Alliance Christian Church
January 18 2026

      • 2 Corinthians 9:7GS-NETBIBLE

      • 1 Corinthians 13:1–13NIV2011

  • House of the Lord
  • Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
  • You Are My Hiding Place

  • Counterfeit Jesus

    John 6:25–35 “When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus replied, “I tell you the solemn truth, you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate all the loaves of bread you wanted. Do not work for the food that disappears, but for the food that remains to eternal life—the food which the Son of Man will give to you. For God the Father has put his seal of approval on him.” So then they said to him, “What must we do to accomplish the deeds God requires?” Jesus replied, “This is the deed God requires—to believe in the one whom he sent.” So they said to him, “Then what miraculous sign will you perform, so that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the solemn truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but my Father is giving you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread all the time!” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
    Introduction
    "Lisa”. Grew up in Church, but was taught a counterfeit Jesus. Fell away when hard times came.
    Transition
    Sevens series. Right now we’re looking at seven conversations Jesus has with people. Each of which are going to show a response on our behalf to the fact that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God.
    If you buy a commentary on the Book of John, or if you look in your study Bible, you might find these seven conversations laid out in the outline, or in the notes of your commentary or study bible.
    You’ll often find them called “discourses” There’s the Born again discourse, there’s the light of the world, discourse, there’s the good shepherd discourse.
    And the one we’re looking at today is often called the “bread of life” discourse.
    I’m calling them conversations. why? well honestly, I think the word “discourse” sounds a little to pretentions, a little bit too fancy for my taste.
    This morning we’re looking at John chapter 6 where Jesus has a conversation with a crowd of people.
    “Bread of Life” discourse. Or the bread of life “conversation, happens right after Jesus performs the miracle of feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish.
    And just to catch us all up to speed on the context here, right after Jesus performs this miracle, John 6:14 .
    John 6:14–15 NET 2nd ed.
    Now when the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus performed, they began to say to one another, “This is certainly the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Then Jesus, because he knew they were going to come and seize him by force to make him king, withdrew again up the mountainside alone.
    Now there’s something interesting going on here. On the surface of it, in some ways, the crowd is responding correctly to Jesus. They’re acknowledging that he is the prophet to come into the world. This is a reference to the promise God gives in the Book of Deuteronomy that he would send someone greater than moses to the world.
    And they acknowledge him as their king.
    So on the surface, everything should be fine and dandy. They’re doing the right thing.
    The problem is, that the version of King Jesus that they have built up in their minds is not true. It’s a counterfeit.
    Roadmap
    As we’re going to see in the conversation that ensues, they have built up a counterfeit Jesus in their minds. We’re going to identify 4 counterfeit Jesus.
    My goal is for you to dig deep, and do a little soul searching, and ask yourself, have there been times in my life where I have inadvertently been worshiping a counterfeit Jesus.
    Turn in your Bibles to John 6:25 .
    Our First Counterfeit Jesus: Bread and Circuses Jesus.
    Statement
    Bread and Circuses Jesus
    Explanation
    John 6:25–27 NET 2nd ed.
    When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus replied, “I tell you the solemn truth, you are looking for me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate all the loaves of bread you wanted. Do not work for the food that disappears, but for the food that remains to eternal life—the food which the Son of Man will give to you. For God the Father has put his seal of approval on him.”
    All of a sudden, when you hear what Jesus says here, it makes sense what their intentions were back in verse 15 when it said they were going to seize him by force and make him king.
    Why did they want Jesus to be their king? Free food.
    They had built up this version of King Jesus in their minds who has the ability to make unlimited food show up out of nowhere. And they’re thinking this is just what we need.
    And think about what his other previous miracles he performed were? He had Healed a bunch of people, miraculously, and then before that he had turned water into wine.
    So they were all on board for king Jesus. Free food, free wine, no more sicknesses. That’s a sweet deal.
    Illustration
    In the roman empire, take a wild guess at which emperors were the most popular with the people?
    It was the ones who provided the most free grain and free wine.
    And every time in history when the people started to think about revolution, overthrowing the emperor, what did they do? Free food, free wine. Free games in the coliseum.
    And in fact, it’s interesting that John includes this conversation when Matthew Mark and Luke didn’t, because at the time John was writing, that’s exactly what the roman emperor was doing. He was pacifying the people by increasing the grain and wine allotments, and having free entertainment at the colusium. Bread and circuses.
