The Bread of Life (II)
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
We're picking up where we left off last Lord's Day. We've covered in our exposition verses 30 to 36, and we come to pick up where we left off in verse 37 and following and these verses occur in the context of those who ate the miraculous meal of the loaves and fish asking Jesus to do a greater sign so that they may believe in him (verse 30). They want Him to go one up on Moses, who gave them manna.
Jesus here corrects their insolent demand, their perverse demand, by pointing out that it was the Father, not Moses, who gave them the manna. Also, the bread that God is giving now is not just temporary food to satisfy their stomachs but the true bread out of heaven to satisfy their souls. Unlike the manna that God gave Israel in the wilderness to sustain life for a few years, the true bread out of heaven gives eternal life—life everlasting—to those who come by faith.
But these Jews were still focused on the temporal when they asked Jesus to give them this bread. They wanted a lifetime supply of food, free food forever! Jesus replies by offering Himself as the bread of life who satisfies everyone who comes to Him and believes in Him. But even though they had seen Jesus, they still did not believe in Him.
That's the context for Jesus' words, particularly in this next section, where we see the profound explanation that Jesus gives in verses 37 to 40; where he takes comfort, as we will see, in God's sovereignty over the salvation of sinners. The point that I want us to see this morning together is this: Those who reject Jesus do not thwart God's sovereign plan. Jesus will see the result of the anguish of His soul because He poured out Himself to death and bore the sin of many, in the language of Isaiah 53.
So when people rejected Jesus—even those who had professed to be His disciples, they had an empty profession—He rested in God's sovereign plan for the ages. God's sovereign plan for the ages to glorify His Son does not rest on the sinful will of man but on God's mighty power to save all of those whom He chooses to save.
If sinners have a part in their salvation—whether 50-50, 90-10, or any other proportion—then they can share the glory with Christ. But as Paul emphatically tells us in Ephesians 1:3-12, God chose to save us so that we would be "to the praise of the glory of His grace." God predestined us, He goes on to say in Ephesians 1, according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who first have hoped in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
So while it may be hard to get our finite minds around it, the doctrine of God's sovereignty over our salvation runs through all Scripture, along with the doctrine of human responsibility. God determined before the foundation of the world to put Christ on the cross, and yet Scripture also tells us also that the evil men who did it were responsible for their sin (Acts 2 and Acts 4). God determined before the foundation of the world to give a chosen bride to His Son, and yet all people are invited and commanded to believe in Jesus.
Our Lord's mission to save and keep all whom the Father has given Him will certainly succeed. It will not be thwarted.
Remember, Jesus exposits the text that they offer Him in verse 31: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat." He exposits and expounds this Old Testament text word for word in His sermon, the sermon that He gives. He corrects their understanding and says God worked the history of Israel and did that miracle of manna specifically to point ahead to what He would do in Christ. It was a type.
He tells them that manna is a type of Himself, something intended by God, looking ahead to Christ, and He does it word for word here from this text that they gave Him: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat." And so He tells them about the giver of the bread—He gave. The giver of the bread. And then He tells them about the identity of the bread—He gave them bread. And then the recipients of the bread, as we will see today. We'll begin to see this today concerning the recipients of the bread. That's the word "them." "He gave them"—who's the "them"? And He explains that. And then He tells them about the origin of the bread—"from heaven." And then, finally, the embracing of the bread, and that's bound up in the word "to eat." "He gave them bread from heaven to eat."
That's the text that Jesus really will walk them through in these words, and it's a powerful sermon, as we saw last week, intended to draw the true and to drive away the false.
That brings us now to verse 37, and I have to tell you that this is a glorious verse. We're not going to get past it today. In the first part of verse 37: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me." Powerful words. This first part of the verse is, in a very real sense, a word of affirmation and consolation to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as He came to do the will of the Father.
You will notice that the context of those words, again, is the flagrant unbelief of the people who have seen His miracles. They had eaten the bread, that bread that He provided, though it was meager in supply. That bread fed 20,000-plus people. They have seen this miraculous demonstration that this is no mere man. And yet our Lord says of these very people who saw the signs and saw the power of God, and yet He says of them earlier in the chapter, you remember, in verse 26: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled."
In other words, “you don't seek Me because you understand what that meant, what I did. You don't understand. You don't seek Me because there's any spiritual perception.” In fact, He says in verse 36: "You have seen Me, and yet you do not believe." In the face of this tremendous display of His own power, this that should have been proof positive and sufficient evidence that He was what He claimed to be, they meet this great display of evidence with stark, naked, stubborn unbelief.
And our Lord, as it were, consoles Himself by saying, “I have displayed My glory. I demonstrated My power, and you have not believed, but it is not in vain. For all that the Father gives Me shall still come to Me. Your unbelief does not frustrate the purpose of My Father. Your unbelief does not discourage Me into retreat. Oh no. I'm grieved, yes, over your unbelief. I'm pained for your unbelief.”
And later on, you will remember, our Lord will weep over their unbelief when He cried over Jerusalem: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" Right? Luke 19. "Oh, you unbelieving Jews, your unbelief has not frustrated Me. Your unbelief has not frustrated the purpose of My Father, for all that the Father gives Me will come to Me."
Oh, the certainty of His decree of election. There is a people that He has given to Me, Jesus is saying here, and the certainty of the Father's effectual call—they shall come to Me. The Lord says, as it were, this comforts Me in the face of unbelief.
And so, every true servant of Christ, every true servant of Christ, every believing father and mother, every believing child of God burdened for sinners, every true servant of Christ has learned to draw comfort from the first part of this verse when He seeks to demonstrate the glory of Christ and the awfulness and the reality of hell. And in the face of all that evidence and that clear truth, when men and women are still unbelieving, what gives comfort to the heart of a servant of Jesus? All that the Father gives Me shall indeed come. They shall come.
This is the testimony of Scripture. Just to give you a sample, and I'm not gonna spend too much time on this because this will come up a little bit later even in the sermon, but turn with me to John 17. John 17, and just watch with your eyes and hear and read it in your heart. Look at verse two, the high priestly prayer of Jesus: "Even as You," referring to the Father, "You gave Him," the Son, "authority over all flesh, now watch this, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life."
Look at verse 6: "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word."
Go down to verse 9: "I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours."
Go down to verse 24: "Father, I desire that they also whom You have given Me be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world."
The immutability of the decree of election and the certainty of the Father's effectual call—this is affirmation and consolation to the true child of God. And the truth embodied in the first part of verse 37, as an under-shepherd of God's sheep, as a servant of Christ, I personally, and we as under-shepherds, elders, and assembly believers, affirm, confess, and believe without reservation, without equivocation, without hesitation. We gladly wear that confession of our faith boldly and openly, simply because it is in the Word of God. And we are called, summoned, to proclaim the full counsel of God.
Verse 37 contains not only an affirmation and consolation to the true child of God, and I want us to focus now the rest of our time also, it contains a message of invitation, consolation to needy sinners, and that's to be found in the latter part of the text. And for every child of God here today, be refreshed. Be refreshed. And again, marinating the mind and the heart, the truth of the gospel. That's what we are doing today, right? May your heart be refreshed. May your mind be filled with gratitude. And the only adequate response would be worship.
The latter part of the text declares: "And the one who comes to Me, I will never cast out." What is our Lord saying? Here's what He is saying. I am consoled by the immutability of the decree of sovereign selection, sovereign election, by the certainty of the Father's effectual call in the face of unbelief, and if in the midst of general unbelief, there should be one who wants to come, I am ready to welcome him. I'm ready. The one who comes to Me in the face of this terrible unbelief, in the face of this general indifference, if there's one amongst you who has a longing to come, a desire to come, My arms are wide open. I'll welcome him.
A word of consolation, invitation to the sinner. "And the one who comes to Me, I will never cast out."
Now, if you're not a sinner in your own eye, if you feel no need for a divine Savior, I have no message of consolation for you today. But if you can feel the truths that we have been considering together in the Gospel of John bearing down upon your conscience, and you say, "Oh, what is the way of deliverance?" I believe God has a word for you today—a word of invitation, a word of consolation. If there's but the slightest inkling of desire to seek salvation by Christ, "Seek Me, and you will find Me when you seek Me with all your heart."
Well, how shall we think our way through such a powerful verse as this? "And the one who comes to Me, I will never cast out." In the first place, I want to briefly define what the word "come" means. "The one who comes to Me"—what does that word "come" mean? Then, having defined it, we shall consider together three things: the object of the sinner's coming—Christ Himself, the necessity of the sinner's coming—"the one who comes," the sinner must come, and then the certainty of the sinner's welcome—"I will never cast out." Simple outline.
Well, let's begin with the definition. What did our Lord mean when He said, "The one who comes to Me"? Will you notice in the very context of this passage, the word "coming"—and we've seen this before—just to remind us that this word "coming" is a synonym for "believing," right? Keep that in mind. Coming to Jesus is a synonym for believing in Christ.
Notice verse 29: "Jesus answered and said to them, 'This is the work of God, that you, what? Believe in Him whom He has sent.'" Go down to verse 35: "Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. Notice now, He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who, what? Believes in Me will never thirst.'" How is spiritual hunger satisfied and spiritual thirst alleviated? By coming, which is the same as believing. Believing. By believing, which is the same as coming.
Verse 40: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life." So when our Lord said, "The one who comes to Me," He's simply using this verb action, "come," to describe the activity of saving faith. A beautiful, simple definition of this goes something like this: coming to Jesus Christ means the movement of the soul, the sinner's soul, which takes place when the sinner, feeling the weight of his sins, recognizing that there's nothing they could do to deliver and save himself, hears of Christ, turns to Christ, trusts in Christ, lays hold of Christ, leans all of his weight on Christ for salvation. When that happens, a man is said, in the scriptural language, to come to Christ.
