We look at the Bible as Christians or as people who are trying to understand what it means to follow Christ. And we look to this word, we look to this book. We look to really, this is a collection. This is a library of books. We look at this as one book, but it's a library of 66 books that are put together in what we call the Bible.

And we look in this book to see, or this library of books to see what it says about our savior Jesus. If we call Jesus Christ the savior of the world, we want to understand what that means, and we want to understand how Jesus meets the reality in which we live. In other words, Jesus wasn't just alive a long time ago and important to the people in his culture, in his day. And then now it's just like some guy that we read about. We believe that Jesus is actually very relevant to today's reality, no matter the times we live in the person of Jesus Christ and the message that he brings are relevant to us today.

We might look at that as a vintage faith that has a vibrant reality. We live in a vibrant world, a world that is made up of many different things. And this vintage faith that we have in Christ is still real today. So we look to the scriptures for that, and we look to see what Jesus did, what he said, and how he lived, and it shows us the paths that we can walk to have life both today and eternally. So we're going to share some scriptures today.

I believe they're going to be up on the screens as well. But it's from the gospel of John, chapter six. And we're going to start in verse 66 and read through verse 69. After this, many of his Jesus disciples quit following him and did not accompany him any longer. Jesus said to the twelve, you don't want to go away too, do you?

Simon Peter answered him. He said, lord, to whom would 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. Amen.

Now, a little bit of the background on this, and for those who are here regularly, I can go for, like, way too long about background behind scripture, and I'm gonna limit that. But what we have going on is jesus had been doing miracles. He'd been teaching about life and about the kingdom of God. And the most recent miracle he had performed was he took one lunch. He took one lunch.

Just some bread and some fish maybe. For some of us, that sounds like a good lunch. And for some of us, we think, I could do better. But that's what they had. And he took that and he fed more than 5000 people.

And he took that lunch and he fed all these people that were there to hear him preach. And then you know what jesus did right after that, he starts doing what was what John that wrote this book, one of Jesus disciples reflecting later as an older gentleman, he writes this down and he says this was a hard teaching. In other words, what jesus said wasn't something that was easily received. And if you ever think that Jesus is just kind of like, you know, he's just kind of hippie like just flows, goes with the flow. Sometimes Jesus has difficult things, things that we don't want to hear, things that confront our lives and kind of demand that we might adjust to it, shift how we're living.

And so a lot of these people who had just partaken in that meal and received all these miracles and heard all these words, they said, you know what, I'm out. I can't handle this hard teaching. I'm going to get out of here. And in reality today many people do the same thing. Many people will hear the teaching of Jesus Christ and they'll say, no, that's not for me.

No thank you. And they'll walk out. And so Jesus, you know what? This is a terrible strategy. It seems like most pastors today, or people who are leading a movement or maybe a public speaker or something like that, whose job it is to communicate what they believe to be the truth to the people that will listen to them, it's not usually a good thing to say.

Dangerous stuff that you know is going to push people away and then you lose your audience. And most of us as human beings struggle with that. We don't want to do anything that pushes anybody out. And yet here's Jesus and he just looks at these twelve guys that are staring at him. His twelve closest friends, his, what we call his disciples.

A disciple is someone that follows another person and learns from them. He looks at his twelve disciples and he basically says, are you guys going to bounce too? If you don't know what that means, it means are you going to leave? Are you going to get out of here too? Basically he asked, are you going to walk with me or are you also going to leave like those other people did?

And there's this one guy we read about him, Peter. I love Peter. Peter. He had this uncanny ability to just always say whatever thing popped in his head. So many times it was the dumbest thing possible.

So many times he said something so stupid. One time he said something so stupid that Jesus looks at him, he says, get behind me, Satan. Get behind me, Satan. Jesus said that to Peter one time. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine Jesus Christ calling you Satan? By the way, that word Satan actually means adversary. So Jesus was saying that what Peter was doing was adversarial or against Jesus, against his mission, against his ministry. And he says, no, no, get behind me. And it was a reminder that Peter's the disciple.

