This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Starting in verse 34, let's read
down through verse 40. They said to Him, Sir, give us
this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the
bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not
hunger, Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said
to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. All
that the Father gives me will come to me. Whoever comes to
me, I will never cast out. For I've come down from heaven,
not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And
this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing
of all that He has given me, but raise it up again on the
last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who
looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life,
and I will raise him up on the last day. There's never been
a time in history where in different pockets of theology that the
doctrine or the teaching of limited atonement has been so divided. In the last year, And some of
you can attest to this. I have seen more and more so-called
Calvinists who would argue the vitality and the importance of
the atonement. I've seen many Baptists who would
come to the table and say, well, you know, this is an academic
debate. It's not important. Let's stop talking about the
atonement. I've seen people stand in pulpits and hijack their entire
services to fight against this teaching of the limited atonement
of Christ. Thereby, by accident, they actually preach a true gospel
by explaining what they believe is not necessary. We see often
in our world, and Brother Jesse can attest to this as well, most
of the people who fight against the gospel so passionately are
those who are actually professing to be in Christ. the so-called
church of Jesus Christ, the so-called believers of this world. They
fight so hard against the teaching of the true gospel that they
actually confess a foolish unbelief and call it truth. There are many passages of scripture.
Interesting that Romans 9 was read this morning. I will use
it a little bit this morning in this text. because it goes
so closely into the teaching of what Jesus teaches this multitude
here in John 6. And that is, in a nutshell, we
can go home after I say this sentence because it's all over,
is that God has purpose to save His elect through the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and He's perfectly and effectually
done the job, it is finished, and all the elect of God will
come to faith in Christ through the hearing of the words of Christ.
Ta-da. And people say, well, that's
not the gospel. Well, if that's not the gospel, then there is
no gospel. Sometimes semantics, how we believe
words are being used and their definitions, etc., can bog us
down to such a degree that we are actually saying the same
thing in agreement, but we're not actually agreeing on anything. I believe the word of God, as
many of you have already heard me say this week, is the scaffold
through which God prunes and slices the church. He brings
us out of this ambiguous unity. Now, what is ambiguous unity?
You've heard it. We all just trust in the name
of Jesus. What Jesus? What name? What authority? What work? What
has he done? Who is he? That's the difference.
We can't just go around saying the name of Jesus, for there
are many Jesus's. There are some people even with
that name that live in my neighborhood, Jesus. I saw as a way of just. Being humorous at a church recently,
Jesus, Jesus, there's just something about that name. And as I was
looking at the book, I was laying the book aside so I could use
the podium that I was about to teach on. And I thought to myself,
now, if there was a man named Jesus as a young boy, he thought
he was something special, didn't he? Because see, anybody can
be named Jesus. The name in itself means Yahweh
saves, God saves. Joshua is a translation of Jesus. Jesus and Joshua are the same
name. We need to understand that the
word in itself means nothing, but who He is means everything.
So that we can all confess Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, but if there's
no power and authority and truth behind the one whom we confess,
there is no life. People knew Messiah, which is
translated into the English transliteration of the Greek Christos, which
is the holy anointed one of God. They knew Jesus was the Messiah,
was the Christ, but they did not grasp with their human eyes
the significance of believing in him alone because they could
not. People want to argue with us
today. They want to argue. Any person can be saved, to which
I would say, then who in the world is God himself speaking
about when he says to Isaiah, go, I will not allow them to
see. I will not allow them to hear.
