Turn back to John chapter 6, John chapter 6, and I entitled
the message, No man can come, but all shall come. No man can come, but all shall
come. Now, I know this, that false
religion tells men and women that all they need to do is take
the first step. False religion puts the salvation
of the sinner in the hands of the sinner. That's what it does.
That the sinner has the final say-so in whether he or she will
be saved or not. Well, first of all, we start
out lost. We start out that way. No one
is on neutral ground. And then sometime before you
die, you got to make a decision. We start out in this life lost. That's how we come into the world.
Richard said we come into the world speaking lies. Listen what it says here in John
5 40 and you will not come to me that you might have life go
back over in John chapter 5 verse 40 the Lord said you will not
come to me that you might have life then here in verse 44 no
man can come to me except the father which has sent me draw
him he can't come because he won't come first of all he will
not come Man has a will problem. We come into this world with
a will problem. Our will is in bondage to our
nature. It's in bondage to the nature.
Salvation with men is impossible because they will not come. They
will not have anything to do with God. We are born, the scripture
tells us, We are born with an enmity in our minds against God. That's how we come into this
world. And that's how we stay until God saves us. Unless he
saves us, that's how we stay. Salvation with men is impossible,
but not so with God. With God, all things are possible.
God can take the hardest, vilest criminal and save him. He can do it, if He will. I have
learned that it's never a matter of God's power, it's a matter
of God's will. That's what it is. It's a matter
of God's will. Salvation has never been placed
into the hands of men and women. As Jonas said, salvation is of
the Lord, and it always will be. It always will be. If not, nobody will be saved.
Now verse 41, the Jews murmured at him, a murmur, that doesn't
even sound like a word, it just sounds like a sound, doesn't
it? Murmur. That just sounds like a sound,
not a word. They murmured at him. They were just like their
forefathers in the wilderness. When they
was in the wilderness, they murmured at God. God fed them, he fed
them bread from heaven, the manna. He, for 40 years, he gave them
bread from heaven and they called it light bread and they was complaining
because they didn't have any meat. Then he sent him quail
and then they still complained. They still murmured against God.
Every time, every time they come up against a little hardship,
they started murmuring, complaining is what they did. They just murmured
against God. There's an old saying that says,
the apple never falls far from the tree. That's true. That's true. And I tell you this, there's
nothing more dangerous than murmuring against God. You know, Moses
said to Israel, God heareth your murmuring. God hears your complaining. And it's dangerous when we murmur
against God. Murmuring says that there is
a flaw in God. Murmuring says that there's a
flaw in the wisdom of God. It says there's a flaw in the
character of God. If we murmur, it says we know
better than God. Listen, murmuring comes from
this. It comes from sitting in judgment
against God. That's where it comes from. It
doesn't come from submission. It comes from sitting in judgment
against God's character, God's judgments, God's providence.
You know, if we complain about today, you know, if we complain
about being too hot today, it's God's providence. It's murmuring
against God's. God purposed it for whatever
reason. Probably to show me the murmuring
is still in me. It's still there. Murmuring is a dangerous thing.
And here's why they murmured. They murmured because of what
he said. They didn't murmur because of what he did. I mean, they were ready to pass
the bread again. It's like pass the bread again.
We'll take that. They murmured because of what
he said. He said, I am. Don't miss that. I am that I
am. the bread of life and I came
down from heaven. Here he is claiming to be the
I am that I am that spoke to Moses. I am the bread which came
down from heaven. Listen, the gospel, see what
he said made him mad. The gospel will make you mad
like it did the Pharisees, or it will make you sad like it
did the rich young ruler who went away sorrowful. or it'll
make you happy, it'll make you glad like the woman at the well.
It will not leave you indifference. You won't be indifferent. They knew what he was saying.
