Faith & Life

John 6:41-51

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Well, peace be with you. Let's pray. Father, may your will be done, Jesus. May your word be proclaimed in spirit. May your work be accomplished.
In us we pray. Amen. Well, we are once again in John chapter six. We've been going through John chapter six for the last couple weeks. It began with the feeding of the 5000.
And this initiates this discourse between the crowd and Jesus around bread, living bread, spiritual realities versus physical needs and all those things. And so it begins with the feeding, this miraculous event of the feeding of the 5000 which is in all four gospels which means it's pretty on par with the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus that are always at the end of the gospels. And this now leads us to the situation where the crowds are following Jesus and looking for him to fill them and feed them once again. Then jesus directs their attention, like we talked last week to not physical needs, but their spiritual needs. And then here today, we're going to learn two lessons.
We're going to talk about the issue of faith and we're also going to talk about that what faith affords us this life that Christ offers to us. And so you're going to know two things by the end of the day. And that is faith comes by grace of God, from the grace of God. And that that faith that we're given by grace gives us eternal life. And so what I want to draw your attention to first is this idea that faith is bye, grace.
Notice here that in this gospel lesson today that the crowds come and they're not believing in Jesus. They're not taking Jesus for what he truly is. And that is he is the son of God. He is the one in whom they ought to believe. And this is signified in the verse 36 of John six.
But I say to you that you have seen me and yet do nothing believe. Jesus calls them out on the fact that they're following him around and they see him. And yet seeing him, they truly don't see him. And then later on down that gets into our lesson for today. John 642 it says.
They were saying, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say to us that he comes down from heaven? And so they think they know Jesus because they know his mom and dad, but they don't know Jesus. And so Jesus points this out to the crowd. He says, you guys don't believe that seeing you really don't see.
And that declaring to know you really don't know you are without faith. You are faithless. And the crowd is grumbling after Jesus. Who do you think you are to say, I've come down from heaven? That's not what's going on.
Don't grumble. Jesus says, jesus then teaches us, then if those people aren't believing, then how can we come to believe in him? How can we come to see Jesus for who he truly is? How can we come to know about Jesus fully, not just something that we can understand by our reason, in our own mind, but how can we come to know Jesus as revealed to us in the scriptures, and what Jesus informs us, instructs us about is very telling. It's very astonishing, because nobody falls into belief in Jesus by an accident.
We just don't happen to fall on Jesus and be like, oh, I found a savior. This is great. I believe in him. That's not what Jesus is saying. John, chapter six, verse 44, shows us that it is the father who initiates this faith that we are given by grace.
Jesus says, nobody can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. This is Jesus response to them grumbling, them saying, like, this is Jesus. This is Joseph and Mary's son. He didn't come from heaven. And he says, you're grumbling.
Stop grumbling. Because you can't thank your way into believing in me. You can't thank your way. You can't work your way to believing in me. Those who believe in me is because the father initiated and gave his grace for them to believe.
It is the father who draws people to believe in his son. No one accidentally falls into faith, only those that the father draws to believe. And how do we come to know that we are being drawn? Well, I liken it to this, and this is kind of an embarrassing story, but I do think it illustrates the point. Growing up, there was this girl in my neighborhood named charity.
Now, I grew up in the eighties, and so we rode our bikes everywhere, and I happened to catch my blue jeans into my chain and my bike, and I'm on the ground, and I'm hanging out with my friends, and this girl, charity, kept on riding her bike around me in circles and just blowing kisses at me, and I was disgusted at it. I was like, girls are gross. They got cooties, and I just don't like them. Stop doing that. Right then something happened.
Oh, say a few years later, I was in the cafeteria in junior high. I'm drinking my chocolate milk. I'm hanging out with my dude friends, and then for whatever reason, as I'm drinking this glorious pint of chocolate milk, I see this girl come into the cafeteria, and in that moment, she caught my eye. I had never experienced sight like that before. Her hair was blowing in the wind, AC DC was playing in the background, and she just is entering into the cafeteria like no other.
And chocolate milk started flowing on this Washington husky sweatshirt I was wearing. And my friend Eric says, bruce, what are you looking at? He turns around and goes, oh, Bruce likes a girl. I can't tell you how it is. I came to be aware that girls are pretty cool.