I will not allow their minds to understand. And then Jesus. Speaking through the evangelist,
John in John chapter 12 said, these things are written that
it might be fulfilled, that what God said through Isaiah was fulfilled,
that they could not hear, they could not see, and they could
not believe. Even if you believe in some rare,
weird, illogical sense outside of Scripture that there is a
possibility or a probability of every human being being able
to be saved by the gospel. You cannot deny the fact that
God shuts that door many times over in Scripture. I've heard pastors say, as long
as there's breath in your lungs, that is not true. As long as
there's a heartbeat, as long as you can hear, that's not true. Because the scripture shows us
that God will shut your ears. And what shut the ears of these
Galilean Jews? The home people of Jesus. It's
that they wanted a king to lead them to their religious freedom,
to their national freedom. They wanted to hear of a Messiah
that would do what they felt in their logical humanity was
the right Messiah. They wanted to take what Jesus
was supposed to be and plug him into the holes that they had
created. Friends, that has never been
truer than it is today in our culture. since Robin and I were speaking
last night about it, is how we ought to often pity people who
cannot see the truth, not mock them, not even say, why can't
they see it? They can't. And, beloved, if
it weren't for the grace of God effectually rearranging the internals
of your soul and giving you the gift of faith and giving you
spiritual eyes, you and I would not see it either. But do you see how foreign that
is? in the culture in which we live. See how foreign that is in the
days of Jesus, where the Jews who knew it with all of their
mind, when they heard it, they're like, that doesn't settle with
what I have decided that Messiah would be. But yet he goes to
the Gentiles. He goes to the Samaritans. He
goes to the pagans. He goes to the unclean. I'm going
to use some vocabulary of the Semitic language. He goes to
the dogs. And they believe. Why? For it
has been granted to them to see. And then they say, verse 34 of
John 6, give us this bread. These multitudes who cannot see
and Jesus tells them things, but they cannot think outside
of their physical mind. They say, give us this bread
always. And then Jesus explains it very
simply in verse 35. This is where we left off last
week. I am the bread of life. Here I am. Here I am. Now see, people think, listen
very carefully, people think that that's the gospel. Jesus
standing and going, here I am. Believe on me. That's not even
the introduction. The gospel is not complex. It's
simple, but it's complete. There's a difference in just
Titling something the gospel and actually hearing the gospel.
The gospel is not the offer of, there's Jesus, believe. The gospel
is not the offer of, come. The gospel is, I have done these
things. My father has done these things.
I have completed these things, now believe. That's the gospel.
And it's never been an offer. Never at any point in the New
Testament has Jesus or any of His apostles ever said, will
you please come? Never has there ever been an
offer for someone to believe. Would you believe? Will you believe? No, at every single sentence,
in the syntax of the New Testament, every time the gospel is presented,
the command of God to believe is given. It's a command, it's
not an opportunity. You see, it's not an opportunity. It is the command of God alone
to believe in the gospel of Christ, to believe in the work of Christ,
to believe in the sovereignty of God and His grace and His
power and His affection and His love and His work. Before the
world began, that before He said, let there be light, there was
the decree of God from all of eternity. Let me give you some
systematic theology about the doctrines of God. God is eternal. That means He has no beginning
and no end. He always has been. And God, as an eternal being,
everything that He does and all of His decrees are eternal. That
means they did not begin one day. God the Father and God the
Son and God the Spirit weren't hanging out over coffee and going,
you know, let's make a plan to save a people. It's eternal. God's love didn't
just start one day. He goes, I think I'm going to
love James Tiffins. Now, God loved me before I was.
And beloved, if you are in Christ today and you are sealed by the
Spirit of God and you believe on Christ and your hope is in
the gospel, you have been loved by God with an everlasting love.
Psalm 107. But I'm not sure why it's so
hard for people to see that even in their logical mind, except
that what Scripture teaches me is that they have not been gifted How is it that people come to
see? It is by the mercy and grace
of God. It is by His mercy. In verse
35, he says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall
not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall
never thirst. Listen, that is just an expression. It's not a theology. You gotta
come and you gotta believe. It's just a simple statement.
These people came to Christ for bread. Food, physical food. And now they come to him again
in verse 26 of this chapter. What does he say? You don't come
to me except that you are full in your body. That's what you
want. You want more body stuff. You want more fleshly stuff.
You want more worldly stuff. You want more perishing stuff.
Then verse 27, do not labor for the bread that perishes, but
for the bread that endures to an eternal life. I am the bread
of life. Psalm 107, it's the psalm where
it says, thank the Lord for his steadfast love. And there's two
verses there that I'll pick out this morning and keep moving.
Verses eight and nine of Psalm 107 says these words, let them
thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works
to the children of man, for he satisfies the longing soul and
the hungry soul he fills with good things. Now, if you know
What's happening here, you understand that God is teaching us about
Himself through the psalmist. Through this song of praise,
we learn. That's why music is so important. If it's not going
to teach us something doctrinally, even if it alludes too weakly
to something that's in the Bible, that's not sufficient. It needs
to teach us something. That's why there are some songs
in our book that we don't sing anymore because some people have
said, that doesn't make sense in our doctrine. Okay. And it's a good song, and in
my car, I can sing it. And at home, I can dance to it.