Or this wonderful definition by John Murray from his book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied: "Saving faith is self-commitment to Jesus Christ in all the glory of His person and in the perfection of His work as He is so freely and fully offered to us in the gospel." I like that. What is it to come? It's to believe. What is it to believe? It is to cast the weight of a sin-sick soul upon the Son of God as He is offered in the gospel.
Well, so much then for a definition of the word "come" here in this context. Now we come to the heart of the text.
First of all, the object to which the sinner comes—it's our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. "I am the bread of life." That's who the object is. Notice the wording: "The one who comes, what? To Me. The one who comes to Me." Not to My cross itself, not to My doctrine, not to My church, not to My ordinances, not to My servant, but "the one who comes to Me." He said, "I am the object of the sinner's coming. It's Me." I am the exclusive, in fact, object of the sinner's faith. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
And this is the teaching of the entire breadth of Holy Scripture—that Jesus Christ, in the uniqueness of His person and the sufficiency of His work, is the object of faith in the coming sinner. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 16:31), "and you will be saved." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved." Acts 20:21, "solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks about what? Repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." He is the exclusive object of the sinner's coming. Passage after passage after passage—"He that believes on the Son..." So then, the object to which the sinner comes is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
But now, to what kind of Christ does the sinner come? And this is an important question. This is where many people trip and fall and go into error. To what kind of Christ does the sinner come? He comes to this Christ, who is, first of all, unique in His person. Unique in His person.
And our Lord underscored this in this very passage. Notice what He says of Himself back in verse 27: "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, set His seal." God the Father has put a special stamp of ownership and possession upon the Son, upon the Son—His own Son—a stamp of approval. He is the unique, one and only Son of Man. The God-Man, the Messiah. "The one who comes to Me." That is, "the one who comes to Me in the uniqueness of My person."
He speaks of Himself further in this passage as the one who has come down from heaven, as we will see that particularly next Lord's Day. Verse 33 and verse 38 say the same thing. But look at verse 33: "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." And who is that bread? Look at verse 35: "Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life.'" And verse 38: "I have come down from heaven. I have come down from heaven."
You see, when the Lord Jesus said, "The one who comes to Me I will never cast out," and sets Himself before His hearers as the object of their coming, He did not leave it up to them to determine who He was and sort of come up and concoct any kind of Christ that they would like to have in their own mind. No, no. He didn't allow for that to happen, and for them to say, "Well, you know what? I'm gonna come up with a Christ in my own head, and then that will suit me; then I will believe in that kind of Christ." No, no. He declares who He is in the uniqueness of His person.
And I would like to say to everyone here today, conscious of their sin and of their need, the object to which you are to come is the Lord Jesus Christ, but not a Jesus whom you may make up or come up with of the stuff of your own thinking, but that Jesus who is set before us in the Gospels in the complete uniqueness of His person.
That one who is called by the prophet, the Mighty God, though He is the Son given, called by John, the Eternal Word, the Logos of God, called by Paul in Colossians, not only the Creator of all things, but the One in whom all things hold together, including you and I today as we sit here. The One spoken of in Hebrews as the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3).
And I think one of the most beautiful summaries of this aspect of this unique person is found in Isaiah 63:1, where we read in this prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus, this description of His unique person. Listen to what the prophet says there in Isaiah 63:1: "Who is this who comes from Edom with garments of glowing colors from Bozrah? This One who is majestic in His clothing, marching in the greatness of His power."
Now watch this: “It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save”, mighty to save. There's the identity of this unique person, the one who is mighty to save, the one spoken of in Psalm 24, verse eight: “Who is this King of Glory?”—and the answer comes immediately—“Yahweh, strong and mighty.” Jehovah Jesus, strong and mighty. “Yahweh, mighty in battle”.
Oh, as you think of the power of sin within your own life, and as you think of the enormity of guilt and the weight of all of that guilt, you know that your need is to have one who is more than man, one who has more virtue and more merit than man can ever have, who has more power than man can possess to break the chains that bind you. The object to which the Lord invites you is Himself in the uniqueness of His person as the one who is mighty to save.
Ah, but you say, I think I see something of Him as mighty, but He seems so mighty, so transcendent that He's beyond me. I need a Savior that I know will come near enough to touch me in my need! Because I feel like a leper, cast out of the camp of Israel, forbidden to come to the temple to worship with God's people, cut off from fellowship with His own covenant people, so that when they see me, they put their finger upon the lip and cry, "Unclean, unclean." I need to know that there's one who is near me.
And God says in those beautiful words in Hebrews 2—turn with me there—verse 14 and following, listen to those beautiful words: "Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same"—the Word became flesh, right?—"that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly, He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham."
Now watch this: "Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He, Christ, the Word that became flesh, might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the help of those who are tempted." What a glorious passage.
And so God sets Him before us, not only in the uniqueness of His person as the one who is mighty to save, but the one who is near us in His humanity, who knew what it was to weep, to suffer, being tempted, to bleed, to die. As a man, He keeps the law of God perfectly. As the God-man, He suffers and dies, and He triumphs. And now there's a man—the God-man—in glory, touched with the feelings of our infirmities, who can sympathize with us in our need.
Oh, I say to you today, on the basis of this text, the object to which the Lord Jesus points the needy sinner is His own self: "The one who comes to me—me in the uniqueness of my person." Oh, but also, the Lord Jesus says, "The one who comes to me in the perfection of my work." Not only the uniqueness of my person, but the perfection of my work.
For He went on in this discourse, this sermon, to say some strange words that have reference to His saving work. Will you notice verse 51? "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever." It's as though some say, but Lord, what kind of an involvement with You is needed to partake of this bread?
While He answers the question, notice verse 51b. "And also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is, what? My flesh." Look at verse 53 and 54: "So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
Well, I thought He said, "The one who comes to Me, I will never cast out. I will raise him up the last..." Now He says it's not only a matter of coming to Him in the uniqueness of His person, but I must eat His flesh and drink His blood. What does that mean?
We will see that in more detail, but for our purpose today, it says that I must have an interest in; a participation in Jesus Christ crucified that is—now follow closely—just as real as the participation my body has with the food that I eat. That kind of faith.
You see, I take food to myself. This morning, you had breakfast. You take food to yourself. I take food to myself. I assimilate it until it becomes part of my fingers, my eyes, my hair, my nails, my skin, my bones, my brain tissues, until what I eat is absorbed into the totality of my being. There is this fusion of my life with that which sustains life.
Jesus says, when you come to Me, when you believe in Me, you come to Me not only in the uniqueness of My person as the mighty God able to save, as the Son of Man, but also in the perfection of My work as the crucified Savior. You come to Me to be involved with Me not just as Christ, the one mighty to save, Christ as the sympathetic one to help and to save, but you come to Me as the crucified one. You come to Me as the one who gives His flesh for the life of the world.
You come to Me, and what is an offense to the world? My cross, which displays the Father's wrath against sin, man's deep helplessness in sin. That cross, which is offensive to the world, becomes the very pedestal of glory for the child of God, who will be able to say with Paul, "May it never be that I would boast except in the cross of our Lord." (Galatians 6:14)
"Come to Me," He said, "not only in the uniqueness of My person, but also in the perfection of My work, that work by which I satisfied the wrath of God, the justice of God, the justice and wrath of My Father, that work by which I swallowed up His wrath against all of those who come to Me by faith, that work, when it was accomplished, enabled Me to cry out from the cross, “τετέλεσται” (Tetelestai) — It is finished, forever finished."
The object to which the sinner comes is the Lord Jesus, in the uniqueness of His person and in the perfection of His work. And coming to Jesus Christ is a lot more than a lot of people make it to be in their heads. You know, they come up with a Christ of their own imagination, to whom they think they may come on their own terms, terms of their own, and say, well, I've come to Christ, and they use this text to justify it.
Listen, listen. Listen to what's bound up in these words of our Lord: the One who comes to Me. The object of the sinner's coming is the Lord Jesus Christ, but the Christ of Biblical revelation. The Christ of Biblical revelation in all the uniqueness of His person and in all the perfection of His work. And no one ever knows the benefits of the perfection of His work who does not embrace our Lord Jesus Christ in the uniqueness of His person as revealed in the Scripture. And it's impossible to embrace Him in the uniqueness of His person without, from the heart, embracing Him in the perfection of His work—the Christ of Scripture.
So let me ask, do you today see a suitableness in the sufferings of Christ? Suitable to care for your sin? Do you see in the One mighty to save, One who is able to loose the bonds of your own sin? Do you? Then He says, “come, come!” The One who comes to Me—not to the church, not the preacher, not an altar of prayer, not the doctrines divorced from His person, not even the promises. Christ Himself. Christ presents Himself in the promises, but the promises are to be but the stepping stone to embrace Him. The living Son of God is the object of the sinner's coming.
That beautiful gospel hymn captures it beautifully, the last stanza of “Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.”
Lo, the incarnate God ascended, pleads the merit of His blood.
Venture on Him, on Him.
Venture on Him, venture wholly, completely, totally, let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.
There it is in a nutshell.
Well, having considered the object to which the sinner comes, will you notice in the second place the necessity of the sinner's coming? The necessity of the sinner's coming, and that's found in verse 37 as well. The last part: “the One who comes to Me, I will never cast out.” He is able, He is willing, but it says here, “the One who comes to Me, I will never cast out.”
