Heavenly Father, we thank you
for your word and we pray that you will give us a singularity
of sight that we would see more of you. Lord, we look to ourselves,
to our unbelief, to our sin, and sometimes in desperation,
unbelief, we feel that we could too fall away. And we answer
with Peter, where can we go? We have no place to go. You must
be to us, the Lord, our righteousness. We have no hope outside of you.
So we pray that you'll be with each of us, Lord, that you will
give us faith, that you will give us better, clearer vision
of you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You wanna stay in the book
of John, if you would, please, and turn back to chapter one.
The things we read here, are very important obviously. This is scripture. Scripture
is the word of God. It cannot be broken, Jesus said. Everything in it is true and
everything in it will be held up for all eternity. Everything
that we think about and talk about as people will not. But
scripture is true. So while you're in the book of
John, I want to read just a few verses from chapter 1 with you. And then we're going to consider
these words here. It's incredible how much information
God has put in just a few verses of scripture. So let's read this
together, beginning at John chapter 1 and verse 1. John 1, verse 35. I want to read
down through verse 38. I'm sorry, verse 39. John 1,
verse 35. Again, the next day after, John
stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as he
walked, John said, behold, the Lamb of God. and the two disciples
heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and
saw them following and said to them, what seek ye? They said
to him, rabbi, which is to say master, where dwellest thou? He said to them, come and see.
They came and saw where he dwelt and abode with him that day.
Now when you read the Word of God, you have to realize that
it has a context. It is written inside of a larger
meaning. And in what we saw the last time
we were together, the meaning, the subject matter is the Lamb
of God. Remember, John the Baptist gave
this declaration in verse 29, behold the Lamb of God. And then
here again, in verse 36, he said, behold the Lamb of God. God sent
John. God sent him to baptize. God
sent him with a message. And the message of John and the
baptism of John were the same message. It was about the Lamb
of God. We're not surprised about that
because as we saw two weeks ago, the Lamb of God is the message
of all of scripture. Jesus told the Pharisees, he
said, you search the scriptures for in them you think you have
eternal life, but these are they which testify of me. They testify,
the scriptures testify of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ
is the message of scripture. And when Jesus was being baptized,
and then again when he was transfigured on the mount, when James and
John were there with Peter and Elijah and Moses appeared, God
the Father spoke from heaven and said, this is my beloved
son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye him. we have to hear Him. God has
spoken to us in these last days in His Son, by His Son, through
His Son. In every way, the Lord Jesus
Christ is not only the message of Scripture, but He's the one
who is speaking to us from Scripture. He is the Word of God. Now, I
say all that in order for us to appreciate the impact, the
importance of what is said here. John the Baptist tells all those
who came to him to his baptism, they must believe on him who
was to come. Remember Acts 19 verse 4, John
baptized, he preached that men should believe on Christ who
was to come. That was his message, believe
on Christ. And who is he? He says here in
this context, he is the Lamb of God, And a little earlier
than that, in the same chapter here, he says, he's the Son of
God. In verse 34, I saw and bear record
that this is the Son of God. And then if you look up in verse,
well, in verse 29, I'll just read through it. It says, the
next day John see a Jesus coming to him and said, behold, the
Lamb of God, notice, which takes away the sin of the world. This
is he of whom I said, after me comes a man which is preferred
before me, for he was before me. Jesus Christ is preferred
before John. He was before John, even though
he was born physically after him. He existed because as the
son of God, he's eternal. And then John said, the reason
I came baptizing was so that he might be made known to Israel.
And then he says it in verse 32, John bear record saying,
I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it abode
upon him. And I knew him not, but he that
sent me to baptize with water, the same said to me, upon whom
thou shalt see the spirit descending and remaining on him, the same
as he which baptizes with the Holy Ghost. So let me condense
it for you. John the Baptist was sent to
prepare the way before the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus
Christ John was sent to preach is the Son of God. That means
he is eternal God. And he was before John, he's
preferred before him. John only came as his messenger.