Jesus is the teacher. Well, Peter, though, this time he gets it right. Sometimes that first thing that popped into his head was the right thing. Every now and then, Peter hits the nail on the head. And this is one of those times where he says, what can we do?

Where else should we go, Jesus, you are the one who has the words of eternal life. You're the one who is showing us life both here and eternally. You have the words of life. We have no one else to go to. Now, hear me.

We need to know this. This is really important. When we die, it's either just lights are out, and that's it. Just we're gone, snuffed out. Not even, like, darkness, just nothingness.

We're gone. It's either that or we go somewhere. Can we agree on that basic premise? If you die, you're either that's it and there's nothing else, or there's that part of you, what we believe to be called our soul, that goes on outside of the body. You know, there's some people that say, oh, well, I need to work on my soul.

Oh, no, no, no. You are a soul who has a body. It's our bodies that we need to work on, right? I feel that it's our bodies that need nutrition. It's our bodies that need sleep.

It's our bodies that need these things. But our soul is that eternal part of us. And that's the thing that Jesus is most concerned with. He wants our bodies to be healthy. We pray for healing.

We believe that Jesus has done miracles. That might seem crazy, but I'll tell you, it's not. It's not that crazy, because if God can make us, he can fix us. And so he does care about our bodies, but it's that inner part of us, that part that's immaterial, that's not made of physical nature. Our soul.

And our soul is that thing that goes on forever unless there's just nothing. If there's just nothing, then there's no hope that we have on this earth. You can just live out your life and do whatever you want. But if something happens when we die. If we go someplace.

It'd be helpful to know a little bit about that, right? It'd be helpful to know, like, if Jesus is the holy one of God, as Peter said, if Peter and the other apostles had somehow figured this out, if they had witnessed it, and they understood that this man before them that taught them and did these miracles, if this man named Jesus Christ was in fact the son of God, the holy one of God, then it's important to listen to him, right? Like, if he really is who he claims to be, then we should listen to him. We should learn from him. And so I thank God that we have these, what we call the gospels, these four books, Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, that are written, each one from a different perspective, to help us understand something about who Jesus is and how Jesus calls us to live and how he has given everything to bring us into fellowship with God.

And so there's something that we need to know about what Jesus said about life after death. See, Jesus didn't just talk about life on this earth. He didn't just set a good example for earthly life. He also talked about life after death. And so, friends, I want to tell you two things.

The first thing that I want to tell you is that it's never a good idea to go on a journey without Jesus. We have this thing says, traveling with Jesus. And of course, we're looking at the summer as we embark on summer. And for kids that were in school, they're out of school. Now is summer break, and you might be going on vacation, you might be traveling, you know, you might be going somewhere, and you might just say, no, I'm staying home.

Whatever it is, whatever your time is, if you're going embarking on something this summer, it's best to go there with Jesus. That's the idea that we have from this scripture today. That's the idea we have from the words that Peter spoke about. Where else would we go? Jesus is the one that has the words of eternal life.

So no matter what or where, travel with Jesus. Here's some practical ideas. You've got some on the screen. Find a Bible reading plan on youversion or Bible Gateway. If you don't know what that is.

There are apps on your phone that you can get, or you can go to their website on a computer. But I love the apps on your phone, especially youversion. That's the one that I tend to use the most. There's these reading plans that are simple, and some of them are just five to seven days, and some of them go for 50 or 60 days even. There's different ranges of them.

But you can go through this reading plan that will help you explore something about the life of Jesus Christ and what it means to be a Christian. You can go to one of those and use those reading plans. Or just simply say, I'm going to read one chapter a day, and you can start anywhere you want in the Bible. You don't have to start at the beginning and read all the way through. I promise you there will be some parts fairly early on.