It just happened. I grew up. I went from thinking girls had cooties to now thinking like, I might want to marry one of them one day. What happened? That's something naturally that happens to us, right?
All of a sudden. We don't fall into it accidentally. It's something that I didn't create in my own self. And that is a funny illustration to illustrate the point of how God the father draws us. We don't know when it comes, how it comes, but he does draw us to his son.
We're told as much. And that is why it's a gift. It's grace. That's what grace means in order for you to understand. When we talk about grace in Christianity, it is a gift.
It's unmerited, unworked faith, favor, and you can't earn a gift, or it ceases to be a gift. You can't will it to happen, even on your own self, or it ceases to be grace, and you can't even demand it, that you do this for me, because then it wouldn't be a gift. It would only be a response to your demanding. But God the father, who is all wise, loving and kind and gracious, bestows even the gift of faith. To truly see his son as he truly is, to truly believe in his son for where he comes from, for these people, these Jews that Jesus is addressing here.
And this isn't anything new. John earlier in his gospel refers to this in the interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus. When I, Nicodemus, a pharisee, comes to him in the middle of the night, and Jesus says, you have to be born again. You have to be born by the spirit. Nicodemus has this hard understanding, like, who can do this?
Can I enter into my mother's womb again and be born again? He's like, no, you're missing the point. And then he says this in John three eight. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the spirit.
The father draws us by sending his spirit into our hearts. It causes our hearts to be reborn, and it begins to draw us to see Jesus. And as we're drawn to Jesus, as the father initiates and gives us that faith to begin to see Jesus in a different life for who he truly is, then the father begins to instruct us more about who Jesus is. Now that we've been given a new heart to come to Jesus in faith and believe in him, the father doesn't stop there. He takes us a little bit deeper in, and he begins to instruct us.
And this is what John 645 means. It is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me. So the father initiates by his own grace and loving kindness and causes his spirit to fall and stir up the hearts of those towards faith in Jesus. And not only that, after their hearts are stirred and they're drawn to Jesus, the father teaches them that this is my son in whom I am well pleased.
And that's how the father begins this journey of faith in us, believing in Jesus. It is how we come. Each and every person comes to be saved. It is the work of God, salvation. We cannot save ourselves.
If we could, then we're ultimately saying, God, you didn't need to send your son to die. I just needed to believe. But none of us have believed. All of us have rebelled. All of us have gone astray.
All of us have dug our own pit, and we can't even crawl out because of the loving kindness of God and his grace he bestows upon us, a gift not earned, not deserved. And he says, the only way out is to believe in my son. And I will move my spirit in you to give you that new heart, a heart of flesh, not of stone, that allow you to believe and to see Jesus. And I will instruct you about who Jesus is and what he is doing for you that causes you to be saved. I liken to this, that as my own heart was stirred up to look at girls and a little bit different, that I knew that my heart was like man.
One day I would like to be married. And so I began to write, as you guys know, in my journal, the characteristics and the qualities that I was looking for in a future wife. And I wrote this letter to my wife. I wrote everything about how I argue, how I throw fits, and here's the things that I desire to be as a husband and all those things. And then I put that letter and I taped it in the back of my Bible and carried around with me all the way through college.
The tape would wear out. I'd retape it. But it was an instruction on about who I am, what I desire to be as a man in marriage. And that is the very thing that when it came that Melissa was looking for a husband that I posted, we met on christian mingle, right? I was in Montana, she was in Phoenix.
And I was sick and tired of just wasting my time and dating. I was like, I don't date to be dating. I date for the attention of marriage, and I'm not playing games. And so on my profile, when, when guys would just put out what their favorite qualities and characteristics were, I just said, look, here's the letter that I wrote to my wife. And I thought, and I believed that if she would just read it, the right one would read it and she would know it's her and she would come and we would find each other.
And that's exactly what happened. And then this is what Melissa has blown up in our bedroom to remind us that that is the connection. And so it's great. But I say all that because that is how also the Lord, after he is drawing our hearts to his son, instructs us about his son right here in his word. And he instructs us even by Jesus own words and mouth, because it is Jesus who actually is the word of God who reveals God, the father.
John 646, Jesus kind of inserts this. He says, the father, my father draws you. My father instructs you, and you come to me, and then I'm going to draw you in even deeper, he says, because nobody has seen the father except me, the one whom he has sent. The father does this without being seen. But so that you can come to know that you're being drawn and being instructed and your hearts are stored towards me.