But in here, we will let it rest. This seeing Jesus, this coming
to Jesus, this eating of Jesus, this drinking of Jesus, being
satisfied, is very akin to what we see there in Psalm 107. That
seeing Jesus brings thankfulness. Why? For the love of God. In
order to see, God must first love you. And if God loves you,
he will cause you to see. Seeing Jesus brings thankfulness
to God. Seeing Jesus, according to this
psalm and many other places throughout the whole of the Old and New
Testaments, we see that this living water, that this being
satisfied as bread, this being filled reveals the steadfast
love of God, for he gives it to his people. The very argument
that the Galilean Jews were giving Jesus. So our fathers ate the
bread in the wilderness. God, our father, Moses, actually,
they said, gave us this bread. And as we'll see later, they
died anyway. It was not true bread. But even in the giving
of temporal bread is for our filling, is for our life. This
is bread that gives us life in our bodies. How much more do
we need life in our soul? How much more important is the
spiritual life? Beloved, let me tell you something.
We who are parents and have children at home or grandchildren that
we influence. Friends, there is no good thing
coming out of a college fund or an education. or a music scholarship,
or anything else that they may get, or mathematics, if they
do not know the truth of the gospel. And God is sovereign
in His timing. God is perfect in His will. God
is absolute, and we have not failed. But God has put us together
this day to hear the words of Christ through this teaching
that we might then also know. that no matter how much we have
strived, if it is not God's will, even our children, our parents,
our neighbors, our enemies, there's nothing we can do to change.
But it is all in the sovereign hand of Christ. Being united with bread gives
life to the body, just as being united with Jesus gives eternal
life to the soul. Seeing Jesus displays the work
of God. This is what Jesus has already
said. What work must we do? And Jesus says, this is the work
of God that you believe on the one whom he has sent. I am the
bread from heaven. Believe on me. Trust in me. Have
hope in me. Find your satisfaction in me.
All these commands and they're baffled. They're confused. They
don't understand what's happening. But ultimately, we see the outcome
of God giving bread. He gives the bread, it's his
bread to give. When he gives bread, he does
so and he brings satisfaction. He brings fullness, never wanting,
come and you will never hunger and come and believe and you
will never thirst, you see. When we feel thirsty for God
sometimes in our humanity and our fleshliness, we come to the
table of that which we might do. Okay, God, what must I do? And I'm not saying there's not
room for discipline in our life. There's not room for be subject
and obedience to the teachings, the clear plain teachings as
the church in the New Testament. But friends, when we are looking
for hope, we do not find it in how we follow after Christ. We
find it in how Christ obeyed the father. And that's what we'll
see. We find the fullness and never
wanting, not because we've seen with our physical eyes, not because
we've studied doctrinally with our physical minds. It's because
the love of God in us, effectually through the spirit of God, through
the hearing of the word of God has brought us up into life as
the people of God. And we are sustained by the power
of God. And in doing so, and in being
so, we are satisfied. Verse 36, you've seen me. You've
seen me, but you do not believe, you see? You've seen me, but
yet you do not believe. And some people say, well, how
do we know? Because he says, I said to you that you have seen
me, yet you do not believe. And therein lies the problem
with our community. Therein lies the problem with
our humanity. Therein lies the problem of our
depravity is that we are always begging the question, what must
I do to believe? What can I accomplish? What can
I do to accomplish faith? What is faith really going to
be like? You know, when faith is hard to find, when your body
gives up, when your mind gives up, when your heart gives out,
When your emotions are so thick that you could not swim through
them with a diving suit. When the air in your soul is
so stagnant that you're not sure you can take a breath, but even
the thought of suffocation and death is too much to bear because
you don't even have the energy to die. If you've never been
there, I pray that you never will be, but I have. And at those moments, it is not
my breathing and my striving. It is not your life or even ability
to die in yourself that matters for as you choke out the last
effort to believe Christ is real. And he's full. And he's life. We are not looking at him and
going, yep, I know the truth of that. We are looking at him
and going, oh, God, My Savior. That is the bark of Thomas. When all of his wisdom knew very
well that Jesus had died and all of his wisdom and logic knew
that there was only one thing that would change his mind, he
says, I will not believe. And I want to interject that
which is which is pressed in the syntax as we get there later
in chapter 20, much later. I will not believe even if I
touch his side. That's the fortitude in which
Thomas's unbelief rests, and Jesus does not come to him and
argue. Look, don't you know who I am?
