Every time we sing that hymn,
I can't help but to think that you are charging me with these
words. And I take that very, very seriously. I want to tell the simplicity
of the story of Christ, and I want to do it I want to do it in the
way that we just sang about. You pray for me that I'll be
able to do that. Our hope is that the Lord himself will take
whatever words we're able to speak and all of those things
we just sang, he will fulfill in speaking the story of Christ
to our hearts. The other thing I was thinking
about as we were singing that song is the word history. Not only is the work of Christ
and the life of Christ in this world, those brief 33 years,
the story that we want to tell, but in truth, all of history
is nothing less than his story. It is his story. It's the providence
of God that has purchased, ordained, and fulfilled all things, not
only in past history, but in the current history as it's being
made day by day in our lives. might we find our hope in Him. Let's open our Bibles together
to John chapter 6. I do want to speak this message
slowly and simply and softly. I do, because the truth that
the Lord is revealing in this passage of Scripture is is eternally
important. In time, our Lord pauses and
says, verily, verily, he is calling on us to give to the next words
special attention. Every word that he spoke was
nothing less than the word of God. But when our Lord says verily,
what we know he's doing is he's summarizing a lot of the things
that he's been saying in one brief statement that needs to
be given special attention. And that's exactly what we have
in John chapter six, verse 47. Verily, verily, I say, You remember when the Lord rebuked
the Pharisees by saying, you have heard that it was said.
You have heard that it was said. And the Pharisees would always
quote the prophets and the fathers often misquoting them. The point
being that you never hear anyone in scripture Even the prophets,
the prophets would all say, thus saith the Lord. You never hear
anyone but the Lord himself have the authority to say, I say unto
you. I say unto you. These are not
just words being repeated from another man. This is God himself. Speaking, verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. Hath everlasting life. Now, a part From the grace of
God, you and I would not give much attention or interest in
everlasting life. If we were but men of flesh,
and that's all we had, we would mind the things of the flesh. They that are of the flesh do
not mind the things of the flesh. And the natural man is so caught
up in the temporal circumstances of this world that his only interest
in the Bible and in spiritual matters go as far as they might
help him navigate in this world. You hear it from the false prophets
in religion. They promise peace and prosperity. They promise a better life, this
and that. And they entice the interest
of their listeners by appealing to the natural interest that
men have in natural things, worldly things. I pray that the Lord would give
us His Spirit because only then will we mind the things of the
Spirit. Only they that have the Spirit
of God will be concerned with and interested in much more deep
and much more significantly, eternal matters than temporal
matters. We look not on those things which
are seen, for those things which are seen are temporal, they are
temporary. and they're much more temporary
than we might think they are. Sometimes we get in a place and
we think, well, this is never gonna get any better. Oh, I promise
you, it's a temporary thing. Temporal. Nothing in this world
that money or time won't solve. Money and time solves everything
in this temporal world. If you can't buy it, in time
it will either pass or in the fullness of time, when we draw
our last breath, all the troubles of this world are gone. We have a problem. We have a
problem that neither money nor time can solve. And that's a
problem that only the Spirit of God make us aware of. It is an eternal problem. It's
called sin. It's a problem that goes beyond
time. And if God doesn't solve that problem for us, we will
not have eternal life. We will not have eternal life
if we don't have this sin problem fixed. Verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that believeth on me hath, hath everlasting life. Now, the first thing we see in
this passage of God's word is that believing on the Lord Jesus
Christ is the evidence of God's grace, not the cause of it. John 6, 47 is not an invitation
for sinners to make a decision. John 6, 47 is a doctrinal declaration. It is a God-given truth for saints
to find comfort, for saints to find comfort. What our Lord is
summarizing in verse 47 began back in verse 44. No man can come to me except
the Father which hath sent me draw him. In verse 44, the Lord
is telling us if we are to be saved, the Father is going to
have to draw us. He's going to have to make us
as we saw in the first hour. He's going to have to make it
irresistible. And then in verse 46, I'm sorry,
in verse 45, the Lord is telling us what is involved in this drawing. What does this drawing consist
of? For it is written in the prophets,
and they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that
I've heard and have learned of the Father cometh unto me. The
evidence that God has drawn me is that I've heard and I've learned. and I've come to Christ. That's
what this drawing consists of. And then, lest he be misunderstood,
there's a statement in verse 46 that's intended to correct
any error on the part of his listeners on our part of thinking
that we can have a personal encounter with the Father. So
he says, not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which
is of God, he has seen the Father. You're gonna come to the Father,
you're gonna have to come through me. And everything that you'll
ever learn and ever know about God will be in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He himself is the fullness of
the Godhead bodily. And so the Lord is guarding us
against any wrong inferences that we might have concerning
the thought of God. Now in verse 47, the Lord is telling us that believing
on him is not the cause of our salvation,
it is the effect of it. It is the effect of it. Now,
all men ought to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is demanded of all men everywhere
that they repent and believe. All men ought to bow, obey everything
that God says. It has to do with ability though,
doesn't it? It has to do with ability. Though
we ought to, and though we are responsible for our not believing,
the truth is, that we're unable to believe apart from the grace
of God. Apart from the miracle of the
new birth, we can't believe. What our Lord is telling us in
verse 47 is if a man is ever found believing on Christ,
it is the proof of His having eternal life. Verily, verily,
I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath, past tense, hath everlasting life. 1 John chapter five, verse one
says, whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of
God. Faith is not the cause, it is
the effect of the new birth. The new birth is a sovereign
singular work of grace that God must do. Now this will cause
some people to say that's not fair and accuse God of wrongdoing.