I'm now illustrating and illuminating you that the Father is drawing you to me. That's why Jesus can call us to faith. It is the Son who reveals the Father. John 118 says, no one has seen God at any time. No one.
The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. We will never get to see or understand the father, but through the Son as he has revealed him, and he's revealed him through his word, which we have in the scriptures. But you know what's also interesting, and this is a side point, is not only does the son reveal the Father? But once we join with the Son through faith in a relationship with him, we now, as the bride of Christ, begin to reflect the Father to the world. First, John 412 says, no one has seen God at any time.
If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. What that means, church, is that as we have united our lives to Christ our husband, and we have become his bride, the church, our husband, has revealed his father to us, and we get to now reflect the Father, the God of love, to the world, so we all get to be a part of this glorious relationship with the Trinity. Faith is given to us by the grace of God. It's a gift that the father bestows and draws and gives us the heart to believe. He initiates our faith.
He instructs us where to put it, and he illuminates our faith in the right person, Jesus his son. When we receive faith to believe, we will also receive this life through that faith. So as grace is given by faith, that we also have by that faith, this new life that Jesus draws our attention to and tells these jews right here and also is important for us. Notice what he says in verse 40. He says this, for this is the will of my father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.
Jesus says, you believe in me, which can only come by grace and faith, that the father initiates and instructs you and illuminates you to you. Come and believe in me. Here's my promises. Here's the benefits, is you will have eternal life, and you will be raised up on the last day. What's that promise?
What does that mean? Let's be clear on this. In Hebrews, chapter nine, verse 27. And inasmuch as it has appointed men to die once, and after this comes judgment, all of us will experience and walk through the shadows of death. And then when we come and die, that first death, we will experience and come before the judgment seat of God.
And that's a heavy, heavy position to be in, because there's nothing you can bring to get yourself out of judgment. You will receive judgment. But for all those who believe in Jesus Christ, you have this promise. Romans eight one. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.
And so all of us will die. All of us will face judgment. But then there will be a separation. Those who are in Christ will not be condemned, and in that moment will be ushered into the bosom of the Father. You will go to experience eternal life.
You will go and experience no more pain, no more sorrow. You will go and be in the presence of Jesus Christ himself, to which he will captivate you beyond all you can think or imagine. You will experience his love. You'll experience peace immediately. And you'll be waiting for him to usher in the new heavens and the new earth.
And when he does, he will take that sack of bones and skin that lie in the ground, and he will raise it up, and he will unite it with your soul. And you will be a glorified body. Never to experience sin, never to experience death, never to experience pain, torment, torture or anything. Only love, only peace, only astonished amazement of a relationship with the divine God almighty himself. You will be made holy.
You will reflect perfectly the image of God. You will not have to work by the sweat of your brow anymore. That's what being raised up on the last day means, is that we're just not a bunch of souls where I'm not just talking only about the care of your soul. Jesus even cares about your body. And he will raise it up on the last day and unite it to your soul, and you will be glorified, made perfect, finally being what God intended you to be when he created you, that first week of all creation.
And this time, no sin will creep in, and death will be defeated. That's what being raised up on the last day means. This is so important. Maybe you remember this. I spoke about this on.
Now it's escaping me. The grave site, when people come to the. What's that called? Decoration day. Thank you.
I spoke about this and the hope and the glory of being raised up on the last day is the fact that in the old Testament, Joseph, you remember Joseph, the one that got thrown into the pit, went into Egypt, then rose into this wonderful position. And that his brothers, who threw him into the pit, who were trying to kill him, come because they're starving. There's a famine in the land. Joseph got a vision from the Lord to have all this food stored up so he can care for all the people in the land. His brothers finally come to him.
They don't recognize that it's Joseph. And Joseph saves them and redeems them and forgives them and offers them food to eat.
And when Joseph dies, he says, carry my bones to the promised land, this land that the Lord God Almighty has promised to us and our generations. Carry my bones and bury me there. I want my bones to be in the promised land. Because Joseph believed in the resurrection, because he knew somehow that he would be raised in that last day. And so the nation of Israel carried his bones for a very, very over a hundred years.