Now, listen carefully. It's the sinner who comes. God doesn't come for him. He Himself must come. He's enabled to come, but He must come. As the Old Confession states it beautifully in the section on the effectual call of God, this little phrase: yet so as they come most freely.
One of the great problems when people begin to understand the first part of verse 37—that there is indeed in Scripture a decree of sovereign election, all that the Father gives Me will come to Me—how can anyone, frankly, face that text and evade the clear, unmistakable implication that there is indeed a people given to the Lord Jesus Christ? He says, they shall come.
But when people begin to understand or confront the doctrine of election, the doctrine of effectual calling—men should be made willing by the grace of God, sovereign grace—then, if they're not careful, they make another conclusion that they are not warranted to make, and it is this: well, if God has decreed to save some, and if most certainly those shall come indeed, that those who are given by the Father to the Son, well, then I'll just sit back until He brings me in.
Oh, no, no, no, no. You sit back for Him to bring you in, my friend, and you will wake up in hell. He says, you must come. You must come, you must come. The One who comes to Me—He doesn't come for you, He doesn't come on your behalf—you must come.
And may I suggest two things about this coming? First, you must come personally and individually. You must come personally and individually, and it's set forth beautifully in this text. In the original language, in the Greek text, there are a lot of passages that, if you didn't know a letter in the Greek alphabet, it wouldn't make a difference. It wouldn't really bother you at all. When you've got a good translation before you, an accurate, trustworthy translation, you're in good shape. But once in a while, there are shades of insight that come in the original text that you don't get, and this is one of those texts.
Now follow closely with me here. When Jesus says, "All that the Father gives me," and I know we're going to work hard here a little bit, but it's worth it. You know, if you want to get diamonds, you have to dig, and when you dig, you take that pick, and you dig, you get blisters, you sweat. If you want only leaves, just take a rake and go at it. That's all you get. But we're going to get diamonds today.
When Jesus says, "All that the Father gives me" at the beginning of the verse, the translation of the NASB and LSB is very accurate: "All that the Father gives me, all that the Father gives me." Our Lord uses a plural neuter, a plural neuter, and He looks upon the whole body of elect, the great mass of believers viewed corporately, not individually.
Now, other passages speak of election in individual specific terms: "Knowing, brothers, beloved by God, your election" (1 Thessalonians 1:4) to those believers there, specifically, individually. "Brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and choosing sure" (2 Peter 1:10). And so, it's both—you have passages that speak to the corporate nature of it, but also then to the individual nature of it.
But look at this text. This text, verse 37, views the elect of God on one hand as a great body. But notice now: "All that the Father gives me, will come to me." That's the word of consolation to Christ in the face of unbelief. But now, when He wants to console the sinner and encourage the sinner to come, He doesn't say, "And those that come to me" (plural) or "that which comes to me" (neuter). Instead, He makes it an individual masculine: "He who comes to me, the one who comes to me." He individualizes it, He personalizes it.
He says, out of all that great body that the Father has given me as a gift, they come, but they come individually. They come personally. They come consciously, one by one. And so, I say, the great thrust of this text is not only setting before us the object to which we come, but the necessity of coming. We must come, and we must come personally. We must come individually.
Not coming by proxy. There's no such thing as coming to Jesus by proxy. Some of you perhaps may have had parents who presented you to the Lord in some kind of a service of dedication. Others of you may have had parents who presented you in what, in their understanding, was baptism and gave you the seal of a covenantal relationship. But dear one, that will never ever bring you to Jesus Christ.
You must come, and you must come personally. "The one who comes to me." Mom and dad cannot come for you. They cannot come on your behalf. Family cannot come for you. The pastor cannot come for you. You've got to come. You've got to come personally, individually, rolling the weight of your own sin-sick soul upon that unique person who is mighty to save in the light of His perfect work on Calvary's cross.
Bear with me as I want to share with you this good stuff from Spurgeon, that great preacher to sinners. In preaching on this passage—this passage here, particularly verse 48—in a message titled "The Best Bread," he said some words that fit so beautifully in the text that we're considering today. Listen to this:
"Believe what is spoken about Christ and so feed on Him. Then next, trust Him for yourself. That is the point, the hinge of the whole business. He is a Savior, I believe that, but I go further and resolve He shall be my Savior. May I say that? Yes, for I am permitted to do so, inasmuch as He says, 'Him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.'
"Scripture says that He is exalted on high to give repentance unto Israel and remission of sins. Therefore, I look to Him to give me repentance and remission of sins. I trust Him in that respect, and He is mine. He has said, 'It is finished.' The atonement is finished, and I believe that it is finished for me.
"A prominent point about the offering under the old law was that the person who came with the sacrifice laid his hands upon it and said, 'This is mine.'"
He goes on to say, "You must do the same with Jesus. Lay your hands on Him and say, 'He is mine. This sacrificial death is for me.'
"Oh, but," says one, "suppose He is not mine? What if I were to take Him to myself without warrant? Suppose such a thing for a moment, yet He would be yours," Spurgeon answers. "If I was hungry and I ate a bit of bread, and after I had eaten, somebody said, 'It is not yours,' I should reply, 'Perhaps not, but how will you take it from me now? It has nourished me and refreshed me. It is mine, and none can deprive me of it.'
"There is the point, you see. If you take Christ Jesus into yourself, the devil himself may say, 'You had no right to Him,' but he cannot take away that which you have eaten. Jesus Himself will not quarrel with you nor blame you for taking Him, for He has said, 'Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out.'
"You may summon a poor man before the magistrate and say, 'He is a thief, for he stole bread from my counter.' You may put him in prison for the theft—though I hope you would not if hunger drove him to the act—but you cannot get your bread away from him if he has eaten it. So if you come to Christ and take Him into yourself, He is yours, and you shall live by Him. Jesus says, 'He that eats me, even he shall live by me.' Nor death, nor hell, nor time, nor eternity can take Jesus away once you have Him within you. 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?'
And I love this: "Swallow then the divine truth. Let it go down quickly for fear anybody should come before it has fully entered into your soul. Once there, it is yours. They say that possession is nine points of the law, and I should think in the case of eating that it is the whole ten points or any other number of points, for there is no getting repossession of that which a man has actually eaten. Get Christ, and Christ is yours—yours by a kind of possession which will never be disputed before the courts of heaven."
The sinner must come. The sinner must come. And oh, my sinner friend, if that is you today in this place, why, why do you linger away from a Savior who gives an invitation as this?
He says, I am the object to which you should come—perfection in my person, perfection in my work. But then he says, you, you must come, the one who comes to me. So you must come personally and individually.
But that's not all. In the second place, you must come heartily and unreservedly. You must come heartily and unreservedly—no drawing near with the lips while the heart is far from him. And in this very context, do you know what it meant to come to him? It meant, it meant, to jeopardize life itself, for the claims of Christ seemed blasphemous to these people, offensive.
Notice verse 41: "Therefore the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.'" They were saying, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I've come down from heaven'?"
They were offended. They accused him of blasphemy. Elsewhere, they wanted to stone him.
You see, for any Jew in this context to say, "I believe his claims"—do you know what it meant? It meant to put your life itself on the chopping block. You say, but it's a simple thing to come to Christ, isn't it? Yes, yes—simple in one sense, it costs nothing. But in another sense, it costs everything. For that coming of which Jesus speaks is not only a coming personally and individually but also heartily and unreservedly.
It means to embrace all of Jesus, with all of the demands of his person and all of the humbling nature of his work. To come to him in the adequacy of his work is to say to him, "Lord Jesus, foul and full of sin I am, I do desire to eat of your flesh and drink of your blood. I do desire to acknowledge that I shall starve to death eternally if not for the life which your death gives to me."
What a humbling confession. What a humbling confession. Man wants to at least say, "Lord, I wiggled my pinky, I scratched my ear, I've done something, I've contributed a little bit—something that adds something to my acceptance before you." No, no, no—this demands coming unreservedly, nothing in our hands to bring, nothing. It demands coming, acknowledging that the one who is mighty to save is God, and God never bargains with sinners. He offers mercy on his own terms. He offers mercy and says, "Bow, kiss the scepter of my Son. Bend the knee."
Oh, how this verse has been abused, but it's glorious in its context and in its full, rich setting. Coming to him is a coming heartily and coming unreservedly. And there were people in that day that came in a different way. Do you know what happened to them? Look, look at the closing of this event.
Verse 60: "Therefore, many of his disciples, when they heard this, they said, 'This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?'" And Jesus said, "You think that what I've told you up until now is hard? I'll give you something harder yet." And he did, and he did. He preached human inability to them again. He told them they can't come unless the Father draws them.
Notice verse 65: "And he was saying, 'For this reason I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted him by the Father or from the Father.'" What happened then? What happened? Look at verse 66: "As a result of this, many of his disciples went away and were not walking with him anymore."
What was wrong with these disciples? Well, they came with reservations. They came with reservations. They came with reservations about their own human ability. And when Jesus, having told them, "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood," which was something offensive to them, He said also, "You are so bad that you can't even get to the remedy unless the Father brings you there."
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no—not us, Jesus. What are you talking about—not us? We have our own wills. We've done a few bad things, yes, but we're good Jews. We're not helpless. We're the captains of our own destinies." They don't like what they hear, and so they go back and walk with him, what? No more. They bail out. They jump ship.
Listen, listen carefully, friend. Friend, you come to Christ with some imagined virtue of your own. If that's how you come or how you came, sooner or later you will part with Him when His word begins to put the pressure upon your supposed virtues.
You come with reservations about certain sins that you want to cherish—darling sins—and sooner or later, like Judas, you will part with Christ for the sake of that sin. To come to Jesus means not only coming individually and personally but heartily and unreservedly, for He said, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot, cannot, cannot be My disciple."