Don't you see? No, he walks through the wall
of a locked room and he stands before Thomas and he says, behold
my hands. Behold my side. Thomas does not
look at either place, nor does he stick his finger in any wound.
He falls before Christ and says, the God of me, the Lord of me,
because Christ saved him. Anyone who comes to see has been
given sight because God has enabled him to see, but not with physical
eyes. Physical eyes will never bring
any of these things. Physical eyes will never bring
thankfulness. the revelation of the love and
the purity and perfection of the work of God. Physical eyes
will never bring the satisfaction and the fullness and the never
wanting that we so long. Only through seeing Christ supernaturally
will we see. Let me tell you two, do not beg
to say, oh, so we just ride this wave and find ourselves saved
one day. Friends, we are not absent minded
in our salvation for God reveals to us the perfection of it with
our new mind. We are guilty of sin, we are
guilty of unbelief, and we are guilty even when God saves us, except
that our guilt has now been satisfied in Christ. In verse 26, excuse
me, in verse 36 there, we see this expression. And you might say,
well, where did Jesus say to them that they've seen me in
verse 26? You're seeking me because you
ate your fill of the loaves. You saw who I am. You saw what
I could do. But the signs and the wonders fed your materialism,
fed your flesh, not your soul, because they are insufficient
for eternal life. How is life given? Well, The one good thing is, is that
when we see verse 36, it's very easy to say these poor people,
why can't they see? Why won't they just believe on
Jesus? Why won't they just obey? I remember as a child being taught
over and over again, the story of the flood. And I had this dramatic reading
with sound effects of that account that was on a cassette tape.
And I remember the cassette tape player that I had. And I would
listen to that and I would listen to the wind blow and listen.
And you hear the hammering of the nails. And Noah would say,
get on the boat for the judgment of God is coming. Believe in
the salvation of the Lord. And they would mock him and laugh
at him and say, look at that crazy old coot building a boat
in the middle of nowhere. And I remember the sound of the
door closing. And this was a child's tape,
probably, what, 1979, 1980. And it was a little too graphic.
Because you hear people say, what is this? Oh my Lord, the
waters are rising! The waters are rising! And they're
screaming and banging on the boat, let me in, let me in! And
then all of this turmoil and the music, you know, dum-dum-dum. And then it just goes silent,
just like that. Just goes silent. That was perfect timing. Just goes silent. And I can remember
the horror of just that story. I could not even read, but I
could know the story. And on that, it's too dramatic.
We don't need that kind of drama to see the horrors of the judgment.
Just read the Bible. But I used to always say, why
did they not get hold of it? Because it was the will of God
to destroy them. And they were worthy of destruction.
And Noah and his family were not worthy of salvation, but
God in His glorious perfect will saw fit to save them. And the
boat is just a type of Jesus. And if they wouldn't get on a
boat, they're not going to come to Christ. Seeing physical lives never brings
anything. But Jesus in verse 37 answers
the question of how, what must we do to be saved? Jesus tells them how the work
of God is accomplished. You must believe. You must be
doing the work of God, they ask that he so he explains them,
which is to believe on the sun. Look at verse 37. What does he
say? All that the father gives me
will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Jesus tells them here how the
work of God is accomplished, how they believe. That belief
is brought to them by God, just as bread was given to them by
God, just as Jesus was given to them by God, Jesus will be
given for the sake of His people. Faith in the gospel, beloved,
is believing that God has saved His people through Jesus Christ
sovereignly. Because it is at the end of what
we are able to consider doing that we see what God has so perfectly
done. All the Father gives to me. Now it didn't say any that the
Father, it doesn't say whosoever the Father gives to me, if you
want to play games with that archaic word in ignorance. If
people want to argue, if they want to learn, teach them. If
they don't, quit feeding pigs perverse. It is not worth your stress. All the Father gives me So here
we see the giving of the Father. Just as God gave the bread to
the Israelites and they lived, so shall the Father give the
true bread to His people and they shall live. But the difference
is, as we'll see next week, is that the Father's people in antiquity
died because it wasn't true bread. It was material. And I find great
irony in that. Theologically, I find great irony.