And as his messenger, he spoke of him. The message he was given
to speak was of Christ, as who? Who he is, the Son of God, and
why he came, the Lamb of God. He came to save his people from
their sins by being the Lamb of God. And he says he was baptized,
the Lord Jesus Christ was baptized. And when he was baptized in water,
God the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. Now all
of this is meant to teach us that God the Father is speaking
from heaven. And God the Holy Spirit lighting
upon him as a dove and The Spirit of God being upon the Lord Jesus
Christ, all that is pointing to Him. God the Father speaking
of Him, God the Holy Spirit lighting upon Him, John the Baptist bearing
record of Him. You can see every light here
is shining on the Lamb of God. The baptism pointed to his baptism,
which meant he would suffer under the wrath of God in order to
take away the sins of his people. Everything is about Christ and
what he would do to save his people from their sins. If you
don't get that, then we've missed the entire meaning of this text
of scripture. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
the world in order that he might give life to his people, in order
that he might bear their sins and the curse they deserved,
and take away their sins, and God would give them life. We don't appreciate the significance
of this, do we? Why? Because we're just natural
people. We see with our eyes, we feel with our senses, we hear
with our ears, and all we know is what we feel and see in this
world. But when the Lord Jesus Christ came, he says, I speak
unto you, as Brad just read to us, the words that I speak unto
you, they are spirit and they are life. Now what that means
is that what we have now, I mean, he tells us elsewhere in John
chapter 3, what we have naturally, when we're born naturally, we
are not spiritual. When you're born from your parents
and when you grow up in this world, you are not a spiritual
person. You don't have a spirit that's
living until the Lord gives you a living spirit. And the way
that he does that is by speaking. He came into the world in order
that we might hear, in order that we might receive a life
that is spiritual, a spiritual life. We don't have it. We can't
see it. We can't know it. We can't produce
it. It's not of us. It's not in us.
God has to give it to us. Now, when John speaks here, he's
talking about the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God, remember what
Abraham and Isaac walked up the hill. God told Abraham to offer
his son Isaac, and Isaac is walking with his father. He's carrying
the wood, and Abraham is carrying the fire. And Isaac turns to
his father, and he says, Father, here is the wood, and here is
the fire, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And remember
what Abraham said in Genesis chapter 22 verse 8, he said,
my son, and this is so significant, listen, God will provide himself
a lamb. are the stake in the tent of
all of history and time. This is God's purpose. This is
God's word. This is God's work. God himself
will provide himself a lamb. He's the one who provides it.
He provides it to be offered to himself. And he himself is
the lamb that he would provide. And he would be the one who would
receive the offering of the lamb. The entire work is God's work
because we're sinful. We need someone to bring us to
God. We can't bring ourselves. God
himself has to do it. That's what the lamb of God is
for. Why do we need a lamb? Why does God require a lamb?
Because of our sin. God cannot accept sinners. God
can't approve of them. And so John the Baptist came
preaching, this is the Lamb of God. In the Old Testament, the
people were told to offer sacrifices morning and evening. They were
to offer in the morning a lamb, in the evening a lamb. At the
Passover, the people were to take a lamb for a house, and
they were to kill it and roast it and eat it in their house. And the blood of the lamb was
to be sprinkled on the doorpost. It was all about the lamb, because
they had to have a lamb. God, he says, when I see the
blood, I will pass over you. The blood of the lamb is the
reason God passed over them, because of our sin. Adam and
Eve were in the garden. They were absolutely without
sin. But when they ate of the tree God told them not to eat
of, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam hid. And
he realized, he and his wife realized they were naked and
undone before God, and they had nothing that they could do about
it. And God clothed them with the skins of an animal to point
to the fact that God would offer his son in order to take away
the sins of his people. That's what this is about. And
so when John would baptize people into the water, they would come
up out of the water, he was saying by that act of baptism, in order
for you, to be accepted by God, you have to undergo a baptism
of judgment under the curse of God and be raised up out of it
to life by God's act. And that would occur when the
Lord Jesus Christ would go to the cross. That's the offering
of Christ. And Jesus said this, I wanna
read this to you in Luke chapter 12 and verse 50. He says this. just so you can connect the baptism
of Christ with his death on the cross. He says in verse 50, I
have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straightened
or constrained till it be accomplished? He was talking about that baptism
of going to the cross and enduring the flood of God's judgments
on himself for his people, and they would be saved through that
judgment. So our only hope is that the
Lord Jesus Christ would take away our sin and would endure
our curse. He's the Lamb of God, that's
who he is, that's God's eternal purpose, and that's what John
preached both in his baptism of people, of Christ, and then
the Lord Jesus fulfilled that at the cross. It was in the context
of preaching Christ and Him crucified that John the Baptist, who had
these disciples with him, and one of them was named Andrew,
we don't know the other one. I think it was probably the Apostle
John who wrote this gospel, but it doesn't matter. They were
with John the Baptist, and in verse 35, where we began to read,
it says, the next day after, when In verse 34, John had said,
this is the Son of God. The next day after, John stood
with two of his disciples, in verse 36, and looking upon Jesus. Now this is a man sent from God.
