From Crowds To Twelve: Why Hard Teachings Reveal True Disciples

When truth collides with our comfort, something has to give. We walk through John 6 where Jesus speaks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, refuses to soften the claim, and invites us to trade easy answers for real discipleship. The crowd loves miracles, but many leave when the message touches the will. We explore why Jesus uses hard sayings and parables to separate curiosity from surrender, and how the Spirit gives life while the flesh offers nothing but noise.

Together, we unpack what it means to truly partake of Christ: receiving his Word, praying with honesty, surrendering our preferences, and letting the Holy Spirit rework us from the inside out. Communion becomes a living picture rather than a ritual—bread and cup as a call to remember, abide, and be changed. We also face the sobering turn when many disciples walk away, and then hear Peter’s steady confession, “You have the words of eternal life.” That line becomes a compass for anyone navigating doubt, confusion, or cultural pressure.

We speak plainly about the modern church’s drift, the pull of doctrines that sound kind but hollow out the gospel, and the need for discernment that is both wise and brave. Grace begins and completes the work—drawn by the Father, saved by the Son, enlivened by the Spirit—yet we still choose whether to yield or cling to counterfeits. If you’ve ever wondered how to hold conviction without cruelty, how to practice faith without performing, or how to be salt and light when the night gets darker, this conversation will ground you in the words that lead to life.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s wrestling with hard questions, and leave a review to help others find these messages. Your story might be the invitation someone needs today.

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

Invitation And Theme

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

If you believe something in your faith, you believe a lot of the right things, but somewhere along the line you discover that you're believing something that is off, something that's worldly, something that's demonic. And the Lord reveals that to you. But you kind of like that idea that you've been believing all these years. You kind of cling to it. Are you willing to admit that it's wrong and allow the Lord to change your heart and change your thinking?

When Truth Confronts Belief

SPEAKER_00 0:50

It's been said that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. And there is certainly some truth to that. But what happens if you spend 10,000 hours practicing the wrong things? What if there's some serious flaw that you've been repeating over and over again? Would you be willing to learn again from scratch? In his message today, Pastor Carl encourages you to carefully consider the words of Scripture and be willing to be corrected as necessary. Are you ready to receive the truth? And now, here's Pastor Carl.

