God. So then what do you, then what we need to do, and that's why I thought that I would be talking about this as step 2, because the work of God doing Father's business, that's what Jesus said when he was a boy. Don't you know I'm about my Father's business? And the Father's business is simple. He sent his Son so that he could restore the relationship of God and man. And the only way to do that was to take away the sin of the world, because sin is what separates God and man from each other. And Satan did it back in the garden. He's, he's got us separated. And I know you've probably seen the, the chasm. There's a man on one side and God on the other, and between it there's just this big empty valley chasm that you can't, you can't reach the two of them. And then you see the cross that goes between that big chasm. I don't know any other way to explain it, but it's a really cool picture representation of how God bridged the gap. And that's the bridge. The bridge is the cross, is where man's on one side separated from God in sin. There's a big chasm, and I, and I don't even know if that's the right word. But I've said it about 4 times already, so I'm using it. Big old, like, Grand Canyon, if you will. Just a big old separator. There's no way you can jump across. There's no way you can get to God by yourself, by your own actions. The only way to get to God is to believe in him who he sent. So that's it. And the only way to do that— and it hadn't happened yet because Jesus hadn't died on the cross, so Jesus is still walking around teaching these people And then, and then these people, instead of saying, oh, that is cool, how do I do that? No, after he told them that, look at verse 30. Therefore they said to him, what sign will you perform then that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do? And you know, it's a dog and pony show. Say, hey, this is the work, you believe him who he sent. And then they said, oh Well, what sign will you perform? I want you to think about that question because he had just fed 5,000 people. And they— these are those people that they had come, they had just eaten, they got their bellies full. He'd already called them out on it, and they said, what sign are you going to perform? Now, he had 3 loaves and 2 fish, and he fed 5,000 men, and it didn't count the women and children. So let's just call it 10,000 people. With 3 loaves of bread and 2 fish, and there were 12 baskets full of fragments left. I, you know, I— maybe each disciple got a basket and they carried it around and gave it to the village. Maybe, I don't know. He said— and I don't even understand the 12 baskets. I just want you to understand that there was more than enough. And I think that the 12 baskets, each disciple had one to be reminded that, hey, not only did I feed all of these people all of this food, there's leftovers. And if you stay in God's word and if you watch how God operates, you're always going to see there's nothing ever done by just chance. Nothing's just random. God has a reason for everything that he does, and it's in order. God is a God of order, not chaos. So there's a reason they had the 12 baskets. I'm not sure that I understand it yet, And if you have ever been to a potluck dinner at church where you have a bunch of people come in and bring food and all of that stuff, or maybe the church supplies the food and there's a big dinner after service or lunch or whatever, and all of this food is there. Now there's somebody that has to clean that up after it's all done. Well, that was the disciples. And all of these people, they got their bellies full. They didn't go home hungry. And so they're, they're coming back because they want to get fed again. He calls them out, and then they say, 'What sign are you going to give us?' And the rest of John 6 is pretty much talking about the Bread of Life. And it's that difficult conversation that he had. It's a spiritual truth when he says, 'I am the Bread of Life,' because he talks about the manna. The people were talking about the manna. They said, 'Moses gave us this manna.' And Jesus starts correcting them and saying, 'No, Most assuredly I say, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. So God the Father is the one that put the manna down. In the Old Testament, it is types and shadows of what's coming. So the manna was really just a type of Christ. It is the bread of life. It is what kept them sustained for 40 years. The manna— the children of Israel were in the wilderness and they ate of the manna, which was a spiritual food. It was brought down from God. It's angel's food. Since God associated the bread of life with the manna, Jesus then says, "I am the bread of life." And so Jesus is then telling them, "Look, you just got your bellies full. You need to eat spiritual food. I am the spiritual food. I am the bread of life." And this is one of the teachings, you know, when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." He is the bread of life. And one of the things that we are to do— and again, soapbox moment— we're to dig into this word because Jesus is the word. Jesus is the bread of life. And the daily manna, the daily bread, is what we get, we eat, it says. And it's a difficult, it's a difficult topic unless you're into cannibalism. This is a very difficult topic to read about and think about. And this is, you know, and this is where the people were like, what are we, what are we supposed to eat your flesh and drink your blood? I mean, you know, Jesus kind kind of doubled down. I'm not going to read this, but Jesus pretty much called them out. But the people that were following him really didn't understand. They just, you know, they had heard his teachings, they had seen the miracles, and they still did not understand that this was a spiritual teaching. And it wasn't about take a big bite out of my left forearm. This is I'm going to give up my body so that I can— the relationship between God and man. And it goes back to the scripture that I talked about from the beginning. This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he sent. So we're gonna— that, that's the work. If you want to work the work of God, if you believe in Jesus whom God sent, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead, you shall be saved. I mean, that's the work of God. That's why God came It's so that we could believe and receive. Now there's repentance, there's humbling yourself, but that's for a different episode. Let's pray real quick. God, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for sending your son to live a perfect life and to die a death that I deserve to die. Lord, I pray for the person listening to this, that if I've confused them, I pray the Holy Spirit that you would help them to understand what it is you want them to know. Lord, we thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

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