This is a man who's preaching God's word, God's message. He's doing what God sent him
to do. What does he say? You two, look, behold the Lamb
of God. He's directing his two disciples
not to himself, but to the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who would
be sacrificed according to the will of God, by God's providing,
and accepted by God in order to take away the sins of his
people. A substitute was offered for the sins of God's people.
This is all of our life, you and I. You and me, these two
disciples, and John himself, we have no other hope but that
God would offer His Son for us and accept Him. And so when John
preaches this to them by speaking these words, Behold the Lamb
of God, this is significant because he said, He's directing them
to Christ. And every true sermon, every
true preacher, everyone who is faithful to God will not direct
attention to himself, will not draw men to himself in order
to gain a crowd or attention or praise from men, but will
direct people just like he himself needs to the Lamb of God. I'm
a sinner. My only hope is the Lamb of God.
And John is saying that here. Now these two who heard him,
it says in verse 37, they heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Notice, they heard and they followed. They heard him speak. Faith comes
by hearing and hearing by the word of God. In Romans chapter
10, verses 16 and 17, it says, how do we have faith? How do
we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? If I can't understand,
if I can't see, if I don't have spiritual life, then how does
this life come to be? How can I gain this faith I need
in order to see and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ? How can
I have it? And God says, it comes. It comes to us. We don't produce
it. I can't work it up. I can't get
it by gaining a PhD. or having a certain measure of
intellect, or memory, or sincerity, or good deeds, or earnest prayers,
none of those things will produce it. It comes to us. God brings
it. He gives it to us, hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God. And the Word of God he's talking
about in Romans 10 is the substitutionary work of Christ, because he's
pointing back to Isaiah 53 in that text. Okay, so these two men heard.
They heard about who? The Lamb of God, Jesus Christ,
and Him crucified. And then it says they followed
Jesus. They followed Jesus. In the New
Testament, when the Lord Jesus came into the world, and he began
his ministry, he had 12 disciples. But he had more than 12, because
while he was here, many people followed him, especially those
who were poor and sick and needed healing, those who needed help
for their other family members who were also sick and poor,
and some of them dead. And the Lord Jesus Christ healed
them, and he taught them. And they followed him. Look at
John, I'm sorry, not John, but the book of Mark in chapter 10
of the book of Mark, where a man named Bartimaeus, whose name
means son of the unclean, Bartimaeus, bar son, Timaeus, unclean. He was the son of the unclean.
He cries out to Jesus because he was blind in verse 46. It
says, they, meaning the crowd, Jesus and his disciples and the
crowd that was with him, they came to Jericho. And as he went
out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people,
blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highwayside
begging. When he heard that it was Jesus
of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou son
of David, have mercy on me. Of course, he said it so that
he could be heard. So he lifted up his voice and yelled out.
Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many, many in the
crowd, charged him that he should hold his peace, but he cried
the more a great deal. He was blind. He knew Jesus was
passing. He couldn't follow him. He couldn't
walk to catch up to him. So he called to him to come to
him. He called to Jesus to come to
him. Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And notice, Jesus
stood still. Jesus stood still, the Lord of
heaven and earth, the creator of all of the universe and this
earth and everything in it. The one whose will has to be
done, whose word always accomplishes his will, stood still when he
heard the crying of a blind man to have mercy. And he commanded,
Jesus commanded this man to be called, and they called the blind
man, saying to him, be of good comfort, he calls you. And he, casting away his garment,
rose and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said to
him, notice, what wilt thou that I should do to you? What do you
want me to do? What do you want me to do to you? The blind man
said to him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. He knew he
was blind. He couldn't see. He knew the
Lord Jesus Christ could give him his sight. And he said, the
one thing I want is to see. And Jesus said to him, go thy
way, notice, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. And
what did he do? Immediately he received his sight, and what
did he do? He followed Jesus in the way. That was his way
now. And back in John chapter 1, these
two heard John speak of the Lamb of God. They saw him baptizing.