Oh yes, he can openly identify himself with Me and come to be with My people and do the things that My people are doing and go through the motions, but I will never own him in that day. In fact, I will say in that day, "Depart from Me, I never knew you."
But oh, let me encourage you. Let me encourage you. Whether you've been driven by the fear of hell or drawn by the loveliness of the Savior to the place where you say, "Yes, I do long to come, I do long to come unreservedly, wholeheartedly"—whether driven by the fear of hell or drawn by the loveliness of the Savior, whether terrified by the threats of God or drawn by His sweet promises—come, come! You must come if you would have life and pardon and acceptance.
But someone objects, "Habib, don't you believe what it says in verse 44? I can't come unless the Father draws me." Oh yes, that's settled. I believe verse 44 with all my heart, but I also believe verse 37b: "The one who comes to Me, I will never cast out." I believe that. You see, the cannot is basically a will not, a will not. Jesus said in John 5:40, "You are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life." The will is depraved. And dear ones, if there's the slightest inkling of desire to come, you're welcome. Come.
You see, verse 44 is not said to discourage the sinner who longs to come, but to humble a proud, unbroken heart that thinks that it has the power in itself to turn on the button of grace when it pleases. Maybe some are sitting here thinking this way: "Well, I know all about the truth, but I'm not ready to commit to Jesus because I want to live life. Maybe a few years down the line, I'll turn on that button of grace and I'll come to the Savior." How arrogant. How prideful.
Don't take what is meant to slay the proud, indifferent sinner and slay yourself with it. Take that which the Lord gives to encourage the needy, desperate sinner and venture upon it. The sinner is plagued with both inability and unwillingness.
You say, "Well, how do you reconcile the two?" I love what Spurgeon said. He was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other, and he replied, "I wouldn't try. I wouldn't try. I never reconcile friends." Friends? Yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibilities are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors. They are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.
How would someone else object? "I'm not deeply convicted of my sin. I don't have enough conviction." But what does Jesus say? What does Jesus say? "The one who comes to Me with 14 ounces or 17 pounds or three tons of conviction, I will never cast out." Is that what He says? No. "The one who comes. The one who comes."
If you're convinced enough to know that you deserve the wrath of God, that you cannot save yourself, sick enough of sin to quit, then He says, "Come." That's all. Come.
Listen, listen. If God gave some of you a deeper measure of conscious conviction, it might seal you in a state of—ready for this?—self-righteousness.
There are some who, by the way they give their testimony, are like the Pharisee who went up to the temple to pray and said, "God, I thank You that I'm not like other people—swindlers, unjust, adulterers, even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, pay my tithes of all that I get..." There are people who talk this way: "God, I thank You I didn't come to You like other people—dry-eyed, no groans, no long periods of heaviness and mourning. I thank You, Father, I did not come that cheap way like other people came. I thank You that I lay under the whiplash of the law for 10 years, or I lay for six weeks in deep conviction, crying day and night." No, no. Do you know what they have done? Their very conviction has become a subtle form of self-righteousness.
My friend, God knows just how deep to wound you. And if He's wounded you enough so that you know there's no healing in yourself, He says, "Come. Come." Again, that old gospel hymn has got it all there:
"Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him."
That's it. That's it.
Make no mistake, conviction of sin is fundamental in coming to Jesus. It's undeniable, the evidence is there, but that conviction must not be measured by some human standard. If the work of conviction has gone deep enough to show you that you deserve wrath, you've offended the thrice-holy God, you deserve nothing but His wrath, and you're conscious that help is only to be found in that Person, Jesus, who says, "Come," then come.
Well, having considered the object to which the sinner comes—Christ Himself—having considered, in the second place, the necessity of coming—coming personally and individually, coming heartily and unreservedly—well, how can I leave us without the cream of the text?
Okay, bear with me a little bit. The cream of the text: the certain welcome of the coming sinner. The certain welcome of the coming sinner.
What will happen if I come, if I roll the weight of my sin-sick soul upon Jesus? I've sinned against conscience. I've sinned against light. I've sinned against privilege. I've sinned against the gospel. I've sinned against the prayers of my mother and my father and my under-shepherd. I've sinned with a high hand. I've sinned with impunity. What will happen if I come? Two things will happen. According to Jesus, He says, "The one who comes to Me, I will never cast out."
Oh, let us not miss this. The Lord is saying, number one, you will be received. And number two, you will be kept. You'll be received, and you'll be kept.
Notice how our Lord affirms this matter of reception, and in the Greek text, He uses a double negative—""οὐ μή" (oo me)." Double negative. Certainly not. In the NASB, this is emphatic, this is vivid. It's as though our Lord says, "The one who comes to Me, I will not—I say, I will not—cast him out."
Now, the strongest way to make a positive statement is to make a double negative. If you were to say to me, "May I come to your house?" and I say, "Yes, if you come, you will be welcomed." But, but if I were to respond this way—"Any time you come, you will never, never, ever find a shut door"—I have really made you feel welcome.
Now, our Lord could have said, "The one who comes to Me, I will receive," but He makes it even stronger: "The one who comes to Me, I will not, no, never, ever cast out." And so we have in this wonderful text the certain welcome of the sinner. You will be received.
Do you come guilty? Do you come heavy laden? The Lord Jesus says, I died for sinners, satisfied the justice of my Father, I will pardon you.
Do you come bound by the chains of sin, which you feigned a thousand times would have broken? The Lord Jesus says, I receive you, I receive you and break the chains, for whom the Son sets free is free indeed.
Do you come weak? He says, I'll make you strong. My grace is sufficient. Do you come ignorant? He says, I'll give you light and sight. You learn of Christ. Do you come struggling with pride? I will teach you humility, he says. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
Well, how can we say it more forcefully? Beloved, you will be received. But something even more wonderful than being received—you will be kept. You will be kept. What comfort there would be in the thought that once received, I might, after 20 years, be cast out. What could make hell worse than the memory that once I knew the delights of salvation? And the strong emphasis of this verse is not upon the initial reception, but upon the continual keeping power of Christ.
That's the emphasis of this verse. The one who comes to me, I will receive. No, no, I will never cast out. Well, He can't cast us out unless He's got us in, right? So the inference here is we will be received, but stronger than that, we will be kept. I will never cast out. Once in the family of God, will subsequent failure and delinquency cast me out or disinherit me? No, no. The Lord Jesus said, I am mighty to save. I am mighty to save.
And as surely as I purchase forgiveness by my death, I will secure the perseverance in holiness and obedience by my continuous intercession and by the indwelling of my Spirit. So that the doctrine I proclaim from this text this morning is not "once saved, always saved, no matter how you live." That's a doctrine of hell. It will take multitudes to that place. What I proclaim from this place is the glorious Biblical doctrine of the preservation and perseverance of the saints.
Christ will receive us. And when He receives us, He changes us. He puts his Spirit within us. Now at the right hand of the Father, He pleads on our behalf, "Father, keep them from the evil one." And the Father, in answer to the prayer of his Son, sends His Spirit into the heart of his children—that Spirit by which they are sealed till the day of redemption, who stirs them up unto holiness and obedience, who reproves them when they sin, that Spirit who convicts them, that Spirit who communicates the fullness of Christ.
And so the Lord Jesus says in this text, the certain welcome to the coming sinner—you will not only be received, but also you will be kept. And what's the reason for both the reception and keeping? Well, that's for next time. That's for next time. You have to come back, right? You have to come back.
And child of God, child of God. What a marvelous text this is. Received and kept. Maybe you're going through a pummeling right now. Maybe you're feeling the flaming arrows of the enemy. Doubts, doubts flooding your mind, harassing you, left, right, and center. Maybe you fell hard and skinned your knees, and you're bleeding, and the enemy whispers words of doubt. May you be encouraged today. You're kept by the power of God. And one day you will stand before him, blameless.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for the blessing of salvation—so great a salvation. How can we not today cry out, blessed be God for such a salvation, coming out of eternity, suffused with the decrees of God, and yet reaching man, the sinner, with his sin, with such simple, broad promises? And when he puts the weight of his soul upon the Lord Jesus Christ, that sinner is received and kept. And all of that, we are told, is buttressed with those same decrees, assuring the sinner that he should be kept all the way to glory.
Hallelujah, what a Savior! Blessed be the name of the Lord for such a salvation. We thank you, Father, that in eternity, You and the Son covenanted together, a people were given to the Son, and the Son comes forth to die for them. The Spirit now is moving to draw them, and the certainty of the purpose that they shall come will unfold. Every individual, as he comes, the promise is he's welcomed. It's all here before us.
I pray this morning for any sinner who's outside of Christ, that they will no longer go on in their sin, in their guilt, and in the terrors of conscience, but that they would turn to you and be saved, be forgiven, be welcomed, and be kept. That they would say with the hymn writer, “Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come”. May they come today.
And for those of us who are your children, O Lord, may our hearts be refreshed. How you've set your affection upon us, and you drew us with cords of love, and we came to you not kicking and screaming, we came willing in the day of your power. We came with delight.
And we all can remember that day when the weight of sin was lifted off of our chests, as it were, and we experienced a purged conscience. And we thank you, Lord, that now, as we live the Christian life, we live knowing that we are kept by the power of God, safe and secure. You hold us in the palm of your hand, and we know, because You told us, “He who began a good work in You will bring it to completion”.
I know whom I have believed, we say with Paul, and I am persuaded, each and every one of us, your children, that God is able to keep what I've committed to him until that day. It is for you to keep, and you promised to do so. We thank you.
