John 6:59

John 6:59 says, These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. Jesus tells us that He spoke these things at the synagogue at Capernaum..  Verse sixty adds, Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?  Many of His disciples said this was a hard saying and asked who could hear it.  Some things that God tells us are hard to hear.  It is much easier to hate your enemies than to love them, for example.  The disciples basically began to murmur.  It was bad enough that those who opposed Him murmured against Him, but how much worse for His disciples to do it.  We today as His followers have a tendency to murmur against God when things don't go the way we wanted.  We discount what God is asking us to do to be just too hard.  We sometimes use the expression, "It's not humanly possible."  That is most likely true.  If we are acting strictly out of our human ability, and it can be accomplished, then we feel no need of God and begin to operate under our own power.  It is only when we acknowledge that only by God's power can we accomplish what He has called us to do that we can really find success.  When God calls us to do a hard thing, remember it is not hard for Him.  We simply need to trust that what He is asking us to do can be accomplished by putting our faith in Him.  With God, all things are possible. Verse sixty-one continues, When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?  When Jesus knew the disciples murmured, He asked them if the things He had said offended them.  We need to ask ourselves if anything about the gospel offends us.  We cannot pick and choose the parts we wish to believe.  If we come for anything other than allowing Jesus to be Savior and Lord of our life, then the gospel will indeed offend us.  Jesus then told those following Him that He spoke of spiritual things. Verse sixty-two asks, "What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up to where He was before."  He wasn't speaking about what might possibly happen, but about what He knew had to happen.   Verse sixty-three continues, It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. He then said the Spirit quickens and brings life and the flesh profited nothing.  Jesus said the words He spoke were Spirit and they were life.  We need to spend our time listening to the words of life from the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes, we treat salvation as a get out of hell free card, but not as a call to discipleship.  Jesus knew that His physical body would soon be destroyed, but He also knew that it was necessary to complete the plan of salvation.  This does not mean we are to ignore or punish our bodies, but that we are to put faith in Christ above all else, even our physical life.  If we spend more and more time and money on the physical than the spiritual aspects of life, we may need to examine our priorities.  When following Christ becomes hard in earthly terms, what will we do?