He told them, you must believe on him who is to come. And now
he's to come. He's come. And John points to
him and he says, you follow him. by saying, behold the Lamb of
God. He didn't tell them directly, follow Him. He just preached
Christ and Him crucified by saying, behold the Lamb of God, and they
followed Him. And John was glad. That was his
purpose. He lived in order for this to
happen. Those who preach Christ and Him
crucified live and die content only if what they preach is heard
and men and women believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. This was
John's entire life. This is my life. The reason I'm
here today is to preach this message. The reason I want you
to hear is to hear of the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I do this delightfully, and I do it with a great desire and prayer
every week, every time we meet together. Lord, lift up yourself
from your word and show us our need of the lamb, and show us
the lamb God provided. God himself, the lamb, who offered
himself for his people in order that he would take away their
sins. All right, so these two disciples heard John speak, hearing,
they believed, and they followed Jesus. They believed what? The
Lamb of God, Christ and Him crucified. Faith, what is faith? Faith is
seeing with God-given eyes, spiritual eyes, hearing with God-given
spiritual ears, and being persuaded with a God-given persuasion that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and He, in offering Himself to
God for the sins of His people, makes us acceptable to God and
brings us to God, and so we follow Him. To be a believer in Christ
is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. To follow Jesus Christ
is to believe on the Son of God as the Lamb of God. It's to live
our lives upon Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If we live upon
Him by faith, we have spiritual life. But if we do not, if we
do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we have no spiritual
life. And God gives us life when we
hear about Christ. That's His will. It's His work.
As Brad read earlier in John chapter 6, this is the work of
God, not doing, not dos and don'ts, not us offering, but believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ. So these disciples heard Him
and they followed Jesus. What does it mean to follow Christ?
It means to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
We can see this over and over in scripture. In Matthew chapter
seven, Jesus said, narrow is the way, compressed, constrained
is the way that leads to life, that leads to heaven. The way
that is the way of salvation, and few there be that find it. It's so narrow that no one can
find this way. God has to bring them in through
this way. We can't find it. We can't enter
it. We cannot get into heaven. Jesus
Christ said, I am the way. Following Christ is believing
on him who brings us through the narrow and straight way into
heaven. Saves us, gives us life. He's
the door. He's the way to heaven. He's
the way. I want you to see this in John
chapter 10. If you want to turn to John chapter
10 with me. He says in John chapter 10, he says in verse 14, I am the
good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. So Jesus
Christ is the shepherd, he has sheep, he knows who they are,
and they know him. Verse 15 of John 10, as the Father
knows me, even so know I the Father. God the Father is infinite
in his mind, in all that he is, his will, his work, and yet Jesus
knows him, therefore he himself is infinite in his understanding.
And Jesus said, I lay down my life for the sheep. This is the
Father's will. This is his heart. Do you want
to know God? Do you want to know what he really
is like? What his great desire is? What his character is, look at
what he wants his son to do. I laid down my life for the sheep.
That was his will, that was his work. Verse 16, and other sheep
I have, which are not of this fold, not just these men I've
called here, them also, notice, I must bring. Christ is a shepherd,
he brings his sheep, and they shall hear my voice. How do we
follow? He brings us. He speaks to us. He says, they
hear my voice and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.
Therefore does my father love me because I laid down my life
that I might take it again. And then in verse 27, or verse
26, same chapter, he tells those who didn't believe on him, you
believe not because you are not my sheep. We can't believe unless we are
his sheep. But he says here, you don't believe,
not because, it's not like we become sheep when we believe,
but we're sheep and therefore we believe. But if we don't believe,
if we die in our unbelief, it's because we were never his sheep.
You see how dependent we are upon the Lord? We're so dependent
upon him that our entire life hangs in his hand, in his will,
in his work. That shows us that we have to
be humbled by God to realize, I can't do this. But he says,
but my sheep, verse 27, my sheep hear my voice, I know them and
they follow me. And I give to them eternal life,
and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. All right, so back to John 1.
These men followed the Lord Jesus Christ. They followed the Lamb
of God. He is the way, the way to the
Father. No man comes to the Father but
by me. He said, I have sheep I must
bring. How do I bring them? I lay my
life down for them. I call them and they hear. I
give them that faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing
by the word of God. All right, look at the next verse
in John chapter one. The two disciples heard him speak
and they followed Jesus. Following Jesus is believing
him, we look to him. In Hebrews chapter 12 it says,
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. And why do we look unto him?
