Summary
Wandering from the Lord
In the sixth chapter of John, the crowds following Jesus had grown large. They were drawn by the miracles and by the hope that He might be the political Messiah who would overthrow Rome. But when Jesus turned from signs and political expectation to the hard teaching of discipleship, the crowds began to thin. Scripture distinguishes three groups around Him: the Jews (in John's Gospel often signifying unbelievers), a wider body of disciples who were attracted and learning, and the inner circle of the Twelve.
The hard teaching was this: "I am the bread of life" John 6:35. Jesus pressed further—He is the bread come down from heaven, and unless one eats His flesh and drinks His blood, there is no life John 6:51-53. This is metaphor, not yet the Lord's Supper, which He had not yet instituted; it is a vivid call to believe in Him as the Messiah who gives eternal life. Many recoiled: "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" John 6:60. The Greek word behind "offend" carries the sense of a death-trap—does this teaching kill any interest you have in Me? Jesus exposes the source of the resistance: the flesh is useless; faith is the gift of the Father, granted through the Spirit-bearing words of Christ John 6:63-65.
And so "many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him" John 6:66. Wandering from the Lord is nothing new. The rich young man in Matthew 19:22 went away grieving when his idol was named. Demas, once a fellow worker of Paul, "in love with this present world has deserted me" 2 Timothy 4:10. They simply went away. The pattern is consistent: when the cost of following becomes plain, the heart that loves something else more drifts off.
Then comes the haunting question. Jesus turns—not to the Jews, not to the broader disciples, but to the Twelve—and asks, "Do you also wish to go away?" John 6:67. That same question still searches the believer today: in the moments when God does not live up to our expectations of Him; when following Christ is simply hard; when His Word convicts us and the law lays bare the breadth and depth of our sin; when we feel the daily pull of the flesh and are tempted to think, if that is what it means to follow, I want out. The eyes of Christ meet us in His Word and ask, Do you also wish to go away? This is the question explored in Wandering from the Lord.: Do You Also....? 2-11-24.
Peter's answer is the confession of faith for every wanderer who has nowhere else to turn: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God" John 6:68-69. There is no other path. Jesus is not a way, a truth, a life, but the way, the truth, the life John 14:6. He alone died in our place, bore our sin, reconciled us to the Father, rose from the dead, and opened heaven.
And it is Peter—Peter who would later deny Him three times—whom the risen Lord sought out and restored with a threefold "Feed my sheep" John 21:15-17. That is the grace that meets the wandering heart. Through Word and Sacrament, Christ keeps drawing His people back, day after day. The hymn confesses it plainly: "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above." When the question comes—Do you also wish to go away?—the only answer is the one Peter gave: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
Video citations
- Wandering from the Lord.: Do You Also....? 2-11-24 — Would you open your Bibles, please, for our time of study today, to the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John, if you're using a Pew edition of Holy Scripture, you're going to find that in the New…