Why Do You Want Him?

According to a 2025 Pew Research study on the world’s religious groups, 2.3 billion people identify as Christian worldwide. Of course, that might mean different things to different people, but still—2.3 billion claim some kind of belief in Jesus. That’s roughly 28.8% of the world’s population.

And then there’s those who don’t considering themselves Christian but are actively searching and considering faith. That might be some of you here this morning. When I was in college at Tulane in New Orleans, several campus ministries came together one year to put on a multi-week event called Alpha, which is a series of talks around evidence for Jesus and the Bible alongside facilitated, honest discussion.

It was an opportunity for people who were curious about Christianity to be able to ask questions, share their doubts, and engage in community. Just in 2025 alone, 2.8 million people across 158 countries participated in an Alpha course.

Back in 2012, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association launched a website called Search for Jesus, and over the course of 10 years, their sites in various languages had 104 million visitors. Over 2,000 years since he walked the earth, people continue to be interested in Jesus. Fascinated by him. This carpenter from Nazareth.

Why do you think that is? In our passage today, we get to see the morning after Jesus fed the 5,000+ with 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish. The people wake up after experiencing something incredible the day before, and they want more. Verse 22 says they notice that only one boat was there and that Jesus hadn’t left with his disciples the previous night (Remember, he withdrew from the crowd to go pray to the Father when they tried to take him by force and make him their king to liberate them from the Romans).

So, the crowd knew the disciples had taken the boat without him to head to Capernaum on the other side. Of course, what they didn’t know is that Jesus caught up to his disciples in the middle of some heavy winds and waves on the sea by simply walking on the water over to them like we looked at last week. Just Jesus doing Jesus things.

But still, following the disciples to Capernaum was their biggest lead, so verses 23 and 24 say that when other boats arrived, the crowd climbed aboard and crossed over the Sea of Galilee trying to find Jesus. Whether it be during his earthly ministry back then or here today, people continue to seek Jesus.

But what we learn in these few verses is that you can seek him without truly wanting him—that you can attempt to follow Jesus without actually having faith in Jesus. This crowd that’s ecstatic to cross a sea and find Jesus at the start of the morning will mostly leave him and want nothing to do with him at the end of the day. Once Jesus is done teaching in John 6, verse 66 says, “After this many of his disciples (just meaning the followers) turned back and no longer walked with him.”

Why would the crowd leave? Why would someone who once called themselves a follower of Jesus when they were younger now be more apathetic toward Christianity than anything else? Sure, there’s pain and all kinds of stories and other factors that filter the way we might understand our religious upbringing or even the deconstruction of some aspects of the faith we grew up with—and maybe that’s a big part of your story or someone you know.

But in a very general, and also a very real sense, I think a person’s search for Jesus can ultimately lead them away from truly following him depending on how they answer two questions. And it’s two questions that Jesus speaks directly to with the crowd in our passage this morning:

1. Why do you want Jesus? and

2. How do you think you get him?

Those aren’t just questions for non-Christians. If you’re a follower of Jesus this morning, how you’re daily answering these questions will shape the way you live your life and how God increasingly sanctifies you and makes you more like Christ.

1. Why do you want Jesus? and

2. How do you think you get him?

Let’s start with “Why do you want Jesus?”. Look with me at verses 25-26.

John 6:25–26 ESV

²⁵ When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” ²⁶ Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.

Once again, there’s a bit of irony to the fact that this same crowd is going to leave Jesus by the end of the chapter for what he teaches them and yet here at the start in verse 25 they call him “Rabbi”, which means “teacher”. And honestly, I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt their sincerity in giving Jesus that title. They want to learn from him. But, once again, we get to the question, “Why?”

At least once a day, our 3 year old, Oliver, will tell Macie or me that his 1 year old sister looks sleepy. He’ll say something like, “I think Nora wants to take a nap” or “Is it time for Nora’s nap?” But he’s not really concerned with Nora. He just knows that when daddy has to work and mommy has to put Nora down for a nap, that means he gets to watch tv. And so Ollie always thinks his little sister could be more rested.