It will cause others to say, well, then I'll just wait and
see what he does. What will be, will be. And they'll
become fatalistic. about the sovereignty of God
in salvation. The evidence that this glorious
truth is being veiled to a child of
God is that they're not accusing God and they're not taking some
backseat position of, well, we'll just see what God's gonna do. No, they're agreeing with God.
Lord, If you don't turn me, I won't be turned. If you don't save
me, I won't be saved. If you don't open the eyes of
my understanding, I won't be able to see. If you don't birth
me into the Kingdom of God, Lord, I've got to be born in the Spirit.
You're gonna have to send your Spirit, and I know the Spirit's
like the wind. I guess today we start the hurricane
season, don't we? And they can't even predict when
it's going to rain a few days out. And they're already predicting
how many hurricanes we're going to have this season. And I always
get concerned when they say we're going to have a light season.
Because that generally means we're going to have a lot of
hurricanes. I remember last time we had three hurricanes back
in one year, and the weather guessers all got together and
said, this is the beginning of a 10-year period. We're going
to have hurricanes like this every year for 10 years. We didn't
have a single hurricane, not in central Florida, for the next
10 years. After that year, I think it was
04, 07. When men can predict the wind.
That's when we'll predict who God's gonna save next. It's what
the Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus. The spirit is like the wind,
he listeth withersoever he wills. If I believe that God is sovereign
salvation and that he has to birth me in order for me to believe,
in order for me to have everlasting life, I'm gonna become a mercy
beggar. I'm gonna be asking the Lord,
Lord, save me. Lord, I can't. I can't do anything
to save myself. You're there, John. Turn back
just a couple pages to John chapter three. John chapter three. Look at verse 36. He that believeth on the sun, half everlasting
life. Half everlasting life. It's because
you've already got it. That's why you believe. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ
is the evidence that God's done a work of grace in our hearts. This matter of everlasting life, it's not life that begins at
the moment of faith and lasts forever. When the Bible speaks
of everlasting life and eternal life, it's speaking of a life
that never had a beginning and never had an end. Now that is
beyond, these things are too wonderful for me, David said.
They're just too wonderful for me. I cannot achieve unto them.
Lord, this is beyond my comprehension. How can there be life? I can hope in a life that never
ends because I'm living now and I can have that hope, but a life
that never had a beginning, A life that's eternally eternal in the
past. Eternal life is not God's reward
or his reaction or his response to something that we do. Eternal
life is God's life. It is God himself. It is a life that he, possesses
within himself a life that he has always had. You know, it's a little humorous, let me use that word,
humorous, to listen to those who believe in the theory of
evolution. Because they will take us back
in time you know, from this stage to
that stage until they finally get to an infinitely dense blob
of matter that never had a beginning. So, okay, so you believe that
there's something that is self-existent. Something that's self-existent.
And the thing that you believe in that's self-existent is a
dense mass of matter. The one that I believe in that
is self-existent is an intelligent, sovereign creator. Now, which one takes more faith? Which one takes more faith? You see, the theory of evolution,
the only purpose behind the theory of evolution is to get God out
of the way so I don't have to bow to him. But they've got a
God. A God is one who is in itself
self-existent. It has no beginning. You can't
bring something out of nothing and so even the evolutionists
have to go back in time to that point where they've got this
thing that exploded and the Big Bang created all the order that
we have now to creation, which takes more faith. Yeah, I say
to the evolutionists, you've got a whole lot more faith than
I do. You've got blind faith. I'm believing in the revelation
that God, who is himself, the creator and sustainer of all
life, the one who has revealed himself to his people in his
word and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Evolution is stupid. It's just
stupid and it has one reason. It has one reason behind it.