No height, no depth, no hell, no principalities, no power, nothing shall separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We thank you.
We ask these things in His name, Amen.
Jesus here corrects their insolent demand, their perverse demand, by pointing out that it was the Father, not Moses, who gave them the manna. Also, the bread that God is giving now is not just temporary food to satisfy their stomachs but the true bread out of heaven to satisfy their souls. Unlike the manna that God gave Israel in the wilderness to sustain life for a few years, the true bread out of heaven gives eternal life—life everlasting—to those who come by faith.
But these Jews were still focused on the temporal when they asked Jesus to give them this bread. They wanted a lifetime supply of food, free food forever! Jesus replies by offering Himself as the bread of life who satisfies everyone who comes to Him and believes in Him. But even though they had seen Jesus, they still did not believe in Him.
That's the context for Jesus' words, particularly in this next section, where we see the profound explanation that Jesus gives in verses 37 to 40; where he takes comfort, as we will see, in God's sovereignty over the salvation of sinners. The point that I want us to see this morning together is this: Those who reject Jesus do not thwart God's sovereign plan. Jesus will see the result of the anguish of His soul because He poured out Himself to death and bore the sin of many, in the language of Isaiah 53.
So when people rejected Jesus—even those who had professed to be His disciples, they had an empty profession—He rested in God's sovereign plan for the ages. God's sovereign plan for the ages to glorify His Son does not rest on the sinful will of man but on God's mighty power to save all of those whom He chooses to save.
If sinners have a part in their salvation—whether 50-50, 90-10, or any other proportion—then they can share the glory with Christ. But as Paul emphatically tells us in Ephesians 1:3-12, God chose to save us so that we would be "to the praise of the glory of His grace." God predestined us, He goes on to say in Ephesians 1, according to His purpose, who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who first have hoped in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
So while it may be hard to get our finite minds around it, the doctrine of God's sovereignty over our salvation runs through all Scripture, along with the doctrine of human responsibility. God determined before the foundation of the world to put Christ on the cross, and yet Scripture also tells us also that the evil men who did it were responsible for their sin (Acts 2 and Acts 4). God determined before the foundation of the world to give a chosen bride to His Son, and yet all people are invited and commanded to believe in Jesus.
Our Lord's mission to save and keep all whom the Father has given Him will certainly succeed. It will not be thwarted.
Remember, Jesus exposits the text that they offer Him in verse 31: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat." He exposits and expounds this Old Testament text word for word in His sermon, the sermon that He gives. He corrects their understanding and says God worked the history of Israel and did that miracle of manna specifically to point ahead to what He would do in Christ. It was a type.
He tells them that manna is a type of Himself, something intended by God, looking ahead to Christ, and He does it word for word here from this text that they gave Him: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat." And so He tells them about the giver of the bread—He gave. The giver of the bread. And then He tells them about the identity of the bread—He gave them bread. And then the recipients of the bread, as we will see today. We'll begin to see this today concerning the recipients of the bread. That's the word "them." "He gave them"—who's the "them"? And He explains that. And then He tells them about the origin of the bread—"from heaven." And then, finally, the embracing of the bread, and that's bound up in the word "to eat." "He gave them bread from heaven to eat."
That's the text that Jesus really will walk them through in these words, and it's a powerful sermon, as we saw last week, intended to draw the true and to drive away the false.
That brings us now to verse 37, and I have to tell you that this is a glorious verse. We're not going to get past it today. In the first part of verse 37: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me." Powerful words. This first part of the verse is, in a very real sense, a word of affirmation and consolation to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself as He came to do the will of the Father.
You will notice that the context of those words, again, is the flagrant unbelief of the people who have seen His miracles. They had eaten the bread, that bread that He provided, though it was meager in supply. That bread fed 20,000-plus people. They have seen this miraculous demonstration that this is no mere man. And yet our Lord says of these very people who saw the signs and saw the power of God, and yet He says of them earlier in the chapter, you remember, in verse 26: "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled."
In other words, “you don't seek Me because you understand what that meant, what I did. You don't understand. You don't seek Me because there's any spiritual perception.” In fact, He says in verse 36: "You have seen Me, and yet you do not believe." In the face of this tremendous display of His own power, this that should have been proof positive and sufficient evidence that He was what He claimed to be, they meet this great display of evidence with stark, naked, stubborn unbelief.
And our Lord, as it were, consoles Himself by saying, “I have displayed My glory. I demonstrated My power, and you have not believed, but it is not in vain. For all that the Father gives Me shall still come to Me. Your unbelief does not frustrate the purpose of My Father. Your unbelief does not discourage Me into retreat. Oh no. I'm grieved, yes, over your unbelief. I'm pained for your unbelief.”
And later on, you will remember, our Lord will weep over their unbelief when He cried over Jerusalem: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" Right? Luke 19. "Oh, you unbelieving Jews, your unbelief has not frustrated Me. Your unbelief has not frustrated the purpose of My Father, for all that the Father gives Me will come to Me."
Oh, the certainty of His decree of election. There is a people that He has given to Me, Jesus is saying here, and the certainty of the Father's effectual call—they shall come to Me. The Lord says, as it were, this comforts Me in the face of unbelief.
And so, every true servant of Christ, every true servant of Christ, every believing father and mother, every believing child of God burdened for sinners, every true servant of Christ has learned to draw comfort from the first part of this verse when He seeks to demonstrate the glory of Christ and the awfulness and the reality of hell. And in the face of all that evidence and that clear truth, when men and women are still unbelieving, what gives comfort to the heart of a servant of Jesus? All that the Father gives Me shall indeed come. They shall come.
This is the testimony of Scripture. Just to give you a sample, and I'm not gonna spend too much time on this because this will come up a little bit later even in the sermon, but turn with me to John 17. John 17, and just watch with your eyes and hear and read it in your heart. Look at verse two, the high priestly prayer of Jesus: "Even as You," referring to the Father, "You gave Him," the Son, "authority over all flesh, now watch this, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life."
Look at verse 6: "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word."
Go down to verse 9: "I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours."
Go down to verse 24: "Father, I desire that they also whom You have given Me be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world."
The immutability of the decree of election and the certainty of the Father's effectual call—this is affirmation and consolation to the true child of God. And the truth embodied in the first part of verse 37, as an under-shepherd of God's sheep, as a servant of Christ, I personally, and we as under-shepherds, elders, and assembly believers, affirm, confess, and believe without reservation, without equivocation, without hesitation. We gladly wear that confession of our faith boldly and openly, simply because it is in the Word of God. And we are called, summoned, to proclaim the full counsel of God.
Verse 37 contains not only an affirmation and consolation to the true child of God, and I want us to focus now the rest of our time also, it contains a message of invitation, consolation to needy sinners, and that's to be found in the latter part of the text. And for every child of God here today, be refreshed. Be refreshed. And again, marinating the mind and the heart, the truth of the gospel. That's what we are doing today, right? May your heart be refreshed. May your mind be filled with gratitude. And the only adequate response would be worship.
The latter part of the text declares: "And the one who comes to Me, I will never cast out." What is our Lord saying? Here's what He is saying. I am consoled by the immutability of the decree of sovereign selection, sovereign election, by the certainty of the Father's effectual call in the face of unbelief, and if in the midst of general unbelief, there should be one who wants to come, I am ready to welcome him. I'm ready. The one who comes to Me in the face of this terrible unbelief, in the face of this general indifference, if there's one amongst you who has a longing to come, a desire to come, My arms are wide open. I'll welcome him.
A word of consolation, invitation to the sinner. "And the one who comes to Me, I will never cast out."
Now, if you're not a sinner in your own eye, if you feel no need for a divine Savior, I have no message of consolation for you today. But if you can feel the truths that we have been considering together in the Gospel of John bearing down upon your conscience, and you say, "Oh, what is the way of deliverance?" I believe God has a word for you today—a word of invitation, a word of consolation. If there's but the slightest inkling of desire to seek salvation by Christ, "Seek Me, and you will find Me when you seek Me with all your heart."
Well, how shall we think our way through such a powerful verse as this? "And the one who comes to Me, I will never cast out." In the first place, I want to briefly define what the word "come" means. "The one who comes to Me"—what does that word "come" mean? Then, having defined it, we shall consider together three things: the object of the sinner's coming—Christ Himself, the necessity of the sinner's coming—"the one who comes," the sinner must come, and then the certainty of the sinner's welcome—"I will never cast out." Simple outline.
Well, let's begin with the definition. What did our Lord mean when He said, "The one who comes to Me"? Will you notice in the very context of this passage, the word "coming"—and we've seen this before—just to remind us that this word "coming" is a synonym for "believing," right? Keep that in mind. Coming to Jesus is a synonym for believing in Christ.
Notice verse 29: "Jesus answered and said to them, 'This is the work of God, that you, what? Believe in Him whom He has sent.'" Go down to verse 35: "Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life. Notice now, He who comes to Me will never hunger, and he who, what? Believes in Me will never thirst.'" How is spiritual hunger satisfied and spiritual thirst alleviated? By coming, which is the same as believing. Believing. By believing, which is the same as coming.
Verse 40: "For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life." So when our Lord said, "The one who comes to Me," He's simply using this verb action, "come," to describe the activity of saving faith. A beautiful, simple definition of this goes something like this: coming to Jesus Christ means the movement of the soul, the sinner's soul, which takes place when the sinner, feeling the weight of his sins, recognizing that there's nothing they could do to deliver and save himself, hears of Christ, turns to Christ, trusts in Christ, lays hold of Christ, leans all of his weight on Christ for salvation. When that happens, a man is said, in the scriptural language, to come to Christ.