Motives matter. In verse 25, the crowd calls Jesus “Rabbi” and asks a question. In verse 26, Jesus doesn’t actually answer the question. Instead, he addresses their motive. The crowd asks, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Remember, verse 24 said they got into the boats “seeking Jesus”. They wanted to know where he is.

And so Jesus doesn’t tell them when he got to Capernaum. He doesn’t tell them that he walked miles on top of the water to catch up with the disciples’ boat in the middle of a storm on his way there. He withholds that information about another miracle—about the very kind of thing the crowd wanted to know and see—in order to address why they’re seeking him in the first place.

He starts off his reply in verse 26 saying, “Truly, truly”, which isn’t an accident. We’ve seen Jesus use that double expression before, and actually John’s gospel is the only one that records it. If you’ve got an older translation trying to sound fancy, it might say, “Verily, verily”. But in the Greek, these two words are simply, “Amen, amen.”

This seems to be John’s way of telling the reader that the next part is both important and trustworthy. So, if you’re reading through the gospel of John in your own personal study as we walk through it together as a church, anytime you come across a “Truly, truly” in your reading, slow down and be intentional with thinking through what comes next.

And what comes next in verse 26 isn’t Jesus teaching a truth; he’s calling out a poor motivation for seeking him. He tells the crowd, “you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Well, what’s the difference between these two things? For starters, a sign is only serving it’s purpose when it’s pointing to something.

As a teenager, my neighbor had an old interstate sign (which now that I think about it, I’m not sure how he got that), but we drilled a hole in it and tied a rope between it and a four wheeler, so we could drag each other around and see how long it took to get the other person to fall off.

Some of you might be surprised to learn that I grew up as a country boy. But that sign was definitely not serving it’s intended purpose when we used it. It wasn’t pointing anywhere!

Jesus just miraculously fed this crowd of probably between 10,000-20,000 people once you count women and children, and he tells them it was a “sign”. It was supposed to point to something else. But instead of seeing the sign for what it was pointing to, they were content to just enjoy the sign as an end in itself. They were so focused on how Jesus met their physical need that they never considered how it pointed to the way Jesus is able to meet their spiritual need. They wanted him for the material things he could do rather than submitting to him for who he is.

So… Why do you want him? Whether you’re a follower of Jesus or just curious about Jesus this morning. Do you want him because you hope he’ll make parts of your life better? Or do you believe he is what makes your life complete? That he is your purpose. That you were made for him.

Last week we talked about how easy it can be to develop this tendency to treat God like your backup—to rely on your own ability to navigate the world and create the life you want for yourself until you run into difficulty. And then when trials or losses come, then we start to rely on God. By necessity, we move from “I’ve got this” to “God, I need your help.”

That’s kinda how Aladdin treated the genie through most of the Disney movie. It’s why the movie’s called Aladdin and not The Genie. Because even when there’s some supernatural being out there that’s greater than us, wiser than us, and more powerful than us, our natural tendency is to assume that it’s here to serve us rather than the other way around.

If you want Jesus because you hope he’ll serve the agenda you already have for your life, then you’ll find yourself either twisting what Scripture says about him as you make him fit into the box you want, or you’ll eventually grow apart from following him when it seems like he doesn’t do what you want or his words in Scripture don’t agree with what you want.

But the Bible doesn’t present a God who revolves around his creation as the center of his universe. God is greatest in his own affections, and that’s actually the greatest thing for us.

One of the members in our church doesn’t drink coffee. He doesn’t want to be addicted to it, and I get that. I might have acted like a dealer in the past offering to buy him his first cup for free, so he could try some, but I understand why he doesn’t want to drink coffee.

If he came to me one day and said that he’s actually wanting to try coffee now, and shows me this can of “toasty hazelnut” Folgers that he found at the grocery store and thought it would be good because he likes hazelnut and it sounds cozy—would I be a loving friend if I gave my approval for him to drink that?