Sweet And Bitter Word Of God

Eating His Flesh Explained

Communion And Inner Change

Abide And Be Transformed

Offense At Hard Sayings

Spirit Gives Life

Many Walk Away

Peter’s Confession Of Life

Judas And Unbelief

Call To Discernment

Closing Prayer And Charge

SPEAKER_02 1:28

There were times where the apostles in the book of Acts went into a town and they proclaimed the gospel and it changed people, and the people would no longer buy the idols of the town because they no longer worshiped idols. They worshiped the true God, which affected the economy of the town, and the town got mad at them. When we realize the ramifications of the Word of God, it's sweet, but it's bitter too. We realize judgment is coming on this world, and that's bitter. But we realize that we're still here and have the opportunity to share the gospel and that people would come to know the Lord and be saved out of that judgment. That is sweet. The Lord says, Partake of the true bread, the living bread, which is me. And it'll change us from the inside out. Verse 52 of John 6, the Jews therefore quarreled among themselves. They murmured and quarreled, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? I am like, totally, this is not right. We need to get this guy out of the synagogue. This is not right. And Jesus said to them, because they were murmuring and quarreling among themselves, but he knew what they were talking about. Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. Instead of backing up and saying, Well, I don't really mean that, he comes in even stronger. And the reason I believe he did it this way is the same reason why he said, why he taught in parables so many times. Do you know why he taught in parables? So that the ones who did not want to believe had an excuse not to believe because they didn't understand the words that he said. It's just a bunch of hogwash. I'm not going to follow after him. But those that did seek after the Lord found in the parables great deep messages that applied to my life. If we understand what he's saying about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, that it's all about reading his word and seeking him in prayer and surrendering my life to his and allowing the Holy Spirit to come in and teach me and change me from the inside out, it's a whole different perspective, isn't it? When we celebrate communion, he brought the same theme in. This bread represents my body. This wine represents my blood. My body was broken for you. My blood was shed for you. Remember this. Partake of this. Let me change you from the inside out. So it's important for us to be in the Word. It's important for us to first believe the gospel and to be changed by the work of the Holy Spirit that's come to convict and to reveal truth to us. We need to accept that first, but we need to grow in it every day. We need to know Jesus more and be changed by him. And to symbolically, you know, eat his flesh and drink his blood. Flesh is one thing, spirit is another. My soul and my spirit need the Lord. I need to be nourished by the Lord through his word. Verse 56. And he keeps on going. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. Just like when you partake of bread and it becomes part of you, you partake of me, I become part of you. And as the Lord works in our lives and makes us more and more like him, we realize that we're not the person that we used to be. We're not where we want to be yet, but we see that the Lord is at work. Are you allowing the Lord to work in your life? And as the living Father set me, I live because of the Father. So he who feeds on me will live because of me. It was part of the will of the Father for the eternal Son to become a man. And that life would come through that man. Life to mankind, which was stuck in death ever since the fall, ever since creation, ever since Adam and Eve sinned against the Lord. This is the bread which came down from heaven. Not as your fathers ate the man and are dead. He's repeating these things so they would ponder on it, that they would realize the bigger picture that he's trying to share. He who eats this bread will live forever. You want life? I am life. Partake of me. I've made a way that you can partake of me. Now it's up to you to do it. He said these things in the synagogue as he taught in Capernaum. A neat little parenthesis that John gives us. By the way, he was saying this in the synagogue in Capernaum. In other words, he was starting to upset people more and more. Chapter 6 started out with the biggest crowds that Jesus had ever seen following him. And it's starting to look like chapter 6 is also where he sees the greatest loss of followers, because he was saying things that they did not like or understand or were offended by. Verse 60, therefore, many of the disciples, when they heard this, said, This is a hard saying. Who can understand it? Which is, this is like, wow, this is crazy. That's one aspect of that. This guy's a lunatic. We need to get him out of here. Or this is so deep it's beyond anything I can understand. I'm going to stick with the things I understand because I'm more comfortable there. Either way, they're actually pushing Jesus away. When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples complained about this, he said to them, Does this offend you? I mean, he knows that it did offend them, but he asks us questions so that we can check our own hearts and our own minds. What is it that we're actually thinking in this situation? And of course, you had the twelve apostles that were his inner circle, but you had a whole group of people that were following him that called themselves disciples of Jesus. And these disciples were becoming more and more offended. Then Jesus says, if this offends you, what if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? Will that offend you? Or will that actually cause you to come to faith after all? I am laying all this out, Jesus saying. Purely honest. I'm not playing any games. I'm sharing with you the truth. I have come as the Messiah that you've been waiting for. And the things that I'm saying to you are too hard for you to grasp, so they offend you, and you don't want to hear them anymore, but they are the words that lead to life. It's up to you to come and seek me. Not even that. Just allow me to work in you. Believe, trust, seek, find, be changed. Because what did happen in the book of Acts? Jesus was gathering with them. And before they knew it, he started rising up and looking up into heaven. And Jesus is going back to his Father like he said he would. And then some angels came and said, What are you looking at? It's my interpretation. The same way he went up, he's coming back. So go do what he told you to do. In the power of the spirit that he gave you to do it in. If this offends you, boy, you're gonna have a hard time when you see me ascending into heaven. It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. Look, do you not understand? When I'm talking about my flesh and my blood, I'm not talking about taking a bite out of my arm. This is a spiritual matter. This is a heart matter. The problems with your murmuring and your disbelief are in your heart. And I've come to make a way where there was no way, but you need to accept it, you need to walk in it, you need to be changed by it. But there are some of you who do not believe. Believing me is the secret. I mean, earlier in the chapter, what are the works of God that we might work them? And he said, the works of God are to believe in the one that the Father has sent, to believe in Jesus, to be changed by Jesus, to accept this gift that he's given us. But there are some of you who still don't believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe and who would betray him. There's this idea that he's opened the gates wide and he's saying, come on in. But there are folks for one reason or another that say, nope, I don't want any of that. I like living my own life, thank you. I don't want anybody telling me what to do. In fact, the God, the image of God that we have from the Old Testament doesn't match who you are, so I don't want anything to do with it. My their religiosity was an excuse. If you believe something in your faith, you believe a lot of the right things, but somewhere along the line you discover that you're believing something that is off, something that's worldly, something that's demonic. And the Lord reveals that to you. But you kind of like that idea that you've been believing all these years. You kind of cling to it. Are you willing to admit that it's wrong and allow the Lord to change your heart and change your thinking? Or will you grab a hold of that false teaching just because it brings you some weird comfort? That's a question to ask us this morning. Because that's basically what we're talking about. You know, the things of the Lord go against the things of our flesh. And that's why Jesus says if anybody wants to follow after me, he needs to what? Deny himself, pick up his cross and follow after me. It's not about how you feel, it's not about how you think things should be. It's about the truth coming to reveal life to you. He is the life, he is the way to the Father. And yet there will be many that do not believe. And there will be some that betray him. And then he said, Therefore, I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by the Father. You can't come with your own logic, you can't come with your own religion, you can't come with your own works. It's only by grace that's offered by the Father, that's made possible by the Son, that is finished by the work of the Holy Spirit. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. The Lord has made a way where there was no way. But he's also given us a choice to follow it or not. And from that time on, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. We see that in the church a lot today. Again, what is going on with the church today is we are being influenced by the culture, by society, by the world more than we are influencing the world and society and the culture. And you've got great preachers and teachers and worship leaders and other folks in the body of Christ that start listening to some of the messages from the world, and they start to question the grace of God, and they say, you know what? I don't believe this. I'm walking away from it. Christianity is hateful, and I'm leaving. Boy, do we need the mind of Christ. We need the wisdom of God to recognize the doctrines of demons that are coming our way and that are influencing us and that are masquerading as angels of light. Many, many who followed him, many who trusted him, but never really came to a full knowledge of him, walked away and didn't follow him anymore. It's interesting that is uh John chapter 6, verse 66, which in the book of Revelation, John would be talking about the mark of the beast, which is 666, which is the number of a man. Six is the number of man, and 666 is just exponential. This is the thinking of the world. This is the thinking of fallen man influenced by Satan, who takes advantage of our fallenness and twists things away that we're further and further from receiving the truth of the Lord. We seek after God and find the truth, because it's his will that we would. Then Jesus said to his twelve, the most intimate group that are following after him and learning from him, do you also want to go away? But Simon Peter answered him and said, Lord, to whom do we go? You have the words of eternal life. And may I put in a parenthesis, he probably also said, You have the words that lead to life, even though we don't fully understand them, and some of these things are crazy and we can't put our heads around it. But you know what? You've shown us enough that we trust you, and we're gonna follow after you. As we grow in the Lord, he's gonna show us things that bother us, that you know, we have no idea what this means, you know, and where is he gonna take us next? What's gonna happen? But have we gotten to the place in our relationship? But even though I don't understand it all, I understand enough that I trust you and I follow you. We have also come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Can you say that? I know it, I believe it. The fact that He is the Christ and the Son of the Living God, it's changed who I am. And when I look to Him and I look at myself, I realize there's so much more work that needs to be done, but I know He started that work and He will complete it because of His goodness and His grace toward me. And how did Jesus answer them? He didn't answer them with that of boys, He answered with another heavy statement. Did I not choose you, the twelve? And one of you is a devil. I chose you all, but one of you is rejecting me. For God so loved the world, the whole world, that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes will not perish, but have everlasting life. But some won't believe. Some are influenced more by Satan and seem to enjoy it and don't want anything to do with God. How sad that is. Because his blood has paid for the sin of the world for everyone that was created and still has yet to be born. The blood of Christ covers them and then some. There is no reason why anyone should go to hell. And when he comes to judge an unbelieving world, it's quite an irony because the wrath of God had already been poured out on him. And now he's pouring out wrath on those who will not believe. He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve. That isn't believing, but is being used as a tool of the enemy. And in the church today at large, we're just allowing those folks in. And it's it's deadening the effect of the gospel, it's watering down the teaching of the Bible, it sounds more like the world than a life-changing message. May we determine to walk in the truth of God's word. May we indeed be salt and light, because the darkness is getting darker. And it's not up to us to match the darkness, but it's up to us to shine into the darkness. And again, it's not up to us in our flesh. It's about the Lord working in and through us. Are we allowing him to do that? Or are we going our own way? That's something we need to ponder. What do we believe? Do we believe what the Lord tells us? Or are we influenced by Our own flesh and the teaching of the world and doctrines of demons. There's so many messages that come at us today. May the Lord give us discernment and boldness and just the grace to walk it out and to share it. Amen. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you that you seek and save the lost. Thank you, Father, that you sent your son to be a sacrifice for all of mankind. And Lord, we thank you for your willingness to set aside your glory in heaven and to humiliate yourself to become one of us. To represent us to the Father, to stand in our place, to take the wrath of God upon yourself for the sin that we rightly deserved to be punished for. And you rose again, proving your power over sin and death, and giving us the opportunity to join you in life. Because you are life. The words that you speak are life. And we desire to partake of you, to be changed by you. As John the Baptist would say, I want less of me and more of you. Lord, may you take us over. May you use us for your glory and our good. And for the sake of those who are around us that do not know you. For time is running out. And now more than ever is the time for the church to shine. Help us to do that, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.