    But Jesus wants us to know that he is not a genie in a bottle.
    Argumentation
    But here’s the deal, I think a lot of us in one way or another have been tempted to create that version of Jesus in our minds.
    Especially when there are passages of Scripture that can be pulled out of context to make it seem that way.
    Matthew 7, ask and you shall receive, knock and it will be answered. God will give good gifts to those who ask.
    It’s not that hard to take a couple of verses out of context and create a version of Jesus in your mind that starts to look a lot like a genie in a bottle.
    But there is a big difference between the real Jesus, who provides for your needs.
    And the counterfiet Jesus who grants your every wish.
    Application
    God did not send his son to grant your every wish.
    That is a counterfeit Jesus.
    But guess what, sometimes we fall into that trap. And we pray for things and we ask for things, and the answer god gives us is NO.
    And if we have a counterfeit version ofJesus in our minds, what ends up happening is we get angry. Why didn’t god give me this, I asked for it. I prayed for it. I prayed really hard.
    But that’s a counterfeitJesus.
    Jesus didn’t come to grant your every wish.
    Transition
    And as the conversation in John 6 goes on, very quickly after Jesus identifies one counterfiet version of himself that they had in their minds, he uncovers the second one, in verse 28 .
    Jesus tells them, don’t follow a bread and circusies Jesus, work for eternal life, look towards things bigger than the needs of this world.
    And they respond by saying
    John 6:28 NET 2nd ed.
    So then they said to him, “What must we do to accomplish the deeds God requires?”
    Point
    Statement
    Look at Me Jesus
    Explanation
    Now it’s really hard to get tone from the bible. Because you’re not there in person.
    I could read this generously to the crowd, and assume that they were more or less asking, what can we do to give glory and honor to god out of our love and commitment to him. Because we are so grateful to God that we want to serve him with our whole hearts. So what must we do to accomplish that?
    That’s a generous reading of the text.
    But based on everything else the crowd says in chapter 6, I don’t think that’s the tone they had.
    Just based on their behavior, and their reaction to the things Jesus says and does, I get the impression thatthe tone of this question is more along the lines of”
    What kind of stuff do I need to do so that God is really impressed with me, and pleased with me, so that he can give me more stuff. So that I can have more of the bread and wine and all my desires.
    In other words, they had built up a “look at me” Jesus.
    They had this idea, well if I could just accomplish the deeds god requires, if I could just be good enough, and act good enough, then God’s going to be so impressed with my behavior and my obedience that he’s just going to have to bless me.
    What do I need to do to impress God, what do I need to do to make God proud of me.
    What do I need to do to earn his favor?
    Argumentation
    And I don’t think it was conscious. I don’t think they realized that was the version of Jesus they had created.
    And in fact a lot of people today probably don’t realize that’s the version of Jesus they’ve created.
    But I think what ends up happening, slowly overtime, if we’re not careful, we end up having a relationship with God that is transactional in nature.
    Illustration
    And it’s a slow process, but I’ve seen the results of it.
    And it’s dangerous. Especially when bad things start to happen.
    I’ve talked to people who have said things like “I don’t understand why God is allowing this terrible thing is happen to me.
    I did everything right. Or at least Itried to.
    I went to Church I read my bible, I prayed, I stayed away from sin as best I could.
    I did everything right, and this is how God is repaying me.
    I’ve had that exact conversation.
    And one of two things happens, when we get into that mindset.
    We either double down. And we think “Well maybe this thing is happening because I wasn’t faithful enough. Maybe I need to do more. Maybe I just need to impress God even more. Maybe maybe maybe
    Or, And this is the logical conclusion, we give up. We throw our hands up and say, obviously I did everything I could, and God still is allowing this horrible thing to happen to me.
    And i’m done. I can’t do this anymore.
    Application
    And when I hear people say things like that my heart breaks.
    Because it means that somewhere along the line someone sold you a bill of goods.
    Someone sold you a counterfeit Jesus.
    Somewhere along the way someone got the idea in your head that Jesus is this person who promises to bless you in accordance with how good you do.
    And it doesn’t work that way.
    That’s not the promise Jesus gives us.
    If that’s you, I urge you to turn away from that version of Jesus. Because it’s not real.
    Our relationship with God is not transactional.
    Transition
    Jesus responds to their claim of a counterfeit Jesus in verse 29, he says
    John 6:29 NET 2nd ed.
    Jesus replied, “This is the deed God requires—to believe in the one whom he sent.”
    To put your faith in Him.
    But immediately, they shift from the “look at me” jesus, from the “transactional Jesus” to another counterfeit Jesus in vers 30
    John 6:30–31 NET 2nd ed.
    So they said to him, “Then what miraculous sign will you perform, so that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
    Point
    Statement
    Give us a sign Jesus
    Explanation