Of course not (And by the way, if you don’t know what’s so bad about flavored Folgers coffee out of a can, then please, fill out a Connect Card, come talk to me after the service; we’ll go grab real coffee together.)!

But I wouldn’t be loving my friend well if he’s wanting to try coffee, and I don’t point him to something that’s better and higher quality.

And God’s the same way. There’s nothing better than God, or that would be God. The creator of the universe is, by definition, the greatest thing over the universe he universe he created.

And so, when we come to him with barley loaves like the crowd in John 6, or maybe for you it’s the success of your career or your status in the community or your accomplishments in life or the dynamics of your family or the amount of your possessions or the reputation of your character or anything else—it would be unloving of our great and glorious God for him to not command you to stop treating those things as ends in themselves and to see how every good thing can find it’s ultimate fulfillment and joy in our submission to and worship of the God who made us for himself.

He’s the good coffee, and there’s none greater. C.S. Lewis put it this way, and I’ve used this quote before. He said,

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. —C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

That’s the crowd in verse 26. They had their physical needs met in a miraculous meal, and that was enough for them—just keep meeting our physical needs. But the call of Christ is not an invitation to less than what our lives are now, and it’s not an invitation to stay the same; it’s an invitation to more—to see how both the miraculous and the mundane—how every part of the lives we live and the world around us find ultimate satisfaction in the one who made it all.

That’s why why we should want him, and whether you’ve been a Christian for a long time, have only just begun following Jesus, or are still searching, that motivation is worth reminding ourselves of over and over again: we were made for God’s glory, and seeking to make our lives about him is our greatest purpose that deepens every other purpose we have in our lives.

But how do we do that? In this passage, we’re not just faced with the question of why we seek after Jesus—He goes on to tell the crowd how we can find him. Let’s keep reading with verses 27-29.

John 6:27–29 ESV

²⁷ Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” ²⁸ Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” ²⁹ Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

In verse 27, Jesus is talking about the things the people seek after, but now in verse 28 he shifts his language to talk about the work the people do: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.” Even though the language is different, the subject is the same.

Think about it. In order to find Jesus, the crowd had to put in some real work. They looked around the place where he had fed them the day before, but he wasn’t there. So, they boarded ships and traveled across 7 miles or so of the Sea of Galilee to head to the place they saw his disciples go.

When they got to the other side, they had to search for Jesus again before they could find him. The start of verse 27 is Jesus highlighting that the crowd’s motivations were made clear by their actions. They wanted Jesus to continue to provide for them physically, so they did everything they could to find him.

If you want to know what you really think about following Jesus, what your motivations really are for believing in him—look at where and how you devote your time and energy. Our actions follow our hearts, and it’s very easy for you and me to say our lives are all about Jesus but to live like we expect him to be all about us.

In verse 27, Jesus is offering a corrective to the wrong motivations of the crowd. He tells them, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life.” They’re attempting to get Jesus, but they’re putting in the wrong kind of work.

It’s like saying you want to lose weight, so you’re going to stop eating. You’ll lose the weight, your health, and your mental well being all in the process. That’s not a sustainable plan, and it won’t serve you long term.

Too many of us want a genie for a moment when what we need is a Lord for our life. For those of you who are Christians, can you think of a time when God did something incredible in your life? When he answered a big prayer, When he protected you from something? When he was your comfort that helped you survive a difficult time?

I can think of a time right now. I remember how close I felt to God. How grateful I was for him meeting my need and being present in my life. How I had a sense of urgency and gratitude that brought me into reading my Bible and praying more frequently. But for many of us, if I wouldn’t have asked about it, that moment you’re thinking of right now might not have crossed your mind at all today.