They didn't like what he was saying, but they knew what he
was saying. They didn't believe what he was saying, but they
knew what he was saying. As I told you in the Bible class,
whenever our Lord spoke, He spoke in such simple terms, it was
so easy, even the youngest Children could understand what he was
saying. He said, I'm the bread, and I came down from heaven. And it made him mad. You see,
it made him mad because they saw standing before them a man,
a poor man at that. They were offended by his common
appearance. You don't look like someone that
would come from heaven. You don't look like God. You
know, imagine their idea of God. He didn't look like that. You
don't look like our idea of the Messiah, what he would look like. Some man standing head and shoulders
like Saul, head and shoulders above the people. That's what
they were looking for. Someone standing head and shoulders
above everybody. I don't know why it is, but height
impresses the daylights out of us. I was at an airport some
time ago, and I was just sitting there, and this man comes walking
in. He had to duck down like this
and come in, and I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. I'm like,
give me some of that. You don't need that much. But
he literally had to duck to walk through that door. I mean, I
was just like, Try not to. I try not to look, but you can't
keep from it. We are impressed by appearance. And the Lord was, His appearance
was this. There's no beauty that we should
desire Him. If He walked in this room, in
the flesh, like He did that day, like you could see Him in that
day, you and I would not be impressed. We would not be impressed. God
has to give you and I different eyes to see the beauty of Jesus
Christ. His beauty is inward. His beauty
is who He is in that man. The Godhead dwelled in Him. The
fullness of the Godhead dwelled in that man. His beauty, like
the tabernacle in the wilderness, it was covered with badger skin.
It looked like all the other tabernacles and tents. The beauty,
the Shekinah glory was on the inside. They couldn't see that. They couldn't get past his flesh.
And because of that, because of what they could see physically,
they would not pay attention to what he's saying. It was just
going right over their head. They would not listen. They saw a man standing there.
They were offended because of his appearance. They were offended
because he did not look like their idea of the Messiah. And
here's the danger. Here is a danger. They knew him,
yet they didn't know him. They knew him, but they didn't
know him. And when I read that in verse
42, they said, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father
and mother, we know, we know where you come from. It wasn't
heaven is over there where they live. How is it then, he saith,
I came down from heaven? This is puzzling. And it is,
unless God reveals it to you. I wrote over that verse, salvation
must come by revelation. If God doesn't reveal it to you,
human logic is going to make you turn and leave it. And one of the problems with
today's preaching, they are trying to make it logical. It's not
logical, not humanly speaking. It's God's logic, but it's not
human logic. My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways
are not your ways. And we got to see it His way, or we're not
going to see it any way at all. Now, but when I read this verse,
verse 42, they said, is not this Jesus, son of Joseph, who father
and mother we know? I thought of, remember when Joseph
and Mary went up to Jerusalem to worship and the Lord, we went
up. He was 12 years old. And then they left, and they
took a day's journey, and they looked around, and he wasn't
with them. And it says there, they're supposing him to have
been in the company. God keep us from ever supposing
that he's here. I want to know he's here. I pray
for him to be here. I ask him to be here. And they
had to go back looking for him, and they found him in the temple
instructing those men, teaching them. They knew him, but they didn't
know him. Lord, don't let that be me. Don't let that be me. I want to know you in spirit
and in truth. And Jesus answered them in verse
43 and said unto them, murmur not among yourselves, quit complaining
and listening or listen, quit complaining and listen. You know,
you can't learn anything as long as you're murmuring. When you're
complaining and murmuring, you can't learn a thing. You cannot
learn anything until you just shut up. You can't do it. And then the Lord, I want to
show you in verse 44, there's two things here that we see.
The Lord reveals the depth of human depravity. Here's human
depravity. No man can come to me because
you will not come to me. Here's human inability. No man
can come to me. Here we see how dead we are by
nature. This is how dead we are by nature. If people could really come to
Christ, this place would be packed. But they have no interest in
Him. There's no interest in Him. There's no interest in coming
to Him. He said, you'll not come to me that you might have life.
They thought they had life. They believed they had life.