He says, let me read the entire context there in Hebrews chapter
12. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse
1 it says, wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight,
strip off everything that's holding us back, and the sin which does
so easily beset us, that unbelief, and let us run with patience,
the race that is set before us, that's following Christ, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. So when we follow,
when your children follow you, what do they do? They listen
to where you are, they look at you, they mimic you, they come
after you, they follow you. It's bird dogging, isn't it?
That's what dogs do. Dogs are always with their master.
They call them and the dog comes. And that's what God's people,
they hear the Lord Jesus Christ, He's the shepherd, like sheep
follow the shepherd, they hear His voice. They hear that He's
the Lamb of God, that He's the way to the Father, that He's
the one who brings them into that narrow, compressed, constrained
way no one can find, the way of life and salvation, the way
to heaven, and they look to Him to do that. They don't look to
themselves, they don't look to another man, they don't look
to philosophy or to political solutions. They look to the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's funny, I was coming to church
this morning and Denise and I were driving along, I saw a bumper
sticker and the bumper sticker was a political bumper sticker.
And I thought, it's interesting how through all the eons of time,
People have been expecting the next regime to fix the problems
of the current regime. Haven't we learned anything?
The problems of man are not solved by man. Our problem is sin. When God wanted to solve that
problem, he didn't send a man. He did, but he sent his son.
He sent his son. And when he sent his son, he
didn't deal with the political problems. He dealt with our problem
of sin against God. It's easy to set problems of
our current world around and talk about them when we're together
to see if we can find the solutions. But that always takes the focus
off of ourselves, doesn't it? And that shows that we don't
like to face the real problem, which is me. Our relationship
with God, we have to do with God. That's the issue. What does
it matter if the next king or the next president or whoever
he is, the next dictator, is good for us in our career or
in our everyday lives? That doesn't matter. If I am
at odds with God himself, I'm going to face him in judgment.
And so this is the Lamb of God, the Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb
of God. Are you poor? Are you blind?
Are you lame? And you can't do anything. Spiritually, you have no life.
You need a savior. You need someone to save you
from your sins. And so these men followed Jesus because they
looked to him, the Lamb of God, to bring them to God. That's
why they came. Notice the next verse, verse
38. Then Jesus turned and saw them following. Now, think about
this. Here the Lord Jesus is going
this direction. John points him out. And these
two men followed him. They were disciples of John.
John was happy to have them go. This was his whole focus of his
life, that his own disciples and others that he preached to
would follow the Lord Jesus Christ. They would believe on him who
was to come, the Lamb of God. And so now these two men get
up and they start following Jesus. And here Jesus is walking around,
walking along, and he turns and he sees them following him. And
then when we read that, we think, well, Jesus was kind of surprised
by the fact that they were following him. But is that the way it was? Was he like unaware until he
heard, oh, look, there's a couple of guys back there following
me. No, it wasn't like that at all. Look at verse 48 of the
same chapter. Nathaniel, who Jesus called a
little later, he said to Jesus, whence knowest thou me? For what
time do you know me? And Jesus answered and said to
him, before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the
fig tree, I saw thee. Now, Nathaniel had been resting
under the shade of a fig tree. Philip, his friend, told him,
we have found the Messiah. And Nathaniel says, He asked
him a few questions. I don't believe it. He got up,
followed Philip, and he saw Jesus. And Jesus said, look, here comes
an Israelite, a man in whom is no guile. And Nathaniel said,
how do you know me? From when do you know me? And
Jesus said, I saw you before Philip called you under the fig
tree. It wasn't like Jesus was learning. about these two men
following him when he turned and saw them following him. Because
they were his sheep. They were given to him. And he
called them by the message John preached, behold the Lamb of
God. And he himself was the one who
called them in that message. He called them with a spiritual
life-giving call so that they followed him. And when they saw
him, They followed him and he turned and he said to them, notice
what he says, what seek ye? What seek ye? Now, here you are. You see the Lord Jesus Christ,
you're following John the Baptist, you're listening to his sermons.