They carried this guy, a casket of his bones with them. They brought it out of Egypt, carried through the wilderness. And when they come into the promised land, they finally bring him to rest in the ground there. And that's to tell us that there is something to not only this body, but our souls and this body when it's united. And when Jesus says, I will raise it up on the last day, that's very important.
But not only does he say that not only is being raised up in the last day, one of his promises, resurrection being a promise, but also he tells us that he'll give us eternal life. John 17 three says this. This is eternal life, that you may know the only true God in Jesus Christ whom he has sent. This is eternal life, that you may know that we may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom he has sent. See, to be raised up on the last day to be glorified is now to be experiencing the fullness of God, to be in right relationship, to be what Adam failed to be, to be made new and to experience forever outside of time, outside of limits.
A new earthen, a new creation that has not broken, but been remade, and a new heavens. And they collide together so that God and his image bearers can be together for the rest of eternity, that we step into the realm of God, who is eternal, and we get to experience him. Now, I cannot conjure up inside you excitement for that. Only those who are drawn to that. Does that sound like good news?
So what are some of the applications that we can learn from these lessons that Jesus is teaching?
It's this. It's kind of simple, but yet complicated. All eternity, for hell or for heaven hinges on Jesus. It's not about the type of music you've been listening to. It's not about whether or not you've done drugs.
It's not about whether or not how many drinks you've had or how many times you've been drunk. It's not about how many times you've been sexually immoral. It's not about all those things. What sends you to hell or to heaven is simply, do you believe in Jesus? If so, you will be saved.
If you do not believe in Jesus, you will not be saved. Everything hinges on Jesus. God the father would not spare his son. If you can do it, if you just behaved well, if you can just work hard enough and be good enough and be righteous enough enough. Nobody can.
It's that simple and yet that profound.
We all deserve to be judged. But only those who believe in Jesus will not be condemned. And that's why I tell you it's not about the works you performed in this life. It's about what and who you believe in. Place your faith in Jesus.
Trust in him, follow him all the days of your life. Now, I can sit here, we can place, we can work out what faith means, that a tree that produces fruit is evident is a healthy, good tree. We could talk about all those things, but I want to camp here because I would have you guys and steer and I would stand before God to answer for anything that I preach, to make it all about Jesus in Christ. Alone, by grace, alone in faith, alone. I've talked to youth groups and camps.
They're like, well, what do I need to do? Like, do I just start living? And you can just tell they're just trying to order their lives rightly on their own, in their own strength. Even adults that I talked to was like, well, you know, at least I don't do all that stuff. And it doesn't matter at that point.
What matters is, do you believe in Jesus?
That's what matters. The only thing that keeps you out of heaven is not believing in Jesus. And the only thing that gets you eternal life is by believing in the one who was sentence from the father, and that is Jesus. We are not. I would have you not believe in your works, I would have you trust in Christ that he accomplished what he says he was going to accomplish, to give you the forgiveness of every sin, both past, present and future.
And that if you confess your sins and put it on him that he is faithful and just to forgive you of all your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And that you can trust in his promises having been made new by him, having been given the faith to believe in him, and having to been given his spirit to cause you to walk just like as he lives and walks, then all the promises are yours. You believe in Jesus, you have the forgiveness of sins, you get to enter into heaven, you will be raised up on the last day and you will spend all eternity with God. Bottom line.
So for those who are being drawn, awakened by God, as if a boy is wakened to experience and see that a girl is good, if you are drawn and being awakened by God to see, to taste and see that Jesus is good, then simply move forward in faith today.
For those who have faith, who know they've been drawn by the father. There's a call to be drawn in even deeper to Christ. The apostle Peter would have the church know that we grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
That faith isn't just, oh, I have faith, I'm good. That faith grows. It does something to us. It begins to change the way we think, act and speak in our lives. It changes our priorities.
It changes the way we live our lives. And we grow more in that grace, and we grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ that can only come through the preaching and teaching of God's word. So if you have been drawn to believe in Jesus and are able to have the eyes to see Jesus for who he is and draw in deeper into that faith, don't forsake all the opportunities that the church affords you to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Learn to love those moments and be drawn in deeper. And lastly, there's actually another promise here, one that I think is beautiful.