People believe because we have this physical life that we have,
that we have life, that we can talk to God. No, you can't. Apart
from having spiritual life, you can't talk to God. You can't
come into his presence. You can't do it. When Adam died in the Garden
of Eden, and he did more than just fall,
We hear about the fall, and he did, but it was more than a fall,
it was a death. It was a spiritual death. His
whole posterity died spiritually in him. In him. Adam could not produce one spiritually
living soul. You know, as believers here,
you know, there's believers here, and you have children. You have
children that don't believe. You cannot impart to them what
God has given to you. You can't give them spiritual
life. You can't give them faith. As much as you want them to believe,
as much as you want God to save them, they are in God's hands. And there's no better hands for
them to be in than His. No better hands than God's hands. You trust them to the Lord. You
trust them. Because we can't pass it on.
I can't give you faith. I can't convince you to believe.
Not savingly, I can't. I might get a profession out
of somebody if I squeeze them hard enough. But they're still lost. But if God saves you, you're
saved. And you'll believe, and you can't
keep from believing. You can't help but believe. He says you're no man, no man,
Jew or Gentile. The most educated, the most sophisticated
cannot come to me. No man can believe on Christ
by himself. Not on your own you can't. Not
on your own. That's the work of the Holy Spirit.
Faith is a gift of God. That's why I said we trust Him
into the hands of... If He can save me, He can save my children.
He can do that too. Ain't no problem with them if
he can save me. And no man can repent on his own. Repentance
is the gift and work of God. Listen to what Paul writes, I
believe it's Paul, maybe Peter, in Acts 11, 18. When they heard
these things, they held their peace and glorified God, saying,
Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance. Have you repented? God granted
it to you, and you know it. You know it. because it's a godly
sorrow. You repent that you've sinned
against him. You know, when David, in Psalm
51, when he's repenting over what he did with Bathsheba and
Uriah, you know what he says to God? Against thee and thee
only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. I hurt Bathsheba. I hurt her family. I hurt Uriah,
I had him killed. I hurt them, deeply. My sins hurt them, but my sins
against you. He said, I have done this evil.
And you know what he said? I've done this evil in thy sight,
with you looking on. David says, I have done this,
everything I have ever done, Lord, forgive me because I've
done it right in your face. Seriously, I've done it right
in your face. Thou God seest me at all times. All times. And I did this right
in your face. I knew better. I knew better. Like Paul said,
but the will to do, I don't know how to do it. Not without sin. No man can come
to me. No man can believe on me. No
man can repent. Thank God for that word except. I'm glad it didn't end with a
period there. Except, thank God for that word. Except the Father
which hath sent me, draw him, him or her. Draw him. Here we see the activity of the
Father in our salvation. You know, our Lord said, my Father
worketh hitherto and I work. THE FATHER IS AT WORK AND SALVATION
AS OUR LORD IS, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND AS THE HOLY SPIRIT
IS. THE WHOLE TRINITY, THE WHOLE TRINITY IS FOR YOUR SALVATION. YOU KNOW THE SCRIPTURE SAYS A
THREE-FOLD CORD CANNOT QUICKLY BE BROKEN. THAT THREE-FOLD CORD
CANNOT BE BROKEN. IT CANNOT BE BROKEN. THE FATHER,
SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT. HERE IS THE WILL OF THE FATHER
It is seen in sending his son, he said, he sent me. He sent
me. You know, in the garden of Eden,
after Adam's sin, it is said that he heard the voice of God,
Christ, the word of God, walking in the garden in the cool of
the day. He came down and you would have
thought that there would be thunder and lightning, but he was just
calm. He was in the cool of the day,
a beautiful day. You know why? Because Christ
stood as the lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
God had already taken care of this matter. And in time, 4,000
years later, He sent his son. From the throne of God came God
into this world and became a man and spoke of himself as bread.
Simple, simple language. We eat bread every day. I do.
I eat bread every day. I eat a loaf a week. I do. I'm not joking. I do. I like my bread. If I had to
go on a diet that does not include bread, and I'm not going on a
diet. But he comes down and he calls
himself the bread, this is God speaking, the bread from heaven,
that a man may eat thereof, you may eat thereof. Everybody this
morning, listen, you may eat thereof and live. I mean live. You're not living if you're lost,
if you don't know Christ, you are not living. And you'll find
that out in a short while. You're not living. To have Christ
is life. I tell you, I wish I could get
this. I know dead people, spiritually
dead people can't see this, but the peace, the contentment, and
the joy that's there, even in sorrow, it's there. And you can't
buy that. You can't work it up. It's God-given. And that's because Christ is
in you, the hope of glory. That's why. No man can come to me except
the Father which sent me, draw him. Here we see the love of
the Father in sending His Son to save people like me and you,
sinners like me and you. And we see the power of the Father.