How do you know that? Because I have the teaching of
Jesus right here as to what it really meant. What God did in
the wilderness for Israel was not for Israel. It was for God. And it was for us to see the
insufficiency and the inefficacy of material bread. The father gives. Some people say, well, the father,
we got to go to the father first. Where do you get that? Oh, the
father knows who will come. But there's never a place in
the Bible that expressly shows in narrative or doctrine that
anyone has ever come. You see, no one has ever come
to Christ. No one has ever followed after
Christ. Everyone who is in Christ has been given to Christ by the
Father. Because they belong to Him. The bread that was in heaven
came down from heaven. It was not a miracle of just
wheat coming together out of the dirt. It was some new bread.
It was some special material bread made from heaven that perished
after it was consumed so that they could not store up for tomorrow
for they must trust in the sufficiency of the all life giving bread
of God every moment. I'm getting ahead of myself.
But that's the point. God had the bread in heaven.
He sent it down and they lived. God has Christ. He sent Him down
and the ones for whom Christ was given Live. The Father gives them to Him.
And all who come, Jesus said, are those who are given. So right
there it explains the coming is the giving. All the Father
give will come. All of them in totality. Not
each one that the Father gives. Jesus didn't say that. All that
the Father gave you will come. It's a guarantee. This is how
the gospel is. It is what the gospel is and
it's how the gospel works because that's how God works. This is
the work of God that you believe. How must we believe? Give us
a sign and we will believe. You've already seen a sign. and
you can't believe. You've already seen me and you
won't believe. You cannot believe. Let me show
you how you can believe by trusting in this truth that God will give
me my sheep. Now we're jumping all the way
over to chapter 10. Jesus is teaching us that our
security is found in the perfection of salvation, of Christ's redemption
and its permanence. Jesus does not have confidence
in man. I mean, imagine here's Jesus
preaching to the multitudes and they won't believe. It's hard
to imagine what I would be like in my mind if I showed up to
service this morning and there was nobody here. I'll be like, what in the world? Let's just Facebook live and
see if anybody wants to hear this. Nope. All the haters watch it. And there's Jesus. And as we'll
see in a few verses, everybody leaves. Nobody's believing. Not one person believed out of
20,000. According to today's evangelical
standards, Jesus needs to quit the mission of evangelism. But you know what? He did not
fail. His confidence of salvation is not in the response of man,
because he knows what is in man, John 2, 27, 26, 27, 28. He knows, nobody has to tell
him what's in the heart of man, he knows. He knows how man, even
in all of their spiritual learning, Nicodemus, John 3, there is a
man, cannot see, nor enter into Him, except that the Spirit,
as He wishes, brings Him to life, as He wishes, through the hearing
of the teaching of the gospel. So Jesus does not put His confidence
in man's response. Man's response is not the effectual
reality of salvation. You see me, but you do not believe.
But Jesus has not failed here. He has never lost one sheep for
whom he has died. Christ has never failed. Not one person, not one person that Christ has
paid for their sins will perish. Christ finished the work And
the strong language that we see in John's writing, 1 John 2 and
Romans 3, is that Christ's work on the cross satisfied, paid,
and liquidated the debt of guilt to the father. He satisfied God's wrath for
his people. Oh, but the blood of Jesus is
sufficient for all people. No, it's not because that's not
what God decreed. That's a cop out. Stand firm on the doctrine
of election or forget it. Stand firm on the gospel or forget
it. Probabilities is not where we
live in Revelation. We don't live in the possibilities
or the probabilities. We don't live in the what-ifs.
Well, couldn't it be this way? But has God revealed Himself
that way? No. Then we do not subject God
to the imagination of men. Jesus satisfied the wrath of
God the Father for everyone He died for. Their debt is paid. There is no man, woman, or child
who is going to stand in judgment if Christ paid for their sins. I don't like that, but that's
the teaching of Scripture. Jesus will not lose any. He will not cast out any that
are given to Him. It is an imperative so that our
security is in the perfection of Christ's salvation. All that
the Father gives me. Let's look at these two things,
giving and casting. All that the Father gives me. See, Jesus, as I said, does not
have confidence in man's response. And this is the point I was getting
to. But Jesus has confidence in the election of the Father. The plan of God, election, predestination,
is the doing of God. It's the doing of God. It's the
plan of God. It's the action of God based
on the decree of God that he has had eternally. God did not
look at the fall and go, oops, time to punt. He decreed it. The problem is that we think
in the sci-fi or the supernatural based on how Hollywood and literature
and poetry and lovestales and fables have been given to us.