    This is like the opposite of the look at me Jesus.
    In the look at me Jesus, the idea is, I’m going to do stuff, and it’s going to impress God, so that he can bless me.
    The Give us a sign Jesus is the exact opposite.
    It’s the “Jesus needs to do something for me, so that I can believe in him.
    I’m willing to put my faith in him, but, he needs to do something for me first.
    Show me a sign.
    Argumentation
    And I think, again, for most people, it’s really subtle.
    I doubt most of us walk around blatantly worshiping a “give me a sign” Jesus, but it does show up in subtle ways from time to time.
    Illustration
    Perfect illustration: have you ever heard someone say something like
    I’m just laying out my fleece for the Lord?
    Does anybody know where that comes from?
    Judges 6, God comes to a young man named Gideon
    And God tells gideon, I am going to appoint you as a Judge over israel, and you are going to lead them to victory from their oppresssors.
    And immediately, Gideon starts doing exaclty what the peoplein John 6 were doing.
    Give me a sign god, so I know it’s really you.
    First he puts out an offering, and God zaps it up, proving he really is God.
    And then, later on, Gideon says to God
    Look if it’s really you, I’m going to lay out a fleece blanket. And I need you to prove it’s really you by making the fleece wet, but the ground completely dry. And gideon wakes up the next morning and sure enough, the fleece is wet, but the ground is dry.
    And gideon says, ok, one more time, this time, I’m going to put out the fleece blanket and I want you to make the ground wet, but the fleece completely dry.
    And god obliges, and gideon wakes up, and the ground is wet, and the fleece is dry.
    Application
    And Christians will walk around saying things like “Oh, I’m laying out my fleece for the Lord” I’m asking God to give me a sign.
    The problem, is that gideon is not the good guy in that story.
    That story in Judges was not meant to be an example we should follow.
    That story in Judges is supposed to be a warning of what it looks like when we don’t trust God.
    It’s not meant to be a model example of faith.
    And yet we as christians, so often, walk around saying things like “oh I’m just laying out my fleece for the lord”
    No. don’t do that. It would be like if Christians walked around saying “oh, I’m just eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil”
    It’s like, no, that story was written to give you an example of what NOT to do.
    If you want a model example of faith, faith that trusts in God without needing him to constantly prove himself, a much better old testament story to look to would be the story of shadrach, meshach and abednego.
    They were put in a life or death situation and you know what they said?
    We believe God can save us from the fire. We believe that he can show us a sign of his glory and power and might.
    But even if he doesn’t, I’m still going to be faithful to him.
    In the absence of a sign.
    We can’t walk around with a “give us a sign” version of Jesus in our heads.
    Transition
    our final counterfeit Jesus.
    Point
    Statement
    "Everything Makes Sense” Jesus.
    I want to read through some of what Jesus says to the crowd here.
    And I wish we had time to be able to break every bit down verse by verse, I think it would be really helpful.
    But I want to at least point out two things that Jesus teaches here that were difficult for the original audience to understand.
    And if we’re being honest are still really difficult for Christians today to understand 2000 years later.
    Explanation
    John 6:35–40 NET 2nd ed.
    Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty. But I told you that you have seen me and still do not believe. Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never send away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. Now this is the will of the one who sent me—that I should not lose one person of every one he has given me, but raise them all up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father—for everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him to have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
    And then a little later in verse 44 he says
    John 6:44–45 NET 2nd ed.
    No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to me.
    I want you to Just hold those couple of verses in your mind for just a second. And I want to read verses 52 and following.
    John 6:52–58 NET 2nd ed.
    Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus began to argue with one another, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who consumes me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the bread your ancestors ate, but then later died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
    There are two things that Jesus says in this passage that I want to point out:
    There’s a statement that Jesus makes in verse 44 where he says
    “No one cane come to me unless the father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.
    And the second one is in verse 54 and following where he says the one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink
    If you don’t know this already, Christians for over 2000 years have struggled to understand these two ideas. The first of which being, seemingly, we have free-will to Choose God, and yet there’s this idea that God is all knowing, all present, all powerful. And so in some ways you might say that God knew all along who would choose him and who wouldn’t
    Some christians take this idea even further, and they draw on verses like this one to say “basically, God not only knew who would believe in him, but he pre-ordained it.