Or this wonderful definition by John Murray from his book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied: "Saving faith is self-commitment to Jesus Christ in all the glory of His person and in the perfection of His work as He is so freely and fully offered to us in the gospel." I like that. What is it to come? It's to believe. What is it to believe? It is to cast the weight of a sin-sick soul upon the Son of God as He is offered in the gospel.
Well, so much then for a definition of the word "come" here in this context. Now we come to the heart of the text.
First of all, the object to which the sinner comes—it's our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. "I am the bread of life." That's who the object is. Notice the wording: "The one who comes, what? To Me. The one who comes to Me." Not to My cross itself, not to My doctrine, not to My church, not to My ordinances, not to My servant, but "the one who comes to Me." He said, "I am the object of the sinner's coming. It's Me." I am the exclusive, in fact, object of the sinner's faith. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
And this is the teaching of the entire breadth of Holy Scripture—that Jesus Christ, in the uniqueness of His person and the sufficiency of His work, is the object of faith in the coming sinner. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 16:31), "and you will be saved." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved." Acts 20:21, "solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks about what? Repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." He is the exclusive object of the sinner's coming. Passage after passage after passage—"He that believes on the Son..." So then, the object to which the sinner comes is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
But now, to what kind of Christ does the sinner come? And this is an important question. This is where many people trip and fall and go into error. To what kind of Christ does the sinner come? He comes to this Christ, who is, first of all, unique in His person. Unique in His person.
And our Lord underscored this in this very passage. Notice what He says of Himself back in verse 27: "Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, set His seal." God the Father has put a special stamp of ownership and possession upon the Son, upon the Son—His own Son—a stamp of approval. He is the unique, one and only Son of Man. The God-Man, the Messiah. "The one who comes to Me." That is, "the one who comes to Me in the uniqueness of My person."
He speaks of Himself further in this passage as the one who has come down from heaven, as we will see that particularly next Lord's Day. Verse 33 and verse 38 say the same thing. But look at verse 33: "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." And who is that bread? Look at verse 35: "Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life.'" And verse 38: "I have come down from heaven. I have come down from heaven."
You see, when the Lord Jesus said, "The one who comes to Me I will never cast out," and sets Himself before His hearers as the object of their coming, He did not leave it up to them to determine who He was and sort of come up and concoct any kind of Christ that they would like to have in their own mind. No, no. He didn't allow for that to happen, and for them to say, "Well, you know what? I'm gonna come up with a Christ in my own head, and then that will suit me; then I will believe in that kind of Christ." No, no. He declares who He is in the uniqueness of His person.
And I would like to say to everyone here today, conscious of their sin and of their need, the object to which you are to come is the Lord Jesus Christ, but not a Jesus whom you may make up or come up with of the stuff of your own thinking, but that Jesus who is set before us in the Gospels in the complete uniqueness of His person.
That one who is called by the prophet, the Mighty God, though He is the Son given, called by John, the Eternal Word, the Logos of God, called by Paul in Colossians, not only the Creator of all things, but the One in whom all things hold together, including you and I today as we sit here. The One spoken of in Hebrews as the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3).
And I think one of the most beautiful summaries of this aspect of this unique person is found in Isaiah 63:1, where we read in this prophecy concerning the Lord Jesus, this description of His unique person. Listen to what the prophet says there in Isaiah 63:1: "Who is this who comes from Edom with garments of glowing colors from Bozrah? This One who is majestic in His clothing, marching in the greatness of His power."
Now watch this: “It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save”, mighty to save. There's the identity of this unique person, the one who is mighty to save, the one spoken of in Psalm 24, verse eight: “Who is this King of Glory?”—and the answer comes immediately—“Yahweh, strong and mighty.” Jehovah Jesus, strong and mighty. “Yahweh, mighty in battle”.
Oh, as you think of the power of sin within your own life, and as you think of the enormity of guilt and the weight of all of that guilt, you know that your need is to have one who is more than man, one who has more virtue and more merit than man can ever have, who has more power than man can possess to break the chains that bind you. The object to which the Lord invites you is Himself in the uniqueness of His person as the one who is mighty to save.
Ah, but you say, I think I see something of Him as mighty, but He seems so mighty, so transcendent that He's beyond me. I need a Savior that I know will come near enough to touch me in my need! Because I feel like a leper, cast out of the camp of Israel, forbidden to come to the temple to worship with God's people, cut off from fellowship with His own covenant people, so that when they see me, they put their finger upon the lip and cry, "Unclean, unclean." I need to know that there's one who is near me.
And God says in those beautiful words in Hebrews 2—turn with me there—verse 14 and following, listen to those beautiful words: "Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same"—the Word became flesh, right?—"that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly, He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham."
Now watch this: "Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He, Christ, the Word that became flesh, might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the help of those who are tempted." What a glorious passage.
And so God sets Him before us, not only in the uniqueness of His person as the one who is mighty to save, but the one who is near us in His humanity, who knew what it was to weep, to suffer, being tempted, to bleed, to die. As a man, He keeps the law of God perfectly. As the God-man, He suffers and dies, and He triumphs. And now there's a man—the God-man—in glory, touched with the feelings of our infirmities, who can sympathize with us in our need.
Oh, I say to you today, on the basis of this text, the object to which the Lord Jesus points the needy sinner is His own self: "The one who comes to me—me in the uniqueness of my person." Oh, but also, the Lord Jesus says, "The one who comes to me in the perfection of my work." Not only the uniqueness of my person, but the perfection of my work.
For He went on in this discourse, this sermon, to say some strange words that have reference to His saving work. Will you notice verse 51? "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever." It's as though some say, but Lord, what kind of an involvement with You is needed to partake of this bread?
While He answers the question, notice verse 51b. "And also the bread which I will give for the life of the world is, what? My flesh." Look at verse 53 and 54: "So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
Well, I thought He said, "The one who comes to Me, I will never cast out. I will raise him up the last..." Now He says it's not only a matter of coming to Him in the uniqueness of His person, but I must eat His flesh and drink His blood. What does that mean?
We will see that in more detail, but for our purpose today, it says that I must have an interest in; a participation in Jesus Christ crucified that is—now follow closely—just as real as the participation my body has with the food that I eat. That kind of faith.
You see, I take food to myself. This morning, you had breakfast. You take food to yourself. I take food to myself. I assimilate it until it becomes part of my fingers, my eyes, my hair, my nails, my skin, my bones, my brain tissues, until what I eat is absorbed into the totality of my being. There is this fusion of my life with that which sustains life.
Jesus says, when you come to Me, when you believe in Me, you come to Me not only in the uniqueness of My person as the mighty God able to save, as the Son of Man, but also in the perfection of My work as the crucified Savior. You come to Me to be involved with Me not just as Christ, the one mighty to save, Christ as the sympathetic one to help and to save, but you come to Me as the crucified one. You come to Me as the one who gives His flesh for the life of the world.
You come to Me, and what is an offense to the world? My cross, which displays the Father's wrath against sin, man's deep helplessness in sin. That cross, which is offensive to the world, becomes the very pedestal of glory for the child of God, who will be able to say with Paul, "May it never be that I would boast except in the cross of our Lord." (Galatians 6:14)
"Come to Me," He said, "not only in the uniqueness of My person, but also in the perfection of My work, that work by which I satisfied the wrath of God, the justice of God, the justice and wrath of My Father, that work by which I swallowed up His wrath against all of those who come to Me by faith, that work, when it was accomplished, enabled Me to cry out from the cross, “τετέλεσται” (Tetelestai) — It is finished, forever finished."
The object to which the sinner comes is the Lord Jesus, in the uniqueness of His person and in the perfection of His work. And coming to Jesus Christ is a lot more than a lot of people make it to be in their heads. You know, they come up with a Christ of their own imagination, to whom they think they may come on their own terms, terms of their own, and say, well, I've come to Christ, and they use this text to justify it.
Listen, listen. Listen to what's bound up in these words of our Lord: the One who comes to Me. The object of the sinner's coming is the Lord Jesus Christ, but the Christ of Biblical revelation. The Christ of Biblical revelation in all the uniqueness of His person and in all the perfection of His work. And no one ever knows the benefits of the perfection of His work who does not embrace our Lord Jesus Christ in the uniqueness of His person as revealed in the Scripture. And it's impossible to embrace Him in the uniqueness of His person without, from the heart, embracing Him in the perfection of His work—the Christ of Scripture.
So let me ask, do you today see a suitableness in the sufferings of Christ? Suitable to care for your sin? Do you see in the One mighty to save, One who is able to loose the bonds of your own sin? Do you? Then He says, “come, come!” The One who comes to Me—not to the church, not the preacher, not an altar of prayer, not the doctrines divorced from His person, not even the promises. Christ Himself. Christ presents Himself in the promises, but the promises are to be but the stepping stone to embrace Him. The living Son of God is the object of the sinner's coming.
That beautiful gospel hymn captures it beautifully, the last stanza of “Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.”
Lo, the incarnate God ascended, pleads the merit of His blood.
Venture on Him, on Him.
Venture on Him, venture wholly, completely, totally, let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.
There it is in a nutshell.
Well, having considered the object to which the sinner comes, will you notice in the second place the necessity of the sinner's coming? The necessity of the sinner's coming, and that's found in verse 37 as well. The last part: “the One who comes to Me, I will never cast out.” He is able, He is willing, but it says here, “the One who comes to Me, I will never cast out.”
Now, listen carefully. It's the sinner who comes. God doesn't come for him. He Himself must come. He's enabled to come, but He must come. As the Old Confession states it beautifully in the section on the effectual call of God, this little phrase: yet so as they come most freely.