And we believe that as things play out, it's because God is
the master puppeteer. Beloved, God's more powerful
than that. He doesn't need to have us on
a string to pull us where he wants to be. He just needs to
have decreed it. Romans 9, people go, well, I
don't know about all that. So let's just, we don't have
to read it because by the Lord's grace, it has been read. In Romans 9, that is the point. God has not failed. His word has not failed. Verse 6, 7, 8, Romans 9 says,
for not all who are descended from Israel ethnically are belonging
to Israel. And not all who are children
physically of Abraham because they are his offspring, but quote
through Isaac, shall your offspring be named? Now the first son was
Ishmael and Ishmael was born out of unbelief and disobedience
and rebellion on Abram and Sarah's part. 13 years after this promise. They decided to come to God and
His promise in their own way. And though it was he was born,
the temporal promises of the material world were given to
Ishmael because he is an offspring of Abraham. But the eternal promises were
never Ishmael's to begin with, because through Isaac shall your
offspring be named." Now, listen to this. This means, I love it
when Paul explains it. This means that it is not the
children of the flesh. Being a Jew is worthless. Well, that's anti-Semitic. Call
it what you will. I call it Christ. I call it truth. being an Egyptian
is worthless, being an American is worthless, being an African
is worthless, being a Caucasian is worthless, being an Asian
is worthless, or any other mix of things that don't go together,
however we want to label ourselves, are worthless. God could care
less about where we are, where we come from, who we are, what
color our grandmas are, and how our hair looks. Okay? But oh, whoa, we can't get away
from that conversation. We're either in Christ or we're
the sons of Satan. and all of our beautiful diversity. It is not, it is not the children of the
flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the
promise are counted as offspring. Do you know? Do you know? And I can't, life of me, think
about Hagar and what her nationality was. It doesn't matter. Isaac was a Chaldean. Ethnic. Not a Jew. Not Israel. What? You're confusing me. Abram
and Sarah came from earth, y'all. Worshipping the moon. And that is the DNA of Isaac. But God said, no, you are now
my people. Not because you saw me, not because
you came to me, because I called you out. I called you out. The children of the promise are
counted as offspring. Isaac was the promised son. So those who were in the promised
son are the offspring. See that temporal issue? For
this is what the promise said, about this time next year I'll
return and Sarah will have a son. And not only so, but when Rebecca
conceived, And we see those two children,
Esau and Jacob. And in the law of the land, the
firstborn son is everything. The second born son is nothing. And they were twins, but the
promised one was Jacob, not Esau. And it says that the reason that
is recorded for us, the reason God did it that way, is to continually
show there is the rule that we go by, and there's the following
of this thing right here, and there's all this that's supposed
to happen, but I refuse it. And Jacob received the blessing
through deception by the decree of God. And he was still responsible
for being a wicked sinner. Though they were not yet born
and had done nothing either good or bad. Why? In order that God's
purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because
of Him who calls. She was told the older shall
serve the younger. All that the Father gives me.
The world's way says that Ishmael is the son of promise. The world's
way says that Isaac We just stick to the fact that it had to be
Sarah's child. Isaac's the son of prophet. So
anybody born of Isaac, anybody born out of Abraham are the promised
ones. No, they're not. Anybody born into Abraham, no,
no, no. It's the ones who are born into
the one who was promised. They are counted as children.
Why did God call Abraham out to begin with? So that through
Isaac, through Jacob, through David, comes Jesus. I don't know, skip a bunch. Read
Matthew and Mark and look at it. Comes Jesus. Jesus is of the lineage of David
through his Mother Mary and his surrogate father, Joseph. Both wives. We are given to Christ and we
find our security in the promise of God to do that. In the effectual work of God,
whereby he gives his people to his son, Jesus is not concerned
with failing in his mission because he cannot fail. He cannot fail. He cannot persuade the natural
man, even with his teaching, to believe in the natural way.