And you have to kind of read all of the gospel of John to get this. But as we're told here in John 644, it says, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. But in John 14 six, later on in John, he'll write this. Jesus said, I am the way, truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me.
Do you see that promise? You get Jesus the son, you get the Father. The father is the one who gives you Jesus his son. And you enter in what theologians call this divine dance. And that might not be really important to you, maybe that's the first time you heard it, but there has been from eternity past this perfect relationship among the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And theologians have a hard time communicating this. And all they can say is that this is a love romancing dance among the trinity. It's perfect unity, perfect love, perfect harmony, they all do for the other. Jesus is always trying to glorify his father. The spirit is glorifying the father and the son.
They're all committed to the will of the father. There's this divine romance, this divine dance that takes place. And what's profound is the father leads us to the Son, and the son leads us to the father and invites us in to that divine dance with him. Maybe you don't like dancing. I do.
I used to rock out to CNC music factory in my parents, Barnsley, and by myself all the time. But I loved it. There was something about the music that I just. I couldn't just help myself. I felt like Kevin Bacon in Footloose where he just goes to that abandoned building and just starts dancing for no reason.
And then it dawned on me that all that work showed up in 8th grade. At the 8th grade dance, I was a little bit of a social hermit, a little shy and bashful little guy. But, man, I heard that song footloose, come on. And I didn't care what the sports guys thought about me or all the pretty girls thought about me. I just started dancing.
And the next day, as I walked through the hallways, everybody's like saying, oh, bruce, I didn't know you liked to dance. I didn't even know you could talk, man. And it changed everything. And dancing did something into me that I'll never forget. I remember coming home from that 8th grade dance and my mom's like, hey, did you have fun?
I go, mom, I had the greatest time my whole life. That's why, like, edit when we were married, like, we had a big old dance party. I got to dance with my mom, dance with my wife. I got to honor my dad, who had passed away with a song that everybody danced to. Dancing is great.
Matter of fact, so much so that David himself, in desperate love of God, gets chastised by his wife for almost dancing naked in the streets honoring God because he's bringing in the ark back to its homeland, back to the city, and David has to just dance before the Lord. I think that's a small picture of this divine dance that we will get to experience for all eternity when we believe in Jesus. He says, now come and enter into my rest and experience my father. Me and my father have always been together. We love each other.
I'm inviting you into that. There's only one point where Jesus had ever experienced abandonment from his father, and that's on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus, before that for all eternity, has never experienced being out of fellowship with his dad. Never.
But he endured that in order to save you because he had to take your sin in order for you to be not condemned in the judgment. He had to take all of the sin for those who believed in him, and he had to face the judgment and the wrath and absorb it in order for it to be done away with. So that when he raises you up, he could present you before the father. And as the father looks and judges, he will only see the work of his son. On you say, I have no condemnation for you.
My son has paid your debt. Come and enter in experience eternal life. Come and get to know me for the rest of your life. Come and be drawn in deeper into me the rest of your life.
That's good news. That's amazing news. I can't excite you any other way than to tell you that it's interesting that Jesus is very well aware of these jews. They're called jews in this chapter, in this section. And next week we're going to continue.
It'll be the last time we're in John, chapter six. And the last thing that Jesus says there is, I tell you that I am the bread that's come down from heaven. And he tells them, your fathers ate manna in the wilderness. They hungered again, and they died. But you feast on me, and you will never die.
And this is the bread that I give for the world, my flesh. Jesus is pointing now their attention to what he has come to do for them. And that's why we believe in Jesus, not in ourselves, because of what he's done for us. Will you believe in Jesus today? And if you do believe in Jesus, would you dive in deeper into the relationship with him and begin experiencing a little bit of that eternal life now through the spirit, let's pray.
Jesus, we thank you that we are not left alone to discern or to know how it is that we can come to have faith in you. But even our own faith is a grace and a gift that is presented, initiated by the Father, that causes us to see you for who you truly are. That draws us and stirs our hearts up towards loving you. That you even instruct us in our faith and how we need to place it in the right person. And then you demonstrate to us through your gospel, through your word, what it is that we do believe and the promises that we do receive through faith in you.
I pray that your people gathered here this morning will come to love you deeper because of this word, this good news. And that they would be taught well how they can love others better because of the way in which you have loved them. And we'll give you all the praise and the glory for it. It's in your name, I pray. Amen.