One of the great problems when people begin to understand the first part of verse 37—that there is indeed in Scripture a decree of sovereign election, all that the Father gives Me will come to Me—how can anyone, frankly, face that text and evade the clear, unmistakable implication that there is indeed a people given to the Lord Jesus Christ? He says, they shall come.
But when people begin to understand or confront the doctrine of election, the doctrine of effectual calling—men should be made willing by the grace of God, sovereign grace—then, if they're not careful, they make another conclusion that they are not warranted to make, and it is this: well, if God has decreed to save some, and if most certainly those shall come indeed, that those who are given by the Father to the Son, well, then I'll just sit back until He brings me in.
Oh, no, no, no, no. You sit back for Him to bring you in, my friend, and you will wake up in hell. He says, you must come. You must come, you must come. The One who comes to Me—He doesn't come for you, He doesn't come on your behalf—you must come.
And may I suggest two things about this coming? First, you must come personally and individually. You must come personally and individually, and it's set forth beautifully in this text. In the original language, in the Greek text, there are a lot of passages that, if you didn't know a letter in the Greek alphabet, it wouldn't make a difference. It wouldn't really bother you at all. When you've got a good translation before you, an accurate, trustworthy translation, you're in good shape. But once in a while, there are shades of insight that come in the original text that you don't get, and this is one of those texts.
Now follow closely with me here. When Jesus says, "All that the Father gives me," and I know we're going to work hard here a little bit, but it's worth it. You know, if you want to get diamonds, you have to dig, and when you dig, you take that pick, and you dig, you get blisters, you sweat. If you want only leaves, just take a rake and go at it. That's all you get. But we're going to get diamonds today.
When Jesus says, "All that the Father gives me" at the beginning of the verse, the translation of the NASB and LSB is very accurate: "All that the Father gives me, all that the Father gives me." Our Lord uses a plural neuter, a plural neuter, and He looks upon the whole body of elect, the great mass of believers viewed corporately, not individually.
Now, other passages speak of election in individual specific terms: "Knowing, brothers, beloved by God, your election" (1 Thessalonians 1:4) to those believers there, specifically, individually. "Brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and choosing sure" (2 Peter 1:10). And so, it's both—you have passages that speak to the corporate nature of it, but also then to the individual nature of it.
But look at this text. This text, verse 37, views the elect of God on one hand as a great body. But notice now: "All that the Father gives me, will come to me." That's the word of consolation to Christ in the face of unbelief. But now, when He wants to console the sinner and encourage the sinner to come, He doesn't say, "And those that come to me" (plural) or "that which comes to me" (neuter). Instead, He makes it an individual masculine: "He who comes to me, the one who comes to me." He individualizes it, He personalizes it.
He says, out of all that great body that the Father has given me as a gift, they come, but they come individually. They come personally. They come consciously, one by one. And so, I say, the great thrust of this text is not only setting before us the object to which we come, but the necessity of coming. We must come, and we must come personally. We must come individually.
Not coming by proxy. There's no such thing as coming to Jesus by proxy. Some of you perhaps may have had parents who presented you to the Lord in some kind of a service of dedication. Others of you may have had parents who presented you in what, in their understanding, was baptism and gave you the seal of a covenantal relationship. But dear one, that will never ever bring you to Jesus Christ.
You must come, and you must come personally. "The one who comes to me." Mom and dad cannot come for you. They cannot come on your behalf. Family cannot come for you. The pastor cannot come for you. You've got to come. You've got to come personally, individually, rolling the weight of your own sin-sick soul upon that unique person who is mighty to save in the light of His perfect work on Calvary's cross.
Bear with me as I want to share with you this good stuff from Spurgeon, that great preacher to sinners. In preaching on this passage—this passage here, particularly verse 48—in a message titled "The Best Bread," he said some words that fit so beautifully in the text that we're considering today. Listen to this:
"Believe what is spoken about Christ and so feed on Him. Then next, trust Him for yourself. That is the point, the hinge of the whole business. He is a Savior, I believe that, but I go further and resolve He shall be my Savior. May I say that? Yes, for I am permitted to do so, inasmuch as He says, 'Him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.'
"Scripture says that He is exalted on high to give repentance unto Israel and remission of sins. Therefore, I look to Him to give me repentance and remission of sins. I trust Him in that respect, and He is mine. He has said, 'It is finished.' The atonement is finished, and I believe that it is finished for me.
"A prominent point about the offering under the old law was that the person who came with the sacrifice laid his hands upon it and said, 'This is mine.'"
He goes on to say, "You must do the same with Jesus. Lay your hands on Him and say, 'He is mine. This sacrificial death is for me.'
"Oh, but," says one, "suppose He is not mine? What if I were to take Him to myself without warrant? Suppose such a thing for a moment, yet He would be yours," Spurgeon answers. "If I was hungry and I ate a bit of bread, and after I had eaten, somebody said, 'It is not yours,' I should reply, 'Perhaps not, but how will you take it from me now? It has nourished me and refreshed me. It is mine, and none can deprive me of it.'
"There is the point, you see. If you take Christ Jesus into yourself, the devil himself may say, 'You had no right to Him,' but he cannot take away that which you have eaten. Jesus Himself will not quarrel with you nor blame you for taking Him, for He has said, 'Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out.'
"You may summon a poor man before the magistrate and say, 'He is a thief, for he stole bread from my counter.' You may put him in prison for the theft—though I hope you would not if hunger drove him to the act—but you cannot get your bread away from him if he has eaten it. So if you come to Christ and take Him into yourself, He is yours, and you shall live by Him. Jesus says, 'He that eats me, even he shall live by me.' Nor death, nor hell, nor time, nor eternity can take Jesus away once you have Him within you. 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?'
And I love this: "Swallow then the divine truth. Let it go down quickly for fear anybody should come before it has fully entered into your soul. Once there, it is yours. They say that possession is nine points of the law, and I should think in the case of eating that it is the whole ten points or any other number of points, for there is no getting repossession of that which a man has actually eaten. Get Christ, and Christ is yours—yours by a kind of possession which will never be disputed before the courts of heaven."
The sinner must come. The sinner must come. And oh, my sinner friend, if that is you today in this place, why, why do you linger away from a Savior who gives an invitation as this?
He says, I am the object to which you should come—perfection in my person, perfection in my work. But then he says, you, you must come, the one who comes to me. So you must come personally and individually.
But that's not all. In the second place, you must come heartily and unreservedly. You must come heartily and unreservedly—no drawing near with the lips while the heart is far from him. And in this very context, do you know what it meant to come to him? It meant, it meant, to jeopardize life itself, for the claims of Christ seemed blasphemous to these people, offensive.
Notice verse 41: "Therefore the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.'" They were saying, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I've come down from heaven'?"
They were offended. They accused him of blasphemy. Elsewhere, they wanted to stone him.
You see, for any Jew in this context to say, "I believe his claims"—do you know what it meant? It meant to put your life itself on the chopping block. You say, but it's a simple thing to come to Christ, isn't it? Yes, yes—simple in one sense, it costs nothing. But in another sense, it costs everything. For that coming of which Jesus speaks is not only a coming personally and individually but also heartily and unreservedly.
It means to embrace all of Jesus, with all of the demands of his person and all of the humbling nature of his work. To come to him in the adequacy of his work is to say to him, "Lord Jesus, foul and full of sin I am, I do desire to eat of your flesh and drink of your blood. I do desire to acknowledge that I shall starve to death eternally if not for the life which your death gives to me."
What a humbling confession. What a humbling confession. Man wants to at least say, "Lord, I wiggled my pinky, I scratched my ear, I've done something, I've contributed a little bit—something that adds something to my acceptance before you." No, no, no—this demands coming unreservedly, nothing in our hands to bring, nothing. It demands coming, acknowledging that the one who is mighty to save is God, and God never bargains with sinners. He offers mercy on his own terms. He offers mercy and says, "Bow, kiss the scepter of my Son. Bend the knee."
Oh, how this verse has been abused, but it's glorious in its context and in its full, rich setting. Coming to him is a coming heartily and coming unreservedly. And there were people in that day that came in a different way. Do you know what happened to them? Look, look at the closing of this event.
Verse 60: "Therefore, many of his disciples, when they heard this, they said, 'This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?'" And Jesus said, "You think that what I've told you up until now is hard? I'll give you something harder yet." And he did, and he did. He preached human inability to them again. He told them they can't come unless the Father draws them.
Notice verse 65: "And he was saying, 'For this reason I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted him by the Father or from the Father.'" What happened then? What happened? Look at verse 66: "As a result of this, many of his disciples went away and were not walking with him anymore."
What was wrong with these disciples? Well, they came with reservations. They came with reservations. They came with reservations about their own human ability. And when Jesus, having told them, "You must eat my flesh and drink my blood," which was something offensive to them, He said also, "You are so bad that you can't even get to the remedy unless the Father brings you there."
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no—not us, Jesus. What are you talking about—not us? We have our own wills. We've done a few bad things, yes, but we're good Jews. We're not helpless. We're the captains of our own destinies." They don't like what they hear, and so they go back and walk with him, what? No more. They bail out. They jump ship.
Listen, listen carefully, friend. Friend, you come to Christ with some imagined virtue of your own. If that's how you come or how you came, sooner or later you will part with Him when His word begins to put the pressure upon your supposed virtues.
You come with reservations about certain sins that you want to cherish—darling sins—and sooner or later, like Judas, you will part with Christ for the sake of that sin. To come to Jesus means not only coming individually and personally but heartily and unreservedly, for He said, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot, cannot, cannot be My disciple."