You'll hit those and you'll say, I'm bored. You know, there's a lot of names and numbers that just kind of keep going and don't stop. And you're thinking, why do I need to know this? You'll get there at some point. If you're just starting out reading the Bible, you probably don't need to read those yet.

Did the pastor just say, you don't need to read that part? No, I said you don't need to read it yet. There will be a time where it'll click where you're like, that's why that's in here. I need that. But for now, maybe you start with the gospel.

Start with, I like the gospel of John that we're reading from today. It's laid out so beautifully. But whatever it is, pick somewhere and start there. There's one of the other things that I would highly suggest you do, especially if you have questions about who God is or about what God has for our lives today. And that is to write out your prayers.

And this is for two reasons. One, our thoughts in our head get more clear when we write them down. I do this sometimes when I'm contemplating something or when I'm working through something. I'll either type it in a note on my phone or write it on paper. But write down your prayer requests and your questions.

The questions you have for God about who God is. We all have them. I don't care if you've been walking with God for six, seven, eight decades. You still have questions for God about who he is and what he wants for you. Or if you're new to faith or you don't have.

You can't even say that you have faith in God yet. But you're like, I think you're real God, and I want to know more. Write down those questions that you have, because as you write them down, you'll be able to look back and see the ways God has answered those things. Both your prayers and your questions, write your prayers down. Now, people have told me for years to do journaling, and I just kind of say I'm a man that seems a lot like talking about our thoughts and feelings, and we're not good about that.

So that's why I specifically said, write down your questions, write down your prayers if you want to journal. That was a joke. You guys could have laughed at that one, you know, like, I know there's some men that journal, and that's okay if you're a man that journals. I'm just saying I'm not that in touch with my journal side of me, you know? So, anyway, you can do that.

The last thing that I might suggest, and there's probably a whole bunch more, but I just wanted to give you some practical things that you could do, is to read one book this summer. Now, for me, that's like, you can do a whole lot more than that. But I also know a statistic that says how few people actually read books. And I think, okay, pick one. This can be a book that's about either the life of Jesus Christ, and if you need some suggestions, I've got plenty, or a book that says what it's like to live the christian life.

Pick one book and read that. And that's one way you can. One of three ways that you can travel with Jesus this summer. But now there's a second thing that I wanted to talk to you about today. The first one was walking with God today.

The second one is about eternity. Me personally, I don't want to travel through this whole life. I don't want to live my entire life on this earth not having walked with God.

I don't want to spend my entire life on this earth and hit that moment where my body dies and say, I didn't walk with God my whole life. Now, some of you might say, well, I haven't been walking with God yet. No, but he's not far from you. He's not far from you. There's this guy named Paul in the New Testament.

He's an apostle. And the job of the apostles is pretty much just to go and share about who Jesus was, the resurrected savior that they have. And Paul talks to this group of philosophers. They were, they didn't really know God very well. In fact, they worshiped like thousands of gods.

But he tells them, he says, you know, there's this one God that you haven't approached yet. I saw an altar in your city. It says to an unknown God and that one God that you don't know. I want to make known to you. And he shares with them about the God who both created the universe, but also created us individually.

And so he says, I want to make him known to you. Now, that's unheard of. All these gods that the world goes after that are really dead. They're really nothing. They're not personal.

They're not known by you. You can't know them. There's nothing there. But the one true God, he has reached out to us. He sent his son to not only live in our midst, but also to die for us.

And in dying, he took our death upon himself, and he took all the guilt and shame of our sin upon himself. And then he rose again to new life, and he offers us that new life for ourselves. I don't want to go through my whole life not knowing him. He's the one person that I want to know. And the beautiful thing is, this is where we can't quite comprehend it.

This is where faith comes into play. Faith is understanding those things that you can't see, believing those things that aren't tangible right in front of you. And yet, if you look, if you really are looking, you'll see God at work in our world, and you'll know that God is active in our midst. I want to walk with Jesus my whole life. Peter had said that Jesus has the words of eternal life.