I don't have to live with God, I can live like I want. Go for
it. I promise, whatever your position is about
God, you'll know who he is one day. I pray that it's not too late. Everlasting life is God's life. It is a life that never had a
beginning. And it is from his life that
he has fashioned and created all life. You know, we can play with the
things that God's made, but only God. You know, we say, We say
you can't make something out of nothing. God didn't make something
out of nothing. He made it out of himself. He made it out of himself. He
spoke the word and it was. He created it from the life that
he is and has. Verily, verily, special attention to this. I
say, this is God speaking unto you. He that believeth hath,
hath, past tense, everlasting life. The evidence you have God's
life, the evidence that you have hope in eternal life is that
God has given you faith. to believe on Christ. He has birthed you. And just
as when a child is born alive, it breathes, it doesn't breathe
to become alive, it breathes because it is birthed alive. And so it is when God births
us into the kingdom of God spiritually, we breathe the breath of life. as a result of the life that
we have. Faith. What is faith? What is faith? I wanna read some things, because
I don't wanna leave any part of this out. All the credit and all the glory
in faith, whatever kind of faith it is, goes to the object of that faith. All the honor in faith goes to
the integrity and the trustworthiness and the good name of the one
being trusted. If faith reflects anything about
the possessor of it, it only shows their need and their dependence. Faith by its very nature excludes
all boasting. A child has nothing to glory
in when it believes its parent. It's only expressing the glory
of that parent and the weakness of that child. Come as a little child, you shall
not enter into the kingdom of God. Suffer the little children
to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven. Men have
made a work out of faith. They have made faith something
that they glory in, when in fact faith is just the opposite. All
the glory of faith goes to the object of that faith, goes to
the trustworthiness of that faith, goes to the name of that faith. The servant has nothing to glory
in when it relies upon the promise of its master. The master's the
one that gets the glory. The servant is just showing his
dependence and weakness upon that master. No one does a background check
on you if you want to invest your money in a company. The investor is not the one who
has to have integrity. He's not the one who has to have
credibility. It is If you have any hope of
making a profit, it doesn't matter who you are, it matters whether
or not that company has earned a AAA rating. Have they proven
over time, by their success and by their integrity, you see,
you have faith when you put your money into a company, are you
not? You have nothing to glory in
making that investment. You profit from whatever glory
that company has achieved by maintaining their good name. Turn with me to Romans chapter
three, Romans chapter three. Verse 23, for all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. Everything about us falls short
of his glory and whatever is short of the glory of God, God
says is a sin. So that's why we say sin is not
just what we do, sin is what we are. We've never been able
to measure up to his glory. Everything about us falls short
of the glory of God. Being justified freely by His
grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This grace must be free grace. We can't go, we're just the recipients. We're the beneficiaries. He's
the benefactor. He gets the glory. whom God hath set forth to be
a propitiation through faith in his blood. For by grace are
you saved through faith. There's faith in being saved. There's no question about that.
No one's ever been saved without faith. It's by grace, through faith. that his righteousness might
be declared. Look at this. To declare his
righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through
the forbearance of God. To declare, I say at this time,
his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of
him which believeth in Jesus. Where's boasting then? Where's boasting? What do I have
to boast in? He did it all. This faith that I have, He gave
it to me. Faith by it's very nature gives all the glory to the object
of that faith. Faith by it's very nature is
only exposing it's inability and it's weakness and it's dependence
upon the one in which it has faith. No glory is in, there's
no glory in faith. Where's boasting that is excluded
by what law of works? Nay, boasting is excluded by
the law of faith. Do you see that? Boasting, there's
no boasting in faith. If it was by law, then there
would be boasting. You've heard your religious friends. We boasted ourselves enough in
trying to promote ourselves, people who, you know, we want
to impress somebody about something good we did. There's boasting
in keeping the law. There's boasting in performance. And men will boast to God. If
they don't understand the nature of faith, they will boast in
their faith. Well, I believe. and they will hang the hopes
of their salvation on a decision that they made and a prayer that
they prayed and they'll go back to a profession of faith and
they'll nail it down. There's my hope. And they boast
in faith. There is no boasting. Why? What is it that excludes boasting? The law of faith. The very nature of faith. Puts
away all boasting. You have nothing to boast in.
That faith that you have was given to you of God and the very
nature of it gives to its object all the glory. Fairly barely, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, If you
have found yourself believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting
him, resting in him for all the hope of your salvation. We looked
at this verse in the first hour. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. He maketh me lie down in green
pastures. He restored my soul. He lifted
me beside the still waters. He's done it all. He gets all
the glory. He made me and I'm so thankful. I'm so thankful. Proverbs chapter
three, trust in the Lord. You see, faith is trusting. Believing
is trusting. and how trustworthy he is. He's
always been faithful to every promise he's ever made. He will
always be. You know, we trust and we have faith
in and believe somebody that we have confidence in. Somebody
tells us something that we have great confidence in, we say,
I believe you, I believe you. I know you wouldn't let it happen.