Oh yes, he can openly identify himself with Me and come to be with My people and do the things that My people are doing and go through the motions, but I will never own him in that day. In fact, I will say in that day, "Depart from Me, I never knew you."
But oh, let me encourage you. Let me encourage you. Whether you've been driven by the fear of hell or drawn by the loveliness of the Savior to the place where you say, "Yes, I do long to come, I do long to come unreservedly, wholeheartedly"—whether driven by the fear of hell or drawn by the loveliness of the Savior, whether terrified by the threats of God or drawn by His sweet promises—come, come! You must come if you would have life and pardon and acceptance.
But someone objects, "Habib, don't you believe what it says in verse 44? I can't come unless the Father draws me." Oh yes, that's settled. I believe verse 44 with all my heart, but I also believe verse 37b: "The one who comes to Me, I will never cast out." I believe that. You see, the cannot is basically a will not, a will not. Jesus said in John 5:40, "You are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life." The will is depraved. And dear ones, if there's the slightest inkling of desire to come, you're welcome. Come.
You see, verse 44 is not said to discourage the sinner who longs to come, but to humble a proud, unbroken heart that thinks that it has the power in itself to turn on the button of grace when it pleases. Maybe some are sitting here thinking this way: "Well, I know all about the truth, but I'm not ready to commit to Jesus because I want to live life. Maybe a few years down the line, I'll turn on that button of grace and I'll come to the Savior." How arrogant. How prideful.
Don't take what is meant to slay the proud, indifferent sinner and slay yourself with it. Take that which the Lord gives to encourage the needy, desperate sinner and venture upon it. The sinner is plagued with both inability and unwillingness.
You say, "Well, how do you reconcile the two?" I love what Spurgeon said. He was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other, and he replied, "I wouldn't try. I wouldn't try. I never reconcile friends." Friends? Yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibilities are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors. They are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together.
How would someone else object? "I'm not deeply convicted of my sin. I don't have enough conviction." But what does Jesus say? What does Jesus say? "The one who comes to Me with 14 ounces or 17 pounds or three tons of conviction, I will never cast out." Is that what He says? No. "The one who comes. The one who comes."
If you're convinced enough to know that you deserve the wrath of God, that you cannot save yourself, sick enough of sin to quit, then He says, "Come." That's all. Come.
Listen, listen. If God gave some of you a deeper measure of conscious conviction, it might seal you in a state of—ready for this?—self-righteousness.
There are some who, by the way they give their testimony, are like the Pharisee who went up to the temple to pray and said, "God, I thank You that I'm not like other people—swindlers, unjust, adulterers, even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, pay my tithes of all that I get..." There are people who talk this way: "God, I thank You I didn't come to You like other people—dry-eyed, no groans, no long periods of heaviness and mourning. I thank You, Father, I did not come that cheap way like other people came. I thank You that I lay under the whiplash of the law for 10 years, or I lay for six weeks in deep conviction, crying day and night." No, no. Do you know what they have done? Their very conviction has become a subtle form of self-righteousness.
My friend, God knows just how deep to wound you. And if He's wounded you enough so that you know there's no healing in yourself, He says, "Come. Come." Again, that old gospel hymn has got it all there:
"Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness He requireth is to feel your need of Him."
That's it. That's it.
Make no mistake, conviction of sin is fundamental in coming to Jesus. It's undeniable, the evidence is there, but that conviction must not be measured by some human standard. If the work of conviction has gone deep enough to show you that you deserve wrath, you've offended the thrice-holy God, you deserve nothing but His wrath, and you're conscious that help is only to be found in that Person, Jesus, who says, "Come," then come.
Well, having considered the object to which the sinner comes—Christ Himself—having considered, in the second place, the necessity of coming—coming personally and individually, coming heartily and unreservedly—well, how can I leave us without the cream of the text?
Okay, bear with me a little bit. The cream of the text: the certain welcome of the coming sinner. The certain welcome of the coming sinner.
What will happen if I come, if I roll the weight of my sin-sick soul upon Jesus? I've sinned against conscience. I've sinned against light. I've sinned against privilege. I've sinned against the gospel. I've sinned against the prayers of my mother and my father and my under-shepherd. I've sinned with a high hand. I've sinned with impunity. What will happen if I come? Two things will happen. According to Jesus, He says, "The one who comes to Me, I will never cast out."
Oh, let us not miss this. The Lord is saying, number one, you will be received. And number two, you will be kept. You'll be received, and you'll be kept.
Notice how our Lord affirms this matter of reception, and in the Greek text, He uses a double negative—""οὐ μή" (oo me)." Double negative. Certainly not. In the NASB, this is emphatic, this is vivid. It's as though our Lord says, "The one who comes to Me, I will not—I say, I will not—cast him out."
Now, the strongest way to make a positive statement is to make a double negative. If you were to say to me, "May I come to your house?" and I say, "Yes, if you come, you will be welcomed." But, but if I were to respond this way—"Any time you come, you will never, never, ever find a shut door"—I have really made you feel welcome.
Now, our Lord could have said, "The one who comes to Me, I will receive," but He makes it even stronger: "The one who comes to Me, I will not, no, never, ever cast out." And so we have in this wonderful text the certain welcome of the sinner. You will be received.
Do you come guilty? Do you come heavy laden? The Lord Jesus says, I died for sinners, satisfied the justice of my Father, I will pardon you.
Do you come bound by the chains of sin, which you feigned a thousand times would have broken? The Lord Jesus says, I receive you, I receive you and break the chains, for whom the Son sets free is free indeed.
Do you come weak? He says, I'll make you strong. My grace is sufficient. Do you come ignorant? He says, I'll give you light and sight. You learn of Christ. Do you come struggling with pride? I will teach you humility, he says. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
Well, how can we say it more forcefully? Beloved, you will be received. But something even more wonderful than being received—you will be kept. You will be kept. What comfort there would be in the thought that once received, I might, after 20 years, be cast out. What could make hell worse than the memory that once I knew the delights of salvation? And the strong emphasis of this verse is not upon the initial reception, but upon the continual keeping power of Christ.
That's the emphasis of this verse. The one who comes to me, I will receive. No, no, I will never cast out. Well, He can't cast us out unless He's got us in, right? So the inference here is we will be received, but stronger than that, we will be kept. I will never cast out. Once in the family of God, will subsequent failure and delinquency cast me out or disinherit me? No, no. The Lord Jesus said, I am mighty to save. I am mighty to save.
And as surely as I purchase forgiveness by my death, I will secure the perseverance in holiness and obedience by my continuous intercession and by the indwelling of my Spirit. So that the doctrine I proclaim from this text this morning is not "once saved, always saved, no matter how you live." That's a doctrine of hell. It will take multitudes to that place. What I proclaim from this place is the glorious Biblical doctrine of the preservation and perseverance of the saints.
Christ will receive us. And when He receives us, He changes us. He puts his Spirit within us. Now at the right hand of the Father, He pleads on our behalf, "Father, keep them from the evil one." And the Father, in answer to the prayer of his Son, sends His Spirit into the heart of his children—that Spirit by which they are sealed till the day of redemption, who stirs them up unto holiness and obedience, who reproves them when they sin, that Spirit who convicts them, that Spirit who communicates the fullness of Christ.
And so the Lord Jesus says in this text, the certain welcome to the coming sinner—you will not only be received, but also you will be kept. And what's the reason for both the reception and keeping? Well, that's for next time. That's for next time. You have to come back, right? You have to come back.
And child of God, child of God. What a marvelous text this is. Received and kept. Maybe you're going through a pummeling right now. Maybe you're feeling the flaming arrows of the enemy. Doubts, doubts flooding your mind, harassing you, left, right, and center. Maybe you fell hard and skinned your knees, and you're bleeding, and the enemy whispers words of doubt. May you be encouraged today. You're kept by the power of God. And one day you will stand before him, blameless.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for the blessing of salvation—so great a salvation. How can we not today cry out, blessed be God for such a salvation, coming out of eternity, suffused with the decrees of God, and yet reaching man, the sinner, with his sin, with such simple, broad promises? And when he puts the weight of his soul upon the Lord Jesus Christ, that sinner is received and kept. And all of that, we are told, is buttressed with those same decrees, assuring the sinner that he should be kept all the way to glory.
Hallelujah, what a Savior! Blessed be the name of the Lord for such a salvation. We thank you, Father, that in eternity, You and the Son covenanted together, a people were given to the Son, and the Son comes forth to die for them. The Spirit now is moving to draw them, and the certainty of the purpose that they shall come will unfold. Every individual, as he comes, the promise is he's welcomed. It's all here before us.
I pray this morning for any sinner who's outside of Christ, that they will no longer go on in their sin, in their guilt, and in the terrors of conscience, but that they would turn to you and be saved, be forgiven, be welcomed, and be kept. That they would say with the hymn writer, “Just as I am without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come”. May they come today.
And for those of us who are your children, O Lord, may our hearts be refreshed. How you've set your affection upon us, and you drew us with cords of love, and we came to you not kicking and screaming, we came willing in the day of your power. We came with delight.
And we all can remember that day when the weight of sin was lifted off of our chests, as it were, and we experienced a purged conscience. And we thank you, Lord, that now, as we live the Christian life, we live knowing that we are kept by the power of God, safe and secure. You hold us in the palm of your hand, and we know, because You told us, “He who began a good work in You will bring it to completion”.
I know whom I have believed, we say with Paul, and I am persuaded, each and every one of us, your children, that God is able to keep what I've committed to him until that day. It is for you to keep, and you promised to do so. We thank you.
No height, no depth, no hell, no principalities, no power, nothing shall separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. We thank you.
We ask these things in His name, Amen.
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