Dear loves ones, you can’t “do” an inheritance. An heir is what is done for you. An heir is what you are in Baptism. So to answer the rich young ruler’s question, “How does one inherit eternal life?” By becoming a child of God and being joined to Jesus in baptismal faith and dying and rising with Him. That’s how you inherit eternal life. And if anything gets in the way of that, get rid of it. It isn’t worth it. Not compared to the treasures in heaven.

And just as He did for the paralytic back then, Jesus forgives us first, and then He heals us, yes physically. No, He doesn’t heal us of all our physical ailments (yet). But He does something even better - heals us of death and hell, and heals us of spiritual corruption. But yet, one day soon He will follow the forgiveness of our sins with the total healing of our bodies in the resurrection to life eternal.

Who doesn’t love free food? Free food always draws a crowd, right? Even if it’s not tacos. Bottom line: If you want people to come out in droves offer free food. And so the crowds flocked after Jesus. But Jesus was offering them more than the type of bread that is dead and ultimately decaying. Jesus is the Bread of Life itself. He won’t let you down. He won’t leave you hungry for more. He won’t make you thirsty. Trust Him. He is true Food, the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else.

It is one of the great and wonderful paradoxes of the New Testament – the Lamb will be their Shepherd – those two images, that of lamb and shepherd coalesce in Jesus. He is both Lamb and Shepherd, both Sacrifice and King, the one who dies and rises and the one who lords His death and resurrection over us to save us. At His birth, shepherds left their lambs in the fields of Bethlehem to worship Him. In His death He is most Lamb and most Shepherd, giving His life into death and leading humanity through the dark valley of death to eternal life.

Now by extension what people think about Jesus will also shape what they think about His followers. About us. Today we increasingly see people expressing these negative views about Christ, and we need to be prepared for people to say the same stuff about us. But at the same time, there is another opinion about Jesus’ followers that we will discover in our text. There are three opinions in this text and only one really matters.