Another person tells us something, Not so sure about that, let me
check it out. Trust in the Lord with all of
your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of
your ways, acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path. If I find myself trusting Him,
is because the life of God, eternal life, everlasting life, that
self-existent one lives in me. And the evidence of my salvation is that faith. I can't look at my performance
to get assurance of my salvation. I can't look at my profession
to get assurance of my salvation, but by God's grace, I look up
and I find that there is a successful, sovereign Savior seated at the
right hand of God who ever lives to make intercession for me,
and my faith is in Him. And my faith declares to him
and to the entire world, if he doesn't save me, I won't be saved,
and he gets all the glory. He gets all the glory. I can
take none of it. That's the nature of faith. Where's
boasting? It's excluded by what law? By
the law of faith? There's nothing, faith has nothing
to boast in. It's just the opposite. And as we grow in grace and in
the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, we see more and more
of how little we have to boast in. The more He reveals of Himself,
the more glory He gets, and the way up is always down. We see,
Lord, Oh Lord, I'm but a little child. I'm but a little child. To believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ is to give Him all the glory and it is to confess all
I have is need. Now here's the blessed truth
of this. Listen very carefully for just
a moment, please. Here's the blessed truth of this.
The glory of God, the glory of God is our greatest need and
the glory of God is our greatest blessing. And so for him to get all the
glory meets our need to the greatest extent and blesses our soul beyond
anything that can be When are we going to be the most blessed? David said, when I'm made in
his likeness, then I'll be satisfied. When I see him in his glory,
we look through a glass dimly now, we see in part, but then
we should know even as we are known, when we see him face to
face, heaven will be rejoicing in his glory. That's the greatest
blessing the believer has to long and look for. And so how
does that change now? It doesn't. It doesn't. To get glimpses of his glory
right now is the greatest blessing that a sinner can ever have. It's the greatest blessing. There's
no blessing to compare to it. For the Lord to show us slivers
of the light of His radiance. This faith is undeserved, it's
unearned. We must be brought to God for
faith before we can ever come to Him with faith. And I should
say that they both are happening at the same time. Whenever we
come before the throne of grace, we're coming for faith and with
faith. From faith to faith. That's what scriptures teach. Left to ourselves, we will never
be in need of this kind of faith. God has to make us sinner. He
has to bring us down. He has to cause us to see how
unable we are to do anything for ourselves. Otherwise, we will always have
something to offer to God, even if it's our own supposed
faith. And when man gets to where he
has nothing to offer to God, he will rest in the hope of having
something in the future to offer to God. And he will make promises
of what he's intending to offer to God. You see, this kind of
faith has nothing to offer to God and knows that it has nothing
that it can ever offer to God. And that everything comes from
God, everything that he has must come from God. A man can receive
nothing except to be given to him from heaven. I'm a receiver. It's been said that faith is
the empty hand, the empty hand that receives the gift of God. And someone
would say, but you have to receive it. God offers it, you have to
receive it, you have to take it. And I'd remind you of a verse
that we've looked at a few times and we'll close with this. Turn
back with me, if you will, to John chapter one. John chapter
one. This will take us back to the
beginning of the message. Verse 12, but as many as receive
him, To them gave he power to become the sons of God, even
to them that believe on his name. I don't pull that verse out of
its context because the next verse goes with it. Who is that's going to believe
on his name? Those who were born. Those who were born. Lord, this
faith that I have was given to me in new birth. I didn't come
up with it. I didn't decide it. It's the gift of God. Who were born. Not of blood. Not of descent. Not in the way
that our babies are born or you were born and I was born. We
don't inherit faith from our parents. Nor of the will of flesh. It's not by determination. Well, I'll just work a little
harder. And the world is filled with people working their way
to heaven. and all their work is going to
be in vain. Nor of the will of man. So it's not by descent, it's
not by dedication, and it's not by decision, but born of God. We're born of God. How do I know if I've been born
of God? Verily, verily, I say unto you,
he that believeth on me hath everlasting life. Our heavenly father, thank you
for your word. Thank you for the living word,
our savior, seated successfully, sovereignly reigning. Lord, thank
you for making us willing in the day of your power. Thank
you for making us willing now to worship you, to believe on
you, to trust you. Lord, as we receive these common
elements of bread and wine, we pray that you would enable us
to look beyond the physical and to see the spiritual work of
Christ in his perfect life of obedience and in his sacrificial
suffering and death for sin. Lord, enable us to do this in
remembrance of him. We ask it in Christ's name. Tom,
will you come please? 46 in the Spiral Hymnal, let's
stand together.