He cannot do that. He will not do that. He cannot
persuade the natural man to stop looking and longing for the flesh,
longing for power, longing for nationalism or national freedom.
but he trusts that the Father will give him all of his people
and he will never cast them out. They will be given and they will
come and they will not be cast out. You see that. Is Jesus lying? No, he's not lying. The certainty
of the work of God is that they will come. The preserving power
of God will keep them. Christ will keep them. He will
later say, I think in John 17, that no one can snatch his people
out of the father's hand. Some people say, well, God gives
people to the sun. Jesus will answer it. I'll read
it in a minute. It's not part of our teaching
this morning. People, you know, God will give, but he does so
because he draws them. That's how he gives them. No,
if he draws them, they are given. That's an argument that we'll
see in just a few verses. And when we're in, we're in.
We cannot be cast out of something we're not into. You have to trust
me if you want to do the word study and you want to look at
the grammar and the Greek, that's great. But this idea of being
not being cast out implies very emphatically that they are indeed
in Christ, for they cannot be cast out of that which they are
not securely into. They are secure in Christ. You
are safe in Christ. The power of our security and
salvation is not just found in this perfect picture, but it's
further explained by Jesus in verse 38. He says, for I have
come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will
of him who sent me. So see now the power of our security and
salvation is found in the work of God. But what we've just seen,
I didn't tell you all that, but that was the point I was going
to make. But secondly, it's also found in the will of God. I come
down. Jesus had already said the bread
of God, God's bread comes down from heaven. He gives the spread
from heaven. I am the spread that has come
down from heaven. And he reminds his listeners right here that
he has come down from heaven to do the will of the one who
sent him. And you might say, we get it. Why does he continue
to repeat himself? Because for us beloved as the
church, we are reminded and encouraged. It's so easy for us to get into
the topical aspects of this gospel and lose sight of the entire
focus of it theologically. This is a theological writing in the genre of a narrative. The bread of God. comes down
from heaven, this reveals the authority of the will of God
in the person of Jesus. We've already seen him do that
in John 5. Remember the conversation he
had with them? Now he's playing it out again. He's telling his
Galilean Jew friends and family this teaching. I come to do the
will of God. I speak the word of God. I do
the work of God. I have authority, I've come from
heaven. In the beginning was the word, and the word was God,
and the word was with God. So here, the place where he was
was with God. The place where he was as God
is where he comes from. The place where he was and from
here, excuse me, where he was sent by God. He was sent by God. So he comes down from heaven
to remind us of this authority. He is the bread of life. That
means that it's effectual, it's perfect, it works. Jesus came
as a man to live as a holy human being. Jesus came as the lamb
to pay for the disobedience of some men. He came as the Son in order to
fully reveal the Father to us. He came as God in order to rightly
and righteously justify His people. Jesus came to do the will of
God and all of these things are included therein. This is the
good news. It's the good news that Jesus
does the will of God. This is our certainty. So we
see Jesus comes from heaven. He is the bread of life, and
now he does the will of God. He comes from heaven, which shows
his authority. He is the bread, which shows
his efficacy. He is the one doing the will
of God, which shows our certainty and salvation. What is this will
of God? It is the decree of God. And
here, in this context, God is speaking of several things. One,
He's wanting us to see that God has decreed an electing love.
We've already seen it in John 3. An electing love, the decree
of God's electing love is the will of God. The decree of God's
sufficient grace is the will of God. The decree of God's powerful
justice poured out upon Christ is the will of God. And the decree
of God's sovereign redemption, where he shall take those whose
sins are atoned for, and he will give them to the Son. They shall
be the sons and daughters of God. And Christ shall be the
first of many brethren. He decreed it. He willed it.
That is a guarantee for it. And in verses 39 and 40, we see
that the purpose of God's will is very clear. It's very, very
clear. Because Jesus says, this is the
will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all
that he's given me, but that I will raise it up again on the
last day. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who
looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life.
And I will raise him up on the last day. Jesus will never lose
any of the elect. Those who are given to him are
those whose sins are forgiven. Those whose sins are atoned for. Those for whom Christ died. They are known in the scripture
as the elect, as the chosen, as the saints, as the church,
as the beloved, as the foreknown, as the predestined, as the called,
and so on. As we see in Romans 9, It does
not depend upon human will or exertion, but on God who has
mercy. John says those same things. For he came to his own, and his
own did not receive him, but to all who did receive him, who
believed in his name, he gave the right to become children
of God, who were born not of the will of the flesh, nor of
the mind, nor of man, but the will of God. They are given to Him and they
are the chosen. And they will be raised to everlasting
life. So they are not unbelievers.