He was a friend of Jesus. He wasn't just a follower of his. He was a friend of Jesus. And he says, Jesus, you have the words of eternal life. I've heard a lot of people talk about how to make this world a better place.

I've heard a lot of people talk both about the problems in the world, and I'm probably guilty of this, too, quite a bit. But we can look at the problems, and we can try to figure out a solution to making the world better. But truly, the world is not a better place without the life of Christ living in and through us. Jesus gave his whole life not just to make the world a better place, but to bring us into eternal life. He offers us that eternal life, that side of eternity that we call heaven, is free of all the things that are plagued in our world.

The poverty, the sickness, the war, the pain, all of those things. It's free of that. We might feel like we're struggling and suffering today, but God's at work not only here now, but for eternity. So faith seems complicated, faith, like if you haven't crossed over that line of faith where you can claim, I believe that Jesus Christ is real, that he's the son of God, that he died and he rose again. If you haven't gotten to that point where you can say that, that's okay, that's fine.

Even if we're honest, even the person who's been a Christian the longest, I don't know who that is. But whoever that is in this room has still got some questions and some doubts today. And you know what we've learned to do? Here's the biggest thing about faith that we've learned to do, is to say, I still have those questions. I still have things that I don't quite understand, and I keep asking God about it, and sometimes he gives me the answer and sometimes he doesn't.

But here's what I can tell you. I know who I have believed. Him. I'm persuaded that he is able to complete the thing that he started. Those weren't my words.

I stole them from a song. By the way, I'm not a good singer, so I didn't sing it. I'm convinced of that. And my faith carries me through those questions that I have. And eventually, all I know is that God is real and God loves me, and that God loves you as well.

So here's the way to simplify faith. Start with saying, God, I believe you're real. I got a lot of things that I don't understand about that yet, but I believe you're real. The next thing is admitting that we're kind of messed up. The Bible is called that sin.

It's a word that can be defined a whole bunch of different ways. However you want to look at that or understand, that is up to you. Just understanding that. And if you think, no, I'm not that bad. Look, I'm not saying.

I'm not trying to rank who's the worst and the best. All I'm saying is look around the world and say, this place is kind of messed up, but God's not done with it yet. I'm kind of messed up, but he's not done with me, either. All right, if that's not worth a praise God or an amen or, thank you, Jesus, I don't know what is. So when we admit that we've gotten it wrong, what we're doing is basically saying, God, I need your help in this.

I've gotten it wrong, but God, you can help me with this. So then the next step would be to trust in God. You see, he offers us forgiveness, or we could understand that. To say, when we say, God, I've messed up, he says, that's okay. I'm making it right.

He's ready to heal our lives. He's ready to fix the places that we've gotten wrong along the way. So after that, you begin to trust in God. You begin to trust that he is ready to heal you and to heal your life. The last thing is just travel with Jesus, walk with him, learn from him, grow in that faith that you have.

Even though it might be small. Say, God, increase the faith that I do have.

I want you to know more than anything else today, God loves you. There's nothing that you've done or been involved in or gotten into that can separate you from his love. All you have to do is say, God, I receive that love as you do, that the healing begins in our lives. As you say, God, I. I accept your love for me in a way that no one else can give it or offer it.

God can. And it's for you. Right now, today, a lot of times churches will do things like they'll make you repeat a prayer. I'm not going to make it that easy on us today. You see, I don't want to give you something to repeat, and then you just mouth it back and then everything's good from there.

You see, there's a little bit of struggling we have to do with God sometimes. Not that we have to fight him, but we have to say, God, I need to understand this. And so what I want for you is for you to be able to put that into your words, not mine. Does that make sense? But I invite you today that if you haven't been traveling with Jesus, or as Peter said, walking with him, because there's no one else to follow, then start that today with just a simple declaration, God, I believe, help the things where I struggle with my belief.

Amen. I'm going to wrap up with.