Every day you see him baptizing people. Maybe you even saw him
baptizing the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether you did or not, doesn't
matter. The point is, here you are. You've come to follow the
Lord Jesus Christ. And as you're following him,
he turns to you and he asks you a question. What are you looking
for? What are you after? What do you
want? Now, this is Jesus Christ. This
is the son of God, your creator, the one who divides soul and
spirit, joints and the bones and the marrow. He knows your
inner thoughts and intentions. And he also is the one who is
the word of God, who is the wisdom of God, who is himself life and
the way of salvation. And he asks you a question, what
are you seeking? What do you want? What do you
feel when that question comes to you? One day, the Lord Jesus
will sit in judgment, and everyone will appear before him, and they
will have to give an account of themselves to the Lord Jesus
Christ. How will you answer? Here's his
question to you. What are you seeking? What would you say? You know
what I would say? You're the master. You know me. You know my need. You know your
own provision for poor, helpless, needy, dead sinners. Lord, give
me What I need, give yourself to me. But notice, when we come
to the Lord, we don't bring something to make us accepted to Him, to
gain His approval. We come for everything. When
we hear that we have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, our
first reaction is, I have to produce that which He tells me
to do. I have to produce that faith.
But that's a misunderstanding of the fact that we're entirely
needy. God doesn't require anything
from his people, but that he himself gives it. If he created
us, if he gave us life, he's gonna have to much more give
us spiritual life, isn't he? Sight, life. So these men come,
and he asked them, what seek ye? Notice, and they said to
him, Rabbi, which means master, They acknowledged him as the
teacher. They acknowledged him as the
one who has all the answers. They acknowledged themselves
to need him to teach them. And what did they say? They answered his question to
them with another question. He asked them, what are you looking
for? What do you want? Why are you following me, essentially?
What seek ye? And I myself would be without
an answer I knew was appropriate. I would just have to say, Lord,
I need the Lamb of God. I need my sins taken from me. I need you to bring me to God.
I need you to give me the life. I do not have the faith. I need
to trust you. And here these men, they say,
Master, in other words, Lord, you have to tell us everything.
And here's their question, where dwellest thou? Where are you
at? Where do you stay? Where are
you? And he said, come and see. What an intimate exchange between
the infinite God and these two men who heard about the Lamb
of God. He says to them, what are you
looking for? What do you want? And like the
blind man, Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do for you? Isn't
that what we need? Don't you want the Lord Jesus
Christ to say to you, what do you want from me? It all comes down to that. Do
I need a job? Do I need healing in my body? We all need those kinds of things.
But what do we really need? I get the job, I go on, I forget
about my need of a job. My physical pain goes away. I get a new issue. I try to make
myself better physically by doing exercises or taking vitamins
or something. I feel better because I got a
good night's sleep, whatever it is. I took some medication. Now I feel better. What do you
really need? Are you done? Is that it? The
blind man said, Lord, that I might receive my sight. I want to see. These men said, where do you
dwell? Sometimes people would ask Jesus
questions and they tried to trick him up. They tried to get him
to do things for them. One time in John chapter six,
these men saw Jesus turn five loaves of bread and two fish
into enough to feed 5,000 people. And so they followed him. And Jesus said to them, You seek
me not because you saw the miracles, but because you ate the loaves
and were filled. You got hungry. I gave you bread
and you said, this is a good thing. I'm going to keep following
this guy. He really has some good food. If you follow him,
you won't be without food. They were only after food. They
had seen the miracles. They were not convinced that
the one who did the miracles was sent of God, that he was
God, and that he was the Lamb of God. They didn't see. And
Jesus said, don't labor for meat which perishes, but that meat
which endures unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall
give you. And so they thought, And this
is just from what we read. Brad read this in John chapter
six. They thought, well, what do we need to do in order that
we might get this everlasting life? Because I know that we've
got to do something. So they said, what shall we do
that we might work the works of God, what he requires of us
in order to get what God promises? And Jesus said, this is the work
of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. It's not what
you do. It's what Christ did. Believing
on Him means looking away from what you can do and all that
you are to Him and His perfection and His work. So we see this. And a little later on in John
chapter 6, as Brad was reading to us, Jesus spoke these things
to the people there. He said, I am the bread of life. He said, you have to eat my flesh. You have to drink my blood. If
you don't eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in
you. And of course, they were confused
because they could only think of physically eating his body
and drinking his blood. And that appalled them to think
that he would require them to actually eat his body and drink
his blood. They were wondering, what are
you going to do? Kill yourself? Are we cannibals? Who knows what
they were thinking? The problem is that we're always
blinded by our physical realm, the sphere in which we live.
We can see no farther than that. When the Lord Jesus talks about
life, he's not talking about what we are in this body. He
said in John 10.10, I came to give them life and life more
abundantly. Do you feel like you have abundant
life? If you're honest, do you? I think most of us would say,
no, I don't feel like that. I don't know how to determine
whether I have it. What is that life? Because this
life that God gives to us, the Lord Jesus Christ gives to us,
is a spiritual thing. It's foreign to us. We can't
produce it. We have no power to make it happen.