Share Your Story And Gather

Service Info And Website

SPEAKER_00 24:07

That's Pastor Carl on Come On Up. You know, the Gospel of John was written by one of Jesus' original disciples. He's referred to as the disciple whom Jesus loved. What a sweet and intimate way to refer to the closeness and friendship that was had between John and Jesus. After all, so many of the events mentioned were witnessed firsthand by John. He was there for the transfiguration, and he was the only disciple of the twelve mentioned to be at the cross as Jesus died. He was also one of the first people to see that the grave was empty. John had an opportunity and a privilege to write about all the things that he saw and witnessed with his own eyes. He saw miracles. He was the recipient of Jesus' love and care, and he was eager for others to see and experience knowing Jesus too. That's why he wrote it all down in this wonderful book of John. Like the author, we hope that you'll take note of the ways that God has intersected your life and brought about amazing stories to tell. Write them down, share them with others, and don't be afraid to tell people about the greatest love of all, so that they can also claim that they are disciples whom Jesus loves. An easy way to share Jesus with people is by letting them know about this radio program. The Mountain Cross is a group of believers in Jesus who seek to grow in faith by simply teaching through the Bible. We meet on Sundays beginning at 10 a.m. To learn more, go to themountaincross.com. That's all for today. Come on Up is sponsored by The Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.