They are the believing ones. The elect, they will be raised.
All that are given by the Father are raised by Christ. It is a
guarantee so that all each and every one in totality will be
preserved into the last day, which is the day of glorification. So confidence in the resurrection
of Jesus is part of the hope of the believer as it was the
hope also of Jesus. But as we see these words unfold
in the closing moments of our service together, we see the
will of God for his people. OK, so Jesus is not going to
lose us. But remember who Jesus is speaking
to. Lost people. who later refused him completely. And this idea of, oh, great teacher,
where did you, when did you get here? We followed you around
for days. And then they just reject him
fully. Jesus is speaking to lost people. And he says the will of God is
that everyone who looks upon the sun and believes in him has
eternal life. And I will raise him up. And
we'll include this verse in with next week's teaching as well.
But all those that look by faith and see Christ will believe it.
They have been given to the Son because they will be raised up
by the Son. They are secure in the salvation
of Jesus because they are in Jesus and they will not be cast
out. They will have eternal life and
they will live forever. All that the Father gives, all
that come, all that are given will be raised up This mindset
of all that, because people say, well, the will of God is at everyone.
That's right. Everyone who looks, believes. Everyone who looks and believes. Many people look at Jesus and
never believe. Everyone who looks and believes,
those are the ones given to Christ. And the reason they look and
believe is because they have been given to Christ. It is not our belief that saves
us. Listen, it is through faith that
we are, what, justified, but the justification is done through
the will of God by Christ. So we are not causing God to
save us, we are believing that He has. The collective whole of God's
people, those are the elect, This language does not lend itself
to a universal atonement that is absurd in the very narrative
of this passage. All that the fathers that the
fathers will decree to give to the son will have their sins
atoned for it was death. And that's what Jesus is really
showing, and we'll look at that a little more next week. Those
for whom Christ God will be given to the Son, and I will say to
you that they have been given to the Son in a spiritual and
judicial sense long before He ever came to earth. That is why Paul uses such language,
that before the foundations of the world. But it's how easy it is to muddle
around with that and to try to make it say something that it
doesn't, rather than just believing wholeheartedly in it. The sheep of Christ will hear
His voice. They will be given life through faith as a gift
of grace. They will believe on the gospel.
And as we close our time today, I pray that you would believe
in this gospel. How glorious is the truth of
Christ. How glorious is the truth of
the gospel. Of redemption. Of salvation. And everything that goes along
with it, Lord. The fullness of your plan for your people. That
you have saved us before the foundations of the world through
your perfect work of redemption that is found in Jesus Christ.
And Lord, I know that in trying to explain these things, Father,
we can misspeak. We can use words that aren't
necessarily clear and thus sound as though we're maybe teaching
something wrongly. But Father, let us rest in the
sufficiency of your Word that we might be taught by you. In the world at large, many who
believe they are in Christ are lost and dead in their sins.
And they sit together under false pretenses, under an ambiguous
unity that has not been divided. And they cry foul when they hear
the explicit gospel because they say that's not necessary. It
causes division. Father, you have purpose division
for you are going to separate the sheep from the goats. And
Lord, by your mercy, would you call your sheep out? Would you
call us out? Would you call them out of our
communities, out of these dead churches? Lord, would you call
the pastors of these assemblies to salvation? Would you call
them out? They might stand with boldness and humility and preach
the truth, even if it costs them the very post. For what is it
good for a man to be your servant if he doesn't do your will? Wicked and lazy. God, may you
never allow us to be that type of servant. Never hold, never
allow us to hold to our cultural fears and fear of rejection and
fear of loss, even precious people, Father, even our own households,
Lord, who would reject the gospel. But cause us to speak softly,
but boldly, humbly, but with great authority. Help us more
than that to pray. that everything we say and all
that we do is not in our power but in Yours. And by the authority
of Christ and the power that raised Him from the dead, Lord,
we shall see Your gospel bring Your people to You. As You've
given us to the Son, Lord, let us celebrate that. In Jesus'
name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
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