He says, except the Father which has sent me, draw Him. Draw Him. Have that spiritual death into
life. Draw Him out of that. Draw Him out of that cesspool
of sin. Draw him out of those cravings
of the flesh. Draw him. Draw him. It takes the power of God to
bring a sinner to Christ. You know, before I heard the
gospel, I was going to a place, and if somebody came in that
they knew had never made a profession, boy, they never let up on them. There would always be certain
people that would go back, get in their head, and they wouldn't
let go. You had to go to the front and
get them to stop. They wouldn't stop. When you preach the gospel and
the Holy Spirit takes that gospel and applies it to the heart,
get out of the way. Just like when the Lord was at
the well there, that woman at the well. He sent them away to
get food and it was just him and her. That's what it comes
down to. It comes down to you and him. It says here that the Father
draws him, not drag him. No one is dragged to Christ. Everyone whom God saved come
willingly. You know why? Because it says
in Psalm 110, Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy
power. That's why you're willing. God
made you willing. God gave you, for the first time,
a will that was not in bondage to your flesh. He gave you a
new heart, and with that new heart came a new will, and that
will is to know God. He gave you a new appetite. Now
you hunger and thirst after righteousness instead of the sins of the flesh.
Oh, they're still there. But the Lord puts them in check
because he says sin shall not have dominion over you. That
sinful nature will not dominate you. It will not dominate you.
Christ dominates us. He draws the sinner, and He draws
that sinner with cords of love. Oh, if we could even just an
inkling of God's love to us in Christ. We can't even begin to
comprehend such love. As parents, our love to our children,
is so pale and puny compared to his love for us. I don't know
how many hairs on your head. He knows how many is on mine. He said, you offend one of these
little ones, it'd be better that a millstone hang about your neck
and you drown in the depth of the sea. He said, I'll drown
you. God said concerning Israel, I
gave Seba and Sheba for you. I killed those nations for you. Now this may sound hard, it may
sound harsh, but if God Almighty has to go through a country or
a nation and just wipe it out for one sheep, He'll do it. He
will do it. He'll do it. That's who God is. And that's how much He loves
His children. Draw them with cordial love, draw them through
the gospel. Boy, I just, I tell you, I'm still drawing, but I
never forget when I heard it, it was just like, it was like
a pulling force, not a dragging force. You know what it is to
drag? It wasn't a drag. It was a pulling
force. It's like I had to be there. I had to be there. I had to hear the gospel. It's
drawing by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God and he's
drawing you. He has a gives us a promise here,
and I'll raise him up at the last day Here's a promise all
that the father he said over earlier I think first 37 all
that the father Giveth me shall come to me and him that cometh
to me I will and no wise cast out then verse 39 And this is
the father's will which has sent me that of all which he has given
me I should lose nothing but should raise it up again at the
last day and then over here he says again verse 44 no man can
come to me except the father which has sent me draw him and
i'll raise him up at the last day you're not going to perish don't
be afraid to die you who believe don't be afraid to die first
of all everything's working together for your good everything and
secondly he said i'll raise you up You'll not die spiritually,
you'll go to be with the Lord, be absent from the body, be present
with the Lord, and I'm gonna raise you, give you a new body, I'm
gonna raise you up. Now if you don't believe, you
need to be afraid. You do. Because nothing, listen, for
those who do not believe God, nothing is working for your good. Zero. You got the best job in
the world, that's not working for your good. You've got the
best health. It's not working for your good.