    That’s one issue, one theological dilema,
    And the other one comes from where Jesus is looking forward to the institution of the bread and the cup, and he says his flesh is truly food, and blood is true drink. And that gets tied into the communion passages where Jesus says “This is my body, this is my blood”
    And Christians have argued for centuries over what exactly Jesus meant when he said that. Some have said, no it’s all just a metaphor. Others have swung the pendulum all the way over here and said, Christ is present in the emblems in a very real and literal way. Others have sort of landed in the middle and said “This is Jesus’ body and blood, but only in a spiritual sense.
    And my goal this morning is not to convince you of one particular theological doctrine or anything like that.
    Rather, My goal is to point out these difficulties that people have had with the text.
    And to point out that if you spend more than 5 minutes reading the Bible, you will come across things that are difficult to understand, you will come across things that don’t make sense.
    And you will come across places in scripture that cause you to have a little bit of tension.
    And maybe for you, these issues, that Jesus brings up in John 6, you’re like, no, I’m good, I know what I believe. This side’s right, this side’s wrong.
    But I’m willing to bet that there’s something in scripture that stumps you.
    That makes you scratch your head and say hmm.… I’m not sure which side I think is the right one. I think both sides of this theological debate make really good points.
    Hmm, I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to make of that verse.
    And if not, like if you don’t have any tensions or any question, please by all means I would like to pick your brain. Because I spend a lot of time studying this book. And it seems like there are days where I will study a passage of scripture, and instead of learning something new, I just discover 5 new things that I didn’t even know that I didn’t understand.
    Argumentation
    If you create a version of Jesus in your mind where you have to be able to perfectly understand everything Jesus teaches
    you are going to be severely disappointed.
    Illustration
    If your standard of faith is “i need to understand everything about the Bible, you’re in for a rude awakening.
    There’s one thing that ties all 4 of these counterfeit Jesus’s togehter
    Whether it’s the Bread and circuses Jesus, or the Look at me Jesus, or the give me a sign Jesus, or the “Everything needs to make sense” Jesus
    One thing that ties all of these together is that they are versions ofJesus where as soon as things get difficult, people start to drift away.
    If the version of Faith you’ve created in your mind is based on God giving you things, or you impressing Jesus, or You attaining perfect understanding of things.
    Then when that doesn’t happen
    When you go through trials, when you start hitting walls in your understanding, when you stop seeing the signs you’re expecting God to give you… you start to grow distant.
    You start to question God, you start to wonder whether or not he even cares...and slowly but surely you start to drift away from Jesus
    But it wasn’t Jesus who let you down.
    It was the counterfeit version of Jesus you created in your mind. That’s who let you down.
    Conclusion
    And that’s exactly what ends up happening to the crowd Jesus is talking to.
    It says in verse 66
    John 6:66 NET 2nd ed.
    After this many of his disciples quit following him and did not accompany him any longer.
    They were like the seeds that were cast on the thorny soil. or the rocky soil.
    The moment things stopped making perfect sense based on the counterfeit version of Jesus they had invented in their minds, they quit.
    But as we read into verse 67 and following, we see what true faith looks like.
    What faith in the true Jesus looks like.
    John 6:67 NET 2nd ed.
    So Jesus said to the twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?”
    Have you created a false version of me in your minds too?
    John 6:68–69 NET 2nd ed.
    Simon Peter answered him, “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!”
    Where else would I go god? I may not understand why it is that you’ve chosen this route for my life, I may not understand why I’m going through this temptation or this trial.
    I may not understand the doctrine Justification, or sanctification, or pre-destination, or transsubstantiation, any of the other “ations” that people come up with to try to make sense of what you’re saying, Jesus, but I know this.
    You have the words of eternal life.
    You are the Holy one of God, and I’m going to set aside everything that stands in the way of my relationship with you and I’m going to know and trust that you are good.
    That I have nowhere else to go.
    And so at this moment Jesus I’m just going to fall down on my knees and worship you.

      • John 6:14–15GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:25–27GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:28GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:29GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:30–31GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:35–40GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:44–45GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:52–58GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:66GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:67GS-NETBIBLE

      • John 6:68–69GS-NETBIBLE

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Alliance Christian Church
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