I like mine with lettuce and tomato Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer Well good God almighty which way do I steer for my Cheeseburger in paradise Jimmy Buffett The first time I heard the song "Cheeseburger in Paradise" I was a poor skinny college student living off of cold cans of Spaghetti-O's for both lunch and dinner. One day I was listening to the radio in my car, and as the delicious lyrics started playing through the speakers my mouth started watering - - I had to have a burger, a good one. Not a soybean cafeteria special, or the plastic kind that McDonalds makes, but a one ton burger that was loaded with bacon, onion, cheese, mayo, lettuce, ketchup, dripping mushrooms and of course all of it served on a toasted bun. I had to have it! There is nothing like good food to satisfy hunger. I can remember even as a kid, my sisters and I would play outside all day and my mom wouldn't let us in before dinner time to snack because she didn't want us spoiling our appetite. And then after waiting five grueling hours we would run to the dinner table while she would pull this huge pan out of the oven. Inside is where all of our dreams would come true. As she lifted the lid, the steam rolled away, and there it was, a hot succulent roast beef with cooked carrots and potatoes on the side. I would grab the season salt, some A1 sauce and let the tender meat melt on my tongue. I can still taste it now. We all are hungry, God made us that way. Hunger and want is the reason we get up in the morning, it is why we live. If you didn't want anything you wouldn't do anything. Want is what moves the plot-line forward in every movie and novel. Rocky is a great movie because the character Rocky wanted something we all want, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." He was tired of being labeled as a bum so he stepped into the ring with Apollo Creed and the audience cheered for him. The "Twilight" series was a best selling series because what Bella wanted was what every woman wants, a powerful mysterious man to unconditionally love her. Want is why we live. People are all, everyone of us, wanting something. But not every want satisfies, nor lasts. One of my favorite passages in the bible is found in John 1:37-38 where two disciples of John the Baptist were told by him to start following Jesus because he was the promised Messiah. John writes, "The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, 'What do you want?'" Jesus is appealing to a person's appetite by asking... "What do you want?" Jesus knows that "want, hunger, thirst, desire, longing, yearning, craving" is what drives us. So what do you want from Jesus? Do you even have an appetite for him? To help you consider this question, there are three different groups in the book of John that want something. And out of these three, one of them will not satisfy - - that is the group we will talk about today. Ask yourself, are you in this group? GROUP ONE: The Crowd As the name suggests, this group is large. And this group is hungry, really hungry. John 6: 26 shows Jesus identifying their purpose in following him and he says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." The crowd wanted food for their stomachs, and Jesus was simply a free vendor of bread. You could say that the "Crowd" are those people whose hunger is immediate, sensory, and always. The belly never has an end to it's hunger, never - - and in this hunger, they come to Jesus to satisfy it now. So what the crowd sees in Jesus is a person that has come specifically for them. He feeds them, performs miracles for them, and they want more. The crowd always wants more. Jesus is our cosmic butler always "willing and able" to give us what we want. What I find interesting in the book of John is that the crowd considers themselves disciples. Even in our own day and age the crowd looks like followers, they really think they are friends of Jesus, but they are only in it for the bread. God, however, wants us to be in it for far more than that, he wants to satisfy not just our physical hunger, but the emptiness of our soul. He is our spiritual food as it says in John 6:53, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." Huh? This really confused the crowd because they can only think in terms of physical desire and immediate needs. Jesus goes on in 6:60, "When many of his disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?' But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, 'Do you take offence at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.'" People don't believe because they don't hunger for more. C. S. Lewis puts it like this, “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." Jesus knows there is a deeper hunger. A better appetite that is easily spoiled by those beggarly things that "far too easily please." That is the crowd's problem, they stop at unsatisfying things, that is why they never can get enough. In John 6:66 Jesus begins to purposefully push the crowd away. It says after his confusing teaching that, "Many of his disciples (The Crowd) turned back and no longer walked with him." He is a dangerous God, and he wants disciples that will hang with him even if their immediate needs are not satisfied. But the Crowd is always quick to leave. Yes, Jesus he is here to satisfy our wants, but he wants you to wait for better food. We are far too easily pleased. The crowd leaves when he doesn't give them what they want, "No fame? No special miracle? No success? No wealth? No friends?...I am outta here!" It is strange how people leave all the time, it is the Demas complex, "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted us." (2 Timothy 4:1) Are you part of the Crowd? What do you want?
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