But if you believe you're sick as could be, that's working for
your good. It's working for your good. I'll raise him up in the last
day. The last day is the final day, he's saying here. The end
of the world. Most people believe you're pretty
fanatic if you believe the world's going to end. It is. It is. He says in 1 Corinthians 15,
24, then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the
kingdom to God, when the whole kingdom is together, even the
Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority
and all power, when he's done that, when Jesus Christ has done
that, then cometh the end. There is an end to all of this,
but not until that last sheep is drawn to the shepherd. Only
God knows where he is, he or she. Only God knows where that
sheep is. But when that last sheep is drawn to Christ, drawn
through the gospel, I mean, who knows where that last sheep is?
Donna was telling me Wednesday night, someone from China was
listening, three from Australia listening. I thought after I
got home, I thought it may be a house full of people listening.
It doesn't have, you know, usually I think there's one person listening.
It could be a gathering of people listening. They're in China. And that one sheep might be in
China. Or that one sheep might be in Australia. Or Canada. Somebody
from Canada. It may be a group of people gathered
in a house listening. And that one sheep hears the
shepherd's voice and comes. Then cometh the end. There's
absolutely nothing else to be done except the saving of that
last sheep. Christ said it's finished. It's
finished. He said, there's other sheep,
other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, them also I
must bring in. That last sheep brought in might
be in this congregation. I believe that. It might be in
this congregation and then come at the end. And he says here, It is written
in the prophets, and they shall be all taught of God. Every man,
therefore, that hath heard and learned of the Father comes to
me. There's a teaching process in the drawing of a sinner. There's a teaching process. All
of God's children are taught of God. They are taught of God. Faith is not ignorance. Faith is knowledge given by God. You say, I see it, I understand. I understand. There's a teaching
process. First, there's a life-giving
process, just like that baby laid in the field. He said, I
said, thy time is love. And he said, I said, live. Now,
when he says live, the teaching begins. Because until then, you
don't have anything to hold it in. Henry said to me one time,
he said, you can't counsel lost people you don't have anything
to work with. You don't have anything to work with. There's
no foundation. I saw this. Went over to the
house, and I saw this on TV. Vicki and I saw it. This woman
married herself. She spent $25,000 and married
herself. Had her own wedding. And I told
Vicki. I told Vicki, I said, when you
take away the word of God, anything goes. If the word of God is not
the foundation, anything goes. Go marry yourself, spend $100,000
on it if you want to. But we have the word of God as
our foundation, and it's the foundation not only for our faith,
but it's the foundation for our conduct. You know what's funny? I was
thinking about this because my own son said this to me here.
Jeremy said this to me a few weeks ago. We talked about marriage. He said, I wouldn't even want
to marry me. That's the difference. But that's the difference between
being saved and your eyes open and being lost and ignorant of
God. One wants to marry their self
and the other one says, I wouldn't marry me. Would you marry you? Oh my. There's a teaching process. He teaches us that we were lost,
dead and guilty. He teaches us this. He teaches
us our need of Christ. He teaches us how Christ meets
those needs. Listen here to John 16, I'm going
to wind this down now. But John 16, 13, 15, How be it
when he, the Spirit of truth, that is the Holy Spirit, is come,
he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself,
but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. You know,
our Lord said that, as I hear, I speak. He said the Holy Spirit
does the same thing. And he will show you things to
come. He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine, and
shall show it unto you, reveal it to you. All things that the
Father hath are Mine, therefore said I, He shall take of Mine,
and show it to you. Have you seen it? Have you seen
that Christ is all in all? Is Christ all in all? Is He everything?
If you've seen him in his office as a prophet, priest, and king,
your wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, you see, he is these
things to me. I got to stop and think. This is what he is to me. He
doesn't just give them to me. He is these things to me. Every man, therefore, that hath
heard and hath learned of the Father comes to me." No probabilities,
no chance of being saved, no maybes. It's 100% certain that
all who hear, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word
of God. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. All who hear
and are taught of the Father, every one of them, every last
one of them, come to Christ. Every last one of them. That
should make you who come to Christ, you who have come to Christ,
that ought to give you great comfort. You've been taught of
God. The Father, the Father of heaven
and earth has drawn you. Drawn you to his Son, drawn you
to his bosom. He's drawn you. You feel drawn
to Christ? Any of you feel drawn to him?
My Lord and my God. All right.