"So [the people] asked [Jesus]: ‘What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?’ " (v. 28, TEV,)

What a far-ranging question this is! It’s an all-embracing theme we have to discuss here: "What God wants us to do." Obviously it is impossible for us to use these fifteen minutes or so and come up with a comprehensive answer to this question.

Think, for instance, of the rainbow-like nature of our congregation’s members. One of you here today is a successful retired businessman. Your children are grown and long-gone. You are financially comfortable. You are in good health and look forward to many carefree years ahead. What does God want you to do?

Another of you here today is a younger woman of our parish. You have several school-age children still at home. You have no husband now, and every day is a struggle to put food on the table and keep the family together. What does God want you to do?

One of you here is a middle-aged person who has discovered that the dread disease of cancer is lurking at your door. There are so many things you would still like to do with your life. Yet now you are no longer sure how many years - or months - you have left. What does God want you to do?

Perhaps today you are one of the college students in our congregation. Soon you will graduate, with the whole adventure of adult living still ahead. You are a little baffled about the host of alternatives, and the choices you could - and someday must - make. What does God want you to do?

You see, for all of us, at whatever juncture or crossroad of life we find ourselves this morning, this becomes a pertinent and challenging question: "What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?"

This morning we listen carefully to our Lord, Jesus Christ, as he himself leads us into God-pleasing answers to a question that involves every last one of us. Today Jesus Christ tells us WHAT GOD WANTS US TO DO.

I

The first wonderful thing we notice about this little story is the fact that these people here asked the question at all! Jesus had just fed the 5,000. Afterwards he couldn’t get rid of them. They followed him wherever he went - across the lake or on into the next town. Jesus now gently suggests that perhaps they are following him for the wrong reasons. He says, "You are looking for me because you ate the bread and had all you wanted" (verse 26). It is this observation by Jesus that now leads the people to ask the question in our text, "What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?"

Jesus must have been mightily pleased by their question! For we might say that the first thing God wants us to do is to ask this question about what God wants us to do! Usually you and I are looking for all the right answers in life. But it’s equally important that we ask the right questions!

Some years ago a clergy friend of mine and I were driving down a wide boulevard in another town. On the lawn of an imposing church a large sign proclaimed, “Christ is the Answer.” My friend facetiously remarked, "I wonder what the question is!" If the question is, "Who was born in Bethlehem 2.000 years ago?" then, of course, "Christ is the answer." But the question itself doesn’t seem all that urgent.

Many people - many Christians are not asking this question of the text at all. As they get up each day, they never ask, "What does God want me to do?" As they plan the use of their time, as they spend their money or raise their children, as they choose a career or the friends they keep, as they practice a particular lifestyle, even many Christians never ask, "What does God want me to do?"

The forces of influence around us are usually silent about such a question as well. Consider media advertising. You look at your fat Sunday paper today, or the current issue of Time magazine, or a day’s worth of television commercials. Is there ever the assumption in any of them that God might have something to say about our consuming habits? Or watch the human situations portrayed in the soap operas, as I know many of you do. These soaps deal with many of life’s heaviest questions. Yet (quite unrealistically, I believe) the soap characters are rarely portrayed as having a religious faith, and usually they settle their questions with no reference to God and his will at all.

Are many of us as Christians much different? You would agree with me that we must congratulate these people in the story for at least asking the question, "What does God want us to do?" I believe Jesus must have been mightily pleased by the question. As responsible and responding Christians, we too need to ask more and more, "What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?"

II

Well, Jesus does answer their question here. Today we need to hear his answer as well. To the question, "What can we do in order to do what God wants us to do?" Jesus answers in verse 29, "What God wants you to do is to believe in the one he has sent." In answering any of life’s vocational or situational questions, this answer of Jesus is basic and foundational: "What God wants you to do is to believe in the one he has sent."

"The one God has sent!" That’s the Christ we’re called to believe in and listen to. All of us lay claim to believing in Jesus Christ. But do we always believe in the Christ whom God has sent? God wants us to believe not in our own idea of Christ, but in the Christ who was sent by the Father.

God made us in his own image, but often we make God over into our own image. We do not like to think about our own misguided lives. We do not like to entertain thoughts about our repetitious sins. We grasp the things of this earth and of this time as though there were no eternal life and a future in heaven. But the Christ sent by God deals precisely with these issues.

The Apostle Paul deserves to be listened to closely, for he faithfully presents us with the Christ who was sent by the Father. It was Saint Paul who wrote, "I did not come among you preaching the wisdom of the world, but I was determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." The Christ of the Bible and the Christ sent by the Father is always and foremost the Christ of the cross. Christ did not shrink from our sins, but he died for our sins upon the cross. Christ did not shrink from the enemy of death, but he was raised on the third day to give each one of us a sure answer and hope about eternal life in heaven.

The one sent by the Father is never a discardable Christ - some harmless, milk-toast Jesus who helplessly tolerates all our whims and fancies. The Christ sent by the Father is the one of whom the early church confessed, proclaiming "Jesus is Lord!" He is Lord of every bright and dark corner of our lives. Christ always has something to say about your life - every choice you make, every action you do, every word you speak. "What God wants you to do is to believe in the one he has sent." Today, take the Christ of the cross into your heart again. Know his forgiveness. Experience the clean slate he freely gives you. Allow him to give you the transforming answers for your life.

III

To follow the one sent by the Father takes faith. it takes belief. "What God wants you to do is to believe ..." Jesus is saying, "Believe that belief works. Faith works, when it is tried!"

The other Sunday my wife and I were walking near the large public swimming pool not far from our home. There we witnessed a charming little scene. A young mother was attempting to coax her little girl to jump off the edge of the pool into her waiting arms. But not this little one! She was determined to remain on the edge, depriving herself of the exhilaration of the water and the pleasing bouyancy that comes from swimming.

I suppose her mother could have put a harness on her, or taken her to some shallow water barely above her ankles. But what good would that have been? You never learn to swim until you take a chance.

Yet many of us frequently order our lives in a similar way. We will not venture forth in faith! We insist upon first equipping ourselves with a harness of financial security, or we wade around in ankle-deep water that makes our life boring and sometimes an insult to God’s promises. We do not see that there is a loving Father waiting to receive us and shelter us in his loving arms. Oh friend, "what God wants us to do is to believe...."

Someone said it cleverly: "It is not faith and works; it is not faith or works, but it is faith that works!" About his fellow Christians, Shakespeare once lamented, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

My dear friend, what is it that you are "fearing to attempt" right now? What is it that perhaps we as a congregation are fearing to attempt? Jesus says, "What God wants you to do is to believe...."

"The one he sent" is with us now in this meal of Communion. It is the forgiving, merciful, empowering Lord, Jesus Christ. What God wants us to do now is to eat and drink freely. For again, Jesus says, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never be thirsty!"

I do not know everything that God wants us to do - of course! But I do know that the closer we come to Jesus, to the one sent by the Father, the closer we will come to doing what God wants us to do. Come closer to him now, and as you come, believe. Believe in him.