And that makes us frustrated. Sometimes we get mad. Well, God,
he told me to do something I can't do. Yes, that's the whole point.
That's the whole point. You're gonna have to depend upon
God to do for you what you cannot do. This is the work of God,
that you believe on him whom he has sent. Or you have no life. So to eat his flesh and to drink
his blood meant to believe on him. the one who would be crucified
as the Lamb of God to take away our sins and bring us to God,
to reconcile us by removing the barrier of our sin offenses against
God, and to make us clean from our sins, and to clothe us in
His own obedience and righteousness that He might accept us. To believe
on Him means to rely upon Him for that, for everything, even
for the faith, the life, in order for me to trust Him. And so as
he was preaching this message in John 6, it says in verse 64,
there were some of you that believed not. Jesus knew from the beginning
who they were that believed not and who should betray him. He
said, therefore, I said to you that no man can come to me except
it were given him of my father. Do you see that? We can't come,
we can't follow, we can't believe on him unless it's given to us. We have to start there. We're
in the hand and at the mercy of God. Verse 66, and from that
time, many of his disciples, notice, they went back and they
walked no more with him. They didn't follow him. The two who heard John followed
him. He asked them, what are you looking
for? They said, Lord, where do you dwell? And they came, and
they stayed with him. But these heard him, and they
left. They stopped following. And Jesus
said to the 12, not to those who left him, but to those who
remained with him, the 12, he says, will you go away? Will
you also leave? And Simon Peter, said, notice,
here's the answer of a true disciple, Lord, to whom shall we go? In other words, you're the only
one we have. You're our only master. You know,
when you think about it, when we believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, we put ourselves, if you want to put it that way,
in a very vulnerable position. We have only one hope. If Christ
doesn't save us, we don't have a backup plan, do we? If God
doesn't forgive our sins for Christ's sake alone, I have no
hope. If he doesn't give me life, I
can't have life. And that's our total reliance
is Jesus Christ. And so Peter said, to whom shall
we go? He answers it this way, you have
the words of eternal life. You're the master. Teach me. Give me the faith. Call me. Make me follow you. Enable me
to believe and to see. Give me sight, like Bartimaeus. And he followed Jesus in the
way. And he said this, and we believe and are sure that thou
art that Christ. the one God appointed to save
his people from their sins, the Lamb of God, the high priest
who would offer himself, the Lamb, for the sins of his people. And then as the king give them
life and bring them to God with his almighty power, thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God. And so he was following. That's what following is. These
men heard Jesus, they followed him. He said, what are you looking
for? What do you want? They said, where do you dwell?
You know where he dwells? Where does the Lord Jesus Christ
dwell? He says to his disciples in John 6, 51, where I was just
reading, let me use that text to show you. I'm the living bread
which came down from heaven. And then he says in verse 56,
he that eats my flesh, Drinks my blood which we understand
now as believing on the Lord Jesus Christ with God-given faith
He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and notice
an eye in him. Where does he dwell? He dwells
in his people. He dwells in his church, the
body. He dwells in his congregation.
He dwells in his city. He dwells in his kingdom. He
dwells at the throne of God, at the right hand of God. He
dwells with those who are poor and contrite in spirit. He dwells
with those who need him. Because of God-given faith, he
gives himself to them. What do you seek? This is the
question the Lord is asking each one of us. What do you want?
What are you looking for? Hear the Son of God, who can
do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. He
can do far more than you can ever ask or think. What do you
want from Him? Lord, that my sins might be taken
away, that you might bring me to yourself, that I might stay
where you are, that you might dwell with me. Is that your answer? Have you come to trust the Lord
as your only hope, the Lamb of God? I trust that you have. I
pray that you do. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we pray
that you would give us that you would not only ask but give us
the answer to your questions, that you would teach us. We have
nothing, we need everything from you. We're ignorant, we're spiritually
dead unless you give us life. We have no faith unless you give
it to us. We're utterly dependent upon
you and we're sinners in every way and we need you to take our
sins away, which you have done only by your precious blood.
Speak to us from your word, Lord. Take your words and apply them
to our heart. Cause us to trust Christ and have nowhere else
to go but to him. And know that he has the words
of eternal life. Bring us to yourself, Lord Jesus.
Amen.