God provided for me, I felt strengthened, and then slowly over time I began to live my life in my own power again, subconsciously placing Jesus in the position of my backup. But that’s such a short-sighted view of knowing God, and it completely misses the mark on why Scripture talks about it as a relationship. The main picture we get of Christ’s relationship to the church is that of a marriage. And healthy marriages don’t just thrive in difficulty; they show up and cultivate greater intimacy every day.

If you remember back in John 4, Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well who was eager to be given the endless supply of water that Jesus told her about—what he called “living water.” But at the start, she just wanted it to meet her physical need, so she didn’t have to go to the well anymore.

In the same way, we see the crowd here in our passage excited to find Jesus, so he can supply them with bread that fills their stomachs, all the while missing the bigger picture—that, as Jesus is going to say next week in verse 35, he is the bread of life.

You don’t get Jesus by seeking after a moment. You get Jesus by surrendering your life. When you relate to God only through the emotional highs and lows you experience with him, then when those moments pass, just like a few hours after a good meal, you’re going to be hungry again. But Jesus invites you to work for the food that endures to eternal life. Work for the marriage, not just the moment.

And the only way we can do that is looking to Jesus. The end of verse 27 says that the food that endures to eternal life is what “the Son of Man will give to you.” Eternal life is only through Christ because it’s on him that “God the Father has set his seal.” That word for “seal” represents a guarantee, a stamp of approval. The Father has granted the Son alone to be able to provide us with this food that leads to eternal life.

I mean, if there was any other way, would the Father still have sent the Son to die for our sin? He’d be evil if he knew there was another option to save us, and yet he still chose to sacrifice his Son. You see, Christianity, in it’s own definition, doesn’t allow itself to be mixed with other faiths. It has to be exclusive.

But, at the same time, following Jesus also creates a wonderful foundation for tolerance of those who don’t. I agree with the late pastor Tim Keller who argued that the word tolerance isn’t used properly today. He said,

“Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.” —Tim Keller

And believing in Jesus, who was sent to die paying the penalty for your sin against an infinitely holy God means that we are all infinitely needy and incapable of reconciling with the Father in our own power. When applied across our life, that’s a foundation for humility with people who disagree with your beliefs, not pride.

Because, even while we hold onto our belief in Jesus deeply and sincerely desire those in other faiths to come to know him, we also understand that our salvation is a gift from the Son of Man and not something that we’ve earned in any way through our own power or performance.

So, when you see that post online, or that talking head on the news, or that coworker sharing their political opinion, or their view on morality or God, we can hold onto our beliefs without compromise and lean in to love our neighbor who might be far from God instead of writing them off or lashing out at them… only if we are submitting to our Savior and humbly living in light of a God who held onto his righteousness while also leaning in to to love us when we were far from him.

In whatever ways we have received grace from God, we should look for ways that we can bend out that grace to others—not in compromise of our faith, but as the exercise of our faith.

The crowd hears that there’s food that endures to eternal life, so in verse 28 they ask, “What must we do to be doing the works of God?” What must we do to get this gift that is given by the Son of Man? And in verse 29, “Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’”

It’s not surprising that the crowd assumes they simply need to do a different kind of work to get eternal life. If all they have to do is shift the direction of their work, then that would mean the focus stays on their effort—their control.

For many of us, the default way we try to draw close to God is that we try harder—that we try to stop doing certain things and try to do different things—things we think are Godly. But as we close our time in the Word this morning, verse 29 is the perfect transition into our time of response. Because Jesus doesn’t make the work that endures to eternal life about our effort or our performance. He says the work of God, or the work that God requires, is “that you believe in him who he has sent.”

This is why the gospel is good news. Because, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, the work that makes you right with God is to believe in the one whose righteous work was done on your behalf to make you right with God. We rest in his work, not our own, turning from the sinful ways we’ve tried to rule our lives apart from God and trusting in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—that his performance can become ours while our punishment becomes his.

That’s the gospel, and everything in your life is a sign pointing to him and something that can find it’s deepest fulfillment in him—when you trust in his work rather than your own.

Let’s pray.